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The 2020 Republican National Convention continues on Tuesday, with first lady Melania Trump due to deliver the keynote speech in primetime from the White House Rose Garden. Other speakers on night two include Tiffany and Eric Trump, Sen. Rand Paul, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Nicholas Sandmann, the senior from Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Ky., who confronted a Native American activist outside the Lincoln Memorial last year.

Tune in here beginning at 9 p.m. ET.

In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday (11th), U.S. President trump praised the effectiveness of Taiwan’s epidemic prevention, but he has no plan to visit Taiwan.

Regarding the recent visit of US health secretary ASAR to Taiwan, which is regarded as a major diplomatic change of the United States, Hewitt asked trump whether he would consider a historic visit to Taiwan before the end of this year. Trump responded that novel coronavirus pneumonia was purely discussed in Assar’s visit, but he did not have a plan to visit Taiwan.

In addition, U.S. national security adviser O’Brien said in an interview that the mainland did not want trump to be re elected. Trump said that if he lost the election, the mainland would “own” the United States, and the Americans would learn Chinese; on the contrary, if he was re elected, he would punish the mainland with tariffs.

n May 5, 2017, at Shanghai’s Pudong Airport, a new passenger airplane took off on its first flight. The Comac C919 that soared into the sky over eastern China that day wasn’t trying to set any records in size or speed or to demonstrate amazing new aviation technologies to the world. Rather, the slim white airliner with the lime green tail was built to send the world a simple message from the Chinese government: China can design and build a commercial aircraft. It won’t seriously challenge the Boeing-Airbus duopoly for now, but that’s not really the point.

It may sound like a bizarre move for a rapidly growing power like China, which in 2019 was the world’s second largest market for commercial air traffic. But the country sees plenty of upside in its attempt to break into an enormously complicated and fiercely competitive industry valued at almost $200 billion. More than just a vehicle to fly the Chinese flag, the C919 is both a first step and an insurance policy.

Even if it never flies outside of China, the plane is part of the country’s long-term goal to become a leader in technology and heavy manufacturing. Selling those goods to the world is one part of this effort, but moving beyond the production of cheap commodity products also would allow the country to become more self-sufficient in everything from telecom equipment to transportation. And by building its own aircraft industry — an area where the country remains dependent on Western suppliers — China will keep billions of dollars at home and have its own airliner free of tariffs.

If it ever happens. Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., calls the C919 a practice plane that has little chance of commercial success.

“They’ve decided to spend as much as needed and take as long as necessary until they have their own plane that can rival Boeing and Airbus,” Kennedy says. “The political ambition from the top leaders is that China has its own aircraft because, in their mind, great nations have their own airliners.”

Advancing the C919 to the point where it can even carry passengers will be arduous. The airliner is years behind schedule — though it was supposed to first fly six years ago, it’s not expected to enter service until late 2021 at the earliest. It’s also dependent on parts made in the US and Europe, and it brings nothing that similar aircraft from Boeing and Airbus don’t already have.

“I would describe [the C919] like a Nokia phone competing against Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S,” says Shukor Yusof, a Singapore-based aviation analyst at Endau Analytics. “It’s just not ‘cool.'”

The C919 also faces significant regulatory hurdles in getting certified to fly outside of China and in gaining the confidence of airlines that aren’t run by the Chinese government. But through its manufacturer Comac, China is pushing ahead to a bigger aviation future, even if it takes a generation.

Made in China

Comac was formed in May 2008 by five companies, including the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which has built a number of military and turboprop passenger aircraft. Though the new state-run firm announced the C919 the same month with a flight scheduled for 2014, the first plane didn’t roll out of the factory until November 2015. Further developmental problems delayed the flight to 2017.

In building the C919, Comac is focusing along a narrow, purely nationalistic line where the experience of building the jet is what’s important, says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the Teal Group in Washington, D.C., who calls the C919 a “national jet.”

“It’s basically a matter of pride to build a tube with a flag on the back and the ability to fly through the air and not a whole heck of a lot else,” he says. “But when joining the aerospace industry, you have to put your pride in the backseat.”

