The Indian government has banned 59 mobile applications from China, including top social media sites such as TikTok, Helo and WeChat, to combat the danger these applications pose to its “sovereignty and security”.
The ban came in the midst of escalating tensions between the two countries along the disputed border. In June both India and China sent more troops to the Ladakh region and satellite photos also tend to indicate that China has constructed new structures overlooking the border region of the Himalayas.
The Indian government, which cited concerns about data on Indian users being transferred abroad without permission, said the ban was enforced pursuant to Section 69A of the Information Technology Act reading with the related provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Public Access to Information) Rules 2009.
India’s information technology ministry said in its statement;
“The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defence of India, which ultimately impinges upon the sovereignty and integrity of India, is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures.”
Reacting to the ban, TikTok said in a statement;
Building empowered local management teams in the countries where TikTok operates, including India, has been critical to our global success.
“While the Government of India has issued an interim order to block 59 apps, our team of around 2,000 employees in India is committed to working with the government to demonstrate our dedication to user security and our commitment to the country overall.
“We are proud to provide hundreds of millions of users in India – and around the world – a creative platform for their stories, performances, education, and, often, a way to make their livelihood.”
India is the largest international market on TikTok, with an estimated 120 million users. As India ‘s diplomatic tensions with China continue to knock-on impact on business and tech, it might be easier to claim a complete decoupling than completed. China is dominating India’s huge internet market — the second largest in the world, with nearly 600 million users, both in hardware and software.
Relationships between the world’s two most populous nations were strained after the deaths of twenty Indian troops fighting hand-to-hand with their Chinese counterparts at the western end of the high-altitude, disputed border in mid June.
