“If we don’t have WeChat, we’re really going back 40 years,” she said, in comments translated from Mandarin Chinese.
“Everyone in China uses WeChat. It’s hard to appreciate how important it is to reach people in China,” said Willy Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School focusing on technology and management. “It seems so [the US] tries to cast an iron curtain between the countries so that people can not communicate with each other. ”
The app is just especially popular among older generations of immigrants who left China many decades ago but still want to stay connected. And during the pandemic, when traveling back to China is complicated, expensive and involves an additional period of quarantine, many remain plagued, making WeChat even more important.
“I still want WeChat. It’s cheaper. Phones [to China] are expensive, “Zhang said.
Zhang immigrated to the US in 1989 and began using WeChat in recent years. Without WeChat, she suggests that she should email photos because she does not know how to use a computer, and make phone calls to family and friends abroad. But with the huge time difference between the East Coast and China, leaving messages on WeChat has been much more convenient, she said.
In the decades since she left China, her friends and family have kept her informed by sending photos of new skyscrapers from old roads, holidays and the birth of grandchildren. When her daughter delivers a baby in October, Zhang plans to send photos with WeChat to her siblings and old classmates. Without it, she said, she would have to use slaughterhouse.
Ken Xiao, 63, who is retired but works as a calligraphy teacher in San Diego, said the Chinese community had heard rumors of a WeChat ban in the US for weeks and had discussed it on … WeChat.
Xiao immigrated from Yunnan Province in 1989 and started using WeChat about four years ago. He now calls his parents every Monday night with the app.
“I am really disappointed to hear this executive order,” he said.
Trump wrote in his executive order, “Like TikTok, WeChat automatically detects large swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to give the Chinese Communist Party access to personal and proprietary information of Americans.”
He went on to say, “The United States must take aggressive action against the owner of WeChat to protect our national security.”
A Tencent spokesman said the company “is reviewing the executive order to gain a full understanding.”
Xiao and other Chinese Americans told CNN Business that they did not know if the Chinese government could read their messages. They said they exercise caution when communicating with contacts, and make sure they do not delve too deeply into politics.
“As regular people, most of us Chinese, including me and my students, we do not talk about anything related to the sensitive, political topics,” he said. “We can use [WeChat] as a normal live communication platform, so we do not worry about anything else. “
If WeChat were to be banned in the US, Harvard’s Shih said Americans should probably use email to reach people in China, a mode of communication that is not so widely used in the country.
“When I send an email, I may not get a response for weeks, or chances are I will never get a response,” Shih said.
For Emily Kuo, 56, a San Diego-based business owner who emigrated from Guangdong province in 1982, WeChat is a way to communicate with her tenants in her California shopping mall and chat with family and friends in China, including her son in Shanghai.
“You can leave long messages, very detailed messages. You can post, let’s say, like a worksheet or a travel itinerary. It’s very powerful. It’s really a very good means of communication,” Kuo explained.
“To me [the ban] is socially super uncomfortable, but I think for many, many Americans doing business with Chinese in China, it would be a big break. It would be very inefficient, “she added. I feel sorry for her and for myself. “
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