China has approved the transfer agreement for the short video app TikTok, United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said, adding that he expects it to move forward in coming weeks and months but giving no other details.
“In Kuala Lumpur, we finalised the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval, and I would expect that would go forward in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll finally see a resolution to that,” Bessent told the Fox Business Network programme Mornings with Maria on Thursday following US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
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China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement earlier on Thursday that the country would properly handle TikTok-related issues with the US. A Chinese spokesperson added, “The Chinese side will work with the US side to properly address issues related to TikTok.”
TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, did not immediately comment.
The fate of the app used by 170 million Americans has remained uncertain for more than 18 months after the US Congress passed a law in 2024 that ordered TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the app’s US assets by January 2025.
Trump signed an executive order last month declaring that the plan to sell TikTok’s US operations to a consortium of US and global investors meets the national security requirements set out in the 2024 law and gave them 120 days to complete the transaction. He also delayed enforcement of the law until January 20, 2026.
Trump’s order said the algorithm will be retrained and monitored by the US company’s security partners, and that operation of the algorithm will be under the control of the new joint venture.
The agreement on TikTok’s US operations includes the appointment by ByteDance of one of seven board members for the new entity, with Americans holding the other six seats.
ByteDance would hold less than 20 percent in TikTok US to comply with requirements set out in the law that ordered it to be shut down by January 2025 if ByteDance did not sell its US assets.
US Representative John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said this month that a licensing agreement for use of the TikTok algorithm, as part of the deal by ByteDance to sell US assets of the short video app, would raise “serious concerns”.