A TikTok spokesperson applauded on Thursday an Indian court's decision to lift its ban on TikTok's downloads in the market.
"We are glad about this decision and we believe it is also greatly welcomed by our thriving community in India, which uses TikTok as a platform to showcase their creativity," the company said in a statement sent to the Global Times.
TikTok will continue to enhance its safety features and improve services for Indian users, the statement noted.
A court in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in early April asked the government to ban TikTok, saying it encouraged pornography and made children vulnerable to sexual predators, according to Reuters.
The Indian Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, once it receives the court's order, will ask Apple and Google to allow the TikTok app to return to their platforms, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a senior government official.
"Basically, it was an event caused by India's domestic protectionism, and it wouldn't cause much damage to TikTok's business exploration in India, since the trend of the internet industry's opening-up is irreversible," Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based industry analyst, told the Global Times Thursday.
It is TikTok's artificial intelligence technology-driven pattern that makes it stand out from other traditional social media outlets and helps its performance, Liu said.
"For Chinese companies seeking overseas expansion, they should first make sure their businesses are operating under local laws and regulations, then improve their localization by offering job opportunities and paying taxes," he said.
Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, plans to invest $1 billion in India over the next three years and expand its content scrutiny team, India's newspaper The Economic Times reported on April 19.
Launched in 2017, TikTok, the international version of Chinese short-video platform Douyin, has rapidly won over many Indian users.
According to survey by U.S.-based analytics firm Sensor Power in February, 25 percent of TikTok's downloads have come from India, for an estimated total of 250 million downloads. In January, 43 percent of the app's new users were from India, compared to just 9.5 percent in January of 2018.
Further understanding of the ban would promote Chinese companies' localization strategy in ways that achieve sustainable development, Liu added.
