TikTok Photo: VCG

After months of push-and-pull with the US government, Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok is at a turning point for its destiny in the US market, analysts said, due to the changing political landscape where President Donald Trump is so far at a disadvantage against President-elect Joe Biden.

If TikTok can maintain the current situation, without being overturned in the process, it might achieve its survival in the American market, they told the Global Times on Thursday.

A day after a petition from TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance challenged a Trump administration order, which was set to take effect on Thursday requiring it to divest TikTok unless it reached a deal with US regulators or won an extension, the US Treasury Department said on Wednesday it wants a resolution of national security concerns it has raised over ByteDance's acquisition of US social media app Musical.ly, which it then merged into TikTok, Reuters reported.

"The Treasury Department remains focused on reaching a resolution of the national security risks arising from ByteDance's acquisition of Musical.ly… We have been clear with ByteDance regarding the steps necessary to achieve that resolution," said a Treasury spokeswoman, according to the Reuters report.

Trump, Attorney General William Barr, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) are all named on ByteDance's petition.

On August 14, Trump issued a second executive order, at the advice of the CFIUS that directed ByteDance to divest TikTok within 90 days. That deadline was to have been on Thursday. 

ByteDance did not respond to the Global Times inquiry about the US Treasury's remarks.

The Chinese start-up said on Friday that a fourth proposal sought to address US security concerns "by creating a new entity, wholly owned by Oracle, Walmart and existing US investors in ByteDance, that would be responsible for handling TikTok's US user data and content moderation."

The US Treasury's expression of seeking a "resolution" instead of any threatening or aggressive words suggested some hope for the Chinese app to survive in the US market, where it has over 100 million users, via a satisfying resolution, Fang Xingdong, founder of Beijing-based technology think tank ChinaLabs, told the Global Times Thursday.

"As long as TikTok can maintain the current situation and also undertake defensive moves by lawsuits, it is likely to survive," said Fang.

The deal, however, needs approval from the Chinese government thanks to new export rules about key technologies concerning national security.

"Now, the Trump campaign is busy filing lawsuits with US states in a bid to reverse the outcome of the election, so he has no time to handle the TikTok issue, and the Chinese government has yet not agreed to the deal," said Zhou Xibing, a veteran analyst who closely follows TikTok.

Zhou said that if Biden enters the White House, Chinese high-tech firms may have more breathing space instead of facing a further crackdown, given Biden's pragmatic tactic of seeking more business cooperation instead of using extreme measures to add pressure.