Introduction
There is a considerable extent of evidence that Chinese media possess a notable influence on modern international relations. It seems rational to present this influence through a particular example. ByteDance is a Chinese privately-owned Internet holding company that owns a number of popular services. This company was founded in 2012, headquartered in Beijing (the company is officially registered in the Cayman Islands).
ByteDance’s Essentials
In 2020, the monthly audience of ByteDance apps was close to 1.9 billion active users. The corporation develops services such as Douyin and a news and information mobile application called Jinri Toutiao (Lin, 2021). The company’s revenue from TikTok comes primarily from advertising.
By June 2021, ByteDance will be among one of the world’s largest non-public technology companies – its estimated value is about $ 300 billion. The company counted on revenue of $ 30 billion by the end of 2020 (Lin, 2021). It seems that the firm managed to overfulfill the plan.
However, excluding these and other adjustments, ByteDance recorded an operating loss of $ 2.1 billion in 2020. According to a knowledgeable source WSJ, these losses were in part due to increased costs of employee benefits that own shares in the company.
ByteDance’s Impact on International Relations
In early August 2020, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning social networking applications TikTok and WeChat in the United States. In particular, US citizens and companies are prohibited from making any transactions with ByteDance, as well as with its subsidiaries (Brandom, 2020). Trump justified his decision by the fact that the corporation collects data about users, which means that it can track the movements of employees of American government structures, transfer this information to the PRC government or use it for blackmail.
In 2020, there were many claims regarding the creation of the first ByteDance data center in Europe. The corporation is ready to invest about 420 million euros in its development (Judge, 2020); it is expected to be launched by early 2022.
ByteDance states that such an action will provide many jobs, advance user data protection, and reduce download times. After the beginning of the operation, all user data from the EU will be stored here. Nevertheless, the authorities of some countries started to demonstrate concerns regarding data safety.
Conclusion
The global community cares about users’ personal data protection. Chinese media corporations possess the power to compromise this data. This fact forces governments to legally restrict the activities of the related companies, which notably affects international relations.
References
Brandom, R. (2020). Trump will prohibit transactions with ByteDance beginning September 20th in apparent TikTok ban. The Verge.
Judge, P. (2020). TikTok announces $500m data center in Ireland. DCD.
Lin, L. (2021). TikTok owner ByteDance’s annual revenue jumps to $34.3 billion. WSJ.