While I often say that I don’t respond to recent business news here, I have also recently broken that rule a few times. So I decided to look at the potential Tiktok ban in the US. To connect this potential ban to my other writing I’ll go back to Merton’s five causes of unintended consequences to point out some less discussed reasons for why the ban might be good or bad.
Related to the discussion around Tiktok, I was reminded that this week marks the 30th year since I first visited mainland China. I remember this because I was in Beijing at the same time that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait — the first week of August 1990. The hotel TV did not black out that specific part of the news.
Since that time I went to mainland China perhaps around 50 times both for work and to travel. For a large country with big regional differences, I don’t count 50 trips as a lot. But I’ve found my perspective to be different from that of others who spent more time there simply because I have seen the country over a longer time.