Trump bans Alipay and seven other Chinese apps

These bans also seem kind of weird after the TikTok ban. They were supposed to find a US buyer or leave the US market. They’ve done neither and are still live.

So when American companies invade the privacy of European citizens its okay, but when Chinese companies do the same with American citizens this is "digital totalitarianism"? Anyone care to explain this to me?

I don&#x27;t understand why Russia is doing obviously hostile acts (elections, hacking government agencies, invasion of Ukraine &amp; others, covert operations and so on...) against the US, and not much is done.<p>Meanwhile, I can&#x27;t remember a covert operation done by China or a visible invasion of a third-party country (except putting concrete on a few inhabited islands) and then everything is done to portray them as the bad guys and ban entire industries<p>I can&#x27;t help thinking of either racism, or politicians being controlled by Russian intelligence (possibly them not being unaware of this)

&gt; The order, which takes effect in 45 days ...<p>US democracy can be seriously threatened by an administration incapable of using a calendar, apparently.

I am not sure about WeChat pay, yes, there might be security issues. On the other hand, China is blocking a lot of western apps. From play store, facebook, gmail, whatsapp to tinder.<p>And there are indeed cases you ask yourself what might be the real motivation of the owner: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;06&#x2F;grindr-sold-china-national-security&#x2F;?guccounter=1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;03&#x2F;06&#x2F;grindr-sold-china-national...</a>

I&#x27;m surprised no action was taken against WPS Office until now.<p>I&#x27;m surprised AirDroid wasn&#x27;t on this list though. It gives the government of China full remote access to millions of Android devices, including many in sensitive corporate environments.

Can anyone explain how CamScanner fits into all this? I thought it was just a scanning app — can you send money with it?

This is a bad move by the US. In the short term it creates political impact, but in the long term it merely cements a multilateral world as we all have to implement multiple payment systems to reach disparate markets. The key beneficiary of that is China. With Alibaba now getting squashed by both the Chinese and US governments, I guess Bezos will think twice before stepping in to consumer payments.

If America wants to claim some sort of moral superiority in this stupid pissing match, it becomes quite difficult to do so when engaging in the same kind of bullshit state censorship that other countries routinely engage in.<p>Oh well. Maybe this will accelerate the move toward app platforms that can&#x27;t be so easily censored arbitrarily by the state.

Facebook&#x2F;Google does the same thing just owned by different govt. WHo&#x27;s to say what happens to a Russian&#x2F;Indian&#x2F;Sri-Lankan app that poses some arbitrary threat any different.

The issue again is that seems an opaque action based on vague &quot;national security&quot; grounds. It certainly behoves the executive to demonstrate justification for actions before they are done.<p>The proper thing would be to define due transparent process for determining legality of apps&#x2F;services and subject all apps to the same set of rules.<p>Executive in general shout not be acting like a dictatorship.

Huh, why is WPS Office included here? Last I&#x27;ve seen it, it was a pretty good mobile&#x2F;desktop office suite alterantive.

So, they must buy it from information brokers like everyone else?

With all this talk about China threating US national security. US actions is actively causing damages in china. Sanctions on Huawei for example is already resulting Huawei unable to build smartphones and other products. There are layoffs at huawei, all kind of suppliers, even sales people at huawei stores. If you count all the people related by Huawei&#x27;s activities, its millions. Normal people, regular folks, who just want to earn a living to support their families. Now all of sudden out of jobs during an pandemic year because of political action by US government. They may have bills and mortgages to pay, kids to feed. Real people are suffering because of the actions of US gov. Chinese people&#x27;s security is actually being damaged here. And where do these people go to protest for their rights and fight for what were theirs?

Trump is not educated enough on these matters to take the initiative. The intelligence apparatus is pushing for these, and will continue to do so with the Biden administration.<p>I can’t envision this Cold War ratcheting down. On the surface, Biden will wipe the slate clean on the trade war stuff, but the tit for tat stuff like this will accelerate.<p>I don’t know what the end result of it will be, but the movement on this front is almost like day trading for defense departments, there’s enough bullshit here to justify entire agencies and budgets (as in, Palantir is going to find some crap here to monetize).<p>Prediction - at least a few provisions in the near term stimulus bills, green deals, that will include funding for China containment policy.<p>Biden has been clear he doesn’t want China setting preconditions for companies (the precondition being we get to copy your IP), and the second bullying sovereign nations economically in it’s sphere of influence. I just don’t know what this will actually look like, but Biden&#x2F;Obama had way more of a master plan policy than Trump ever did for dealing with China:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;East_Asian_foreign_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;East_Asian_foreign_policy_of...</a>

The problem isn&#x27;t Chinese software, it&#x27;s the smartphone model that makes consumers extremely susceptible to vendor lock-in and network effects for even trivial things like sharing files.

I can&#x27;t remember is Facebook and Twitter allowed in China?

Pretty disappointed about WPS Office. I find it&#x27;s quite good running on Ubuntu.

&gt;Ambar, an influencer, say she has seen inappropriate content on TikTok<p>Hahahaha what is this??

&gt; President Trump&#x27;s order says &quot;by accessing personal electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers, &lt;I removed a word&gt; connected software applications can access and capture vast swaths of information from users, including sensitive personally identifiable information and private information.

After decades of exporting (and&#x2F;or stealing) western IP and most of our manufacturing base to China, at the expense of the working class and to the benefit of capitalists, Trump was first to stop the bleeding. He wasn&#x27;t particularly smart about it, and he should have built alliances, yet he went alone as usual.<p>With all major western internet platforms being already banned in China, Jack Ma having disappeared for weeks now after being critical of the CCP, there are still comments here why everyone can&#x27;t be nice to each other, and what harm were those Chinese apps causing. The opioid crisis has so far killed more Americans than WW2, and at least some of it is caused by the evaporation of blue-collar jobs. This is a direct consequence of certain economic policies. Say what you will about the CCP, but at least it cares about its people - because they are doing the polar opposite.

You can bet Beijing will retaliate and ban even more US companies.

Trump can do all he wants, but empirical data shows that folks just ignore him without consequences so these apps won&#x27;t be banned any longer than Tiktok was shut down or Chinese companies were delisted from the NYSE.<p>That doesn&#x27;t mean he is wrong and China hasn&#x27;t infiltrated America at every level, but it&#x27;s a lost battle now that America will be rolling out the red carpet for the CCP.

After American intel <i>officially</i> claims it was Russia behind the SolarWinds hack, Trump lashes out at China. &quot;Lookit here!&quot;. Coincidence? Hey, I am just asking questions.

Why can&#x27;t the App Store and Google Play add country-of-origin labeling for applications?<p>I&#x27;m against the US banning apps, but having a clear warning message detailing the risks around downloading apps Made in China (eg, history of widespread Chinese government-sanctioned economic espionage) seems reasonable and appropriate.

Wall Street is very concerned that the next occupy wall street will circumvent their payment processor blacklists and surveillance by using Chinese competitors that aren&#x27;t controlled by US financial interests.