The agreement between the US and China over the sale of the Chinese-owned platform TikTok is a landmark. China will retain a 20% ownership share, along with control of the algorithm, which is foundational to the platform’s success. The new American shareholders will control the algorithm’s use, but not own the algorithm itself.
For China, the deal is a blow, but by retaining 20%, the country maintains a presence in the US market that would otherwise have been entirely denied. The compromise is more ideological than commercial, centered on a quasi-theological principle of new digital technologies: the sanctity – and therefore intangibility of the algorithm, which China doesn’t trust will be protected by the old intellectual property rights (IPR) regulations.
TikTok is the latest example of this “techno-theological” dispute – and the first to be resolved through such a compromise.
Around 2009, the US and China had a similar dispute over Google. China demanded that Google open its technological vault and bring the source codes to China. Google refused, fearing the Chinese would steal the technology.
Then newly elected, President Barack Obama tried to intervene and mediate but failed to resolve the issue. With great fanfare, Google left China. For essentially the same reasons, other similar platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, also failed to enter the country. China consistently demanded the “Sinicization” of ideological sources, a condition the Americans would not grant.
Today, America could have similarly shut down TikTok because the technology and the platform are considered dangerous from multiple perspectives. However, by now, TikTok has taken on an essential role in the American electoral process. President Donald Trump appears to have over 170 million followers on TikTok. Shutting it down would have hurt Trump and the entire electoral process.
It’s a significant concession to China. A similar compromise was possibly offered to Beijing for US platforms seeking to enter China, but Beijing rejected it. Beijing sought access to the technological holy grail and was willing to forgo the platforms altogether. The US, already hooked on TikTok, seems unable to wean itself off the app and thus accepted the deal.
The TikTok compromise resembles the one the Holy See reached with China regarding the appointment of bishops. The Pope retains control over the “mother code”—the core technology—but China is responsible for managing this code within its territory. China could simply block domestic access to the Catholic or broader Christian “source code.”
Still, with millions of Catholics and hundreds of millions of Chinese interested in religion and Christianity, an ideological void could emerge that may be filled by other faiths more insidious and uncontrollable than Christianity. China was already hooked on religion, and Catholicism, almost like the US is on TikTok.
Therefore, for the Church of Rome, limited access to the Chinese market is better than no access at all. This reflects a modern understanding of Christianity, one no longer hinged on a supreme imperial-papal relationship, but one that believes in reaching out to every person who chooses their faith freely and unites with the Pope in a spontaneous and liberal synodality.
Religious authority
With the rise of modernity came a decline in religious authority. With the 16th century Reformation, the Pope and imperial power lost their grip, as authority was devolved to the northern European princes and eventually to the pastors and laymen who could read the Bible without seeking authoritative interpretations.
Eventually, with the late 18th century French Revolution, religion was dispensed with altogether, and materialism and atheism triumphed worldwide. The pope, the bishops and the priests all lost prestige and power. Faith in science, and its practical application, technology, took over.
With that came also something unprecedented: the rise of patents. Inventions gained a trademark and thus value. They could be bought, sold and rented like any other good, such as real estate. IPR protection became the key to everything, the deep secret holding all power over the good.
On the occasion of the Reformation, the 1474 Venetian Patent Statute is generally regarded as the earliest codified patent system in the world. It states that patents may be granted for “any new and ingenious device, not previously made”, provided it was useful. Generally, these principles remain the fundamental principles of current patent laws.
Two centuries later, in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War, pitting papal and anti-papal forces in Europe, and just before Cromwell’s Protestant Revolution, Britain approved the Statute of Monopolies (1624). In 1710, the British Statute of Anne was enacted, which laid the groundwork for the current patent and copyright law, thereby firmly establishing the concept of intellectual property.
Before this time, guilds, trade associations, states, religious authorities and abbeys held secrets, granted or denied access to books and dispensed them as they saw fit. The unpatented Greek Fire, which had commanded Byzantine maritime power for centuries, famously died with the fall of Constantinople.
Similarly, a myriad of secretive techniques were employed by various medieval crafts, ranging from steelmaking to textiles and masonry. Above them all, the authority of God maintained the social and political order; the pope and the emperor were the ultimate authorities over the secrets and their control. They were the sancta sanctorum.
Then, kings, religious authorities and sanctioned guilds controlled secrets that had no open trade value, as they could not be freely exchanged in return for money. With trademarks, private individuals owned inventions and could trade them in an open market. People could buy them and build new patents on them in an expanding “capitalism” of inventions. Just as money well invested yields more money, so inventions well developed lead to new inventions in a never-ending pyramid of development.
It all worked well and fine until some 20-30 years ago, when inventor capitalists started feeling that patents were no longer sufficient because they could not be really protected. The situation is very different from the previous Cold War era.
Then, the USSR had its inventions, but they were not put on the market. American inventions, although available for civilian use, were stolen only for their military applications, which stifled the development potential of those patents.
With the US-China struggle, a new playing field has emerged. Inventions have now dual uses, both civil and military, that foster new, distinct technologies. Patenting them is not enough. Companies and states have restarted keeping secrets. At the heart of these secrets are algorithms, the keystones of the latest technologies, including social media platforms and AI.
Practical gods
They are the practical God, the foundation that gives rise to development and economic growth. Algorithms are controlled by states or special companies serving the state, much like the sanctioned guilds of the past that served imperial power. Algorithms, the heart of the new power, like the gods of the past, must be controlled by the emperor.
For the return to IPR, every state should commit to IPR protection, but no similar consensus is on the horizon. Here is the heart of modernity: the accumulation and investment in developmental inventions and technologies. More practically than ever, the future is at stake.
China offers a neo-imperial model grounded in state control of technologies. Because they are dual-use and crucial to developing a strong, independent army–the ultimate guarantor of the state’s political independence–this approach is based on deep-seated mistrust of the United States. This shakes the foundation of the Western civilizational model.
If the US civilizational model collapses, China’s imperial model will remain the sole and unchallenged alternative. China means Asia, unless Asia finds a new special unity against China, which might well be the case.
Asia, with 60% of the world’s population and over 50% of global economic growth, is the world’s largest region. However, IPR-protected inventions are not simple technologies; they are the ultimate culmination of a complex chain reaction that began half a millennium ago.
China apparently understands what is at stake and it is now seeking a new developmental model. A recent essay in the Chinese Communist Party’s theoretical journal, “Seek the Truth,” attempts to rethink the entire process of modernization. In the West, modernization is traditionally viewed as a highly complex historical process, but China now seeks to encapsulate it in a rational formula that justifies its present evolution.
It aims to answer the fundamental question: How can China’s model fit into a modern system without significant changes and without compromising its political system? The idea is captured in the need “to explore the role of the state in guiding capital, regulating monopolies, preventing risks and promoting innovation—thus establishing a more efficient and rational system of economic governance.”
The question differs from Russia, which offers a neo-czarist response to modernity. It is deeper, holding more weight as it challenges the Western system more profoundly. If it works for China, it will change all global balances–and also the modern space of religion. Religion in each state, as per the IPR, will depend on the state’s consent.
Then, if the West, including the US, abandons its foundational role in liberal ideology and its IPR-based technology, China’s efficiency will be much higher than America’s. That is, President Donald Trump’s acceptance of the Sinicization of America’s TikTok could have much longer and heavier consequences than the Vatican’s agreement with China.
Francesco Sisci, born in Taranto in 1960, is an Italian analyst and commentator on politics with over 30 years of experience in China and Asia.
This article first appeared on Appia Institute and is republished with permission. The author thanks former Asia Times editor-in-chief Pansak Vinyaratn for discussions that informed the article.
