China has banned leading US travel giant Tripadvisor's app along with 104 other mobile apps from online app stores in the country. The move comes in as a part of cleaning up 'illegal apps' on the internet.
Tripadvisor is an American online travel firm that offers user-generated content and comparison between hotels, restaurants, and tourist sites. Founded in the year 2000, it is one of the oldest internet travel companies.
Most of the blocked apps are Chinese but the list also includes the US Tripadvisor's app without any clear reason.
It had removed 105 apps it considered "illegal," including the US travel giant, the Cyberspace Administration of China said in a statement.
"As of Tuesday afternoon, Tripadvisor's website was still accessible in China," reports CNN
Chinese regulators were quoted as saying that the removed apps were the first of many that would be taken down in a wide-ranging "clean-up" of online content related to illegal activity, including obscenity, pornography, prostitution, violence, fraud, or gambling.
However, some media reports linked the action on TripAdvisor to the US and its ongoing exercise to ban TikTok which is owned by China-based Bytedance.
A judge in the US has granted a preliminary injunction barring the US Commerce Department from putting restrictions that it had planned to impose on short video-sharing platform TikTok.
The order on Monday came in response to a challenge to the Donald Trump administration's executive order on August 6 that would have barred US companies from doing transactions with the Chinese parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, The Verge reported.
