US officials on Friday ordered a ban on downloads of the popular Chinese-owned mobile applications WeChat and TikTok from Sunday, saying they “threaten national security”.

The move comes amid rising US-China tensions over technology and a Trump administration effort to engineer a sale of the video app TikTok to American investors.

“The Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated the means and motives to use these apps to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and the economy of the US,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.

The initiative would ban WeChat, an app with massive use among Chinese speakers, and TikTok from the online marketplaces operated by Apple and Google.

Source: AFP