Beijing, Dec 9 (IANS): China on Tuesday said it has removed leading US travel platform Tripadvisor's app along with 104 other mobile apps from various online stores in the country as part of cleaning up the internet.

Most of the apps that were banned belonged to local Chinese companies but it was not clear why the country blocked Tripadvisor.

"As of Tuesday afternoon, Tripadvisor's website was still accessible in China," reports CNN.

The Cyberspace Administration of China said in a statement that it had removed 105 apps is considered to be "illegal," including the US travel giant.

Chinese regulators were quoted as saying that the removed apps were the first of many that would be taken down in a wide-ranging "clean-up" of online content related to illegal activity, including obscenity, pornography, prostitution, violence, fraud or gambling.

However, some media reports linked the action on TripAdvisor to US and its ongoing exercise to ban TikTok which is owned by China-based Bytedance.

A judge in the US has granted a preliminary injunction barring the US Commerce Department from putting restrictions that it had planned to impose on short video-sharing platform TikTok.

The order on Monday came in response to challenge to the Donald Trump administration's executive order on August 6 that would have barred US companies from doing transactions with the Chinese parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, The Verge reported.