The CEO of TikTok, Chew Shou Zi, received the honourary invite to celebrate Trump's inauguration on January 20, where he will sit alongside all the VIPs-including former presidents, family members, and other distinguished guests.

Mr. Chew will join other prominent tech executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. Some are also speculating that Trump's committee invitation to Mr Zhou could also hint at Trump's commitment to protect TikTok from the possible ban that could come as soon as Jan 19.

TikTok's role in securing an electoral win for Trump

In a news conference in December, the President-elect said that there is "a warm stop in his heart" for the app and gave it credit for helping him win over young voters. Indeed, TikTok had played a very instrumental role in helping Trump connect to his younger voters and secure their ballots in the election.

In June last year, Trump made the shocking announcement that he would be joining TikTok. News reports say that Trump got the idea from his son Barron Trump, and it really worked miracles for Trump.

In just six hours into joining the app, Trump managed to amass 614,000 followers, which was three times more followers compared to his competitor, Joe Biden.

Trump currently has 9.5 million followers on the platform, more than the 7.47 million followers on his own social media service Truth Social. Ultimately, Trump's strategy of appealing to young voters worked, as he ultimately managed to secure 34 points more when it comes to youth voters compared to his competitor.

For this reason, we can see why Donald Trump is so willing to offer a helping hand to help TikTok to escape the ban. Trump has also vowed to save the app in the US once he is inaugurated on Jan 20, though his options for doing so are limited.

What can Trump possibly do?

Legal experts have speculated that the most likely place Trump could intervene would involve a part of the law that gives the president the authority to determine whether ByteDance has done enough to remove TikTok from Chinese control.

Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump's pick for national security adviser, also reveal that the Trump team is also currently working on a executive order to keep the app available in the U.S.

Another person who is eyeing TikTok is billionaire Elon Musk. Previously it was rumoured that Elon Musk is talking to Chinese officials regarding a deal to buy the U.S. version of TikTok.

Some speculated that because of Elon Musk's proximity to Donald Trump, China would be more than happy to sell the app to Musk as a way to get information of what is happening in the White House, especially during such an important time for china when it is facing a possible tariff from the Trump administration.

While Elon Musk has yet to comment on the rumours, China authorities have straightup denied the rumours, calling these rumours "pure fiction."

U.S TikTokers Jumping to XiaoHongShu

Facing the impending ban, many U.S TikTokers have jumped to the Chinese social media app XiaoHongShu. Many of these TikTokers have also called themselves TikTok refugees, who have migrated to the Chinese app just to spite the American government. The surge in American TikTokers flocking to the chinese app had even help the Chinese app to top the app store charts.

But these American TikTokers are facing trouble assimilating to the predominately Chinese speaking community on XiaoHongShu, and have devised very creative ways to deal with it. Some TikTokers have hidden behind their pets, hoping that posting images of their pets could help to break the ice with the Chinese community.

Other users have resorted to using Google translate to include Chinese subtitles to their content, to cater to the Chinese audience. Regardless of the methods, it seems that the Chinese community on XiaoHongShu is very welcoming of the of their foreign friends, and has showed great hospitality to them by welcoming them into the app.