BEIJING, February 14 (TMTPOST)— The Indian government sought to ban more Chinese applications in the name of national security.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) of India is set to issue an order to block 54 Chinese apps, recommended by the country’s Home Affairs ministry which cited the Section 69 in the Information Technology Act, which authorize the Indian central government to block accesses to any website or any app which found to be misleading and pose threats to national security, according to the Economic Times and many other Indian news media outlets on Monday. These banned apps were alleged to “collected real time data that are being misused and transmitted to servers located in hostile country”, a MeitY’s statement that day said.
Free Fire, the most popular mobile game that underpinned the significant growth of Sea Ltd., the Southeast Asian e-commerce and gaming group backed by Tencent as the biggest shareholder, became one of the new targets. Sea’s U.S.-listed shares plunged as much as 20% on Monday, setting the record intraday decline since they began to be traded in October, 2017.
Source: Free Fire"s developer Garena
India has banned a total of 321 apps originated from China since the two countries’ border clash resulting in rising tensions in May 2020. India first imposed the ban on 59 apps in June, 2020 and soon expanded the scope as it added 118 such apps to the banning list in that year’s September alone, including Tencent’s PUBG, one of the world’s highest grossing video games.
China opposes any discriminatory and restrictive measures against Chinese enterprises and has asked the Indian authorities for a clarification, Gao Feng, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce of China, commented on India’s order to permanently ban on 59 Chinese mobile apps such as TikTok, Baidu, WeChat last year. It is hoped that India and China will work towards the same goal, and provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for the investment and operation of market players from all countries in India, including Chinese enterprises, Gao said. The Chinese government has always required Chinese enterprises to abide by international rules, operate in accordance to laws and rules, and respect local public order and morality during their overseas operations, he added.
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