I have the same thought.
The short lived tik Tok ban showed how weak the US govt is at confronting tik tok and the Chinese govt was very open to letting people do on XHS. It was a win win for china either way.
Why would they suddenly be ok with selling Tik Tok to the Americans, and not just he US portion but global operations? This is a large steal. I would be very surprised if the usually competent Chinese govt drops the ball on this.
IMO seeing how quickly people started moving to XHS may have exactly convinced the Chinese government that Tiktok is not that valuable. Tiktok's worth is in its user base, and if they can be easily moved over to another platform then why not sell Tiktok and then siphon all its users into another platform, perhaps even one that's behind the GFW?
It would be a big gamble, for sure, but it'd be the ultimate power move to sell Tiktok for $200B only to have its users move into Douyin, XHS, or a new app.