Comac didn’t reply to repeated email requests for comment.

Like the Airbus A320neo and the now-grounded Boeing 737 Max 8, the C919 is meant to be a short- and medium-haul workhorse connecting both large hubs and smaller cities. Comac’s aircraft has a two-class passenger load similar to that of its would-be rivals (see chart below), it flies about as fast (0.78 Mach) and it uses similar Leap engines manufactured by CFM, a joint venture between General Electric and France’s Safran. It’s also about the same size as both planes, but with a profile that closely resembles the A320neo.

Aboulafia says the similarities are the C919’s main problem — it doesn’t have new technology, nor is it more fuel-efficient, a feature that safety- and budget-conscious airlines place at the top of their shopping lists. “That’s the difference between developing new technology and developing a tube on the flag on the back,” he says. “There’s no technological selling point for this jet.”

Yusof, of Endau Analytics, whom I spoke with over email, takes a similar view. “China is now the world’s second largest economy, but significantly lags the US and Europe militarily in terms of technology.”

There’s a reason for the C919’s cautious design: Engineering and building a passenger jetliner is really hard. Boeing’s been in the business for close to a century, and Airbus grew out of a handful of British, French and German airplane makers that had existed long before the consortium’s 1970 founding.

But China doesn’t have a long history of aviation engineering experience to rely on. Though the country has built military aircraft, planes carrying paying passengers are different — it’s not just about being powerful, they also need to be safe and reliable. Boeing and Airbus have operations in China: Airbus has an A320 final assembly line in Tainjin, and Boeing a facility for outfitting completed 737s in Zhoushan. But Chinese workers aren’t performing the critical engineering work. Beefing up homegrown talent is key.

“There’s nothing more complicated than making a commercial airliner except making 1,000 of them, essentially identical to each other,” Kennedy says. “And then you have to service those thousand planes wherever they lie in a cost-effective, reliable way that convinces people to sit in them.”

Comac’s only other aircraft, the little-used ARJ21 regional jet, hasn’t given the company an auspicious start. Though it entered service in 2016, only about 30 of the 90-seat aircraft have been delivered to a handful of Chinese airlines. In a March 2019 report he wrote on the ARJ21, Aboulafia called the aircraft “an overweight and stunningly obsolete product.” AirineGeeks last year said it is “a poorly designed copycat of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80” (one of Comac’s predecessor companies produced some MD-80s in China in the late 1980s).

Kennedy blames the inefficiencies on Comac’s hierarchical structure, which he says prioritizes confidentiality and secrecy. Chinese companies that aren’t state-owned, like Huawei or Alibaba, would be better suited to the job. “Building a successful commercial aircraft requires horizontal coordination across many different suppliers from around the world in a very open transparent way,” he says. “Comac is really unfit for the task.”

Price and performance

Yet, there is an area where the C919 can potentially compete: price. Most estimates put its per-unit cost at around $50 million, about half the price of both the A320neo and 60% cheaper than the Max 8. For China’s nearby allies and airlines in developing nations eager to build an air travel infrastructure, the cheaper cost may be enough to win over some customers.

“There’s a desire to offer an Asian-made aircraft to Third World countries at lower prices compared to those marketed by Boeing and Airbus,” Yusof says.

In a statement, Airbus said it welcomes the competition from Comac, which will be good for the development of the industry. “We believe that the C919 will bring new competition to the market and the Chinese market is big enough to have more than two manufacturers. Airbus was born in competition and thrived in competition.”

Boeing expressed a similar sentiment. “Competition makes all of us better as it spurs innovation and the development of new technologies that meet the evolving needs of our customers,” the company said in a statement. “This is good for airline and cargo operators and the broader flying public.”

Kennedy is more skeptical about the C919’s chances. While a Chinese company like Huawei can compete on price and technology, just relying on the former won’t be enough for Comac. “The only other advantage is that it’s got a Chinese label,” he says. “Maybe for some that will be good enough. But in this industry, typically, that’s not been a strong enough selling point — that it’s a new entrant and you buy it for nationalistic reasons.”

