China's TikTok back in India? Government rejects social media reports

In 2020, India banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese-owned apps, citing data security concerns.

The government on Friday refuted reports that the ban on Chinese short video-making aggregator TikTok, online shopping platform AliExpress, and women’s clothing e-commerce platform Shein was lifted.

Earlier, reports claimed that these Chinese apps, which had a huge following in India, were back five years after they were banned following strains in bilateral ties between the two South Asian neighbours in 2020.

Claims on social media suggested that some users were able to access the websites of TikTok, but with no access further than the homepage. They also said that no shopping was allowed on AliExpress or Shein.

MANY CHINESE APPS RETURNED IN FEBRUARY

Notably, in February this year, many of the Chinese apps that were banned in 2020 following the India-China border tensions made a return to the Play Store in India as diplomatic relations between the two countries improved.

Apps like Xender, and TanTan, among a bunch of others were available for download once again, but TikTok—by far the most popular of these apps in India—remained conspicuously absent.

While some of these apps returned with tweaks, others made a comeback in cloned versions.

India Today’s Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) team reviewed more than 200 of the banned mobile applications and found that original or clone versions of at least 36 of them were available either on Google’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store or on both platforms as of February 10.