TikTok's billionaire founder in dilemma as tug-of-war over app rages on

Zhang, whose ByteDance Ltd owns TikTok, was on the verge of building the world's third truly global advertising and social-media force

TikTok founder Zhang Yiming built his tech empire by fending off giants like Alibaba and Tencent at home and humbling Facebook abroad. Now all that could get torn apart at the hands of the brawling, nationalistic leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries.

US President Donald Trump hit TikTok in its most lucrative market Thursday when he moved to ban it -- along with Tencent’s super-app WeChat -- in 45 days. That followed efforts by Trump to get Zhang to sell off TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft Corp or another American suitor by Sept. 15. When Chinese President Xi Jinping’s