<div>Chinese digital enterprises e.g., Baidu, Alibaba and ByteDance (known
for Toutiao and TikTok) contribute greatly to the expansion of China’s
global presence and influence as a digital powerhouse, adding a ‘social’
dimension to China’s soft power (Yu, 2019). China’s latest tool for
cultivating soft power, TikTok, has been attracting much attention.</div>


<div>Unlike most research on social media as a country’s soft power toolkit,
this research looks at TikTok not for its contents or the range of
actors in communicating with foreign audiences; but rather as a
technological company subjected to a ban in India and a potential ban in
the US. To understand how the Sino-Indian and Sino-US disputes about
TikTok are framed in news coverage and its potential relevance to
China’s growing digital capabilities, the research conducts inductive
frame analysis on TikTok dispute news coverage in leading national
papers in the US (<i>The New York Times</i>), India (<i>The Times of
India</i>) and in China’s global English language news outlet <i>China
Daily.</i>
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