Either way, Comac still has major hurdles ahead. Though certification by Chinese authorities is certain, letting the C919 fly within Chinese airspace, approval by the US’s FAA and Europe’s EASA is a much higher hurdle. Though the two bodies only regulate aircraft flown by their airlines or within their respective airspace, many other countries without a strong aviation safety agency follow their lead.

Kennedy says the FAA and EASA may even try to use their influence as a protective measure. “You could also see the US or Europe try to extend their regulatory authority even to countries where they’re not certifying,” he says. “They could try to push countries to not buy these planes.”

Aboulafia sees another large hurdle the C919 will need to fly over, one that he says really matters. If Comac has any real hope for the C919 to succeed, he said the company must create a support structure for its airline customers to keep its aircraft flying. That includes not just supplying parts on demand, but also building a team of technicians who can travel anywhere quickly around the world to maintain and fix aircraft.

It’s an endeavour more complicated than building the plane itself.

“To develop that organically for a 150-seat jet is many billions of dollars,” he says. “If you have a [faulty] airplane on the ground for more than 24 hours, you’re not a serious person. You might as well just go into children’s confectionery or something like that.”

Boeing’s troubles with the 737 Max family are unlikely to give Comac a boost, either. If the Max can return to service as predicted in the last half of this year — Boeing has conducted certification flights after repairing the flight control system blamed for two crashes that killed 346 people — it will be back in the air long before the C919 ever carries people.

Still, Yusof says Comac may be able to take advantage of the situation. “It provides breathing space to fix the technical shortcomings and inadequacies and perhaps to use the MAX crisis to highlight to its potential customers that even a major aerospace player like Boeing is not averse to making mistakes.”

A divorce jet

Aboulafia also calls the C919 a “divorce jet” for a potential future when free trade relations between China and Western countries break down to unsolvable levels. At that point, Chinese airlines will have to turn to a domestically made airplane. “I’ve spent decades now saying they’re trying to break into the market and they’re not gonna succeed,” he says. “But I got it all wrong. The reality is that they’re preparing for a great decoupling between the West and China.”

Even if the country takes decades to grow a homegrown airplane business, it’s a future that Western companies should worry about. China is a giant market for airliners, and the major Chinese airlines buy virtually all of their planes from Boeing and Airbus. By 2030, the country should surpass the US in terms of annual air passenger traffic, and in a report issued last year, Boeing predicted China would spend $3 trillion on 8,090 new planes by 2038.

Kennedy says Comac is all part of a larger effort by the Chinese government to develop an import substitution strategy. Called “Made in China 2025,” it pushes China to become a leader not just in aerospace, but also in sectors like telecom equipment and phones and 5G, AI, semiconductors, automobiles and medical products. “The goal is to comprehensively upgrade Chinese industry, making it more efficient and integrated so that it can occupy the highest parts of global production chains,” Kennedy wrote in a reportfrom last year.

Global production chains, however, are something Comac is unlikely to avoid. The company is no different than Boeing and Airbus in that it designs and builds airplanes, but it doesn’t make most of the parts that go inside. Beyond CFM and its engines, suppliers include Honeywell, Rockwell Collins and Parker Aerospace. (China’s Ministry of State Security has also been accused of hacking the C919’s foreign suppliers in order to steal their intellectual property.)

For now those arrangements will continue, but if Western countries decide to restrict the sale of aircraft components — a possibility the Trump administration has hinted at — Comac has no Chinese-made products to fall back on, for engines or anything else. And though the country wants to develop its own aviation parts infrastructure, a completely domestically produced plane is unlikely — it’s not how the industry, Boeing and Airbus included, works.

“The plane doesn’t exist without those supplies, and if the US and EU decide to turn this off, they can stop the plane right away,” Kennedy says. “No one builds a plane all by themselves.”

Order and entry into service

Comac has now built six C919s and is continuing test flights with a plan to start carrying passengers in 2021. Yusof says hitting the 2021 target is possible, though the end of 2022 is more likely if there are further production delays. Aboulafia, meanwhile, doesn’t see the plane entering service until 2023 at least.

