What Should We Do About WeChat?

Note: This article was written in 2020

US President Donald Trump’s decision to ban WeChat, the Chinese owned social media app, represents a significant escalation in his effort to “decouple” from China, and punish Chinese entities for their alleged ties to the ruling Communist Party and the associated security threats.

To the relief of millions of WeChat users in Australia, there is no indication yet that the Federal Government is considering a similar blanket ban, although defence personnels are already prohibited from using the app.

There are legitimate concerns about the risks of national security, personal data, and exposure to censorship and propaganda posed by WeChat. Chinese laws require its businesses and citizens to support “national intelligence work”;  China’s privacy protection regime is notoriously weak (which allowed its app developers much more leeway to exploit consumer data); The government imposes heavy censorship requirement, even on users outside the country; and it pumps nationalist and authoritarian propaganda to the wider Chinese diaspora across the world. 

But an outright ban of the app will create enormous ripple effects and unintended consequences. For a start, WeChat, with its one billion users including a hundred million outside China, is extremely popular. It has become virtually the only tool with which overseas Chinese communicate with their family and friends back in China, due to the Chinese Government’s blocking of other social media platforms commonly used in the West. I use WeChat to video chat with my elderly father and his carers in a Shandong nursing home, so do many other Chinese migrants who left their parents and relatives behind. Millions of overseas Chinese students keep in touch with their families back home with WeChat. With Covid imposed travel restrictions, having an essential communication channel cut off will only add to people’s stress and anxiety.

WeChat is an essential tool for anyone doing business with China, the second largest economy in the world. An estimated A$ 2.5 billion annual worth of Australian products is sold by daigou (purchasing agents), with many transactions conducted through WeChat. Our tourism industry is heavily reliant on Chinese visitors who are accustomed to pay by the app. 

WeChats hosts a vast Mandarin language sharing ecosystem with which users create, exchange contents and ideas across national borders. Despite the best efforts of Chinese censors and the Great Fire Wall, information can and do seep through. Breaking news spread fast through the chat groups. The first signs of the coronavirus were actually first reported by concerned doctors via the app.

So what should we do about WeChat?

First, any measures taken should be within the confines of constitution and law. It remains to be seen how Trump’s executive order can survive the inevitable legal challenges ahead. There are significant free speech and property right issues involved in outlawing an app already installed in people’s phones, and huge hurdles in extricating ourselves from a Chinese tech giant whose products and services reach many aspects of our modern lives.

Second, we can impose conditions on Tencent, owner of WeChat, for the right of access to our consumer market. WeChat is already based in Singapore, separate from its domestic cousin Weixin, for more operational freedom. We should demand it to respect the implied freedom of political communication in our Constitution and stop censoring contents that are legal and permitted under Australian law, and apply penalties for noncompliance. We should incorporate the platform into similar regulatory regimes already in place with Google and Facebook for violent, discriminatory and manipulative contents which are prevalent on WeChat.

Third, the West as a whole should demand reciprocal market treatment in our diplomatic and trade negotiations with China. The websites of our public broadcaster, ABC, and many other commercial news outlets, are frequently blocked by Chinese authorities, while China’s state media enjoy enfettered access to audiences in the West. WeChat is freely available in our app stores but nearly all western communication platforms are banned in China. Tencent has benefited enormously from its state protected monopoly and leap forward into a global money making machine. Whatever faults in Trump’s leadership skills, one thing he did get right: We should no longer tolerate being taken advantage of by the Chinese Communists who exploit our freedom to expand their political and commercial interests abroad while imprisoning their own citizens behind the Great Fire Wall.