US SECRETARY of State Mike Pompeo called for a harsher crackdown on Chinese technology on Wednesday, saying Chinese apps should be pulled from Google and Apple app stores.

President Donald Trump has already threatened to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok song and dance app, telling parent company ByteDance to sell off TikTok or see it outlawed in the US by September 15. 

US academics say the legal basis for such a ban is unclear, but Mr Pompeo declared TikTok and messaging app WeChat “significant threats to the personal data of American citizens.”

The Narendra Modi government in India has already banned a host of Chinese apps on supposed security concerns.

Eurasia Group analyst Paul Triolo said the US pressure to ban apps — and to push companies such as Google to stop devices made by Chinese firm Huawei from using its apps, such as Google maps — is part of a bid to force countries to pick sides in Washington’s new cold war against China.

It is pushing US allies and companies to stop using Chinese software “at all levels of their communication networks, from internet backbone to app stores,” he said.

The strategy has already forced the British government to U-turn on Huawei’s involvement in developing a 5G network at a cost of billions and delaying the network’s construction by an estimated seven years.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said US paranoia about Chinese technological development was unjustified.

“The development of China and of the United States is not a zero-sum game,” he said. “We should not reject each other. We should draw on each other’s strength to achieve common development.

“Our message is quite clear: we urge the United States to stop acting with arrogance and prejudice, but enter into constructive dialogue with us on an equal footing.”

But Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison admitted that the outbreak of war between the US and China was no longer “inconceivable.”

Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd wrote earlier this week that during the run-up to the US elections in November the risk of “hot war” erupting were “especially high.

“The next three months could all too easily torpedo the prospects of international peace and stability for the next 30 years. Wars between great powers rarely end well for anyone,” Mr Rudd wrote in Foreign Affairs.