In recent news, China has accused India of discriminating practices violating the rules of the World Trade Organization following the latter’s decision on banning more Chinese mobile applications. New Delhi issued an order on Tuesday to block 43 more applications with claims that they engaging in various activities that wage a threat to India’s national security. To date, India has already banned over 220 Chinese mobile applications some of which were developed by the biggest tech companies in China like Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance.
The action is being taken based upon the various inputs regarding these blocked applications that allegedly engaged in activities that are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, and security of the state and public order as per India’s information technology ministry.
They also added that this drastic decision was taken based on the comprehensive reports received from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center, Ministry of Home Affairs.
The various apps that were affected by this decision included short-video streaming app Snack Video which was reportedly on the top list of the chart in terms of the number of downloads in the past few months. The app is owned by Kuaishou which is backed by Tencent and is an alternate and competitor to the globally popular Chinese app, TikTok.
Some of the other apps that were banned included Alibaba’s e-commerce platform, AliExpress, workplace messaging application DingTalk, streaming app Taobao Live, delivery app Lalamove India and some other dating sites.
The Chinese embassy in India spokesperson Ji Rong said that they oppose India’s constant excuse under the vague term, ‘national Security’ in prohibiting mobile applications of Chinese origin.
They also said that they hope that India offers a healthy market for new businesses and rectify the present violation of WTO rules. They said that these two countries can grow through new developmental opportunities than waging a threat against each other.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that India’s claim is redundant and they should rectify their approach to avoid further economic damage.
This is not the first time that India issued its decision to ban Chinese applications from the country.
Back in June, 59 mobile applications with Chinese backgrounds were banned by New Delhi whereas 118 new were added. The blocked ones included TikTok and PUBG, owned by Tencent which has taken the youth in India by storm with its exponentially growing popularity.
India has blocked about 220 Chinese apps to date. South Korean game developer PUBG Corporation is in plans of returning to the Indian market after cutting their affiliation with Tencent. It was through Tencent that PUBG was published in India.
According to sources, a new game known as PUBG Mobile India is set to launch. These bans were announced about events of bilateral relations between the two countries clashed in the Himalayas killing about 20 Indian soldiers. This instigated anti-Chinese sentiments across the country and people started supporting Chinese products.
Before this clash, New Delhi has announced restrictive measures on Chinese investments in the country.
