Alibaba's UC News In India Applies Strong Filters To Snuff Out Adverse News About China

ABP News tried to seek a response from officials at UC News who were not readily available for comments.

  New Delhi: We are all aware of the suppressed press freedom in China that is mainly aimed at avoiding potential subversion of its authority. The Chinese establishment is imposing a similar restriction through its private media entity operating in India. It seems there’s an all-out war on internet freedom and strict surveillance of anything even smelling of anti-China sentiment. The idea ostensibly is to prevent subversion but then, we all thought the Internet was open and free, didn’t we? To cover all these aspects extensively, an in-depth investigation was conducted by ABP News to expose China’s dirty tricks of conducting a ‘psychological warfare’. This battle now is now rerouted and is bound to weaken India financially and socially. (WATCH COMPLETE NEWS REPORT BELOW) The catalyst here is the ubiquitous UC News App which has garnered a humongous 13 crore users in India. It was launched in 2016 and since then has penetrated deeply into the Indian digital space seeking articles and opinion from people and news publishers. It has set up a huge content and technical team in Gurgaon and in other parts of the country which manages all the daily flow of news that are curated in such a manner that nothing gets reflected against the Chinese dragon. The registration in their news app is very simple. But when ABP News tried to upload news articles on UC’s portal many of them got rejected in the first go. Articles that show China in a bad light was dismissed right way. But other articles were given a green signal. Articles that cannot get a thumbs up - screenshots below For example – there’s no way one can proceed by writing titles like ‘China taught a lesson…’, ‘China’s dominance on South China Sea’, Aksai Chin’, ‘Dalai Lama’, ‘McMohan line’, ‘Xi Jinping resignation’, ‘protest against Chinese products in India’. Strong filters seem to have been in-built to prevent any anti-China views or news creeping into the system. Unverified stories of communal clashes, war-mongering in India get a green signal On the flip side, there were articles like ‘5000 mobsters torched 20 Muslim houses in Gujarat’ – this particular story did not contain the name of the author and the time when it was published. Stories like these can be thoroughly read. Another article that went up was ‘War declared between India and Pakistan’. Also the investigation found audio recordings of Kashmiri militants spreading hate against India. Articles like these that can deem potentially dangerous to Indian administration or the regime does get approved straightforwardly. Going by the kind of articles posted on the app, it clearly depicts it is merely spreading rumours without any fact checking or veracity. 'UC News can influence 2019 India polls' “UC News is a Chinese front of Alibaba Company. It is notorious for giving out intelligence services under the garb of selling products. It is a completely well-thought conspiracy. They are smartly drawing our opinion and publish items that are in favour of them. They can duly influence elections next year,” said RK Yadav, former Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) officer. 'Prevent Cyber warfare' “Recently Modi went to Wuhan and I read some Chinese bloggers and users writing about how India is tamed by the Chinese establishment. It is a psychological warfare which they disseminate by projecting everything rosy about China. It can alter the mindset of 13 crore people in India as well who access their website and application. A strict vigil needs to be kept on them as they have been given open penetration to the entire country. The huge flow of data is effortlessly transferring to China easily. This is cyber attack or cyber warfare via mobile network,” said Major General GD Bakshi (retd). ABP News tried to seek a response from officials at UC News who were not readily available for comments. UC’s current user base to skyrocket to 20 crore The current user base of UC News is 13 crore and is about to reach 20 crore very soon.  UC Browser is pre-installed in most of the Chinese phones sold in India. One can download UC News and can register it. The complete data is saved on the Beijing server. UC’s operations may not be pursuing the agenda of the Honker Union of China (HUC) and the Red Hacker Alliance who attack critics of China and infiltrate foreign government, corporate sites and also spread terror. It, however, poses a threat by functioning as a legal entity that can be difficult for the Indian government to dispute. To jog your memory a bit, the Ministry of Defence in India had issued a order in December, 2017 to the Indian armed forces asking officers and all security personnel to remove, uninstall over 42 Chinese apps which included WeChat, Weibo, ShareiT, Truecaller, UC News, UC Browser. Alibaba, the second largest company in China, is a major investor in the payment bank firm Paytm and its parent company One97. It has also invested in e-commerce firm Snapdeal.