China didn't ban Google or Facebbook. China has laws that required Google and Facebook to keep their servers within Chinese borders and they chose to not follow those rules, hence preventing them from operating in China. Whereas Tiktok has complied with all the laws in US thus far but still banned because of baseless national security concerns. And that's the issue here.
So a totally innocent college student going home for summer vacation, gets in trouble. Escaped China, ended up on Planet Money, and vowed never to return. That sounds right? Could it be that this guy was the one spreading Islamic extremism (or worse terrorism) and got caught doing it? But of course Planet Money podcast is too busy to include that other side of story.