China said Friday its first home-built aircraft carrier has completed five days of sea trials, putting it closer to joining its sister flattop in the country's increasingly powerful fleet.
The still-unnamed ship completed all assigned tasks before returning to its construction yard in the northern port of Dalian, state media reported.
In this May 13, 2018, file photo provided by China's Xinhua News Agency, China's indigenous aircraft carrier lifts anchor in Dalian in northeast China's Liaoning Province. China says the carrier has successfully completed five days of sea trials. (Li Gang/Xinhua via AP, File)
The 50,000-ton carrier is China's second and is due to be commissioned before 2020 following the arrival of its air complement.
China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was bought as a mostly empty hull from Ukraine and was commissioned in 2012 along with its flight wing of Chinese J-15 fighter jets.
Both carriers are based on the former Soviet Union's Kuznetsov class design, with a ski jump-style deck for takeoff and a conventional oil-fueled steam turbine power plant.
China is seen as striving to overtake the U.S. as the dominant naval power in Asia and already boasts the world's largest navy in numbers of vessels.
Beijing says aircraft carriers are needed to protect its coastline and trade routes, but they are also seen as backing up Beijing's claims to self-governing Taiwan and virtually the entire South China Sea.
WASHINGTON (AP) — TikTok is gearing up for a legal fight against a U.S. law that would force the social media platform to break ties with its China-based parent company, a move almost certainly backed by Chinese authorities as the bitter U.S.-China rivalry threatens the future of a wildly popular way for young people in America to connect online.
Beijing has signaled TikTok should fight what it has called a “robbers” act by U.S. lawmakers “to snatch from others all the good things that they have.” Should a legal challenge fail, observers say Chinese authorities are unlikely to allow a sale, a move that could be seen as surrendering to Washington.
Beijing may not want the U.S. action against the popular short-form video platform to set a “bad precedent,” said Alex Capri, senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore and research fellow at Hinrich Foundation. “If Beijing capitulates to the U.S., where does it end?”
The legislation that U.S. President Joe Biden signed this week could allow Washington to widen its scope to target other China-related apps, such as the popular e-commerce platform Temu, and embolden U.S. allies to follow suit, said Hu Xijin, a former editor-in-chief for the party-run newspaper Global Times.
With 170 million American users, TikTok should “have more guts to fight to the very end and refuse to surrender,” Hu, now a political commentator, said Wednesday on Chinese social media.
TikTok vowed to challenge the new U.S. law, which requires its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to divest its stakes within a year to avoid a ban. The company has characterized the law as an infringement on the free speech rights of its users, most of whom use the app for entertainment.
“We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail,” the company wrote on the social platform X.
The fight over TikTok has increased tensions between the U.S. and China, with both vowing to protect their economic and national security interests. U.S. lawmakers are concerned the Chinese ownership of the app could allow Beijing to exert unwanted influence in the U.S., especially on young minds. The law has followed a string of successes by Washington in curbing the influence of Chinese companies through bans, export controls and forced divestitures, drawing protests from Beijing that the U.S. is bent on suppressing China’s rise through economic coercion.
The U.S. has forced other Chinese companies to divest before, including in 2020, when Beijing Kunlun, a Chinese mobile video game company, agreed to sell the gay dating app Grindr after receiving a federal order. But TikTok, created by a Chinese company only for the overseas market and evidence of the nation's tech powers on the global stage, is a high-profile case that Beijing does not want to lose.
National dignity is at stake and could “take precedence over the financial interests of ByteDance investors,” including global investors who own 60% of the company, said Gabriel Wildau, managing director of the New York-headquartered consulting and advisory firm Teneo.
A legal challenge from the company is expected to lean on First Amendment concerns and could drag on for years. Beijing is betting on a legal win, analysts say.
What to do if TikTok doesn't prevail is likely still being debated with the Chinese leadership, said Dominic Chiu, an analyst with Eurasia Group. President Xi Jinping, who will have to sign off on whether to permit or prohibit the sale, probably has not made the final decision, Chiu said.
Luckily for Xi, there is no urgency for Beijing to decide, said Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Washington-based Stimson Center. “A lot of things could change," she said.
If lawmakers get their wish and a sale does occur, it’s likely to be a challenging and messy process for TikTok, which would have to disentangle its U.S. operations from everything else.
For one, the price tag for TikTok’s U.S. business — which is unknown — is expected to be high enough to severely limit the pool of investors and companies who’d be able to afford it. Some investors — including former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin — have already positioned themselves as potential buyers of a U.S. version of TikTok. ByteDance, which is privately held, is valued at $220 billion, according to market tracker Pitchbook.
And there’s uncertainty about what would happen with the TikTok algorithm, the secret sauce that feeds users short videos based on their interests and has contributed to the platform’s status as a cultural juggernaut.
ByteDance would be barred from controlling the algorithm of a U.S. spinoff of TikTok. Many experts believe Chinese authorities would block any sale of the technology that populates people's TikTok feeds under export regulations revised in 2020, when then-President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok through an executive order that was blocked in federal courts.
Some, including Mnuchin, have said TikTok would need to be rebuilt in the U.S. using new technology. But it's unclear what that might look like, or how well it can reproduce the type of video recommendations users have grown accustomed to seeing.
Robin Burke, a professor of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, says some aspects of the algorithm might be replicated by industry insiders. But he also noted there are areas where TikTok appears ahead of its competitors and duplication might prove challenging.
“TikTok has all the experience, they have all the data,” Burke said. “I think it’s unlikely that a U.S. business — if they don’t inherit the technology from the parent company — would be able to build something equivalent. Certainly not right away.”
AP journalist Dake Kang contributed from Beijing.
FILE - A TikTok content creator, sits outside the U.S. Capitol, April 23, 2024, in Washington. TikTok is gearing up for a legal fight against a U.S. law that would force the social media platform to break ties with its China-based parent company or face a ban. A battle in the courts will almost certainly be backed by Chinese authorities as the bitter U.S.-China rivalry threatens the future of a wildly popular way for young Americans to connect online. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, file)
FILE - The TikTok logo is displayed on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen, Oct. 14, 2022, in Boston. TikTok is gearing up for a legal fight against a U.S. law that would force the social media platform to break ties with its China-based parent company or face a ban. A battle in the courts will almost certainly be backed by Chinese authorities as the bitter U.S.-China rivalry threatens the future of a wildly popular way for young Americans to connect online. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
