TikTok, a Beijing Trojan horse for the abusive collection of private data and a threat to national security? Or scapegoat for the Sino-American conflict and expiatory victim of Washington’s anti-Chinese paranoia? The real sin of the platform, prized by 150 million Americans, seems to actually lie in a change in governance, the latest episode of which could not but attract the attention of the governments of many Western countries.
Indeed, ByteDance, the parent company of the application, has carried out, in the greatest discretion, a series of changes of ownership, which have resulted in a nebulous shareholder structure behind which the shadow of the Chinese Communist Party looms. [PCC]. First episode: on April 30, 2021, three Chinese state companies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, the powerful Internet regulator, acquired 1% of the shares of ByteDance Limited, for the ridiculous price of 2 million yuan [270 000 euros]and obtain one of the three seats on the board of directors, with right of veto.
The member of the board of directors thus parachuted is none other than Wu Shugang, a CCP official known for having declared in 2012 on Weibo, the Chinese Twitter, “The devil take away human rights and freedom!” »message since deleted… On the same day, the firm’s share capital was increased by… 1,900%, to reach 200 million yuan [27 millions d’euros] ! Second episode: May 20, 2021, Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, barely 38 years old, resigns as CEO. Since the beginning of 2022, he has lived in Singapore.
Third episode: on January 18, the same Zhang Yiming sells all his shares, i.e. 98.81%, in ByteDance – renamed Douyin since May 2022 – to an obscure company, Xiamen Xingchen Qidian Technology [XXQT]created only twenty days before, on December 30, 2022. Chinese media wondered how a small mouse with a registered capital of 1 million yuan [130 000 euros] was able to swallow the planetary giant whose value is around 200 billion dollars [183 milliards d’euros]. But none dared to break the omerta that surrounds the two shareholders of XXQT: no information concerning them appears officially, except their names. We only know that they each hold 50% of the mysterious company founded in Xiamen, a city of which the young Xi Jinping was vice-mayor from 1985 to 1988, before building his political ascent from Fujian province.
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