Trump government says US is seriously looking at banning China-origin apps like TikTok

Soon after it was reported that TikTok will suspend operations in Hong Kong, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in an interview to a US news channel has said that the Trump administration is "looking at" banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok.

This is significant as India has last week banned 59 Chinese apps alleging data theft. Pompeo on Tuesday also has said that they are taking the issue 'very seriously. Moreover, Trump's Secretary of State openly stated that if Americans does not want its information in the hands of the Communist Party of China, then they must not download China-origin applications.

Soon after India's move, US designated two Chinese companies- Huawei Technologies Company and ZTE Corporation as "national security threats". Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai stated that the money from the FCC's Universal Service Fund worth Rs.8.3 billion dollars cannot be used to buy, improve or support any equipment or services provided by these suppliers.

READ | TikTok says it's stopping its operations in Hong-Kong, after India bans China-based app

TikTok says it is stopping operations in Hong Kong

In a major development on Tuesday, TikTok has suspended its operations in Hong Kong, as per reports by an international news agency. This comes even as TikTok's parent ByteDance may be set to incur losses as huge as $6 billion after India banned Chinese applications amid the border dispute. China has recently passed the Hong Kong National security law that undermines the 'one nation, two systems' doctrine, thereby gazumping Hong Kong's autonomy. Thus, the move by TikTok also comes against the backdrop of what critics have termed as China's attempt to curtail protest and freedom of speech under the garb of 'bringing back stability' in Hong Kong with the draconian security law. 

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As per reports, TikTok had earlier said that it would not comply with any requests made by the Chinese government to censor content. Therefore, the move becomes significant even as it will result in a loss of approximately 150,000 users. Notably, TikTok is not available in China and parent company ByteDance operates similar short video sharing app called Douyin in the country.

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India bans TikTok

In a surprise move last week, the Home Ministry banned 59 Chinese Apps including TikTok. The Centre stated that it has received many complaints from various sources including several reports about the misuse of these apps for stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorized manner to servers that have locations outside India. 

As India banned the apps including TikTok, Chinese mouthpiece Global Times quoting sources said that the loss to the parent company - Beijing-based ByteDance could be as high as $6 billion. At the time that TikTok was taken down, it had approximately 370 million users on the Play Store, with a large majority of those coming from India. 

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