How TikTok’s owner Zhang Yiming tried and failed to cross the US-China divide

The Chinese entrepreneur behind TikTok took ample precautions when he set out to straddle the tech world’s most treacherous divide: the one separating China’s tightly controlled internet from the rest of the planet.

He made TikTok unavailable in China so the video app’s users wouldn’t be subject to the Communist Party’s censorship requirements. He stored user data in Virginia and Singapore. He hired managers in the United States to run the app and lobbyists in Washington to fight for it on Capitol Hill.

None of that counted for much in the end. With TikTok now negotiating a sale to Microsoft under intense pressure from President Donald Trump, who said on Monday that he was giving the go-ahead to such a deal, the digital wall between China and the United States is proving to be higher than ever at this moment of widening conflict between the two countries.