(The Editor's Pick is a new newsletter from The Hindu that provides a snapshot of the most important stories from today's edition of our newspaper, along with a note from our top editors on why we chose to give prominence to these stories.)
The Centre has banned 118 apps, a majority of which are of Chinese origin, citing national security issues. This comes amid a border standoff with China, and nearly three months after the ban on 59 other Chinese-origin apps. The current tranche includes the mobile phone battle royale game PUBG, which is hugely popular in India with reportedly 40 million active users from the country. While the number of apps banned may be higher, in terms of impact the current lot does not match up to the earlier ban. The ban in June involved apps such as TikTok, SHAREit, and UCBrowser which have much larger user bases. However, across both bans, the economic impact may be limited as revenues from India for Chinese big tech such as ByteDance and TenCent are muted. The impact will be on any ambitions these companies have of projecting themselves as global players. Technology as a terrain of reciprocation against China is being used not just by India, but also by the U.S. TikTok is facing takeover threats under U.S. President Donald Trump's orders. It may not alter the Chinese government's geopolitical calculations, but the high visibility of this strategy and its immediate impact on millions of mobile phone users is what makes this story important. |
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