WASHINGTON — China and the United States once acted like opposites when it came to governing the internet. It blocked major foreign websites, sheltered Chinese tech firms as they developed alternatives to Western rivals and kept a tight grip on what people said online. The United States stood for a global openness that helped a generation of internet Goliaths dominate worldwide. Mr. Trump went further on Friday, ordering ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to give up its American assets and any data that TikTok had gathered in the United States. That followed a White House initiative this month to begin purging Chinese apps and telecom companies from American networks, saying they posed a security threat.

Source: New York Times August 17, 2020 15:14 UTC