US Secretary Bessent: China approved data transfer deal with TikTok

(Patria) - China has approved a data transfer agreement for the short-video app TikTok, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday, adding that he expects this to continue in the coming weeks and months, but gave no further details, Reuters reported.

"We finalized the TikTok agreement in Kuala Lumpur in terms of getting Chinese approval and I expect that to continue in the coming weeks and months, and that we will finally see a resolution to that," he told Fox Business Network after a meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

China's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement earlier on Thursday that the country would properly resolve issues related to TikTok with the United States. A Chinese spokesperson added:

"The Chinese side will cooperate with the US side to properly resolve issues related to TikTok."

TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, did not immediately comment.
The fate of the app, used by 170 million Americans, has remained uncertain for more than eighteen months after the US Congress passed a law in 2024 requiring TikTok's Chinese owners to sell the app's US assets by January 2025.

On September 25, Trump signed an executive order stating that the plan to sell TikTok's US operations to a consortium of US and global investors meets the national security requirements established by the 2024 law and gave them 120 days to complete the transaction. He also postponed the law's implementation until January 20, 2026.
Trump's order states that the algorithm will be modified and overseen by US company security partners, and that the algorithm's operation will be under the control of a new joint venture.

The agreement on TikTok's US operations includes ByteDance appointing one of the seven members of the new entity's board, while Americans will hold the remaining six seats.

ByteDance would hold less than twenty percent of the stake in TikTok in the US to meet the requirements stipulated by the law mandating its closure by January 2025 if it does not sell its US assets.