China to Implement Stricter Regulations on Businesses Through App-Based System

HONG KONG: China will require all of the country’s mobile app providers to submit company information to the government, China’s information ministry said, marking the latest push by Beijing to keep a tight rein on the industry.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced late on Tuesday that apps without proper notifications will be penalized after a grace period that ends in March next year, which experts say would potentially limit the number of apps and hit small developers. hard.

You Yunting, a lawyer at Shanghai-based DeBund Law Offices, said that in practice the order requires approval from the ministry. The new rule is primarily aimed at combating online fraud, but it will affect all apps in China, he said.

Rich Bishop, co-founder of AppInChina, an app publishing company, said the new rule is also likely to affect foreign developers who have been able to easily publish their apps through Apple’s App Store without showing any documents to the Chinese government.

Bishop said that to comply with the new rules, app developers must now have a company in China or work with a local publisher.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The iPhone maker last week removed more than a hundred AI apps from its App Store to comply with the rules after China implemented a new licensing system for generative AI apps in the country.

The ministry’s announcement also stated that entities that engage in Internet information services through applications, for example in the fields of news, publications, education, film and television, and religion, must submit the relevant documents.

The requirement may affect the availability of popular social media applications such as X, Facebook and Instagram. Such apps are not allowed to be used in China, but they can still be downloaded from app stores, allowing Chinese people to use them when traveling abroad.

China already requires mobile games to be licensed before they are released in the country, and had removed tens of thousands of unlicensed games from various app stores in 2020.

Tencent’s WeChat, China’s most popular online social platform, said on Wednesday that mini-apps, apps that open on WeChat, must also comply with the new rules.

The company said new apps will have to complete pre-launch registration starting in September, while exiting mini-apps will have until the end of March.