For those who came in late, the US government voted to order the Generation Z popular Chinese app TikTik to close or be taken over by a US company. Although the US claims that the move is on security grounds, it looks more like a government-backed corporate theft.

Wang Wenbin, China's mouthpiece, reckons the US is playing a game of 'finders keepers' with the app that's got a whopping 170 million users stateside.

And there is some evidence that China might be right. Almost immediately after the vote, Steven Mnuchin, the former Treasury top dog, emerged from the woodwork claiming he has put a team together to buy TikTok. Mnuchin worked under Trump and is notable for being one of the few advisors he did not fire.

Trump took an antagonistic stance toward TikTok, which ultimately resulted in ByteDance striking a data partnership with Oracle.

Mnuchin told CNBC that TikTok was a good business “and it ought to be in the hands of a US firm."

Meanwhile, He Yadong, another of Beijing's bigwigs, is wagging a finger at Washington, telling them to quit the bully-boy tactics against foreign firms.

Still, it remains unclear if the Chinese government would permit ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US buyer. TikTok has lobbied furiously against the bill, including a concerted pitch to its user base and through videos on its platform.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has implied that a sale is not an option. China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin described the bipartisan push as indicative of “robber’s logic” toward TikTok, the Financial Times reported yesterday.