No matter where you are in the world, you would be using some of the other Chinese technology right now. The past decade has witnessed immense Chinese influence in the tech market. The United States, which still in my opinion dominates the tech world, has only one competition in the consumer-based tech space, i.e. China.
During recent times, or during the past one month, we all have witnessed some incidents which have shaken the Chinese tech world bad. Recently, India banned 59 Chinese Mobile Applications including the wildly popular TikTok and WeChat, which by the way had a huge consumer base in India. Although, it is not a blanket ban, and the authorities are considering the written submissions by all these apps. The ban was put in place due to privacy concerns. Some critics are also linking this ban to the very recent Indo-China Border Standoff which resulted in Armed Forces casualties on both sides, as a measure of putting a 'Digital Strike' on China by India.
The concern flagged by the Indian Authorities is privacy and data mining of the Indian users of those apps. The only question people now have in their minds is that are these apps really mining all the data pulled from the users of such apps? China has been very critical over this move by India, and on the other hand, China itself has arbitrarily censored the internet in its own country since the very inception of this technology.
Recently, the US has also initiated sanctions on the Chinese tech giant, Huawei over the concerns on its close ties with the Chinese Communist Party. Critics have always had suspicions that Beijing could use Huawei to spy over other nations and Huawei has always denied this claim and said that they will never allow such requests from the PRC officials. Due to the recent sanctions on Huawei, it has been said that it won't be able to deliver 5G in the country. This along with the rising Anti-China Sentiment in India is not helping Chinese Tech-Space.
China recently has seen deteriorating international relations due to the pandemic and the various border disputes it has are also a reason why this sentiment is growing. Also, Trump's vow to bring the manufacturing back to America and the recent Chinese labor cost rise is also a reason the tech space is suffering. Washington is also trying to provide a $25 billion stimulus package in the form of a reshoring fund, followed by Japan offering $2.2 Billion so that the country could reshore out of China because the tensions are rising between the two nations.
In my opinion, the tech space of China should be made independent from the Communist Party in power, so that the users in other countries could see the transparency in the mode of operations while maintaining the data by such apps. China should also open its doors to western apps such as Google, YouTube, and Facebook. This will give the Chinese people an option to switch over other apps in the market which are not based in China, hence increasing healthy competition in the international tech space. Since the Chinese tech space is taking a toll at this very moment, Beijing should understand the need for not censoring the internet for its own citizens.
Only the time will tell if China's billion-dollar tech space will sail through this mess or bite the dust by the actions of other nations.