Recently, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States launched a review of TikTok, a short-form mobile video platform that is a subsidiary of Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, which has attracted a lot of attention in both China and the US.

Some in the US believe this is the latest move by the US government to suppress Chinese technology, having already attacked ZTE and Huawei. Others believe that TikTok is different from ZTE and Huawei, since it does not challenge the US' technological advantage, and instead it being targeted indicates that the US focus has spread from Chinese technology to Chinese soft power.

Fundamentally, the targeting of the three companies has the same aim. The goal of the US government is to narrow the channels for China's overseas influence.

Although TikTok is an independently operated company and its executives have invited US third-party audit firms to analyze its data security; although TikTok has been accepted by many US companies and organizations - the US Army has even used TikTok to issue recruitment advertisements, and The Washington Post opened an account on TikTok to strengthen contact with young Americans - and although there is no evidence to support the US regulators' concerns, the company is still subject to the same kind of scrutiny and pressure that other Chinese companies, such as Huawei, have faced.

It is believed TikTok is being investigated because it acquired the social network Musical.ly in 2017, a merger not reviewed by CFIUS. Musical.ly had a large number of users in the US market and after its merger with TikTok, the latter's popularity in the US market soared. CFIUS now wants to look at the merger and may ask TikTok to withdraw from it.

In fact, some US conservative politicians hope that the US regulatory authorities' probing of TikTok will let the US people be aware that TikTok is a China-based company. The idea is to create panic and persuade Americans to quit TikTok. This kind of negative publicity strategy was once used against Huawei, but Huawei has never really entered the US market. In contrast, TikTok has more than 20 million users in the US.

The US government also expects to use the investigation to raise the alarm more generally about the "threat" from Chinese technology. In the past year, the US law enforcement agencies have failed to establish any strong evidence against Huawei, so the US government needs to find a new target, one that is more well-known in the US and will easily attract attention there. TikTok serves that purpose. Its review will help serve the US strategy of discrediting Chinese products and services around the world.

But the investigation raises a broader question as to whether the concept of soft power is still valid given the competition among major powers. Joseph Nye, a professor at Harvard University, pioneered the concept of soft power, arguing that a country can influence other countries by attracting and persuading them to serve their national agendas.

After the concept was put forward, many countries recognized the usefulness of the concept and a wave of soft power initiatives were launched globally.

Yet beneath the appealing packaging, the concept of soft power is basically nothing more than a means for the US to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries through nonmilitary means.

However, the US' international influence has been frustrated by its unruly behavior, which has weakened its soft power. So it is emphasizing a more aggressive posture against the legitimate international communication behavior of other countries, viewing it as a threat to its soft power.

The review of TikTok is a classic case of this. TikTok is a commercial enterprise and is not a national security threat. However, that is how the US government has chosen to portray it. This case needs to receive due attention from US society. There is no need for the US people to get involved in this campaign initiated by the US government.

The author is an associate research fellow at the Institute of US Studies of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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