The Chinese government is considering a plan for billionaire Elon Musk to buy TikTok’s operations in the United States to avoid the app being banned.

TikTok may be sold to billionaire Elon Musk (Photo: SP).

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The contingency plan is one of several options China is considering as the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to uphold a law requiring TikTok parent company ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban, according to a new report from an anonymous source.

The report revealed that billionaire Elon Musk will run both social network X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok’s business operations in the US.

Senior Chinese officials are debating contingency plans for TikTok’s future in the United States as part of discussions about working with President-elect Donald Trump.

However, it is still uncertain whether the Chinese government will decide to carry out this plan, and it is unclear whether ByteDance is aware of the government’s plans to sell TikTok to billionaire Elon Musk.

“We cannot comment on completely fictional information,” a TikTok spokesperson said.

On January 10, the Supreme Court held a hearing on the TikTok ban, signed by President Joe Biden in April 2024, when the US government accused the platform of posing a risk to national security.

TikTok’s lawyers argued that the law violates the free speech rights of millions of people in the United States.

TikTok appealed multiple times but was rejected by federal judges.

In December 2024, re-elected President Donald Trump urged the Supreme Court to intervene and delay President Biden’s ban to give him time to find a “political solution.”

The hearing ended with no decision, meaning ByteDance will have until January 19 to sell the app, which has more than 170 million users in the US, or shut it down.

TikTok creators and marketers have been preparing for the app to shut down on January 19, according to the New York Times.

In fact, billions of dollars in advertising are spent on this social network and a ban would certainly cause a huge loss to the US economy.

If this law is implemented, Google and Apple will have to remove TikTok from their app stores and US users will immediately lose access to TikTok.

The app will not be able to be updated and will gradually become unusable. In court, ByteDance representatives assured that TikTok will not be sold.