India bans 54 'Chinese' apps, citing worries over security

NEW DELHI • India has banned 54 apps it says are of Chinese origin, including Sea Ltd's marquee game Free Fire, citing security concerns, people with knowledge of the matter said yesterday.

The ban is the latest instance of tensions between the two neighbours which are locked in a protracted border dispute.

The apps banned by the South Asian nation's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology include those belonging to large China technology companies such as Tencent, Alibaba and NetEase, and are re-branded versions of apps already banned by India in 2020, said the people who asked not to be identified.

Sea - founded by China-born entrepreneurs who became Singapore citizens - has been focusing on building a gaming and e-commerce business globally with backing from Tencent, the largest shareholder of the company.

Sea did not respond to requests for comment on the ban on the game Free Fire - Illuminate.

Free Fire, the battle royale shooter often compared with PUBG, is among the world's most popular mobile games with more than a billion downloads on Google Play. The title has underpinned the phenomenal growth of the Singapore-based Sea, South-east Asia's most valuable company, and its expansion into markets from Brazil to India.

The game was the highest grossing mobile game in India in the third quarter of 2021, according to industry tracker App Annie.

While Tencent is Sea's largest shareholder, it has adopted much the same hands-off approach it takes with other investees in China.

In January, the WeChat operator revealed it was cutting its stake in Sea to 18.7 per cent from 21.3 per cent, while taking its voting rights eventually to under 10 per cent.

A spokesman for India's home affairs ministry did not comment on the matter.

And a Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology spokesman declined to comment on the issue.

The latest move comes as a long-running dispute between the two nuclear-armed nations remains unresolved, after boiling over in a bloody 2020 skirmish that left soldiers from both sides dead, and drew tougher laws in India for investments from China, including the original app ban.

India and China share an unmarked 3,488km-long border along the Himalayas, where thousands of troops, tanks and artillery guns from both countries have been massed since then.

Tensions between the two countries remain, with India's army chief citing the risk of Chinese aggression as recently as last month.

Separately, India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has criticised China's economic actions towards Australia in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, saying progress and prosperity over the past 80 years had been the result of a trading system "governed by rules and not politically influenced".

Australia's relations ties with China, its largest trading partner, have nosedived since early 2020 when Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.

Beijing retaliated with trade restrictions, including high tariffs on Australian barley and wine and slowing coal shipments.

When asked by the newspaper whether Beijing's actions towards Canberra constituted economic coercion, Mr Jaishankar said: "You know that bit - if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck."

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