Amid an increasingly hostile business climate fostered by Chinese authoritarian leader Xi Jinping’s crackdown on private enterprise as well as public distrust of Chinese firms in the United States, global Chinese firms have been seeking to dissociate themselves from the Beijing regime on the international stage.
For example, TikTok moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. Recently, the company assured U.S. lawmakers that the move was not related to Chinese parent company ByteDance, since TikTok is operated by a Singaporean citizen from its main office in the city state.