 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to be discussing the Indian government's decision to ban 59 Chinese apps. Now this is being seen as a retaliatory measure following the recent tensions in the border between India and China which peaked on June 15th in which Indian soldiers were killed and there were casualties on the Chinese side as well. There's been a lot of discussion in India about what kind of steps the government will take. There's been a lot of jingoism in the media also and right now yesterday we saw that this was a measure announced by the Indian government. We have Prabir Prakash start to talk more about this. So this is a bit of an unusual measure, it was kind of unexpected. There's been a huge campaign going on in India of course among certain sections of the right wing saying that this is the time to boycott Chinese goods which you can come to later maybe. But how do you see especially the technical and technological implications of a move like this? See the argument seems to have been in Indian at least policymaking circuits that this does not affect our economy, it only affects some people and who can do without the apps. So you know there's nothing critical about these apps. So yes people may be little unhappy who use TikTok or other apps but it has no economic implications for us. That seems to have been the consideration under which we have really banned the Chinese apps. Of course we can talk about what are the possible Chinese responses later or about the larger geopolitical or the geo-strategic context itself including the border standoff which certainly is by no means over. But the point very narrowly focused if you want to ban Chinese apps, how do you do it? So effectively what you do is say that all the ISPs should block certain sites where you might have to go if you have to use the app like Facebook even if you use the app you essentially go to Facebook. So if Facebook is blocked the app doesn't help you because you're either looking at others or you're trying to livestream yourself both of which then uses the Facebook servers. So blocking TikTok servers effectively could have the same purpose that you would actually not be then able to either see or publish on TikTok. So effectively you get cut off from TikTok if all the ISPs block TikTok servers which is it seems to be the intention. The second is those apps which are kind of standalone apps say you want to use your phone camera to do certain things. Now those once uploaded do not need connection back to a server they work from your phone. So if you don't delete them those apps will tend to be still there but as other things happen newer versions come you will not be able to access them. Therefore effectively over a certain period your apps may indeed be dead but for the time being it may have no impact that you don't access the either the Google Play Store yourself for an update or if you are using it the apps it doesn't really have an effect on you. The second thing that happens is in this particular case the Google Play Store or whichever other store you may use you can use for instance the iOS store also that any app that you download can be blocked by the government saying the Play Store these apps will not be downloaded and I presume that if we tend this to the major Play Stores that they will accept this and they will not therefore allow if an Indian IP to access these kinds of downloads that I think is possible. So effectively serve notices on the Play Store in this particular case the Google Play Store being the most important one and then also block the ISPs is probably presumably the next set of measures that will now come in what I call the when you flesh out the order. Now you have passed an order but you need to then put the skin bones and other things flesh into it. I presume that that's what it will do. So effectively all the Indian users of TikTok would then not be able to use TikTok. So TikTok is one of the most popular apps that are being used but particularly younger people in the world. It has one of the highest downloads amongst the apps again as I said the global population and particularly the young population who have been who have adopted to TikTok partly because of the much smaller segments it tends to use much more. So you can see that there are certain kinds of Instagram TikTok becoming more popular particularly younger people. So yes it will ensure that we have the American Facebook Instagram and others who are going to rule the roost including YouTube who are going to rule the roost and the Chinese companies will not have it in in rest into the Indian market if this ban continues. So that's that's where the situation seems to be. I think we are going to see a set of measures how to flesh these this ban out. Of course young people will always find ways to get around to this kind of internet bans because as you know internet allows a certain degree of flexibility and being people being able to bypass various things. As you know the US tried to stop WikiLeaks. They even took it out from the domain registry but they still couldn't stop WikiLeaks from being available globally. So I'm going to leave those longer time frame issues out but it is true that TikTok as a major emerging player which it is at the moment and a certain set of other things will not be no longer be accessible in India if this ban continues. So one of the concerns or points raised by many critics is the fact that the government has of course cited threats to security threats to the integrity of Indian cyberspace has pointed to the fact that data is being siphoned off to servers in countries outside India which makes it kind of appear like this is of course a Chinese conspiracy without of while we do know that the situation is that this is a global trend that almost every app does collect a huge amount of data and the way it processes the data is actually shrouded in secrecy. As you know data is the new as global economic forum said world economic forum said the new oil and then the modified it later saying it's more important than oil because oil is finite this is infinite okay. So global capital has been salivating on the issue of data as a commodity for some time and data is a commodity not only comes from apps it comes from websites you go to they embed cookies