China Feels The Pinch From India’s Apps Ban Policy
India is about to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, with a population of 1,400 million, with also the fastest growing economy in the World. Though most Indians presently are not big spenders on apps, there is a huge potential market power in India’s 1.4 billion people. Nearly 65% of them are below 35 and, likely potential users of phone apps.
Now China has been banned from such a market, ceding the space To Indian Companies and few others to stake out their market shares. All this while China has to look on from the outside because they thought that even after physically attacking Indian Soldiers in Galwan, there will be business as usual. This will be hard for Chinese Companies with global ambitions.
“It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.” This may have been spoken by Mao of China but this is now being implemented by Modi of India. Xi did not listen to Mao words but India is taking countermeasures.
The initial ban that India imposed on several smartphone apps by Chinese companies, including TikTok, did not cause any serious damage to Chinese business but by expanding the scope of the bans serious impact has been felt by Chinese Companies and even those connected with them, like companies in Singapore etc.
India, this week, banned 54 apps built by Chinese companies, over and above the 200 odd apps already proscribed. At once in a press conference on Thursday, the spokesman for China’s commerce ministry, Gao Feng, expressed concern about India’s ban on Chinese apps. Evidently, India’s determination to ban Chinese apps by the hundreds is working up a steam in Beijing.
The biggest example of an Indian app ban making a company suffer is Sea, the maker of the popular video game Free Fire. After India banned the game, Sea, which is listed in New York, plunged 18% in value, and some analysts forecast further fall, as much as by 40% in JP Morgan’s estimate.
Now, Chinese tech major Tencent is the largest investor in Sea, although the company is now domiciled in Singapore and most of its staff work in the city state. Sea is feeling aggrieved that India picked on its app, but the fact remains that Chinese investors are the largest owners of the company.
The Chinese leadership is probably more concerned about India’s prominent role in the Quad, an alliance of four nations — the US, Japan and Australia, besides India — that has been forged to make the Asia-Pacific totally peaceful. Beijing should have noted that India is charting its own path on its own terms and not becoming a camp follower of USA.
It buying the sophisticated S-400 missile system, despite the US government’s opposition, threats and tantrums on buying the sophisticated military kit from Russia. India still remains the key for Quad.
Now the signing of historic CEPA between UAE and India should further open up the Chinese eye. It must improve its bilateral relationship with India or risk dismantling over a time. The only way to settle things is to negotiate and demarcated the Indo Tibetan border both on ground and the map.
Similarly the border between China and Tibet must also be demarcated. Thereafter both the Countries can go back to dominating the World trade as they have been doing for the last 7 thousand years except when the pesky Europeans had carried out virus attacks from 18th Century onwards.
