Trump blacklists 8 Chinese apps including Alipay, mulls Alibaba, Tencent delisting

• Financial

Late on Tuesday, the departing US President Donald Trump had signed off an executive order that in effect would ban US transactions with as many as eight Chinese software apps including the Alibaba-backed fintech firm Ant Group’s Alipay mobile payment, adding further strains in to an already escalated trade tension with Beijing less than two weeks before leaving the Oval Office, top officials from White House had unveiled.

On top of that, a senior official of Trump Administration was quoted saying following the announcement that the move, which comes over the heels of a delisting of three Chinese telecom companies’ securities in NYSE as early as by January 7 or January 11, was largely targeted to limit the magnitude of threats for the Americans due to their large-scale exposure to Chinese software applications, while Trump’s executive order had also added that the United States must take “aggressive action” against Chinese app developers who had military tie ups.

China vows to retaliate against Trump’s blacklisting of Chinese apps

Besides, latest Trump Administration move to prevent US investment on eight Chinese software application developers followed a media headline that quoted White House sources as saying that the US President Donald Trump had been mulling an option to prevent US transactions to Chinese e-commerce giants such as Alibaba Group Holdings alongside TenCent.

However, according to the latest executive order from Trump that barred US investments on eight Chinese app developers, the US Commerce Department would be entitled to ban US transactions on CamScanner, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate alongside WPS office within the next one month and a half.

Besides, while Trump’s executive order stated, “By accessing personal electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers, Chinese connected software applications can access and capture vast swaths of information from users, including sensitive personally identifiable information and private information.

Such data collection would permit China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors, and build dossiers of personal information,” as an inevitable repercussion, reiterating United States’ unreasonable abuse of national power and suppression of foreign companies from time-to-time, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying was quoted saying in a regular press release earlier in the day that Beijing would take necessary steps to shield the rights of its companies.