Chinese government acquires stake in domestic unit of TikTok owner ByteDance in another sign of tech crackdown

In another sign of China’s tightening grip on the country’s growing technology sector, the government has taken an ownership stake in a subsidiary that controls the domestic Chinese social media and information platforms of ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that owns TikTok.

The ownership stake does not appear to directly affect TikTok, the wildly popular video service that last year surpassed Facebook Messenger as the most downloaded app in the United States. But the development could prompt fresh debate about whether TikTok poses national-security risks to American users.