| Hi all, it's Zheping in Hong Kong. Two years of trade disputes between the U.S. and China have driven up the cost of consumer electronics, industrial equipment, soybeans, steel and washing machines. Now we are beginning to see what a tit-for-tat looks like when it comes for the internet. The attack on TikTok by President Donald Trump opens a new front in the trade war. There's not much precedent for the U.S. banning an internet property because it's foreign—or for practically any other reason beside criminal conduct. There's also no obvious mechanism for doing so like there is in China. More than two decades ago, China erected a Great Firewall that created a sort of nationalized web, where Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. took the place of Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Most Western companies that try to cross the chasm are unsuccessful or blocked, as Google was in 2010. ByteDance Ltd., the Beijing-based owner of TikTok, rose on the mainland by hoovering up local user data to train and refine its artificial intelligence systems before becoming a global phenomenon. ByteDance is a success story in Beijing's quest for so-called cyber-sovereignty. What ByteDance is now facing in the U.S. is similar to what a host of American companies have long experienced in China. Facebook and Twitter are banned; foreign companies have to secure local partners to operate cloud systems or video game businesses; and spheres like online banking are severely restricted. With a proposed TikTok "ban," the Trump administration is not only treading new territory for the U.S. but also signaling how that might work. Rather than creating a Great Firewall of its own and employing content censors, Trump is demanding ByteDance sell or "close down." The president can order actions against foreign companies over national security concerns, a move for which the White House has been laying the groundwork. That was the path the administration took to block Broadcom Inc.'s bid for rival American chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. and to unwind a Chinese company's acquisition of the gay dating app Grindr. ByteDance has a short window to comply with Trump's demands. In just six weeks, it has to work out a deal with Microsoft Corp. or another "big company, a secure company, a very American company," as Trump put it on Monday. Otherwise, millions of American teens risk losing their favorite lip-syncing and social video platform. For its part, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella got on the phone with Trump over the weekend to convince the president not to follow through on threats to ban the app outright—whatever that would mean. Nadella's plea was apparently successful. TikTok's fate is a reminder to China's aspiring international giants that they have to embrace reciprocity in this new era of techno-nationalism. Over the weekend, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. will soon announce measures against "a broad array" of Chinese-owned software deemed national security threats, suggesting the actions may go beyond TikTok. If the U.S. goes down that path, it would join a small but growing group of countries that includes Russia and India tightening control over the internet. Beside Trump, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming has to worry about furious Chinese netizens. The 37-year-old CEO hid all of his posts from the public on the microblogging site Weibo after people flooded his account with comments slamming him and calling him a traitor for even considering a sale to an American company. For Zhang, a deal with Microsoft would be a throwback of sorts. He used to work there for a brief stint. —Zheping Huang | 
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