India under perennial psychological fear from China: Wechat faces shutdown!

It is not surprising that WeChat (weixin), a powerful mobile communication application from Tencent (tengxun) Inc. that supports sending voice, video, photo and text messages from platforms and devices such as iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Symbian and BlackBerry devices, have come under the scanner of Intelligence Bureau (IB) couple of weeks after it was launched with a much fanfare by Bollywood starlet Parinneti Chopra on May 14, 2013. This is not the first time that the ghosts of the Chinese companies have loomed large over the national security horizon in India; Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE Corporation, India have already faced the unpleasant consequences from various government agencies and ministries in recent past. It has been reported that the IB has told the National Security Advisor (NSA), who also happens to be India’s Special Representative for border negotiations with China that applications like WeChat may bring in new cyber threats in the country and have suggested its ban.

This is yet another example of India reeling under perennial psychological fear from China after much media hype about China using water as a weapon by way of damming Brahmaputra, and other issues related to border transgressions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that remains undefined. So much so, the recent agreement during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s India visit on ‘media exchanges and cooperation to improve the mutual understanding and friendship of the two peoples, and to hold a India-China High-Level Media Forum’ has been seen by some ‘strategic thinkers’ in India as a Chinese ploy that would open floodgates of national security for Chinese espionage!

Have the platforms like Facebook, Skype, Twitter, Google talk, and many other apps endangered national security even though the National Security Agency of the US has been snooping social media and telephone networks around the globe for many years? WeChat has many things in common with above applications. Whereas Skype charges its customers for voice chat over phone or computer, WeChat so far has been offering these services for free. Unlike the western platforms, the WeChat was launched in India in July 2012 in partnership with Ibibo, an Indian company holding 20 percent of shares. It has customized it for Indian clientele by adding Hindi to its language bouquet. Of late, it has also launched a feature that allows companies and brands to open accounts, Yahoo, Cricket, and even Café Coffee Day has instantly opened accounts along with many other brands. In fact India’s Silicon Valley needs to learn from Tencent Inc. as to how to expand horizontally and cater to the mass customers by doing R&D. In its brief history of 15 years, the company has grown into China's largest and most used Internet service portal, offering applications such as QQ (QQ Instant Messenger), WeChat, QQ.com, QQ Games, Qzone, 3g.QQ.com, SoSo, PaiPai and Tenpay and boasts of over one billion users. This year’s first quarter revenues of the company were USD 21.61 billion and earned a gross profit of USD12.11 billion. 

Demonizing of the dragon is the product of our own thinking and making, which is no better than the fears and anxieties of the people of Qi state in ancient China, who feared that the sky might fall and cause destruction to their hearths and homes. I believe we need to seriously introspect why we are living in the shadow of such a fear, the fear that demonstrates no confidence in our people, government, systems and even army. China would continue to score psychological points and advantages over India if we don’t come out of it.

It is true that owing to historical reasons and animosities in the 1960s, India and China have been suffering from a deep rooted mistrust and security deficit. For a better security environment, India and China need to maintain and deepen the momentum of the high level political visits as well exchanges between the two people including armies at different levels. Vibrant trade between the two may prove a catalyst to create a better environment and reduce the security deficit greatly.

We can only hope that a better sense would prevail in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the Department of Telecom (DOT) before they block the application. Shutting down the application would deteriorate the already fragile security environment, the need of the hour from the Indian side should be rather to bring in drastic structural adjustments in ours security apparatus and ensure that the systems and institutions are efficient and robust. Its cyber command is nascent; the cyber security experts in the IT ‘superpower’ are no more than a few hundred comparing China’s million plus! We are years behind as usual China’s security architecture forget about the real IT superpower the US!