Chinese government acquires stake in domestic unit of TikTok owner ByteDance
washingtonpost.comWhat do they need a stake in it for when they could have just demanded information or even code to be inserted by the development team?
According to Qichacha https://qcc.com/firm/95c92bca98e4e1935b982fb6c4e865f6.html , the 1% stake was acquired by a fund http://www.ciifund.cn/ set up for strategic investment to support companies in the internet sector.
Putting 2 million RMB into a Bytedance subsidiary at this stage is unlikely to have much impact in the sense of the fund's original mission, but if the investment performs well, it'll likely contribute to the income of various people involved with the fund.
It may not make much sense if you think of the government as a monolithic entity, but if you consider that it's actually a network of self-interested individuals, it's not all that surprising.