After years of rejecting the idea of a sale of TikTok’s US assets to an American buyer in order to avert a ban, China and ByteDance may have found an owner they could live with: Elon Musk.

Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the U.S. operations if TikTok fails to fend off a controversial ban.

Talk of a possible sale of TikTok's U.S. assets to Elon Musk reflects his increasingly powerful stance as a power broker at the nexus of U.S.-China relations. Why it matters: Beijing-based TikTok owner ByteDance faces a Jan.