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Comment by bduerst | Hacker News Reader

>It's a Chinese company, they have privledges, not rights.

Neither Bytedance nor TikTok are Chinese companies.

It's true that Bytedance has buildings in Beijing, and a Chinese app (Taotiao) that is a Chinese subsidiary, but Bytedance is a Cayman's Islands company and TikTok doesn't even have servers inside China.

For purposes of the Chinese National Intelligence Law compelling the company to share user information with the CCP, Apple shares way more user data than TikTok does.

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Bytedance is a Chinese company. Look up VIE (variable interest entity) or "Sina Structure". Essentially the Cayman islands topco is a fudge that the Chinese government tolerates to facilitate non Chinese investment in Chinese companies, something which is not normally allowed. The structure is very common among Chinese tech companies. Instead of controlling the company by owning a majority of its shares, the "owners" of VIEs control their firms contractually. Paul Gilis' blog is very good on this https://www.chinaaccountingblog.com/weblog/explaining-vie-st...

VIEs are publicly trade (Bytedance is not) and that blogpost you linked is a decade old.

>... Bytedance is a Cayman's Islands company...

Sure, it's incorporated in the Caymans, but we all know that that is just a technicality.

Like every other company operating from the Caymans; tax evasion.

If you keep everything legal, I think it's called tax optimisation.

Yet somehow the Chinese government can control the export of their technology and needs to approve any deal with a US company?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-unlikely-approve-ti...

Well, the US also controls lots of companies that are not American. Especially in finance. They were handing out American sanctions for European banks doing business with Iranian companies.

I was referring to laws literally called "export controls" which regulate goods and technology that originate in China, not stretching the word to make a metaphorical case for ownership.

If it does business in China, then it's beholden to Chinese law at the risk of no longer doing business in China.

By that rationale, Apple and Microsoft are Chinese companies.

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