I agree with MelianPretext's assessment and yours, I agree that this is a scenario that chinese leaders want to avoid, not to mention the possible loss of tiktok's algorithm.
it's just that imo, if china does not acquiesce to this seizure, it radically shortens the roadmap to physical war, and I don't think zhongnanhai is too keen on that at this point in time
maybe my opinion is wildly inaccurate, and war is just a remote possibility given the material/industrial circumstances of many possible players (e.g. europe), but I'm seeing a lot of signs that the american effort to completely defeat china is slowly but surely ramping up to a point of no return, and this time they're also operating in tandem with its allies (eu conducting an investigation into china's EVs: europe's own version of this tiktok thing in the us. it seems to me as if china's mercantilist practices have never been that much of a problem since its admission to wto, but now, suddenly, they are. is it made in china 2025 that scared the s**t out of them? did it start before? idk)
for example, I've always thought that semiconductors sanctions are pointless if you don't physically reset china's ability to research and innovate; china has the market and the talent pool to eventually come up with an indigenous EUV solution, so what's the point of sanctioning them? imo they make sense if you already know that in a couple of years you're planning to bomb the s**t out of their research facilities