It’s also unclear how the coronavirus pandemic, which has sharply depressed air travel demand worldwide, will affect its development. And further on, Comac says it is developing its next airliner, the 280-passengerwide-body C929, in a partnership with Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation.

To date, the company says it has 815 C919 orders from 28 airlines and aircraft leasing companies, almost all of which are Chinese (the airlines include China Eastern, Air China, Hainan and China Southern). Outside of the country, only Connecticut-based GE Capital has signed a letter of intent to purchase 20 C919s, but airlines in neighboring countries like Myanmar and Laos could be buyers. Yusof says orders could also come from Indonesia and from some countries in Africa, a continent where China has been investing heavily for years to extend its soft power.

Until the plane actually enters regular service with an airline, though, the analysts I spoke with say the Comac’s announcements about orders don’t mean a whole lot. “They don’t necessarily bear any resemblance to reality,” Kennedy says. “To me those numbers of orders and timelines are really just PR rather than reflection of the plane’s actual readiness to be delivered in and put in service.”

This story is part of Generation China, CNET’s series exploring the nation’s technological ambition.

When Marcy Granger first downloaded TikTok early last year, the 29-year-old Transportation Security Administration officer had no idea that a Chinese company owned the popular short-form video app.

Then the TSA barred workers from using TikTok for the agency’s social media engagement because of national security concerns. That’s when Granger learned that the video app belonged to ByteDance, a technology company based in Beijing.

The revelation didn’t stop Granger, who has racked up more than 166,000 followers on the app, from making TikTok videos. The Denver resident lip-syncs to pop music and posts motivational messages about life and motherhood on the app during her free time. She occasionally wears her TSA uniform at home in her videos but doesn’t give away security details about her job.

“It didn’t really scare me too much because some people don’t realize all social media and all data is tracked,” said Granger, who also runs a social media marketing business.

TikTok is China’s first global social media hit, capturing the attention of users through short videos of people lip syncing, dancing and goofing off to music. The app’s success, though, has fueled scrutiny from politicians who worry that the Chinese government could use the app to spy on citizens and spread political propaganda.

On Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he plans to ban TikTok in the US, according to CBS News. He’s also considered signing an order directing ByteDance to sell TikTok’s US operations, Bloomberg reported earlier in the day. Microsoft is potentially an interested buyer, according to The New York Times. A spokesperson for TikTok said the company doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation. The White House and Microsoft didn’t comment on the divestment reports. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s remarks aboard Air Force One.

Some cybersecurity experts say Trump’s focus on TikTok is more about politics than national security concerns. TikTok is competing in an environment dominated by US social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. Facebook, the world’s largest social network, even created a similar app called Lasso but shut it down in July after it failed to gain traction. Facebook’s photo service Instagram is expected to launch a TikTok competitor called Reels in more countries, including the US, in August.

“The Trump administration sees pushing back against TikTok as part of its strategy in containing China’s rise as a science and technology power and competing with China in the future about how data is governed, collected and analyzed,” said Adam Segal, who oversees the digital and cyberspace policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Fears about privacy and security have already prompted some TikTok users to think about whether it’s too risky to stay on the service, while others hope to remain on the app. Some users have already pulled the plug on TikTok. In July, gaming star Tyler “Ninja” Blevins tweeted that he deleted TikTok from all his devices.

“Hopefully a less intrusive company (data farming) that isn’t owned by China can recreate the concept legally, such funny and amazing content on the app from influencers,” Blevins, who has more than 4 million followers on the app, said in a tweet.

TikTok has pushed back against allegations the app is “spyware” for the Chinese government, noting that it has an American CEO and that its safety and public policy teams are based in the US. TikTok said all US user data is stored in the United States, with a backup in Singapore. TikTok said that none of its data is subject to Chinese law and that it has “never provided user data to the Chinese government” and wouldn’t do so.

This week, CEO Kevin Mayer said in a blog post that the company launched a new Transparency and Accountability Center so experts can view TikTok’s moderation rules in real time and look at the code that drives its algorithms.

