TikTok’s woes continue

Here’s what else you need to know about China today:

Top story: Rival protests over Taiwan have gathered at LAX for the arrival of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文 Cài Yīngwén) before her controversial meeting today with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The scheduled meeting has highlighted a stark political divide over the self-ruled democratic island. Click through for the whole thing.

Public colleges in Florida today banned apps TikTok, WeChat, and others from their campus networks. In the U.K., the Information Commissioner’s Office, which reports to the British Parliament, fined TikTok £12.7 million ($15.82 million) for breaking the law on protecting children’s data. This comes as TikTok faces the possibility of a general ban in the U.S. later this year, following bans on government devices from the Five Eyes countries and other European states in recent months.

French President Emmanuel Macron is in China for his three-day state visit, where he is expected to press Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 on limiting Beijing’s support of Moscow. While China has portrayed itself as a mediator to the war in Ukraine, concerns from Western states have been growing over Xi’s friendly meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin last month, where both men pledged to deepen cooperation between their two countries.

Saudi Arabia and Iran’s top brass will meet again in Beijing on Thursday, according to reports from an Iranian official and a Saudi-owned newspaper per Reuters, to discuss the next steps in their landmark rapprochement brokered by China last month.

Prominent American business executives and former diplomats urged Joe Biden and Xi Jinping to stabilize relations between the U.S. and China in a prominent ad in today’s Wall Street Journal, paid for by 97-year-old insurance titan Maurice R. Greenberg. Meanwhile, the Federation of German Industry (BDI) called for a renegotiation of the frozen EU-China investment deal, which has stalled for over two years.

The Vatican’s uneasy relationship with China has gotten more tense after Chinese authorities unilaterally appointed a new Catholic bishop to Shanghai, in an apparent violation of the controversial deal between the two states that was renewed for a second time in October.

Italy is growing wary of China’s stake in Pirelli, the leading Italian tire manufacturer whose patents to produce high-end tires are used in everything from electric vehicles to Formula 1 racing. Rome’s move to curb the influence of Chinese state-owned Sinochem, Pirelli’s largest stakeholder, is the latest Western government action to scrutinize Beijing’s influence over its strategic industries.

China helped alleviate global debt burdens driven by the COVID pandemic, according to a new report from Johns Hopkins University’s China-Africa Research Initiative that studied China’s role in the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI). While China’s role in debt renegotiation processes has been mired in controversy, particularly in cases like Sri Lanka, the paper suggests that China “fulfilled its role fairly well as a responsible G20 stakeholder.”