Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.Beijing has hit out at US laws to ban TikTok as former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin mentioned he was assembling a consortium to purchase the app from its Chinese language proprietor.Overseas ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin mentioned on Thursday that the US had proven a “robber’s logic” in the direction of the app, which has 170mn customers in America. “Whenever you see different individuals’s good issues, you have to discover methods to personal them,” Wang mentioned.The US Home of Representatives on Wednesday authorized a invoice that will pressure TikTok proprietor ByteDance to promote the app to a non-Chinese language firm inside six months or be banned from US app shops. It nonetheless wants Senate approval and President Joe Biden’s signature.Mnuchin mentioned in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that he was placing collectively an investor group to aim to take over the short-video app. “It’s an excellent enterprise,” he mentioned. “It must be owned by a US enterprise. There’s no means the Chinese language would ever let a US firm run one thing like this in China.”US safety officers have mentioned the app poses a threat to nationwide safety. China has lengthy banned the most well-liked western social media platforms, together with Fb, Instagram and X, because it tightened censorship.Nevertheless, any sale would require China’s approval underneath export management guidelines that in impact give it a veto in any deal that will promote Chinese language know-how to a US purchaser. Beijing’s commerce ministry mentioned final 12 months it will “firmly oppose” a pressured sale by ByteDance.He Yadong, spokesperson for the commerce ministry, on Thursday referred to as on Washington to “cease unfairly suppressing overseas firms”. TikTok has spent greater than $1.5bn on so-called Undertaking Texas, a company restructuring plan to safeguard US consumer knowledge and content material from Chinese language affect. TikTok has partnered with US cloud software program group Oracle to construct a standalone unit to wall off American consumer knowledge. The talk over banning TikTok has develop into one of many solely unifying subjects that Democrats and Republicans can agree on in Congress, as issues mount about Chinese language interference in sectors together with training, development and leisure. Biden helps a ban however former president Donald Trump is against it.RecommendedThe Home vote got here after US safety and intelligence officers held labeled briefings for lawmakers to stipulate the alleged nationwide safety dangers. ByteDance had engaged in an intense lobbying marketing campaign to oppose the measure, saying it will hurt small companies that depend on its app to succeed in new clients. TikTok generates the majority of its income from promoting but it surely has taken its ecommerce platform to numerous markets throughout Asia in addition to the US, enabling manufacturers and retailers to promote items marketed by means of brief movies. TikTok Store debuted within the US in September, producing since then $1.1bn in gross merchandise income, the full worth of products offered on its platform, in line with inside TikTok monetary statistics seen by the Monetary Instances. ByteDance was valued at $260bn final 12 months and TikTok accounts for many of the mum or dad group’s enterprise, giving it an enormous price ticket in any potential acquisition.Meta-owned Instagram has emerged as TikTok’s fiercest rival within the US, after its introduction of “reels”, a function that allowed customers to share brief clips, cloning the TikTok’s viral video options. Final 12 months, Instagram overtook TikTok as probably the most downloaded app on the planet.