US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the United States is “certainly looking at” banning Chinese social media apps, including TikTok.
“I don’t want to get out in front of the President (Donald Trump), but it’s something we’re looking at,” Mike Pompeo said in an interview.
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India has banned 59 apps with Chinese links for engaging in activities “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”. The ban came in the wake of the ongoing stand-off along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh with Chinese troops.
All the 59 apps have now been removed from Apple Inc and Google LLC’s app stores for the Indian market.
India’s decision to ban Chinese apps was widely noted in the US, including some prominent lawmakers, who urged the American government to follow suit.
“India bans TikTok and dozens of other Chinese apps in the wake of deadly clash,” powerful Republican Senator John Cornyn said in a tweet as he tagged a news report in The Washington Post.
Republican Congressman Rick Crawford tweeted that “TikTok must go and it should have been gone yesterday.”
US National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien also alleged that the Chinese government is using TikTok for its own purposes.
“On TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media platform with over 40 million American users, probably a lot of your kids, and younger colleagues, accounts criticising the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and Beijing’s policies are routinely removed or deleted,” O’Brien had said in his public remarks.
Meanwhile, a media report in Beijing said Chinese tech giant unicorn ByteDance Ltd. was anticipating a loss of over $6 billion after three of its apps, including TikTok, were banned by India.
The $6 billion amount is most likely more than the combined losses for all the other Chinese apps banned by India, China’s Caixinglobal.com had reported.
