The Chinese government is considering a plan to have Elon Musk acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations to avoid a ban on the app in the United States , Bloomberg News reports.

An emergency plan that, according to the media agency, would be one of the options that Beijing is evaluating while the US Supreme Court decides whether or not to uphold a law that requires the Chinese company ByteDance to divest the US operations of TikTok by January 19.

Already this morning, however, TikTok defined Bloomberg's news as "pure fiction" , categorically denying the deal. "We cannot be expected to comment on pure fiction," a TikTok spokesperson told AFP.

Chinese government officials have not yet decided whether to proceed with the Musk option, the report said, noting that the plan is still preliminary .

Meanwhile, in the US, users are already looking for a valid alternative to the popular video-making platform. An alternative that, in reality, still speaks Chinese at the moment: Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 have hit the first two positions in the Apple iPhone download charts.

(Unioneonline/vl)