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WeChat is now in play as the Trump admin looks to break a 20-year custom of mostly ignoring Chinese internet blocks. The executive order lays the groundwork for an eye-for-eye reprisal aimed at what is China's most groundbreaking internet product. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/business/trump-china-wechat-tiktok.html
It's been a strange watching it all come apart after so many years of covering China's Great Firewall, like staring at a fault line for a decade, and finally there's an earthquake. The tensions have been there quietly building for a long time. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/technology/china-homegrown-internet-companies-rest-of-the-world.html
China's vision has long been for an internet dictated by heavy government intervention. The U.S. has stood for relative openness. It's unclear what will happen with these EO's, but a real block of WeChat and TikTok would bring the U.S. to China's camp.
In protesting all this, China stands for openness in its words, but obviously not its actions. The U.S. and China have a lot in common on the internet. Both gov'ts crave more and secret access to user data when they need it. Both worry about foreign intervention in politics.
