India’s government banned nearly 60 Chinese mobile apps on Monday, including TikTok, citing national security concerns, after a deadly clash between their militaries this month raised tensions between the two countries to the highest level in decades.
The fighting two weeks ago, along the disputed border between the world’s two most populous countries, left 20 Indian soldiers dead and an unknown number of Chinese casualties.
While India has vowed to retaliate, it lags far behind China in military and economic power, leaving it with few options .But Chinese telecommunication and social networking companies have long eyed India’s giant market and its enormous potential. About 50 percent of India’s 1.3 billion citizens are online.
In addition to TikTok, the popular video-sharing social networking platform, the banned apps include WeChat, UC Browser, Shareit and Baidu Map.
Analysts say up to a third of TikTok’s global users are based in India.
The Chinese apps were “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers which have locations outside India,” India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a statement Monday.
“The compilation of these data, its mining and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defense 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,” the statement added.
The Chinese government did not immediately comment on the move, which was announced late at night in Beijing, nor did TikTok.
This month’s border brawl was the worst violence between the two nuclear-armed countries in more than 50 years. India blamed China for provoking the clash by intruding into territory it claims high in the Himalayan mountain range. China said the incident happened on its side of the border, and that Indian troops intruded.
