The vote in the US House of Representatives on Wednesday, March 13 against Chinese social media platform TikTok is disconcerting. In a country that likes to present itself as the temple of free enterprise, elected Republicans and Democrats decided by a large majority to force ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, to choose between selling the app within 180 days, or being barred from Apple and Google's app stores.

This vote has given rise to some incongruous coalitions, such as the one that was brought together against the bill by left-wing Democratic Representative Alexandria Occasio Cortez (New York State), motivated by substantive arguments, libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Donald Trump. Trump, a former TikTok critic, has now changed his mind, arguing that this relentless attack against the app would play into the hands of other social media platforms he considers hostile to him.

China's retort was equally sharp. Beijing reacted to this aggressive interventionism by deploring a decision that "puts the US on the opposite side of the principle of fair competition and international economic and trade rules." As we know, the Chinese Communist Party is generally concerned about these principles and rules. At least China had the decency not to decry Internet censorship.

Hasty passage

To become law, the House's text still has to clear the hurdle in the Senate, where elected representatives have made it known that they intend to firmly defend other principles, starting with freedom of expression, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. So the game isn't up yet.

No one can deny that the Chinese platform's extraordinary popularity is likely to raise concerns among legislators. The heavy fine imposed in Italy for lack of control over content that could present a danger to young users bears witness to this. Beyond the addiction that the app fosters − which concerns all players in this market, in the US as elsewhere, whatever their nationality − the national security concerns put forward in Washington cannot be dismissed out of hand.

Under pressure for many months, ByteDance has already made some gestures, such as a billion-dollar investment to have American user data stored by a third party in the US. But the suspicions of Beijing-led opinion manipulation during this election year, also raised during the vote, need to be substantiated. Yet the House hastily passed the bill, without any tangible evidence being presented to the elected representatives.

If the March 13 vote is any indication, it's of the chamber's poor state: paralyzed by polarization and disorder ever since the Republicans took control by the skin of their teeth following the midterm elections. When compromise becomes synonymous with betrayal, stigmatizing China and everything associated with it proves to be the only possible common ground. This is an admission of impotence, not a demonstration of decisiveness.