Guest:
Prof. Vivienne Bath
Vivienne Bath is a professor of Chinese and international commercial law at the University of Sydney Law School, and also serves as the director of the Asia-Pacific Legal Research Center and the research director of the China Study Centre. Her teaching and research focuses on international commercial law and economic law, private international law and mainland China law. She studied at the Australian National University and obtained a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard University in the United States. Professor Bath has gained extensive academic and professional experience in international commercial law over the past few decades in Sydney, New York and Hong Kong.
Prof. Michael Keane
Michael Keane is a fellow of the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University, a professor of Chinese media, and the project leader of the Digital China Research Lab, the cultural and technological center of Curtin University.
Prof. John Mikler
John Mikler is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. His research covers international economy, international politics, globalization, climate change and other fields, and his research interests are the interaction between multinational organizations and national governments and societies. His last research topic was related to the international automobile industry, and he used the method of capitalism comparison to analyze the impact of this industry trend on the environment.
Dr. David Smith
VDavid Smith is a Senior Lecturer in US Politics and Foreign Policy at the US Study Center and School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. Dr David Smith studied at the Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, and received a PhD in Political Science from the School of Social Sciences, University of Michigan. His academic research focuses on the domestic political ecology of the United States.
Content:
In 2016, a rising star of a social media platform was born. Since its establishment, TikTok, a subsidiary of ByteDance, has continuously impacted people's perception of social media, interpreting modern Internet life in its own unique way. However, since 2020, TikTok, as a new symbol of the Internet age, is experiencing unprecedented turmoil: from Microsoft's attempt to acquire TikTok software, to being banned from use in the United States by US President Trump... The turmoil experienced by TikTok is TikTok users in the United States have had a great impact, and have also made the future development of multinational Internet companies uncertain. At the same time, business and political relations at the international level have become complicated and confusing due to the social media incident involving government intervention. What is behind this incident What do the various forces on display represent?
In an era of such rapid Internet development, what kind of reflection and warning does the TikTok incident bring us? What is the motivation of the government to intervene in this social media incident? What impact does it have on social media in the United States, Australia and China? Aside from the impact on social media users, how should we interpret the impact of this event from the perspectives of business, politics, culture, and society? Is the government intervention triggered by the TikTok incident reasonable?
In the upcoming China Talk, we will invite four professors to analyze the impact of the TikTok incident from different perspectives in the form of Webinar.