India Goes On A Digital Strike Against China, Bans 118 More Apps

After banning 59 Chinese apps earlier in the year, India has now banned more 118 apps, which also includes PUBG, a gaming app that had become a serious love affair for the youth of the nation. This decision was taken by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on 2nd September as a reaction to China’s incursion in the disputed region of Himalayas. 

Tensions between India and China have been rising by the day over the border issues in Ladakh and holds no signs of cooling down. While the Indian army is on its feet giving a tough fight to the Chinese troops, the government is finding other ways to give China a rock-solid fight, and banning its apps is one of those ways. 

Chinese apps are no doubt facing the grunt of the feud between the two nations, considering that one of its apps PUBG has had around 175 million installs from India alone till now. The Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, in his official statement, has said that the reason behind such a mass ban on Chinese apps is because they pose a threat to India’s sovereignty and security. These “apps collect and share data in a surreptitious manner and compromise personal data and information of users that can have a severe threat to the security of the state,” the statement further added. 

The banned apps include Baidu, Baidu Express Edition, Tencent Watchlist, FaceU, WeChat Reading and Tencent Weiyun, PUBG Mobile, and PUBG Mobile Lite among others. These apps, according to the complaints received are stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’data in an unauthorized manner to servers which are locations outside the country. 

Even though our Play stores and App stores are flooded with a majority of Chinese apps, India is coming up with its own apps, which are great, safe, and even better alternatives to the Chinese apps.  As reported by ANI, very recently, two final year B.Tech students of IIT Bombay, Rohit Kumar Chaudhary and Kavin Agrawal, both pursuing Civil Engineering developed an app named Air Scanner, a free document scanner. This app is the alternative to a popular Chinese app, Camscanner. 

Similarly, given below are some apps that are great alternatives to the banned Chinese apps: 

Chingari

It is the alternative for TikTok. Chinagri is an Indian video sharing app that enables users to create and edit videos. It also lets users access news from across the world and play games. The app is also available in various Indian languages which incudes Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati 

Fortnite

This is an aletrnative to PUBG and is developed by developed by Epic Games, an American game developer. However, it is important to note that even in Epic Games, Tencent the maker of PUBG, has a 40% stake. Other alternatives to PUBG are Call of Duty, Sniper 3D, Garena Free Fire, Last Day on Earth, and Battlelands Royale. 

Google Chrome

The best browser really, even better than Alibaba’s UC browser, makes browsing information from across the world, not just easy but quick. 

Xender

There is no better alternative to ShareIt than Xender. It is safe, has comparatively less ads, and is easy to use. It lets users to exchange data smoothly irrespective of whether your phone is an an Android or an Apple. Unlike shareit, Xender does take much time in connecting two devices. 

Myntra

The ban on Shein was very hard for women to digest, however, there are a number of alternatives to it too, Myntra being the best. Not only is it Indian but has equally trendy and fashionable products. 

Just like the above-mentioned apps are alternative to the ones we were so used to using, there are many other apps that are equally easy to use and free of cost. You just need to start trying them out. It’s time we stop depending on Chinese products and services and tread on the path of ‘Atmanirbharta’ laid out to us by our Prime Minister.