China says it’s willing to work with U.S. on TikTok

Beijing will work with Washington to “properly resolve” issues around the divestiture of the U.S. operations of TikTok, China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement Thursday, according to a CNBC translation.

The ministry did not provide a timeframe or any further details. The comment followed a high-stakes meeting earlier in the day between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first in-person gathering of the leaders since Trump took office in January.

Trump did not mention TikTok in his remarks with reporters following his meeting with Xi. Instead, he outlined how the U.S. will roll back some tariffs on Chinese goods, while Beijing will postpone its latest rare earths restrictions.

“It’s the lack of specifics that will most certainly add to policy miscalculation risk,” Louise Loo, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics, said in an email. “We don’t think there’s enough as yet to believe Beijing’s interests in the TikTok contention truly aligns with President Trump’s motivations to spin off the entity’s US business.”

ByteDance and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to U.S. national security law, Beijing-based ByteDance must sell TikTok’s U.S. operations or effectively be banned in the country. China has yet to approve terms of a deal that would allow a new joint-venture company to oversee TikTok in the U.S.