Trump's Reasons For Banning 8 Chinese Applications

Alipay application illustration. (Markus Winkler / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - US President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning the use of eight Chinese alert applications, on Tuesday, January 5.

According to Reuters, this order will be carried out by the US Commerce Department, to determine which transactions will be prohibited as directed. The goal is to protect the threat of US citizens.

The order said that the prohibition was carried out because these applications were accessed by personal electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers and were connected to China. This allows users' personal and sensitive data to be accessed.

This includes the possibility of China finding and tracking the location of US federal employees and contractors.

The applications in question are Alipay, CamScanner, QQ Walet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate, WeChat Pay and WPS Office. This prohibition will be effective in the next 45 days.

"We support President Trump's commitment to protecting the privacy and security of Americans from the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party," said US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Illustration (Matam Jaswanth / Unsplash)

Meanwhile, other officials said this executive order was similar to the order signed in August 2020, regarding the blocking of WeChat and TikTok, which also belong to China.

"This measure is aimed at protecting our citizens from the threats posed by Chinese software applications, which have a large user base and access to sensitive data," explained a senior official.

"The United States must take aggressive action against those who develop or control software applications connected to China to protect our national security," he stressed.