China reportedly to discuss TikTok, WeChat in next trade talks with US
Tencent Holdings Ltd.
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07:46 20/03/24
Chinese officials are set to discuss the US ban on TikTok and WeChat in the next trade talks with Washington officials in coming days.
Negotiators are reportedly going to go over the progress made on their trade deal through a virtual meeting this week, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources close to the matter.
Issues to be discussed include agricultural purchases, the dollar-yuan exchange rate and President Trump’s prospective bans on transactions with the two apps on national security grounds.
After tit-for-tat tariffs were imposed on both sides, China’s pledge to raise purchases of US goods are far behind schedule. The coronavirus crisis and the deterioration in US-China relations over tech security and Hong Kong are some reasons for the delay.
Beijing was only a quarter of the way through its effort to buy more than $170bn in US goods this year by the end of June.
China would need to buy about $130bn in the second half of this year to comply with the original terms of the phase-one agreement signed in January
Larry Kudlow, director of the White House’s National Economic Council said in a press conference on Tuesday that “one area we are engaging is trade. It’s fine right now.”
At a briefing in Beijing on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said China’s position on phase-one of the trade deal where the purchase pledge was included remains consistent.
He also spoke about the US ban on TikTok over national security concerns by saying that it “is just a platform for providing entertainment, leisure, the show of talents and sharing for American people and people around the world. It has nothing to do with national security.”
Trump is also banning US transactions with Tencent Holdings WeChat app, which has more than 1bn users, for similar reasons.
The Trump administration believes both companies are collecting information from US users for the Chinese government.
These decisions come on the back of his ongoing conflict with Chinese tech giant Huawei, which he also accused of spying for Beijing.
He placed the company on a blacklist which prohibits US companies of doing business with the tech giant without approval from the government. One of the most notable consequences of this is Huawei’s loss of access to Google’s services for its devices which are very popular among consumers.
Most recently he urged international allies to forbid Huawei access to the development of the new 5G network as his administration had serious concerns regarding national security.