Modi’s Digital Strike on China

The 2019 Balakot airstrike was conducted by India in the early morning hours of 26 February when Indian warplanes crossed the de facto border in the disputed region of Kashmir, and dropped bombs in the vicinity of the town of Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan.

This attack was popularly known as Surgical Strike. Of Course! BJP used the attack for political interests and won the 2019 General election.

This time India did Digital Strike on China instead of Surgical Strike. Govt of India on Monday took an unprecedented step and decided to ban at least 59 Chinese apps.  Among the apps that have banned are Tik Tok, SHarit and UC Browser. A day after ban the apps in India also have been taken down from Apple App store and also Google Play store. Some popular Chinese apps like Tik Tok, SHarit, Kwai, UC Browser have already shown a dip in download after the cross border tension.

India mentioned security threat is the reason for banning these apps. How it will affect China is the question now? By banning top Chinese Applications, India gave strong message to China. India hits at China’s soft power. Chinese apps lose out on over 574 million Internet users. TikTok had nearly 120 million active users in India. 10% of tiktok revenue comes from India to China. TikTok downloads fell to 5% from April to May and 38% from May to June 27^th. The Indian app economy is valuable to China with more than 800 million Smartphone users eager and willing to lap up content on their devices.