Beijing on Thursday cited Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and the popularity of yoga in China to criticize India which bans 118 Chinese apps and subtly warned New Delhi not to join the US ‘clean web’ program, Washington’s initiative. for an Internet without security threats.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that, unlike the reason behind India’s decision to ban all 118 apps, the popularity of Tagore’s poems or the wide approval of yoga among Chinese citizens does not mean that China sees them as “infiltration” or “threat”.
India on Wednesday banned 118 mobile apps, mostly Chinese, including Tencent Holdings Ltd’s popular PUBG video game, citing concerns about data security.
These “applications surreptitiously collect and share data and compromise users’ personal data and information that may pose a serious threat to state security,” India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a statement. .
The latest round of banning – India first banned 59 Chinese apps on June 29 – comes in the context of a further escalation in the current border friction between the two Himalayan neighbors in eastern Ladakh.
While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invoked Tagore and his poetry, the Ministry of Commerce of China was less poetic. He said he strongly opposes India banning Chinese apps.
“The Indian actions violate the legal interests of Chinese investors and service providers and China calls on India to correct its errors,” Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng said in a briefing.
Gao said India has abused national security by imposing “discriminatory restrictions” on Chinese companies,
He said that China has always asked its companies to comply with international and local rules and regulations in their overseas operations.
“We hope that the Indian side will work with the Chinese side to maintain the hard-won bilateral development and cooperation in order to build an open and fair trading environment for international investors and service providers, including companies. Chinese companies, “Gao was quoted as saying.
China’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said that neither country should harm long-term interests due to myopia.
“The Indian side decided to ban some excellent and popular Chinese apps. The rights and interests of Indian users are harmed in the first place. And the rights and interests of Chinese companies will also suffer. So what India has done benefits no one, ”said spokesman Hua Chunying.
“As I said, both are ancient civilizations with splendid cultures that we are proud of, and the exchange between the two parties has been going on for thousands of years.”
Taking the example of Tagore, Hua said that many of his poems are popular in China, and then he quoted a line from one of his poems: “We misread the world and say that it deceives us.”
Also, yoga is becoming more and more popular in China; Including myself, I am very fond of Indian culture. But we don’t believe that Indian culture or poems or other things are infiltrating here or pose a threat to Chinese culture, ”Hua said.
“What we believe is that the mixture of different cultures leads to promote mutual understanding and friendship of people.”
Hua also let out a subtle warning about the ties between India and the United States.
“I have noticed that the US state department said on the same day that India banned more than 100 Chinese applications and asked other countries to join India in implementing the clean network initiative,” he said.
“So I don’t know if there is any correlation or interaction between India and the United States. But India is an ancient civilization with wise people. They should know what the United States has done on cyber security, for example, Dirtbox, Prism, Irritant Horn, Muscular, and Submarine Cabling. Indians must have the wisdom to know whether American practice on cybersecurity is clean or dirty. “
“We hope that India can remain committed to its valuable independence decision-making.”
Experts in China were expected to criticize New Delhi’s decision to ban the apps.
Zhao Gancheng, director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, said that while the app ban is likely to have limited impact on the Indian economy, the “… bad intentions behind the decision of the Indian government to generate tension and even a conflict with China is reaching an increasingly dangerous level ”.
“This is dangerous. The worse the Indian economy becomes, the more likely New Delhi will cause a military conflict. This is a very worrying situation,” Zhao told state media.
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