A couple of weeks back I had written about the simmering tension on the India-China border in the Himalayas in the Ladakh region. Although the fistfights and skirmishes have de-escalated in the physical border, the tensions have escalated in the internet space.
India has made a move to ban TikTok, Wechat, and 57 other apps made by firms that are all based in China. Here is the entire list. (Interestingly, the list is not alphabetically arranged and TikTok tops the list). WeChat (owned by Tencent) an all-pervading ecosystem boosted with mobile payments is also part of the banned list. Despite its early entry into India in 2012, Wechat has languished, partly because WhatsApp had rolled out even earlier in India. WeChat had payment features then. However, electronic payments in India had not yet taken off, and consequently, WeChat was viewed as “yet another free chat system” with no inherent advantages over WhatsApp. (WhatsApp will be introducing payments in India in 2020).
Of course, complaints about the apps’ backdoor data acquisition were always there. Earlier this year, Reddit CEO Huffman had called TikTok “fundamentally parasitic“. Recently, a Reddit user re-engineered some of the data acquisition efforts and argued that
“Not new news, but tbh if you have TikTok, just get rid of it“
However, the specific data collection and security issues were not the crux of the problem in this case. Looking at the statement from the Indian Ministry of Information Technology, the main issue is “national security” specifically that apps are “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order“. It seems to be a retaliation of sorts as a part of souring relationships.
TikTok’s Appeal in India and its Vanishing Opportunity
I am not a TikTok user. I am slow to signup for new apps in general, but even accounting for that I understand that I am not the target audience for TikTok. Tiktok, like Facebook, is a place where people “hang out” and exchange interesting short videos. Remember Vine? Indeed, there is undeniable and peculiar artistry to the creation of the TikTok videos.
Even if you don’t have Tiktok on the phone, it is hard to avoid its viral presence. Like thousands, I have seen the TikTok personality in a Bernie t-shirt in the viral “OK Boomer” video eliciting collective cringes and apparently limitless simping, a word which may become the Oxford Dictionary word of 2020. Then, in my circles, there was the Australian cricketer David Warner — far removed from his remarkable on-field belligerence and the press conference breakdown after the 2-year ban — reinventing his persona on TikTok with “Mindbreak” dances with his adorable family. Still, the platform is not for me, as the emphasis is invariably on mindless evanescence.
I would like TikTok to be a repository of old-school Kodak moments — it would a fun place like the moving portraits in Hogwarts — but I am uneasy with the pervasive worship of exhibitionism and a rabid fandom on the platform. As the K-pop fans demonstrated recently, there seems to be an emergence of twitter-type activism.
I will try to explain the appeal of Tiktok in India. The entertainment market is a behemoth in India. As Indians, we were always reliably informed and irrationally passionate about the movies in multiple languages. The massive entertainment market has always been a tough nut to crack. Disney movies break box offices all over the globe but the Indian market seems to be a puzzle. This failure is not from the lack of trying. Disney India has spent money hiring talent like Siddhartha Roy Kapur to run studios, casting A-list stars as voice actors, dubbing the English into regional languages, and even producing local movies. Netflix and Amazon have escalated their budgets, and have acquired local content to Indian home televisions and mobile screens. US consumers might have noticed an explosion of “Indian content” on NetFlix and Amazon Prime. Netflix now has 15 million subscribers in India, many paying as low as $3 per month, and Amazon prime has 10million subscribers, with only 40% paying subscribers, due to some weird discount bundling schemes. None have succeeded like Tiktok which has been downloaded 611 million times accounting for about a third of 2 billion downloads in the world. TikTok truly democratized entertainment in India by bringing the possibility of role-playing to aspiring masses.
Because of its allowance for brevity, Tiktok has made everyone with a mobile phone into a content producer, and a consumer. It doesn’t stake itself on virality in India. It’s fun even when no one is watching. Tiktok had become the most popular video app in India, evident from the slices of life-takes that I have seen ranging from whimsical to serious, prosaic to jubilant. The ephemeral nature of life felt in the strenuous COVID quarantine in India had only intensified the hunger for these otherwise unremarkable 10-second videos. Bollywood stars, Indian cricketers, movie stars, and an enormous industry of TV soap celebrities have all jumped in. Its social influence has spread its wings to the increasingly tabloid-like news media in India. Of course, in a rapidly changing world, its dark side was also emerging. Recently, even the reputable mainstream newspapers covered the tragic death of Siya Kakkar, a teenage Tiktok star.
Anyway, this ban is an undeniable loss for ByteDance. Worse, it is a precursor, this ban typifies the challenge that international firms from China will increasingly face in the future.
As I have argued on the blog before, Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance major global brands that may emerge out of China. Internet presents a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs and businesses that have germinated in the crucible of massive internal competition in China. All these firms nurture a global ambition. In particular, the Indian eCommerce and mobile market is the fastest-growing market in the world. In addition, India has almost no multinational interest in the Chinese market, to retaliate with similar brands, and compared to other nations, India and China have had a generally positive relationship over the millennia. Hence the ban is costly, it would be a tremendous loss for many firms that were founded in China.
Brands and Soft Power
Brands cannot escape national identities and politics. As demonstrated by the Japanese brands in the 70s and the 80s, the interests of brands can temper the passions of nationalism.
Modern China faces a challenge: How to grapple with soft power, while its economically liberated citizens yearn to create transformative technologies for the world. This is not a new lesson.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Admiral Zheng He (1371-1433), a eunuch military commander and explorer, exercised soft power during the rule of Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor (1402-1424) and third emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Zheng He traveled across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, along the way visiting numerous countries in an effort to show both the wealth and power of the Ming Dynasty, a charm offensive in its own right.
I have written on this blog that China also has a long remarkable history. From Nixon and Kissinger’s time, the historical and cultural imperative has always been the reason to engage China. China has emerged from the shadows of the tragic usurpations of colonial powers. The viewpoints and coverage of the conflict from India and Chinese agencies have been sensational saber-rattling.
Hopefully, the leadership in India and China can let cooler heads prevail and shelve their personal ambitions in the light of the betterment of their citizens from cooperation. I am hopeful, but not confident.