Post the sudden move by the Government of India in banning 59 Chinese Apps with a clear motive to maintain safety and sovereignty of Indian Cyberspace, the reactions received were of a mixed nature. According to the IT ministry, the apps listed are giants like TikTok, WeChat, Camscanner to name a few. The move comes in the backdrop of current stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh with Chinese Troops. This decision marks as the largest sweep by the Indian Government against Chinese Technology Companies.
How are Chinese Tech Firms affected by this?
The ban significantly depletes a top growth market for Chinese technology firms and may force other governments to shut them out. For Beijing-based ByteDance, India has been the biggest driver of TikTok installs, accounting for 611 million downloads, or 30% of the total, according to SensorTower. Cutting off new users, and existing ones as they try to install updates, will sting its mooted valuation of $110 billion. The company faces a similar backlash in the United States where lawmakers are also suspicious about Beijing’s access to consumer data.
By banning these Chinese Apps, Govt of India has restricted no exposure of Private data including each Individual’s buying/browsing Patterns to suit particular agendas or marketing patterns, thus Chinese companies can no more make money by selling Indian users data to other companies. In addition, Govt of India Banning has triggered globally owned non-Chinese firms like Facebook to enhance the user security policies and work towards bettering the online security for Indian Users.
Can the ban completely be imposed?
India is a huge country, with even bigger network infrastructure, banning and tracking down the apps is difficult unless the google app store and the apple store strikes down the apps from the download list on their respective platforms, which seems unlikely. Now, with people even more exposed to 3rd party apps, which can be of more risk than their original counterparts, the online cyber police have to be on high vigil in tracking online hackers, and people who end up using VPNs to download the apps. This poses a new set of challenges in front of GOI in succeeding to maintain the bain and hence be completely able to keep the Indian Cyberspace from intruders.
