WASHINGTON — China and the United States once acted like opposites when it came to governing the internet.
Beijing imposed a heavy state hand. It blocked major foreign websites, sheltered Chinese tech firms as they developed alternatives to Western rivals and kept a tight grip on what people said online. The United States stood for a global openness that helped a generation of internet Goliaths dominate worldwide.
But when President Trump issued executive orders that could lead to a U.S. ban next month on two of the world’s most popular Chinese-made apps, TikTok and WeChat, the White House signaled a new willingness to adopt Beijing’s exclusionary tactics. Mr. Trump went further on Friday, ordering ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to give up its American assets and any data that TikTok had gathered in the United States.
On Monday, the administration also clamped down further on Huawei by restricting the Chinese tech giant’s ability to buy computer chips produced abroad using American technology. That followed a White House initiative this month to begin purging Chinese apps and telecom companies from American networks, saying they posed a security threat.
