After India bans 59 mobile phone apps in their country-- mostly from Chinese companies--China has now spoken against the Indian government's decision. The Chinese government said they are strongly concerned about their choice, but reiterated that they respect the country.
China finally speaks up
On Tuesday, June 30, Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, released its official statement regarding India's 'banning of Chinese apps.' He explains that the Chinese government was "strongly concerned" about the ban.
Despite the allegations of India against China, the Chinese government said that they still respect the decision of India to stop supporting their local apps. However, it insists that their government requires its apps to follow strict and certain safety regulations.
"We want to stress that the Chinese government always asks the Chinese businesses to abide by international and local laws and regulations," he said. "Indian government has responsibility to uphold the legitimate rights of international investors, including Chinese ones."
So far, the Chinese government only insists that they will still investigate the issues in order to check and verify information on the situation.
Why did India ban Chinese apps?
India and China, two of the biggest populations in the world, have been in the cold war with each other recently. This was after tension arose when a border clash happened in the Himalayas between the two nations, resulting in 20 deaths of Indian officers.
As a part of their war against each other, the Indian government decided to block almost all Chinese apps in the country, including the famous video-sharing app, TikTok.
They accused these apps of imposing security dangers for their users in the country. India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said on the statement that Indian users have been facing security and privacy issues on the apps, forcing them to block the apps.
"The compilation of these data, its mining, and profiling by elements hostile to national security and defense of India ... is a matter of very deep and immediate concern which requires emergency measures," the agency said.
So far, TikTok is the only Chinese company that made a statement regarding the accusations. They clarified that their system doesn't save any data from their Indian users, contrary to what the Indian government was saying.
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