Dan Harris, a Seattle lawyer who works with foreign companies in China, said he has heard from an unusually large number of businesses in recent weeks looking for ways to reduce their presence in China without leaving the market altogether

“If you look at the people who draw the analogies between Google and Facebook and TikTok, they’re either unsophisticated or they have an ax to grind in favor of TikTok,” said Dan Harris, a lawyer who works with foreign companies in China and writes the China Law Blog. “Most serious people see a difference. It doesn’t mean they’re all great or all bad, but there is a difference.”

“China has become a risky place,” Dan Harris, a lawyer at Harris Sliwoski, a firm that specializes in investment with China, said in an email. “If you are going to do business there you had better know what the laws are and you had better follow them, because China is not going to let anyone slide, especially not an American or a Canadian.”