Apple Blamed for Getting Rid of Wrong Apps in Gaming Purge

According to the Wall Street Journal earlier in July this year, Apple services in China have had to pull multiple Apps from its store, after it arose the tech giant have received heavy criticism from government-run media outlets including Xinhua Media, China Central Television and other state-backed agencies, for not meeting the standard requirements when it comes to filtering out illegal content.

Gambling Apps Replace CryptoKitties for No. 1 in the Blockchain WorldOut of the 25,000 Apps which were removed from the site, 4,000 of them were recognized by their tags as “gambling” apps; as per reports from The Journal, CCTV and Bloomberg. Many of these illegal mobile applications included several fake lottery tickets. After this information came to light a spokesperson for Apple stated, “Gambling apps are illegal and not allowed on the App Store in China. We have already removed many apps and developers for trying to distribute illegal gambling apps on our App Store, and we are vigilant in our efforts to find these and stop them from being on the App Store.”

A very big proportion of Apple’s products are manufactured in China, such as IPads, IPhones and MACs. It is said that 1.8 million developers have produced games for Apple’s store in this part of the world; generating almost 17 billion dollars (almost one-fifth of Apple’s overall revenue) and making it the firm’s second largest market in the world after the US.

The law on gambling in China

casino mobile appsDespite the huge amounts of gaming revenue generated each year, most forms of gambling have been illegal in mainland China since the 1970s. This includes clandestine casinos, various card games, sports betting, unofficial lotteries, plus all online poker applications. Parts of Hong Kong have made exceptions to some forms of gambling as they are still regulated under some common English laws, after the former colony was returned to China by Britain back in 1981.

When 347,000 citizens were prosecuted for gambling offences in 2012, Chinese authorities made a harsh and conscious effort to take down 30,000 illegal casinos seen to be operating unlawfully, as well as the 10,000 gangs and ringleaders responsible for conducting these operations. To the present day, Chinese authorities can enforce a penalty of up to 3,000 yuan if its citizens are caught partaking in any illegal gambling activity.

Not the first time

Last year, Apple store apps were also pulled up by state officials for its network of applications which included a hidden VPN (Virtual Private Network), allowing Chinese citizens to dodge internet censorship. 100’s of apps were asked to be removed by government officials after a hefty crackdown on cyber-security.

The firm were also seen to be bending the rules yet again in 2017, after a data center based in the rural province of Guizhou spoke up about how the Macintosh gods were not abiding by data protection policies involving encryption keys.

Tension rising in the US

The US President Donald Trump is said to be very displeased with the recent news, even after his initial threat to reassess the annual tariffs on all China export goods worth $500 billion. This sparked fear among US representatives, as Beijing may now be less inclined to put any non-tariff measures in place to encourage their operations throughout China.

The China Clean Energy Fund

Earlier in the July this year, Apple put forward a joint proposal with 10 other suppliers to invest nearly $300 million dollars into a 4-year ‘clean energy’ plan for China. This plan will be used to address issues such as climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, how they can utilize renewable energy as well as develop new, clean energy projects which could power over 1 million homes.

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