To stay in China’s good graces, Apple has taken down apps from its Chinese App Store in the past. The move is a reminder of how beholden Apple has become to the Chinese government at a moment when the leadership is pushing to tighten its control over the Internet. Because Google’s services are largely blocked in China, Android users revert to alternate stores for downloads, and Skype’s main app was not available on popular ones run by Chinese tech giants like Huawei and Xiaomi. Such products also often run afoul of government rules that require the use of real-name identification for each and every account.Ī Microsoft spokesman said Skype had been “temporarily removed” from Apple’s App Store and that the company was “working to reinstate the app as soon as possible.” But the spokesman did not address Skype’s absence from a variety of major third-party Android app stores. Others include Gmail, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Telegram and Line.īeijing appears to have disabled these apps because they generally feature encryption options that make messages harder for the government to monitor. While China has long wielded the most sophisticated and comprehensive Internet controls in the world, under President Xi Jinping it has upped the ante, squelching most major foreign social networks and messaging apps one at a time.Įarlier this fall, Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp was hit by blockages in China, becoming the latest in a long line of products to be rendered unusable by Chinese government filters. But its removal from the app stores is the most recent example of a decades-long push by China’s government to control and monitor the flow of information online. Skype, which is owned by Microsoft, still functions in China, and its fate in the country is not yet clear. The users said that the disruption began in late October. The removal led to a volley of complaints from Chinese users on Internet message boards who were no longer able to pay for Skype’s services through Apple. “These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business.” Therefore these apps have been removed from the App Store in China,” an Apple spokeswoman said Tuesday in an email responding to questions about Skype’s disappearance from the App Store.
“We have been notified by the Ministry of Public Security that a number of voice over Internet protocol apps do not comply with local law.
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