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| TikTok has what many Silicon Valley companies lust after: A culture-making machine beloved by 100 million Americans and deep-pocketed advertisers. | TikTok坐拥深受1亿美国人和财力雄厚的广告商喜爱的文化制造机器，这是许多硅谷企业都梦寐以求的东西。 |
| That doesn’t mean they will line up to buy it. | 但这并不等于这些企业愿意争先恐后地收购它。 |
| TikTok said on Wednesday that the Biden administration was pushing the company’s Chinese owners to sell the app or face a possible ban. But there are probably few companies, in the tech industry or elsewhere, willing or able to buy it, analysts and experts say. | TikTok周三表示，拜登政府正在敦促该公司的中国所有者出售这一应用，否则它可能遭到封禁。但分析人士和专家表示，不管是在科技行业还是其他领域，愿意或有能力收购的企业恐怕很少。 |
| At a price of $50 billion or more — the value some analysts said TikTok could command — the social media platform would be too expensive for many companies, including competitors like Snap. The tech giants that could afford it, such as Facebook owner Meta, Google and Microsoft, are likely to shy away for fear of getting caught in years of antitrust scrutiny in the United States. Then there’s the headache of owning a social media company, and figuring out how to handle the endless flood of toxic content. | 一些分析人士估计，TikTok的收购价至少在500亿美元以上，对于包括Snap等竞争对手在内的许多企业来说，这个社交媒体平台实在太贵了。能够负担得起的科技巨头——比如Facebook的所有者Meta、谷歌和微软——可能会因为担心被美国常年的反垄断审查抓住把柄而选择回避。而且，拥有一家社交媒体公司的同时要解决有害内容无休止泛滥的问题也令人头痛。 |
| In addition, it remains unclear how TikTok would fully unravel itself from ByteDance, its parent company in China, or whether any deal would be approved by the Chinese government. | 此外，目前尚不明确要如何将TikTok与其中国母公司字节跳动完全剥离，也不清楚中国政府是否会批准任何交易。 |
| TikTok “has a lot of baggage, and that baggage means that it’s hard to make this a reality,” said Brian Wieser, an independent consultant who focuses on the media and advertising industries. | 专门研究媒体和广告行业的独立顾问布赖恩·威泽表示，TikTok“有很多包袱，而这些包袱意味着收购难以实现”。 |
| There may be other options, such as a private equity company swooping in with an offer with a partner, or ByteDance spinning off TikTok into a stand-alone public company. But if there are a limited number of potential suitors it may complicate the White House’s efforts, and continue to drag out what has already been a yearslong battle between Washington and the company. | 可能还有其他选择，比如让一家私募股权公司与合作方联手报价，或是让字节跳动将TikTok拆分成一家独立的上市公司。但如果潜在收购者不多，可能会给白宫的举措增加不少麻烦，让华盛顿与该公司之间持续数年的斗争继续拖下去。 |
| TikTok has been in the cross hairs of both the Trump and Biden administrations, both of which have said that the app poses a national security threat. Lawmakers have been increasingly concerned that TikTok could put sensitive user data, like location information, into the hands of the Chinese government. They have pointed to laws that allow Beijing to secretly demand data from Chinese companies and citizens for intelligence-gathering operations. | TikTok一直是特朗普和拜登政府的重点关注对象，两届政府都宣称该应用对国家安全构成威胁。立法者也愈发担心TikTok可能会把位置信息等敏感用户数据交给中国政府。他们指出，法律允许中国暗中要求中国企业和公民上交数据，用于情报收集活动。 |
| More than two dozen states have issued bans of the app on state-owned devices, and several pieces of federal legislation are also aimed at banning TikTok. | 20多个州已经发布了禁止在州府所有的设备上使用该应用的命令，另外还有几项旨在禁用TikTok的联邦立法。 |
| John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on Thursday about whether the administration was pushing ByteDance to sell TikTok. But he said that “we have legitimate national security concerns here, and outside of all that, we continue to support bipartisan legislation that’s designed to address those security concerns posed by certain foreign-owned consumer apps.” | 周四，对于政府是否在推动字节跳动出售TikTok的问题，国家安全委员会发言人约翰·F·柯比拒绝置评。但他表示，“我们有合理的国家安全担忧，除此之外，我们也会继续支持两党立法，以解决某些外资消费者应用带来的安全问题。” |
