The Chinese government has introduced new regulations that require platforms offering APP distribution in the country to only offer APPs that have been filed in mainland China, while other APPs will not be allowed to be shelved on app stores.
The new rule will be enforced in early 2024, but some programmers have reported that the App store in mainland China is already enforcing the rule.
As a result, ankimobile may not be able to continue to be offered in the App store in mainland China, so users in mainland China who have previously purchased the software will not be able to download and upgrade the software, and whether or not it is possible to provide support for resumption of purchases by switching from the China store to the U.S. store.
The word “filing”（备案） is quite Chinese, so I may have to explain it.
That is, developers are required to submit relevant information, such as the developer’s identity, the content of the app, etc., to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of the Chinese government, and they are also required to have a mainland Chinese identity, and so on.
The policy has not yet been released, and the information available is for citizens of mainland China, so perhaps there will be some specific programs for foreigners when the policy is released.
I believe Apple is currently lobbying the government to change its position here, though I don’t know if they’ll have much luck. It’s not practical for me to register a business in China or rely on a third-party publisher, and hosting a separate instance of AnkiWeb in China would be expensive in both time and costs. If nothing changes, AnkiMobile will unfortunately likely need to exit the China market before the deadline.
China’s decision not to be a democracy should be respected.
Perhaps a monarchy really is a better system of government in the long run, and for the benefit of the citizens.
But we should not lose the beautiful work of the Chinese students.
We need to find a solution that will give an adequate answer.
to both sides
In the first place, the number of Chinese AnkiMobile users may be quite small.
The market share of iphone among Chinese students is only about 10%.
After the regulation, iphones will be harder to use, so the user numbers may decrease even more.
Probably won’t affect desktop Anki and AnkiDroid? (Chinese AnkiDroid users download AnkiDroid app file directly).
According to some news reports, this regulation will affect hundreds of thousands of apps in the Apple store.
I don’t think there is any way to get around it with a VPN, the apps will be removed from the Apple store.
The deadline is until next March, there are about 5 months left. In the meantime, Apple’s negotiations may progress, a workaround may be created, or simple guidelines on how to apply for ICP may be developed.
Existing Chinese AnkiMobile users may be able to use AnkiMobile in beta testing, but I don’t know if it will work after regulation.
Users who have purchased should still be able to use it, and the update only needs to search for AnkiMobile from the “Account-Purchase-My Purchase” in the App Store and click Update. I bought a game before, and then it was removed from the shelves. Even if I uninstalled it from my mobile phone, I can re-download and update it in this way.
For Chinese users, AnkiMobile cannot be replaced by AnkiDroid, which does not officially support v3 Scheduler, but only experimental features, giving people a sense of instability.
It’s been a while since I had an Apple product, but I have noticed that nowadays, it is somehow possible to install apps outside the official app store, without having to jailbreak (at least in the US). Is this an option in China? If so, would that still require registration (filing)? I presume Damien would have to set up a new payment system.
I’ve worked at companies that had some kind of internal app store for employees to get the official company apps that weren’t in the Apple app store. That would have been in the US and no later than 2017, so i assumed it wasn’t too hard for anyone to setup the same these days. If iOS 17 solves the problem more cleanly, and is allowed in the Chinese version of iOS, that’s even better.