India and China relations were again tested following New Delhi's move which again blocked dozens of applications from China.
After blocking around 200 Chinese apps including TikTok and WeChat since last July, India is now blocking and asking its citizens to remove 43 apps from the Bamboo Curtain country such as streaming site Taobao Live, job seeker app DingTalk, and e-Commerce AliExpress owned by giant Alibaba Group.
This blockade stems from the tension between the two countries that occurred on the border in June.
The Chinese and Indian troops were involved in bloody clashes on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) or the border between the two countries in the Galwan Valley, Aksai-Chin-Ladakh area around the Himalayas which is a dispute between the two countries.
The clashes began when China said three Indian soldiers crossed the LAC border around mid-June.
China said that Indian troops crossed the border area twice on Monday (15/6).
Beijing says Indian soldiers provoked and attacked Chinese troops, resulting in unavoidable physical clashes between troops in the border area.
Meanwhile, India claims 20 of its soldiers were killed in the two-day clashes.
On the first day of the clashes, India reported three soldiers were killed. But a day later, the number of soldiers who died increased by 17.
On the other hand, China did not mention the number of their troops who were victims of the clashes.
Since then, the two countries have tried to resolve conflicts on the border through diplomacy. High officials from the two countries also met to reduce conflict.
Even so, the tension and arms race continues. The two countries continue to deploy troops and a number of main defense systems to the border.
The conflict on the border has sparked negative sentiment from the people of the two countries. In India, a group of citizens burned a Chinese flag and a photo of President Xi Jinping.
Tensions returned last September. The Indian and Chinese militaries accuse each other of opening fire and crossing the border.
This prompted the deployment of tens of thousands of troops from the two countries to the border, which is more than 4,000 meters high.
In the same month, the Indian military accused Chinese soldiers of kidnapping five of its civilians in North Ladakh near the disputed border. The allegations were filed by India after the five people disappeared.
The border dispute in the Himalayas between China and India has indeed become an obstacle to relations between the two countries so far. The two countries have mutually claimed control over the area since the mid-1960s.
Initially, the two countries had a brief war in 1962. At that time, China took over the border area from India.
Since then, tensions have never disappeared over the China-India border. However, the last major clashes involving weapons occurred in 1975.
The clashes in June became the first deadly conflict between the two countries' armed forces on the border since 1975.
