CHINA will not accept the “theft” of a Chinese technology company and is able to respond to Washington’s move to push ByteDance to sell short-video app TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft Corp., China Daily said yesterday.

The United States’ bullying of Chinese tech companies was a consequence of the Trump administration’s zero-sum vision of “America first” and left China no choice but “submission or mortal combat in the tech realm,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

“China will by no means accept the theft of a Chinese technology company, and it has plenty of ways to respond if the administration carries out its planned smash and grab,” it said, without specifying options.

Microsoft said Monday it was in talks with ByteDance to buy parts of TikTok after U.S. President Donald Trump reversed course on a plan to ban the app on “national security” grounds and gave the firms 45 days to strike a deal.

ByteDance became the world’s largest startup thanks to the success abroad of TikTok.

Trump now has the power to potentially cripple ByteDance’s prized asset by adding TikTok to the U.S. entity list, which would compel American companies such as Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to drop the service from their app stores.

The Global Times newspaper said U.S. treatment of ByteDance and Huawei Technologies, now on a U.S. trade blacklist, was indicative of U.S. efforts to separate its economy from China’s.

China had “limited ability” to provide protection to these Chinese companies by retaliating against U.S. companies because the United States had technological superiority and influence with its allies, it added.

“China’s opening-up to the outside world and disintegrating the U.S. decoupling strategy should be priorities,” it said in an editorial. (SD-Agencies)