China mulls over selling US Tik Tok operations to Elon Musk: report
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New York, United States: Chinese authorities are considering selling US TikTok operations to billionaire Elon Musk after the US passed a law last year that required the video sharing platform to sell it or shut down, News agency AFP reported.
The discussion on the potential sale of the platform comes in Beijing just as the law is going into effect on Sunday, a day before Trump takes office.
It is reported citing sources that Musk’s social media company X, formerly Twitter, may purchase Tik Tok from its Chinese owner ByteDance and combine it into his platform.
Report said it was not clear if Musk would have to sell other assets to purchase Tik Tok as the value of its US operations were estimated between $40 and $50 billion.
The Chinese social media company began facing crisis after the US government accused Tik Tok of collecting data and spying on users alongside alleging that it is a conduit to spread propaganda.
Denying the allegations, the Chinese company challenged the US law taking the matter eventually to the US Supreme Court.
At the hearing on Friday, the nine-member bench of the court was seemingly skeptical of TikTok’s lawyer’s arguments that ‘forcing a sale was a violation of First Amendment free speech rights’.
The news agency reported citing Bloomberg that the sale of the platform to Musk is ‘ still preliminary’, and Chinese authorities are yet to reach a consensus on how to ‘proceed’.
Musk, who has a factory in China for his electric car company Tesla, is a close ally to Trump and views China as one of the biggest markets for his auto company.