As with the trade war, Trump loves to make simplistic and sweeping moves that sounds tough and plays well to his base, but never really fully grasped the true total implications.
That is why China will not allow TikTok to cave, because it wants Trump to press the trigger on these bans. While this will cause a fair bit of damage to the Chinese companies targeted in the short run, in the medium to long term, the damage to American interests are going to be exponentially worse.
If America does this, it will shatter its monopoly on mobile app stores and OS. Because it would burn a hell of a lot of people beyond the Chinese this is supposed to target.
Developers, users and free countries will all jump ship as soon as a credible alternative becomes available. And wouldn’t you know it, Huawei has been developing just such an alternative.
I think China will make concessions that are simply unthinkable to American tech companies of making the Huawei App Store and OS truly boarderless and maybe even open source.
China does not want to corner the market like America, merely shattering America’s existing stranglehold and creating a truly free and open market placed and even playing field would be progress enough.
