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However, this is all a deflection, because blocking a company from operating as a business within China is not the same thing as banning them by blocking all access to their foreign websites/apps.
If China didn't want Wikipedia operating fully within China as a nonprofit, but you could still access foreign countries'/languages' Wikipedias, I wouldn't necessarily describe Wikipedia as "banned in China". I'd maybe describe it as a partial ban at most.
I'm guessing they decided there was no effective legislation Tiktok couldn't weasel around via loopholes, deception, or some combination of the two.
I'm not a fan of TikTok but its silly not to see the bias here
The PRC bans tons of US websites and apps all the time, much more stringently than the US is doing, but people keep drawing these false equivalences regardless.
Unlike China's typical banning policy, the US isn't implementing a full website block, which means the app would continue to work for a while, and Americans would still be able to get to the website or get to the app if it's hosted on foreign servers. I see nothing about blocking Americans from getting to the content, only from hosting the content.
In contrast, China outright blocks its residents from even being able to get to Google or Facebook or the New York Times, period, even if they're hosted in another country. It's a full ban.
So the US is implementing a weaker ban with one website even as China has blocked thousands, but people are still freaking out.
Honest question: what laws?
They are, in fact, banned. It's not just that they can't operate like a normal business within China, you can't even reach the foreign servers from within China...because they're banned.
If a new social media network opens in Denmark, it might not operate in the US yet -- which means US laws wouldn't even be applicable -- but I could still reach it from the US without needing a VPN, because it wouldn't be banned either. Maybe it wouldn't be useful for me as an American yet, but I could still get to the website, because the US government isn't stopping me.
Many popular US websites are actually banned in China, whether you want to admit it or not.