For more than a decade, China has limited how foreign tech firms that operate inside its borders do business. The world’s largest internet market has used its Great Firewall to block Facebook, Twitter, Google and other services in the name of preserving its cyber sovereignty.
The walled-garden approach has helped homegrown giants like Tencent and Alibaba Group win the local market, while giving the Chinese government a better hold on what gets communicated on these platforms. China has even suggested that other nations deploy similar measures.
Be careful what you ask for: Last week, dozens of Chinese firms got a front-seat view to the challenges their global counterparts face in their territory. With a press release, India declared that the world’s second-largest internet market was shutting the door to dozens of Chinese firms for an indefinite period.
India said it would ban 59 apps and services, including ByteDance’s TikTok, Alibaba Group’s UC Browser and UC News, and Tencent’s WeChat over cybersecurity concerns.
New Delhi is open to meeting these firms and hear their defenses, but for now, local telecom operators and other internet service providers have been ordered to block access to these services. Google and Apple have already complied with India’s order and delisted the apps from their app stores.
India’s order is already shifting the market in favor of local firms, several of which have rushed to cash in on the app ban. A crop of recently launched short-form video sharing services have amassed tens of millions of users just this week.
But depending on how long the ban remains in place, the move could also derail a big funding source for thousands of Indian startups. The vast majority of India’s unicorns count Chinese VCs as some of their biggest and longest-term backers. New Delhi’s order could also change how American giants, many of which are already bullish on India, review the market moving forward.
Today, we will explore various ways India and China’s situation could play out and impact various stakeholders. But first, some background on how tension escalated between the two nuclear-armed nations.