“The entire industry has received scrutiny, and rightly so. Yet, we have received even more scrutiny due to the company’s Chinese origins,” Mayer said. “We accept this and embrace the challenge of giving peace of mind through greater transparency and accountability.”

ByteDance’s investors, including Sequoia and General Atlantic, have also proposed transferring the majority ownership of TikTok to them amid more scrutiny from the US, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, government officials are still looking closely into TikTok, an app known for its quirky dance videos that last up to a minute. US lawmakers say that even if TikTok doesn’t store US data in China, they’re still worried that the government has some control over the app.

“Security experts have voiced concerns that China’s vague patchwork of intelligence, national security, and cybersecurity laws compel Chinese companies to support and cooperate with intelligence work controlled by the Chinese Communist Party,” US Sens. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, and Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, wrote in a letter last year asking for an assessment of the app’s national security risks.

In 2017, ByteDance purchased social media app Musical.ly, which had offices in Shanghai, China, and Santa Monica, California. The Chinese company then rebranded Musical.ly, already popular among teens in the US, as TikTok and promoted the app with an aggressive marketing campaign. The US government last year launched a national security review of ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly.

Some employers, including those with government ties, have taken their own action against the app. Wells Fargo told employees to remove TikTok from its work phones. The US Navy, Army and other military branches have banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices because of cybersecurity concerns. Democratic and Republican national committees have warned staffers about it. Joe Biden’s presidential campaign barred staffers from downloading TikTok on their personal and work devices and asked them to delete the app if they already had it, reaffirming guidance from the DNC, a campaign official said. Last week, legislation that would bar federal employees from using the app on their work devices cleared the US House of Representatives and a Senate Committee.

India has taken a step further and banned TikTok, citing national security concerns. The move came after at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed during a clash with Chinese troops along a disputed border in the Himalayas. Now other countries, including the US and Australia, are considering whether they should bar the app too.

Some TikTok users like Granger are keeping their fingers crossed that a US ban doesn’t happen.

“I like being able to have that reach to share positivity. So it does worry me a little bit that if [TikTok] goes away that I’ll lose that ability,” she said. “I really do hope that they don’t ban it just because I have seen so much good come out of it.”

Watch this: Why the US might try to ban TikTok

US weighs TikTok ban

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last earlier this month the Trump administration was looking into banning TikTok. In an interview with Fox News, Pompeo said that people who downloaded the app are putting “private information in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.”

President Donald Trump then confirmed in an interview with Gray Television that the US is considering a TikTok ban to punish China for its response to the novel coronavirus. “It’s a big business,” Trump said. “Look, what happened with China with this virus, what they’ve done to this country and to the entire world, is disgraceful.” Trump’s campaign then began running ads on Facebook asking people to sign a petition if they think the US should ban TikTok.

“TikTok has been caught red handed by monitoring what is on your phone’s clipboard. Do you think we should ban TikTok? Sign the petition NOW!,” one of the ads stated. iPhone users discovered in June after upgrading to an early version of iOS 14 that TikTok and other apps were accessing their phone’s clipboard.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has targeted a Chinese company. Taking aim at Chinese smartphone maker Huawei Technologies and telecommunications equipment maker ZTE, Trump extended for another year a 2019 executive order that barred US companies from using telecommunications equipment created by firms that pose a national security risk.

The Trump administration is considering action against TikTok under a federal law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, according to The New York Times. The law allows the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual or extraordinary threat to the US. The US Commerce Department could also put TikTok on its “entity” list, restricting the company’s access to US technology. Adding TikTok to the list would mean that Googleand Apple would have to pull it from their app stores. Trump’s administration could lobby US lawmakers to enact legislation that targets TikTok as well.

Preventing people from using TikTok, though, won’t be easy. There are other ways to install apps outside of downloading them from the app stores. Tech companies could put up a fight as well.

“The tech community will be very hesitant to go along with this app ban,” said Wayne Lam, an independent technology analyst. “It sets a precedent for the government to ban other apps or even for other global apps to be inaccessible to the US market.”

