On Tuesday, in an internal letter to Chinese employees only, ByteDance’s founder Zhang Yiming said, the United States aims to ban TikTok and not force a sale and that some people had misconceptions about the situation.

The letter was reported by Chinese media and confirmed by a source.

The report of this letter comes in the wake of media reports that ByteDance was negotiating the sale of TikTok with Microsoft Corp, which prompted online criticism of Zhang and of the firm.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

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