Kyle Bass prefers the term "China realist" to "China hawk", but the inveterate China critic, who last year bet against the Hong Kong dollar's peg to the greenback, appeared on CNBC Tuesday morning to share his thoughts on TikTok, HSBC and the prospect of 'decoupling' between the US and China.

As Bass has explained on several occasions, the US is maneuvering against China on four fronts: there's what Bass calls "kinetic war" - a clash between the world's two largest militaries - in addition to a cyber war, a narrative war, an economic war.

Pushing back against critics like Barry Diller, who slammed the Trump Administration's approach to the TikTok deal, Bass blamed "China's own policies that have put them in this situation in overplaying their hand."