What a plan B might look like
As TikTok faces a countdown to a potential ban in the United States, Chinese officials are reportedly weighing an unexpected plan B: letting Elon Musk take over the popular video platform.
On paper, such an arrangement makes sense, given Beijing’s existing ties to and trust in the world’s richest man. But beyond whether this might actually happen, there are a host of other questions that would need to be resolved for it to work.
The latest: Chinese officials have debated whether the tech mogul should be allowed to invest in or buy TikTok’s American operations to satisfy a U.S. law requiring the app’s sale, according to Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal.
It’s unclear whether Chinese officials have spoken with Musk or ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. TikTok has called the reports “pure fiction.”
There’s a logic to such a move:
Musk is a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, and both men have said they oppose outlawing TikTok in the United States. (The Times reports that the billionaire is expected to use office space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, as part of his work for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.) Musk has been a counterweight to China hawks in the Trump orbit, including Senator Marco Rubio, the pick for secretary of state.
Musk also has a close relationship with Beijing, and officials there most likely feel that they have leverage over Musk: China accounts for about 40 percent of Tesla’s sales, a market share that has come under threat by homegrown competitors.
For Musk, putting TikTok together with X could vastly expand his social media empire’s audience, potentially making it more attractive to advertisers. (That would also help the contingent of investors who financed Musk’s purchase of Twitter in 2022.) And TikTok generates a huge amount of data that could be useful for training his xAI’s artificial intelligence models.
There are still a lot of unknowns. Beijing would prefer to look strong in standing up to Washington, especially as Trump — who despite opposing a TikTok ban has spoken of escalating a trade fight — prepares to take office. The Journal adds that some discussions to date have concluded that a better course of action might be to let TikTok get banned and then negotiate with Trump. Because the law only prevents ByteDance from updating TikTok, such negotiations would give it and the White House time to reach an accord.
It’s also unclear how Musk would finance a deal. One possibility is his borrowing against his Tesla shares, which have soared since Trump’s victory. (It’s an option he considered — but didn’t take — when he moved to buy Twitter.)