US politicians find fault with TikTok again: selling to US companies can prevent TikTok from being completely banned in the US

Source: Global Times [Global Times reporter Pan Xiaotong and Chen Zishuai] According to the report of the Financial Times on the 2nd, Mike Gallagher, a Republican representative of the US Congress, said that the sale of TikTok, a social media owned by China's ByteDance Company, to an American company could prevent the company from being completely banned in the United States.
It is reported that Gallagher is an influential figure in the Congress.
Previously, he compared TikTok to "digital fentanyl" and considered the social media platform "addictive" and "destructive".
Recently, American politicians have repeatedly suppressed and restricted TikTok under various pretexts such as "national security".
The Wall Street Journal reported on December 28, 2022 that in order to cooperate with a new bill, the US House of Representatives has prohibited all equipment managed by the House of Representatives from using TikTok.
Earlier, Gallagher and Marco Rubio, Republican of the Senate Intelligence Committee, proposed a bill to completely ban TikTok in the United States.
Gallagher said on the 1st local time that the bill would allow TikTok to be sold to an American company, calling it a "feasible solution".
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, said that when the new Congress was sworn in as Speaker of the House of Representatives this week, he would appoint Gallagher to lead a new "China Special Committee" to promote Washington to take a tougher attitude towards Beijing.
According to the Financial Times, Gallagher is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer.
Since he was elected to Congress for the first time in 2016, he has become one of the main representatives of Eagle to China on Capitol Hill.
Lv Xiang, an expert on American issues from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on the 2nd that the US government's constant suppression of TikTok is the result of the US party struggle, and there may also be relevant enterprises behind it.
Lv Xiang pointed out that the politicians who strongly criticized TikTok were mainly several key Republican members, including Gallagher, which was consistent with their consistent strong anti China stance.
In addition, most of the states that prohibit federal employees from using TikTok on government equipment are also "Republican states".
From this perspective, some Republicans are using TikTok as a "political target" to stir up the already fragile Sino US relations.
At the same time, the development of American Internet enterprises has been in a serious decline for more than a year, so some American companies may be behind it.
Xiang Ligang, a communications expert, told the Global Times that "starting with" TikTok was not a phenomenon in American politics now.
Former President Trump had pushed for the forced sale of TikTok, but it failed in the end.
Members of parliament led by Gallagher push forward the sale or ban of TikTok, which is also difficult to achieve results.
First of all, TikTok did not violate the laws of the United States.
The request of American politicians to sell TikTok completely violated the principle of the so-called free market economy in the United States, and ultimately damaged the trust of enterprises in the United States government.
Moreover, referring to Trump's failure case, Gallagher, as a member of parliament, is very difficult to realize his own plan to a large extent.