China railed for years against the United States’s bid to force the sale of TikTok, once accusing Washington of demonstrating “robbers’ logic” in response to the platform’s success.

Now, Beijing is touting talks on how the video-sharing platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, might relinquish ownership of its US operations.

The turnaround has raised questions about what China might expect in return, with analysts suggesting that Beijing has come to view TikTok as a useful bargaining chip to win concessions on more pressing issues.

China has yet to confirm a deal on TikTok, which Washington has cast as a propaganda tool of Beijing and a threat to privacy, and there are numerous outstanding questions about what a sale would entail.

Most crucial of all is the question of who would own and co

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