Washington (AFP)
The United States announced Friday the ban, from Sunday, of downloading TikTok and WeChat applications, further escalation in the standoff with China over the fate of these two applications.
Washington, however, leaves a door open for TikTok, an application very popular with young people to produce short videos, before completely banning him from operating on its soil.
"The president leaves until November 12 to resolve the national security concerns posed by TikTok. The bans could be lifted if necessary," the Commerce Department said in a statement.
Regarding WeChat, current users will see the application almost disabled in the United States, said a US official.
The platform, which belongs to the Chinese giant Tencent, is omnipresent in the lives of Chinese people (messaging, remote payments, reservations, etc.).
The announcement comes as negotiations with ByteDance, Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell its activities in the United States to an American group are stalling and the Trump administration is growing impatient.
"The Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated that it has the means and the intention to use these applications to threaten national security, foreign policy and the economy of the United States", justifies the US Department of Commerce.
"Regarding TikTok, the only real change from Sunday evening will be that we will not have access to application improvements, updates or maintenance," said Minister of Commerce Wilbur Ross on the Fox Business channel.
Very quickly, users will therefore have to deal with an application with degraded service, which could make it much less attractive.
TikTok denounced this decision, while ensuring that it presented maximum guarantees to respect the security and privacy of American users.
In addition to the possibility of audits carried out by third parties, "the verification of the security of the code and the surveillance" could be done by the American government, assured a spokesperson to AFP.
In addition, an American technology provider would be responsible for the maintenance and operation of the TikTok network in the United States, "which would include all services and data serving American consumers," she said.
This popular teen short video app has around 100 million users in the United States and up to one billion worldwide.
- Technological dominance -
Minister Wilbur Ross assured that "the basic TikTok will remain intact until November 12".
"If there is no agreement before November 12 (...), TikTok will be (...) closed," he threatened, however.
The United States is thus carrying out the threat brandished by President Donald Trump against these two Chinese applications, in a context of great tensions between the two economic giants.
At the beginning of August, the host of the White House had issued an ultimatum to TikTok, which he accuses of industrial espionage on behalf of Beijing, without however having made public any tangible evidence.
He gave ByteDance until September 20, ie Sunday, to sell its TikTok activities on American soil to a "made in US" company.
But two days before the deadline, the negotiations have still not succeeded.
A first project involving Microsoft and the distribution giant Walmart was rejected by China last weekend.
Then Monday, the US Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, formalized the name of a new potential partner: Oracle, based in California.
Some media mention a minority stake (up to 20%, according to CNBC) by Oracle, specializing in software and services for businesses.
The Chinese parent company ByteDance would retain a majority stake.
Supermarket giant Walmart has also made it known that it could be part of the new project.
A US government national security committee has been tasked with examining Oracle's offer, while Republican lawmakers have warned of greenlighting a deal that would leave the company under Chinese control.
Behind TikTok, it is the battle for technological domination that is being played out between the United States and China.
Simultaneously satisfying the interests of the world's two leading powers and allaying the concerns of both countries over security issues, algorithms and other key technologies used by TikTok seems impossible.
The TikTok saga unfolds as Donald Trump, vying for a second term, promotes national security in his campaign.
The Republican regularly accuses his Democratic opponent Joe Biden of weakness towards Beijing.
On Friday, an official from the Ministry of Commerce assured that this decision should not be seen in the light of the elections which will take place on November 3.
© 2020 AFP