SHANGHAI -- One of the last foreign-run tools for online communication in China appears to be in trouble with authorities there.
For almost a month, Skype, the Internet phone call and messaging service, has been unavailable on a number of sites where apps are downloaded in China, including Apple's app store in that country.
"We have been notified by the Ministry of Public Security that a number of voice-over Internet protocol apps do not comply with local law. Therefore these apps have been removed from the app store in China," an Apple spokesman said Tuesday. "These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business."
The removal led to a volley of complaints from Chinese users on Internet message boards who were no longer able to pay for Skype's services through Apple. The users said the disruption began in late October.
Skype, which is owned by Microsoft, still functions in China, and its fate in the country is not yet clear. But its removal from the app stores is the most recent example of a decades-long push by China's government to control and monitor the flow of information online.
While China has long wielded the most sophisticated and comprehensive Internet controls in the world, under President Xi Jinping it has upped the ante, squelching most major foreign social networks and messaging apps one at a time.
Earlier this fall, the Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp was hit by blockages in China, becoming the latest in a long line of products to be rendered unusable by Chinese government filters. Others include Gmail, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Telegram and Line.
Beijing appears to have disabled these apps because they generally feature encryption options that make messages harder for the government to monitor.
A Microsoft spokesman said Skype had been "temporarily removed" from Apple's store and that the company was "working to reinstate the app as soon as possible."
Business on 11/22/2017