Trump WeChat bans ‘an unwelcome signal’ to Chinese community

For the global Chinese community, WeChat is more than a chat app: it’s often the primary means of staying in touch with friends and family at home.

That decision last week by U.S. President Donald Trump to order U.S. companies to stop doing business with WeChat has sent shock waves.

“WeChat has become the ‘it’ tool for Chinese-speaking people, no matter where you are all over the world,” one Shanghai resident told the BBC.

The billion-user app is primarily a social networking platform, but can be used to host daily activities such as shopping, gaming and even dating.

But WeChat has a less innocent side. It is seen as a key instrument of China’s internal surveillance apparatus.

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In an executive order, President Trump WeChat highlighted a threat to U.S. national security and accused it of collecting “incredible swaths” of user data, threatening Americans’ personal and proprietary information.

The owner of WeChat, TenCent, has been ordered to sell the app by mid-September as a ban on US operations.

The move to block WeChat, a prominent example of China’s innovation in China, is seen by many Chinese as an attack on their culture, their people and their state. In response to President Trump, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has accused America of using national security as a cover to exercise hegemony.

The Chinese diaspora in the US is shocked by the move, and many people are worried – not just about keeping in touch with lovers, but what this means for relations between China and the US.

‘A non-welcome signal’

Jennie, 21, is a student at the University of California, and learned about the sequence while browsing WeChat.

“At first I did not believe it was true,” she told the BBC. “Then I just felt angry.”

Jennie spends about four hours a day on WeChat, and uses it to contact people in the US and China. It is also a vital source of information and they spend a lot of time reading articles published on the public accounts of Chinese media, content creators and companies.

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On the anniversary day of Tiananmen Massacre, Jennie made a post with one sense of remembrance. It was soon deleted, and their entire public account disappeared.

She told the BBC she was “very concerned” that WeChat would share her information with the Chinese government, but was strongly opposed to America blocking the app.

“It would be similar to what China is doing – censoring,” Jennie said.

She used to publish on her own public account, until it was censored by WeChat two years ago.

Jennie believes that there should be an alternative to threats managed by WeChat, other than banning it altogether.

“I wanted to study in the US because of its openness, but this movement has broken my bubble.”

This feeling of disappointment is shared by other Chinese immigrants in the US.

“I used to think that America is culturally inclusive,” says Miley Song, a Chinese immigrant to California. The Washington movement is sending “an unwelcome signal” to Chinese immigrants in the country, she believes.

The 30-year-old mother-at-home often uses the app to make contact with her parents in China, who were in a panic after hearing about Mr. Trump’s executive order.

But Ms Song says she is cautiously optimistic. “The ban seems very vague, I think it might be difficult to ban WeChat altogether,” she says, “we’ll wait and see.”

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While she is not particularly concerned about the ban, she is concerned about what it means for her future in America.

In the midst of a pandemic, and with presidential elections underway, Ms Song thinks the Trump administration is trying to divert attention from increasing death tolls and declining polls.

“Otherwise, why has Trump concentrated on destroying Chinese apps now?”

‘It is completely embedded in people’s lives’

There is also concern among those who have returned to China to live and study in America.

Rachel spent 10 years in the US, many of them as a student in the capital, Washington, DC.

Now at home in Shanghai, WeChat has “become completely embedded in people’s daily lives”, she told the BBC.

“If you live in China, you can’t go anywhere without two great apps: one is WeChat, the other is AliPay,” Rachel said. “If you want to buy a bottle of milk, open WeChat Pay or AliPay to scan and pay for the QR code, and most stores do not accept money.”

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WeChat is also used as a tracking tool to assist the government in controlling the spread of coronavirus.

While President Trump’s order will not have much of an impact on her day-to-day activities in China, Rachel said it may be harder to make contact with people in the US. As a result, she said, she’s exploring some alternatives such as communications appliance, or VPNs – virtual private networks that mask the location of your computer.

“It’s sad that it’s going down this way,” Rachel said. “I see both sides, there is always good and bad in both societies, and I want to be neutral, but it’s harder and harder to become neutral.”