Penalties await Chinese apps that don’t follow the law

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that apps that did not provide the appropriate information will be penalized after a deadline set to expire in March next year. Experts say that this action will create more restrictions for a number of applications and will hit small application designers.

According to Yu Yunting, a lawyer at Debond Law Offices in Shanghai, this order actually requires applications to obtain approval from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The primary goal of the new regulations is to combat online fraud, but it will affect all apps in China.

According to Richard Bishop, one of the founders of the app publishing company “Apple-in-China”, the new regulations will likely affect foreign app developers who published their apps through Apple’s app store. In order to comply with the new regulations, app developers must now have a company in China or work with a local publisher.

Apple removed hundreds of AI apps from its app store last week to comply with the regulations after China introduced a new licensing system for artificial intelligence apps manufactured in China.

According to the announcement of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, entities engaged in Internet information services through applications in fields such as news, publishing, education, film and television, and religion must also provide relevant documents.

This requirement will affect access to social network applications such as X, Facebook and Instagram. Such apps are not allowed to be used in China, but they can still be downloaded through app stores, allowing Chinese citizens to use them when traveling abroad.

China previously required mobile games to be licensed before being released in the country and removed tens of thousands of unlicensed games from various app stores in 2020, according to Reuters.