Beijing, Sep 3: A day after India banned 118 Chinese mobile apps, China on Thursday said the movie violated the legal interests of Chinese investors and service providers.
China’s Commerce Ministry said Beijing is seriously concerned and “resolutely opposes” the Indian government’s move. It asked India to “correct its mistakes”.
Chinese commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said India has “abused the concept of national security and adopted discriminatory restrictive measures against Chinese companies.”
The Centre’s move comes amid the renewed tension between India and China along the Line of Actual Control in eatern Ladakh region.
The IT Ministry said it had received complaints from various sources, including several reports about misuse of some mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data to servers outside India.
The 118 mobile apps banned by the government on Wednesday had issues around security, surveillance and data privacy of Indian users, IT and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
“Today we have also banned 118 more apps which were a problem for your security, surveillance…data,” Prasad said while addressing a virtual conference of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum.
The Centre had earlier banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok and UC Browser, in the aftermath of Galwan Valley clash when at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
This takes the total count of Chinese-linked mobile apps banned by India to 224.
