China will require all mobile app providers in the country to provide details of their businesses to the government in Beijing's latest effort to keep the industry in check.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that mobile app providers will face sanctions if they do not provide business details after the grace period ends in March next year.

According to a report by The Edge Malaysia on Wednesday, experts assess that the policy has the potential to limit the number of mobile applications and have a negative impact on small developers.

A lawyer from DeBund Law Offices, Shanghai named You Yunting said that the regulations made to crack down on online fraud will have an impact on all application developers in China.

Meanwhile, the founder of app publishing company AppInChina, Rich Bishop, said the new rules could potentially impact foreign developers who can release apps through Apple's App Store without showing any documents to the Chinese government.

Bishop added that to comply with these regulations, foreign application developers must have branch companies in China or collaborate with local developers.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also requires applications related to internet information services through applications from various domains such as news, publishing, education, film & television, and religion to also submit related documents.

Previously, China had required mobile games to obtain a license before launching in the country which resulted in tens of thousands of unlicensed games being removed across various app store services in 2020.