The Indian government recently banned 59 Chinese applications. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, known for his active social media accounts, had decided to quit the Chinese microblogging website Weibo. It is the most popular social media platform in China, and PM Modi joined it a few years ago.
First PM Narendra Modi’s photo, posts and comments have been removed from his Weibo account but it remained a blank page on the site. But later the account was also removed. Before the removal, he had around 2.5 lakh followers on the Chinese micro-blogging site, where he used to post in the Chinese language. The Indian PM had joined Weibo in 2015, ahead of his first visit to China as PM.
The removal of the account came days after the text of PM Modi’s speech and few other official statements of Indian govt were removed from Weibo and WeChat accounts of the Indian embassy in Beijing.
Removal of account from Weibo
Although the Indian govt had banned Weibo and other Chinese apps 2 days ago, the removal of PM’s account took time as the process of removing VIP accounts from Weibo is complicated. The user has to go through a procedure to quit and follow a formal process to deactivate the account. PMO might have initiated the request on 29th June itself as the account now no longer exists on Weibo.
Before he deleted his account from Weibo, there were 115 posts. While removing the account was taking time from the Chinese side, posts were manually deleted. There is a policy in China that one cannot delete a photo with President Xi Jinping from the social media account. There were two photographs in which Jinping was with PM Modi, and they were visible until the account got deactivated.
Indian government has not only banned applications of Chinese origin but the government is taking multiple steps to reduce Chinese penetration in Indian economy. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari announced that Chinese companies will not be able to take part in Highway projects any more. BSNL has terminated Rs.471 crore worth deal with Chinese companies.
