POLICY
POLICY
POLICY
India bans 47 Chinese apps and may ban 275 more
After banning 59 Chinese apps last month because of national security concerns, India has added 47 more apps to the list.
Included in last month’s ban was the very popular video-sharing app TikTok, which was a big statement by India. At the time of the ban, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said that the country was “strongly concerned regarding the decision of the Indian government.”
On Monday, a spokesperson for the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said that some of the new bans were apps operating as clones for the ones already prohibited.
“We have banned 47 mobile apps from China in this ongoing exercise which highlights the government’s seriousness about data privacy and security,” a spokesperson who wished to remain anonymous told AFP. “The order was issued on Friday. Most of these 47 apps are banned for the same reasons as the earlier 59, and many were lite versions or variants of the earlier banned applications.”
A full list of the banned apps has not been released, although reports state that some of them include Tiktok Lite, Helo Lite, SHAREit Lite, BIGO LIVE Lite and VFY Lite.
It’s also reported that about 275 more apps may soon become unavailable to the India consumer. One of the names on that list is reportedly PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which is backed by China’s largest videogame producer, Tencent Holdings Ltd. That and other apps are currently being reviewed to see how much data they share with Chinese government agencies.
Other names on the list are reportedly electronics maker Xiaomi Corp. and online retailer AliExpress, which is owned by the e-commerce giant the Alibaba Group. “Some of these apps have been red-flagged due to security reasons while others have been listed for violation of data sharing and privacy concerns,” an official told India’s Economic Times.
It’s thought that there are some 300 million Chinese apps downloaded on phones in India, which is about two-thirds of the country’s smartphone users. In June, prior to any bans, Indian troops clashed with Chinese troops on the Himalayan border. That left 20 Indian soldiers dead and prompted calls for India to ban Chinese products.
Photo: Logan King/Flickr
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