Beijing on Thursday invoked India’s Nobel Laureate polymath Rabindranath Tagore, who is popular in China, when addressing New Delhi's decision to slap a ban on over 100 Chinese apps.
“If Tagore and Yoga are no threat to China, how is PUBG a threat to India?" Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying wondered.
“Rabindranath Tagore has many poems popular in China. Yoga is becoming more and more popular in China, and including myself, I am very fond of Indian culture. But we do not think that Indian culture or poems or other things are infiltrating here or are posing any threat to Chinese culture,” said Hua.
Hua said India should not hurt the long-term interests of both countries and their people “because of temporary short-sightedness”.
On the other hand, Gao Feng, spokesperson for Chinese Commerce Ministry, asserted Beijing has always asked its companies to comply with international and local rules and regulations in their overseas operations.
The spokesperson expressed the hope that India would work with the Chinese side to maintain hard-won bilateral cooperation between the two nations.
India’s federal Electronics and Information Technology Ministry has alleged that the 118 applications were “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users’ data in an unauthorised manner to servers which have locations outside India”.
The latest ban on Chinese-origin mobile applications followed the alleged incursion of China's People’s Liberation Army into eastern Ladakh on the night of 29/30 August, when, according to the Indian side, it “violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements.” According to the Indian defence ministry, the country's army took measures to “thwart Chinese intentions to unilaterally change facts on ground.”
New Delhi had earlier blocked 106 mobile applications after the armies of both countries fought a skirmish in eastern Ladakh on the night of 15-16 June. Twenty Indian soldiers lost their lives in the clash, after India alleged that the Chinese army had crossed the border into its territory along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Beijing has denied the allegations and accused the Indian army of crossing its border.
