The long-drawn saga between the Indian government and Chinese based companies operating in India does not seem to have any conclusion any time soon. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has initiated their investigations in to Chinese based companies that are in the betting and dating industry. These companies carry a lot of potentially sensitive Indian data which can be sent to the Chinese government.
Under official Chinese law, Chinese tech companies that expand their businesses internationally have to share their data with the Chinese Communist Parties if they ask them to. Over the past few years, India has had a major tech revolution with waves of digitisation sweeping the country. With an expanding middle class and tech companies growing exponentially, there increased a demand of budget smartphones and other cheap consumer electronics. China and its tech companies took advantage of this situation and entered the Indian economy and flooded the market with their cheap, yet reliable smartphones. They were so successful that Chinese company Xiaomi is now the most popular smartphone in the country. Other popular Chinese consumer electronic companies include Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, and Huawei.
India clearly doesn’t want their data to be in the hands of any other country and especially not the Chinese government and they will be pulling all the stops to ensure that this does not happen. Data is the new gold in the digitized world and India will be looking to keep them secure and to themselves.
Many apps that provide loans as well which are Chinese based make it easy to avail the money and then they are slumped with massive interests. Around 40 non-banking finance companies in the country that have business with China and their companies are now likely to have their licenses revoked.
Many Chinese companies have also been accused of financial malpractice including tax evasion, mainly avoiding the goods and services tax and even circumventing many trade laws to benefit them.
Companies have also left the country over the past few months with the most note worthy one being Shopee that was strangled out of the Indian e-commerce market after its parent company was kicked out of the country. TikTok, a Chinese based social media platform which has taken the world by storm and has quickly risen to become one of the most popular apps was also banned in India closing off such a big market for them.
It seems like this tussle isn’t going to stop anytime soon and there will be a lot of updates from this front soon.
