*China has expressed serious concerns regarding India’s bans of Chinese apps for national security reasons, and hoped the latter would treat all foreign investors, including Chinese firms, in a transparent, fair and non-discriminatory manner

Isola Moses | ConsumerConnect

As India conducted its fifth round of Chinese app bans, a few days ago, since June 2020, blocking access to 54 additional Apps, China has said it has serious concerns about the bans.

ConsumerConnect gathered the Asian economic giant Thursday, February 17, 2022, stated that it hoped India would  treat all foreign investors, including Chinese firms, in a transparent, fair and non-discriminatory manner in the country.

Some of the Indian-banned Chinese Apps 

China expressed serious concerns regarding India’s ban of Chinese apps for national security reasons, agency report said.

Gao Feng, a Spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce, said: “We hope India can take concrete measures to maintain the sound development momentum of bilateral economic and trade cooperation.

Recall this publication had reported that India blocked access to 54 Chinese mobile apps earlier this week.

The last bans were said to be the fifth round of Chinese app bans since June 2020, when it banned 59 apps including the hugely popular TikTok.

According to Reuters, 321 Chinese apps are now banned in India.

Apps banned in the latest round include Beauty Camera: Sweet Selfie HD; Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade, Viva Video Editor and Tencent Xriver.

India stated that it believes the affected apps were sending users’ data to servers in China. Such collection would allow the data to be mined, collated, analysed and profiled, potentially by “elements hostile to the sovereignty and integrity of India and for activities detrimental to national security,” a source told Reuters.

However, report had indicated that many of the Chinese apps that India had banned since June 2020 continue to operate in the country, quoting industry insiders and privacy experts.

Some of these are registered in countries, such as the US, Singapore, and even India to evade bans.

Venus Dhuria, Co-founder of mobile Internet technology company AppyHigh, also said these apps “quickly clone themselves, changing their identity and making basic tweaks to their design before returning.”

Similarly, China has accused India of “suppressing” Chinese companies after Indian tax authorities raided the offices of Huawei Wednesday.

Feng said that China was “deeply concerned” about India’s “suppression of Chinese firms”.