Well, did they? So far it is not that clear.
<< They have a precedent now to ban apps from hostile power.
Is that a good thing? If so, why?
<< They gained even more respect from countries
Heh, you honestly may want to reconsider this statement. It is not respect, when China openly effectively says 'nah' to sale and shutters the app instead..
<< Chinese government took this takedown with a whimper
Huh? Dude... where did you see a whimper. Allow me to revisit events.
1. Congress passes a law effectively banning TikTok 2. TikTok sues over free speech and loses appeal with SCOTUS 3. Rather than selling, it shuts down the app 4. Users go everywhere, but ( apparently ) US apps 5. Incoming administration gives assurances it won't actually enforce anything for now
I accept there are ways of looking at things, but this is something else.
Everyone already knew TikTok was valuable. This isn't new information. They have no concessions to extract here.
Users haven't said anything out of spite. Some people signing up for some other services was not what drove Trump to announce this executive action.
To me, there is a strong appearance of quid pro quo between ByteDance and Trump. In that case, there doesn't need to be a sale. Trump likely will require a simulation of restructuring which enables him to declare ByteDance in compliance, and the whole things goes away.
I appreciate the analysis even if I disagree with it.
<< many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
It is mildly funny given that China is not selling it. It was defacto made a real geopolitical issue with 170m US users as pawns. They may well be buyers, but China is not in a position of weakness here. If anything, the past 48h showed that users can simply say 'fuck it' out of spite.
In short, from game theory perspective, even if they decided to sell, they can now extract heavy concessions. Yeah, US won so hard on this one.
As I may have mentioned in another post, individual players may have gained some ground, but that is it. US lost a lot in this exchange alone.