After its unabated intrusion in India’s territory which ultimately led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers in a bloody clash between Indian and Chinese troops in Galwan valley on June 15, China is now finding out the cost of clashing with one of its major trading partners.
This time it’s not the U.S., but India that’s creating headaches for some of China’s leading tech names. The brutal clash and a concurrent war of words, has led to calls among Indian consumers to boycott Chinese products.
The Indian government earlier in July banned 59 Chinese apps, including the hugely popular TikTok video sharing app that boasts more than 120 million local users.
Now, an insider at TikTok parent ByteDance has said that the ban could come with a heavy price tag, costing the company more than $6 billion in lost revenue — a sum greater than all the losses suffered by the other 58 banned apps combined.
India is TikTok’s largest market outside China in terms of users, where the service is called Douyin. The application was downloaded in India 611 million times in 2020’s first quarter alone, nearly double the total number of downloads for all 2019.
While ByteDance is feeling the pain most sharply, another banned Chinese app in India is also feeling a pinch after losing one of its highest-profile local users following the ban.
The move to boycott Chinese services and products also saw Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi cancel his official account on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, with the removal of his headshot and more than 100 posts over the last five years.
In a press release, the Indian government had said that the banned applications are engaged in activities “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.”
The ban has been imposed under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009, it said.