WASHINGTON: Any potential buyer of Chinese-owned TikTok that has operations in China could be a problem, a White House adviser said on Monday, amid reports that President Donald Trump was weighing whether to allow a US company to buy the popular short-video app in lieu of an outright ban.

Asked on Fox News about Microsoft's comments that it was seeking to acquire the company, Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro cited Microsoft's Bing search engine and Skype platform, saying they "effectively are enablers of Chinese censorship, surveillance and monitoring."