on your on your device whether it's a computer or a smartphone and that's primary task of those cookies which is essentially small bits of code which are embedded into your system is to send data out that's how Google knows you even if you don't log into Google Google will immediately know that you are on live at the moment. So these are all the things that Facebook and Google do as a default and this is how they have become really the big data monopolies in the world. So the Indian problem that we have created is we have siphoned out only China as a country which is not allowed to do it only Chinese apps are not allowed to siphon data out of the country all other app can do that all other apps or cookies or anything else that you have including of course Microsoft if you have Microsoft Windows or Microsoft any other application software of course that sends data out in fact it says I'll update your software and the rise of which of course it also checks your software it in fact checks whether you have a legal copy of that software or not so you know if we say that all companies in the world are allowed to do it except Chinese companies you have created a situation which in world training terms would be called an exceptional statement and then such an exceptional statement would require exceptional circumstances for it so if you say it's because of a border clash that we are having that we have introduced essentially sanctions on China this would amount to a unilateral sanction on China and its data applications in this case the apps that we are talking about I think this would be considered an exceptional step that India has taken in trade terms and the fact that it we if you're so cautious about our data security then why is it that this is not extended to other countries other apps that is the key problem we are going to get that if it is not extended to other countries this then comes under a virtually the security exception that we are taking that we are in a condition of virtual not exactly war but a warlike scenario and therefore apprehension of our security breach from China is much higher so you are taking in what in WTO terms is called the nuclear exception that this is a complete exception that you are taking and this then is not subject to any trade review of course the trade WTO trade review mechanism is virtually dead for other reasons which are not going into here mainly because of the United States but you are creating this this principle that you can retaliate against China because of the border tensions on any count that leaves China then open to retaliate against you on any other count as well so it is in in fact the start of a trade war now earlier you had banned them from you know free entry of capital you had said any capital that comes from India from China will need special sanction this is again extended only to China then you have now introduced this specific thing you are striking them off from various tenders which are global tenders so you are creating an exception China exception in your trade terms so then the question that arises is what will China do and if we look at the terms of trade between India and China the point is the Chinese trade export trade we are I think seventh in the list of countries and we have 3% of their exports for India though our exports are much smaller than the Chinese exports to us but as a fraction of our total exports it is still larger than what we are as a fraction of China's exports but we are 3% of China's total exports China for us is roughly about 5.5% of our total exports which mean that if they decide not to take it we will lose 5.5% of our exports and China will lose roughly 3% of their export market so this is the what are the how much damage you can inflict on each other the point is for us China is still a big market for China we are still not such a big market for China the third largest export destination for India so that is the other issue that will come up and if we look at the kind of exports we do to China it is possibly much easier for China to switch those exports to other countries import from other countries while in India's case they are exporting critical components to us which are critical for a whole range of industries for instance Rajiv Bajaj has already said that we export or you know two wheelers in large numbers that's 15,000 crores of two wheelers which go out from India we are the largest exporter in the world we have beaten China in this area but we need components so 15,000 crore worth of exports need 1000 crores of imports from China and if those components are not available then being able to source them from some other country is not only going to take time we'll have to see whether they're available because most of the components in certain sectors come from China that's true for for instance our pharmaceutical APIs a large number of APIs in the Indian market today come from China and we are the biggest drunk exporters in the world from the generic market but the generic market exports depend on Chinese APIs so it is not that you know it's going to be as easy as the Modi government seems to believe that China will not retaliate except against our apps that they will fight one Mahabharata time the dharma yudha that the rathi fights against rathi the the those who are on foot foot soldiers fighting as foot soldiers so that's not the kind of battle that's that we have started we have started asymmetric response because a border clash really led to a border standoff and we are now converting it to a trade retaliation which opens it out for other kinds of trade retaliations as well so I think this is very very uncharted territory which India is heading it seems to me we are upping the ante because we want China to give us some concessions we believe those concessions cannot be got through basically military means I think I hope that both sides are clear that the military uh a standoff should not lead to war and if that is so then what are the instruments at our disposal so we seem to be taking the root not of negotiations and trying to solve this to bilateral discussion with maybe between president Xi and Prime Minister Modi but we seem to believe that if we pile on the pressure that we side with Americans and the NATO countries against China then possibly they