| TikTok said this week that it was weighing its options and that a security proposal it offered the government in August offered the best protection for American users. Under the proposal, the company would spend more than $1.5 billion to cordon off access to sensitive U.S. user data and offer oversight and transparency around its content recommendations. | TikTok本周称正在权衡选择，并表示其去年8月向政府提出的安全方案已为美国用户提供了最好的保护。根据这项提案，该公司将投入超过15亿美元，封锁对美国敏感用户数据的访问，并对其内容推荐提供监督和透明度。 |
| The company’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, who is Singaporean, is scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee next Thursday. Lawmakers are expected to question him about the app’s ties to China and the content it delivers to young people. | 该公司的新加坡籍首席执行官周受资定于下周四在众议院能源和商业委员会作证。预计议员会就该应用与中国的联系，以及它向年轻人传递的内容向他提出质询。 |
| Maureen Shanahan, a spokeswoman for TikTok, said in a statement: “If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: A change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access.” | TikTok发言人莫琳·沙纳汉在一份声明中表示：“如果保护国家安全是目标，撤出股份并不能解决问题：所有权的变更不会对数据流动或获取施加任何新的限制。” |
| A host of technology companies declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday about their interest in buying TikTok, including Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Twitter. | 周四，包括苹果、亚马逊、谷歌、Meta、微软和Twitter在内的多家科技企业要么拒绝置评，要么没有回应有关是否有意收购TikTok的置评请求。 |
| The Biden administration’s push for a sale mirrors the effort by the Trump administration three years ago. At that time, Mr. Trump threatened to ban TikTok from Apple and Google’s app stores unless the app was sold to an American company. A group of federal agencies that review national security concerns related to foreign companies, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, had recommended such a move. | 拜登政府推动出售Tiktok与三年前特朗普政府的做法如出一辙。当时特朗普威胁要让TikTok从苹果和谷歌应用商店下架，除非该应用被美国公司收购。美国外国投资委员会曾建议采取这样的举措，该委员会由多个联邦部门组成，负责审查与外企有关的国家安全问题。 |
| Possible buyers for the app included Microsoft and the cloud computing company Oracle. But the Chinese government issued export restrictions in August 2020 that potentially allowed Beijing to block a sale. While Oracle and Walmart ultimately seemed to reach an agreement to buy stakes in the app, resolving Mr. Trump’s concerns, the deal never closed. | 当时该应用的可能买家包括微软和云计算公司甲骨文。但中国政府在2020年8月发布了出口限制，让北京有能力阻止这笔交易。虽然甲骨文和沃尔玛最终似乎达成了购买该应用股份的协议，解决了特朗普的担忧，但交易从未完成。 |
| Multiple federal courts later ruled that Mr. Trump did not have the authority to ban the app, limiting the government’s leverage in the case. (Oracle has since been working with TikTok to help it store U.S. user data in domestic servers and has been a key partner in its plan to assuage national security concerns.) | 多家联邦法院后来裁定，特朗普无权禁止这款应用，限制了政府在此事上的处置手段。（此后，甲骨文一直在与TikTok合作，帮助其将美国用户数据存储在本国服务器中，并成为TikTok缓解国家安全担忧计划的关键合作伙伴。） |
| When President Biden took office, the administration initially focused on negotiating a deal through CFIUS with TikTok that would settle the concerns without a forced sale. The company assumed its talks would resolve soon after it submitted a 90-page proposal to the administration in August, but its efforts have been stymied by several revelations around how ByteDance and TikTok have mishandled U.S. user data. | 拜登总统上任后，政府最初的重点是通过外国投资委员会与TikTok谈判达成协议，在不强制出售的情况下解决这些担忧。该公司在8月向政府提交了一份90页的提案后，本以为谈判很快就会得到解决，但由于字节跳动和TikTok处理美国用户数据不当的几起曝光事件，其努力受到了阻碍。 |
