‘Remove Chinese apps’ clamour gets louder
Chandrima.Banerjee@timesgroup.com
02.06.2020
It’s a straight pitch with an unsubstantiated claim: “Chinese apps are not secure you can scan and select Chinese apps that you want to uninstall.” That was enough. There are now over 10 lakh downloads in exactly two weeks since the app ‘Remove China Apps’ was launched. It is also the top downloaded Android tool in India with a 4.8 rating as of Sunday.
The app, with the icon of a dragon and two brooms crossed behind it, offers to identify all “Chinese apps” in one click and uninstall them. The Covid-19 outbreak had started what the recent LAC standoff has reinforced — circumspection about China — and the battleground is an app store. Growing interest in “Indian apps” has meant Google search interest shooting up from 31 in the first week of May to 100 in the third week.
The top trending Android app — ‘Bharat Messenger’ — and two of the top 10 trending communication apps in India on Sunday had the “Indiamade” connect. Another app, ‘Indian Messenger’, had been dormant for about a year since it was launched. But on Sunday, it started trending at number 8 and went straight to a 4.4 rating. “Indian apps very good,” a reviewer wrote. The third app, strangely also called ‘Indian Messenger’, has been downloaded over 10 lakh times and has a 4.6 rating.
Driving these apps are three touchstones of China-centred rhetoric — data security (“Chinese apps are unsafe”), national supremacy (“China funds anti-national agents”) and Covid-19 (“China spread the virus”) — that come together to spur a need for virtual retribution.
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