China has given its approval for the transfer of the popular short-video app TikTok. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shared the news on Thursday. He believes the deal will move forward in the next few weeks and months, finally settling the long-standing issue.
Secretary Bessent announced Fox Business Network after President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Kuala Lumpur. “In Kuala Lumpur, we finalized the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval,” Bessent said. China’s Commerce Ministry also stated earlier on Thursday that it would properly address TikTok-related matters with the United States. TikTok, which China-based ByteDance owns, has not yet commented on the development.
The future of TikTok, an app used by 170 million Americans, has been uncertain for more than 18 months. In 2024, the U.S. Congress passed a law telling TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the app’s U.S. operations by January 2025.
President Trump signed an executive order on September 25. This order confirmed that the plan to sell TikTok’s U.S. business to a group of U.S. and international investors complied with the national security requirements of the 2024 law. Trump gave them 120 days to complete the sale and delayed the enforcement of the law until January 20.
Trump’s order explained that U.S. security partners would retrain and watch over TikTok’s algorithm. The new joint venture will control how the algorithm works. The agreement for TikTok’s U.S. business also means ByteDance will appoint one of seven board members for the new company, with Americans filling the other six spots. ByteDance will own less than 20% of TikTok U.S., following the law that said the app would shut down by January 2025 if ByteDance did not sell its U.S. assets.
However, Representative John Moolenaar, a Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on China, expressed serious concerns this month about a licensing agreement for the TikTok algorithm if it’s part of ByteDance’s deal to sell the U.S. assets.
