After a ban on TikTok and 59 other Chinese apps last month, the government has created a new list of apps to examine if they pose any risk to national security or individual’s privacy.
This time the Center has kept 275 Chinese apps on the radar, including PubG backed by China’s most valuable internet major Tencent, Zili by phone maker Xiaomi, AliExpress by e commerce giant Alibaba as well as apps like Resso and ULike from TikTok-owned ByteDance. The reviews aimed at identifying more Chinese apps and their funding is underway.
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.
This is in addition to examining the alleged flow of data from these apps to China that poses a threat to the national security of India.
According to industry estimates Chinese Internet companies have about 300 million unique users in India. This indicates that nearly two-thirds of smartphone users in the country have downloaded Chinese app
For PubG, India is one of the largest markets, generating about 175million installs to date, or 24% of the total downloads. Although PubG Videogame has been developed by a subsidiary of South Korean video game company Bluehole, it is also backed by China’s most internet major Tencent.
Meanwhile the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology( Meity) has sent 77 questions to the 59 banned-Chinese apps. The Center has asked questions whether they censored content, worked on behalf of foreign governments or lobbied influences among others. The ministry has also given these companies three weeks to respond which will expire this week.
If the government may ban all, some or none from the list- one has to wait and see.
