China to act against latest US bans

CHINA said yesterday it would take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights of companies, after US President Donald Trump signed an order banning US transactions with payment services Alipay and WeChat Pay and six other apps.

Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order banning transactions with the apps, arguing that the United States must take “aggressive action” against developers of Chinese apps to “protect national security.”

It tasks the commerce department with defining which transactions will be banned under the directive within 45 days. The order also names CamScanner, QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate which is published by Alibaba Group subsidiary UCWeb, and Beijing Kingsoft Office Software’s WPS Office.

“This is another example of the US’s bullying, arbitrary and hegemonic behavior,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying. “This is an example of the United States over-generalizing the concept of national security and abusing its national power to unreasonably suppress foreign companies.”

Beijing will take “necessary measures” to protect Chinese companies, Hua said, repeating a government statement made following previous US sanctions announcements.

Hua said the new order would “of course have some impact on related Chinese companies, but more important might be that it damages the interests of American consumers and the US.”

“The US talks about a free market economy and fair competition, but how does it behave?,” she said.

STAR-listed Kingsoft Office officials said yesterday the ban won’t adversely affect the company, which offers free services to 100 million overseas users.

The company, which had more than 457-million active monthly users at the end of September, is the second most valuable firm in the Shanghai STAR Market, checking in at 183.4 billion yuan ( US$28.4 billion). It closed yesterday at 397.96 yuan, a 2.34 percent decrease, compared to a 0.71 percent decrease for the STAR 50 Index.

WPS source codes are developed independently by Kingsoft, without external or US technology licenses, according to company officials.

Alipay was downloaded from Apple’s US app store and Google Play 207,000 times in 2020, while image scanning app CamScanner and office suite app WPS Office were downloaded 4.4 million and 563,000 times respectively, according to research firm SensorTower.