China’s leadership has ordered Apple to remove WhatsApp from the App Store in the People’s Republic. The US company has already complied. Explaining the move, Apple said it is obliged to comply with the laws of the countries in which it operates. The Wall Street Journal quotes Apple as saying that the Chinese internet regulatory authority justified this order with „national security concerns.“ Likewise, Meta’s Threads app, a competitor to X (formerly Twitter) is no longer available in the Chinese Apple App Store.