| And now, any potential sale looks even more complicated than before. | 现在，任何潜在的转售看起来都比以前更加复杂。 |
| “It’s much more fraught on all levels on the economics of it,” said Glenn S. Gerstell, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and the former general counsel of the National Security Agency. “TikTok now has two years of user growth, it’s far more entrenched in terms of its position in American social media, and clearly the tensions with China have greatly increased.” | “从经济角度看，方方面面都更麻烦了，”战略与国际研究中心高级顾问、前国家安全局法律总顾问格伦·格斯特尔说，“两年来TikTok的用户在增长，它在美国社交媒体中的地位更加牢固，而且美中紧张关系显然已经大大加剧。” |
| Antitrust officials at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are increasingly concerned about attempts by tech giants to buy other companies. The F.T.C. unsuccessfully challenged Meta’s acquisition of a small virtual reality start-up and is trying to block Microsoft from buying the video game powerhouse Activision Blizzard. | 美国司法部和联邦贸易委员会的反垄断官员越来越关注科技巨头收购其他公司的企图。联邦贸易委员会对Meta收购一家小型虚拟现实初创企业的交易提出质疑，但未获成功，它还试图阻止微软收购视频游戏巨头动视暴雪。 |
| “I think the whole concern with tech platform dominance would be a factor in what buyer or buyers would be acceptable,” said William J. Baer, a former head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. “A tech platform would legitimately have to think about the antitrust risk of buying something that, while not directly a competitor, would be seen as expanding the dominance of that platform in the tech space.” | “我认为，对科技平台主导地位的整体关注将是决定哪些买家会被接受的一个因素，”司法部反垄断部门前负责人威廉·贝尔说。“一个科技平台必须合理地考虑收购的反垄断风险，这个收购对象虽然不是直接竞争对手，但会被视为扩大了该平台在科技领域的主导地位。” |
| The uncertainty around TikTok’s future has been felt by its U.S. employees, who are spread among locations including Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York and Washington. Morale at the company has waned as state bans and legislation targeting TikTok have gained traction, according to three employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity. | 分布在洛杉矶、湾区、纽约和华盛顿等地的TikTok美国员工已经感受到了公司未来的不确定性。三名不愿透露姓名的员工表示，随着各州针对TikTok的禁令和立法得到推动，公司内部士气低落。 |
| TikTok leaders briefly addressed a potential divestment during a companywide livestream on Tuesday, where executives told employees that a divestment would not address the U.S. government’s concerns, according to two of the employees. | 据两名员工透露，周二，TikTok的领导层在全公司范围内的直播中简要谈到了可能的撤资，高管们告诉员工，撤资不会解决美国政府的担忧。 |
| In an internal note sent after news broke about the Biden administration’s push, Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, called the Biden administration’s push a “developing situation” and said that “divestment doesn’t solve anything” if protecting national security is the objective. He added that the company’s strategy to build systems to store U.S. user data on U.S.-based servers monitored by a third party “remains the same.” | 在有关拜登政府新举措的消息传出后，TikTok美洲公共政策主管迈克尔·贝克曼在一份内部通知中称，拜登政府此举所造成的问题“尚不明朗”，并表示，如果以保护国家安全为目标，“撤资解决不了任何问题。”他还说，公司的策略“没有改变”，那就是在位于美国的服务器中创建存储美国用户数据的系统，并接受第三方监督。 |
| “We feel strongly that this conversation should include the industry at large and not be based on where a company was founded," Mr. Beckerman wrote. | “我们强烈认为，这种对话应该包括整个行业，而且不该基于一家公司是在什么地方创办的，”贝克曼写道。 |
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