Ban on Tik-Tok is a signal from India to China that New Delhi is ready to escalate

The Modi government has launched what is the equivalent of a digital strike against China. The move to ban 59 Chinese APPs, including Tik-Tok, comes amid a tense border stand-off with the Chinese. Over the last few weeks the Chinese have doubled down behind indiscernible lines in the shifting sands of Eastern Ladakh.

In the wake of the bloody encounter in the Galwan Valley and after several successive rounds of meetings at the military and diplomatic level it was thought that the Chinese would withdraw from the areas they had chosen to occupy illegally. But as we know the Chinese have chosen not to disengage as promised. The betrayal has only deepened the trust deficit that has come to entrench itself between the two sides. Something had to be done. Something had to give.

With the military option virtually ruling itself out for the moment the Indian government has been pursuing other options to signal that there can’t business as usual. ‘Business’ is the operative term here. The ban on Chinese AAPs is one part of a slew of initial measures the Modi government has contemplated to punish China economically.

Of course, there are many who believe that banning Chinese APPs will have no punitive impact on Beijing and that the step is expedient borne out of misplaced populism and jingoism. On all counts the skeptics seem to have missed the point.

The ban was always intended to be politically expedient. It is a very unambiguously political protest. The ban is intended to convey that the Modi government cannot indefinitely turn a deaf ear to the justifiable clamour within India for verifiable action against Beijing if it continues to treat Indian concerns callously. India is after all a democracy. The government has to at the very least be seen to be responding to its supporters. The exigency of this compulsion won’t be lost on the Communist adversary even if Xi Jinping and his colleagues are not immediately answerable to the Chinese people.

Second, the claim that the ban on 59 APPs will have no impact on the Chinese is only partially true. Take the case of Tik Tok. The APP’s maker generates Rs 3.7 crore per day from its 119 million Indian subscribers. With the Chinese company seeing a reported 90% increase in its subscriber base in 2019 alone it would have been hoping for reaping a bonanza in the years ahead. Are we then to believe that the ban will not sting the makers of TIK-TOK? And what about the other Chinese APP developers?

The digital strike is but the first step in the escalation ladder. A few weeks back state owned telecom companies had already moved to keep Chinese vendors out of their network upgradation tenders. This too is bound to hurt. Before that the department for promotion of industry and internal trade made it incumbent upon Indian companies seeking foreign direct investment from ‘neighboring countries’ to seek prior approval from the government. Trade analysts say that the change in FDI approval norms will make it difficult for big Chinese companies to invest in Indian firms in the IT sector. This too will pinch the Chinese.

Yes, it is right to observe that Indians will lose jobs in the near term but who is to say that Indian Information technology companies won’t step into the void.

Lastly, is the ban borne out of a misplaced sense of jingoism? Not quite. Prime Minister Modi has only demonstrated that he is not afraid to change the status quo even when it comes to a large power like China. Beijing’s catspaw in South Asia, Pakistan, realised this when after Uri and Pulwama the Modi regime responded by eroding the notion that the Line of Actual Control or LoC was inviolable. Till then Pakistan would sponsor strikes on Indian soil from across the LoC in the smug belief that the de facto border would guarantee it immunity from Indian reprisals. Its optimism wasn’t entirely misplaced. It might be worth recalling that not many governments before Modi’s NDA had demonstrated an appetite for risking escalation by embarking on hot pursuit across the LoC.

The Modi regime’s virtual strike on China has been carefully conceived to underline that India isn’t a status quo power. Don’t be surprised if Delhi’s decisive digital offensive sets a precedent.