The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) had banned, in early November, just under 40 applications from being updated for excessive data collection. According to information from South China Morning Post, this sanction was lifted for nine services owned by Tencent.
Usual procedure
On December 16, QQ Music, Tencent’s music app, was updated to iOS. New features are on the agenda, such as the ability to listen to music with friends or add certain sound effects to their songs.
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Changes that could have been trivial if the last major update of this popular service in China, 190 million active users in October according to QuestMobile, did not date from early November. The application and others were subject to a “temporary administrative” sanction.
Tencent, like the app stores, has received the ban on updating, but also the ban on publishing new services without control by the authorities. A measure partially lifted by regulators with regard to updates.
These sanctions have become standard currency for nearly a year in China. The authorities had not hesitated to ban WeChat, Tencent’s super-app, the most popular in the country, from recruiting new subscribers during the summer.
Tencent and its some 70 active applications and its hundred games on smartphones are particularly affected by the multiple suspensions of services ordered by various Chinese regulators since the beginning of the year 2021. The tech giant had quickly made it known that it was working together with the authorities.
Sanctions against Tencent and others to last?
This relaxation for QQ Music and at least nine other services shows that Tencent is gradually getting in tune with new Chinese data security laws and in particular the PIPL, the GDPR of the Middle Empire.
To analyze this return of updates on QQ Music as a sign of a warming of relations between the Chinese authorities and the main suppliers of applications such as Tencent would, however, be premature.
If the company, like its competitors, is gradually conforming to the new constraints imposed on them, the Chinese authorities seem determined not to let anything go. The lists of tens or even hundreds of services blocked temporarily or permanently could continue to pile up in 2022.