TikTok’s security concerns

As TikTok faces more scrutiny, some cybersecurity researchers have identified vulnerabilities within the app. Concerns about government officials tracking user data and security, though, aren’t unique to Chinese social media apps.

“They’re fundamental problems in how we consume information and how information is exchanged,” said Serge Egelman, who oversees research about security and privacy at University of California, Berkeley. “What TikTok is doing isn’t particularly new or novel, but it’s pretty much how most apps collect data and monetize themselves.”

The Trump administration, for example, has purchased cellphone location data from a company called Venntel and uses it for immigration and border enforcement, The Wall Street Journal reported in February. China is a “useful political punching bag rightly or wrongly, in many cases,” Egelman said, but the questions facing TikTok should also be asked about other apps and governments.

Oded Vanunu, head of products vulnerability research at Check Point Software Technologies, said that hackers and cybercriminals are putting a lot of resources into finding vulnerabilities on social media and messaging apps because the data is valuable. Russian trolls have used social media apps to sow discord among Americans during the 2016 US presidential election. Since the US government doesn’t control TikTok’s infrastructure, it’s no surprise the government is concerned about its risks, he said.

Social media apps, including TikTok, collect information about its users such as their location and images. Users also have private videos they don’t post to the public. A version of TikTok called Douyin (that’s the word for “shaking sound” in Chinese) available in China was using facial recognition to police foreigners, The Telegraphreported.

“In the world of cybersecurity, this kind of data is gold,” Vanunu said.

In January, cybersecurity firm Check Point Research found TikTok security flaws that could have allowed attackers to manipulate content in TikTok accounts, delete videos, upload unauthorized content, make private videos public and reveal an account owner’s personal information. The researchers told TikTok about the issues and they’ve been fixed.

Using any social network comes with risks, experts said. Users have to be wary about uploading any private content that they aren’t comfortable with having leaked. They shouldn’t also believe everything they see on social media apps because videos can be altered to spread misinformation.

The Washington Post, while working with privacy company Disconnect, concluded that TikTok doesn’t appear to collect any more data than Facebook — but “that’s not a compliment.”

TikTok was also one of more than 50 apps that security researchers discovered regularly sought access to what users copied content on their mobile device’s clipboard. Researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk in March published a list of iPhone or iPad apps that “snooped” on a device’s clipboard. Apple then released a developer version of iOS14 that included a feature that alerted users when an app accesses a person’s clipboard. TikTok told BBC that it didn’t store or receive any data from these clipboards.

Last year, a California researcher and college student Misty Hong sued ByteDance, TikTok and Musical.ly, alleging in the lawsuit that the short-form video app has been illegally and secretly harvesting vast amounts of personally identifiable user data and sending it to China.

Censorship worries

Yaqiu Wang, who researches China for the Human Rights Watch, says concerns about TikTok go beyond just privacy. There have also been fears TikTok has been censoring videos that are critical of the Chinese government, a claim TikTok denies.

Wang and her colleagues last year posted video clips of an unidentified Chinese protester called Tank Man, who stood in front of Chinese Army tanks leaving Tiananmen Square a day after the military’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989. One video the researchers posted couldn’t be viewed by the public, but TikTok said that it made a mistake by restricting the content. The video was “incorrectly partially restricted based on guidelines related to displaying identifiable military information,” and it was reinstated, the company told Wang.

Last year, TikTok apologized to a US teenager Feroza Aziz after the company suspended her account after she posted a makeup video where she criticized China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims. The company said it mistakenly pulled the video and that she was blocked from the app for prior behavior not because of her views on Chinese politics.

Other tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter also have content moderation policies and say they abide by local laws. But these US companies are making different decisions about how they handle political content, Wang said. Facebookdoesn’t send speech from politicians to fact-checkers while Twitter has labeled political posts with misinformation.

“The worry with TikTok is to what extent can the Chinese government compel TikTok to make certain decisions?” she said. “We need more evidence, but I think that the concern is valid.”