India bans another 188 Chinese apps, including PUBG, Baidu, and Alipay, saying widespread concerns were flagged against the blocked apps
India on Wednesday banned 118 more apps, including popular gaming app PUBG, for allegedly being engaged in activities which are “prejudicial to sovereignty …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second wave of India's app-ban campaign. In late June the government blocked TikTok, ShareIt, UC Browser, WeChat, and Clash of Kings in a first tranche of 59 banned Chinese apps citing national security and public order; weeks later came reports that New Delhi was examining an additional 275 apps including PUBG, AliExpress, and Resso for potential action. Wednesday's order on 188 apps converts that review into enforcement.
The move hits consumer giants with mass Indian user bases — PUBG above all — rather than niche tools, and the pattern outlasted the border tensions that reportedly triggered it: by early 2023 MeitY had begun the process to ban another 138 betting and 94 lending apps with reported Chinese links.
First-order effects
- PUBG loses access to one of its largest player bases overnight, while Baidu and Alipay see their remaining Indian distribution channels shut by government order.
Second-order effects
- Chinese app developers must now treat India as a jurisdiction where market access can be revoked wholesale on security grounds, forcing them to weigh localization and data-handling concessions against writing off the market.
Third-order effects
- If the sequence from the June ban through the 188-app order to the 2023 betting-and-lending action holds, app-store availability becomes a formal instrument of India's digital trade policy — with Beijing already mirroring the playbook via its own removals such as the December 2021 order pulling Douban and other apps from stores.
The trend: Governments are converting app-store access into an explicit national-security lever, with India running the largest sustained program of blocking Chinese apps.