will start you know accepting what we are asking for and back down on the border and backing down on the border is these this is this seems to be the game plan with trying to up the ante in various ways unfortunately this is even if it was a even playing field which it is not in trade terms even if it was an even playing field it means I will inflict damage on you and I'll accept some damage because of that that is cutting off both our noses and it doesn't really help either India or China so I will say just as the border standoff doesn't help us either of the countries I don't think this new trade war which we have initiated in this particular case will not in the long term help us unless Indian side believes that this is the only way to get a settlement on the China and we do have the example of course of the US attempts in the recent past both of the trade war itself and in its context a tech war against Huawei especially which really does not seem to have paid off after all making all those aggressive moves nothing much has changed as far as the Chinese strength in that sector is concerned so that's probably a lesson for India. A lot of it has got covered up because of the pandemic so after all the US today is in one of the worst case scenarios for the pandemic well China seems to have come out of it so China is at least internally recovering export markets are also at the moment quite weak for China partly because no country at the moment is seeing an economy which is revving up in any sense in fact most countries have cut back heavily industrial production is down therefore both exports and imports both are down for all countries or at least most countries given that Chinese recovery will be largely geared for the internal market and their export market at the moment is really down as also the US whatever they were exporting nobody's going to buy fancy aircraft and other goods at the moment and stop it for a few months at least so given that I think the trade war it's difficult to assess the state of the trade war with while the economy is in this condition so in some sense we have yet to assess how much damage each one has inflicted on the other but it is very clear that the damage that the United States thought they would inflict on China which will bring China on its knees to the US this is Trump's belief that did not happen and China has made very clear that even if they suffered the consequence of the trade war that it does damage the economy they are not going to give in they're not going to succumb because if they do they accept the position of US pre-eminence that whatever US says unilaterally will be accepted by everybody in the world including China that's a position they're not going to take so I think India's therefore belief that to trade war and we have much less clout in global economic terms that China or United States has therefore to believe that we can do something which the US could not do or Mr Trump could not do in spite of all the bluff and bluster I think that's a lesson for us that that root does not seem to pay much dividend and I think this this level of jingoism is also a part of it is also due to the fact that we don't seem to know what to do so I think the Modi principle which has worked internally internal politics bluff bluster threat you know take it to the edge and then people back down because they cannot really go to that level particularly when you're a ruling government at the moment so you have all lot of instruments of power so this kind of attack tactic you can see if Rahul Gandhi makes a criticism Sonia Gandhi makes a criticism any opposition party makes a criticism they really immediately start not answering the question raised but what you did 50 years back what you do 30 years back what you do 10 years back and so on so you get a start of name calling of a certain kind so I think this kind of politics which they have sort of grown up with when it comes to international arena I don't think it works that easily but hey we never know maybe the Chinese will say look we don't want to really get into an angle with India at this point let's give them some in concessions and then maybe Mr. Modi will get some concession and declare it to be victory the reality is the border standoff has largely issues related to the India's building up the border roads infrastructure at the border and China after particularly the change of Ladakh status for a part of JNK to a union territory they and Mr. Shah's statement in parliament that we will take back Pakistan occupied Kashmir as well as Akshay Chi. I think that this is what Mk Narayan the national security advisor there is former NSA has also said that we did not seem to have factored this aspect that China might misread the situation or read the situation that India is actually now posing a threat to the Tibet Sinkiang road or the CPEP and given this threat that they perceive therefore they have started building up and capturing I'm quoting here General Panang capturing the strategic heights on in on the border so this is the reason for it or it could be perception that India and China both are now looking at each other through strategic competition and building up on the border whatever may be the reason the reality is that will China back down because tiktok is been stopped in the Indian market along with 58 other apps but as you know tiktok is the key is the biggie in this case and it is it is emerging in the world as one of the competitors of the other big app players so will that happen that's a question to really answer my answer is in strategic terms no country backs down because you have stopped a particular product import or the particular export and you will see that the that Chinese will probably retaliate but they will retaliate in their at their own time and of their own choosing so they will also not be silent to this already reports are there before this itself that China is slowing down its exports to India so all of those things are now on the on the table we'll have to see what how they respond but not a very not a very happy situation and it doesn't look like we want to negotiate both sides one side we don't know want to negotiate the border crisis at the moment thank you so much for being for talking to us that's all your time for today keep watching you