US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to ban transactions with eight Chinese apps, including WeChat Pay and AliPay (via Reuters).
/article-new/2021/01/alipay-wechat-pay.jpg?resize=560%2C338&ssl=1)
The injunction bans all US transactions with the companies behind the apps, the full list of which includes Alipay, CamScanner, QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate, WeChat Pay, and WPS Office.
The injunction gives the Commerce Department the task of determining which transactions are prohibited under the directive within 45 days, but a U.S. official said that Reuters that the Department of Commerce plans to take action before Jan. 20, when Trump leaves office.
“By accessing personal electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers, Chinese connected software applications can access vast amounts of user information, including sensitive personally identifiable information and private information,” said the executive order.
Such data collection “would allow China to track the locations of federal employees and contractors and build records of personal information,” the document adds.
The said apps are hugely popular with Chinese mobile device users, and if the order were successful, the bans would be quite a blow to Chinese Americans using apps like WeChat to communicate.
The new orders are in addition to two previous orders signed by Trump in August that sought to ban transactions with WeChat and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance. The first order was blocked by a judge in September and then again in October, while a preliminary injunction issued by another judge in December prevented the TikTok ban from going ahead.
Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion on this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.