After the strategic digital pushback against Chinese investments and apps, India should turn its attention to the biggest Chinese domination tool – 5G. This is the mother lode that enables the efficient gathering of data, which when mined, results in product enhancement and pricing benefits to products listed in China 2025 and helps China set global standards. There is an urgency for alternate suppliers of 5G equipment and other technologies to avoid relying on China.

With more than 130 and 119 million users respectively, Chinese apps such as UC Browser and TikTok are not merely internet products, but serious content aggregators in India. But the final control of data collected by these apps resides in China, and this creates a grave risk to national security.

It is time to formulate a Universal Declaration of Digital Rights that upholds the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Life, liberty and security in the digital realm need the same protection today. Human beings’ rights to digital self-determination, including control of personal data, are also sacrosanct

Amit Bhandari, Fellow, Energy and Environment Studies, Gateway House, and Kunal Kulkarni, Senior Researcher, Gateway House, write an op-ed for The Asian Age on the possible implications of U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent announcement to withdraw from the JCPOA, more colloquially Read more