There is a view that India’s decision on Chinese apps does not hurt the Chinese state, which is the real enemy. ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is a private Chinese company with other investors who will lose out. But again it doesn’t hurt the Chinese state. The other view is that private firms in China are not really private firms. They are all required to have a communist party committee to oversee their operations. They are all arms of the Chinese state and legally required to “report back” to state bodies which includes the intelligence agencies. Â
