On this episode of China Uncensored,
what do you get when you combine
Venmo, Uber, Fandango,
and the TV screens from 1984?
Stay tuned.
We’ll chat about it.
Hey, good to see you again.
I’m Chris Chappell.
What’s the first thing you think of
when you see this?
If you’re like me, it was,
“What is that boy doing on the moon
and what sinister plot does he have
against the Earth?!”
It turns out it’s just the login screen for WeChat.
You might not have heard of WeChat
if you’re like most people
watching this show outside of China.
And if you’re inside of China—
what are you doing illegally watching
subversive content on YouTube?
Anyway, WeChat is the biggest mobile app
in China right now—
and one of the biggest in the world.
It has close to 900 million active users worldwide.
So what the heck is WeChat
and why is it so successful?
And should you be afraid?
Well, I’m in the media,
so it’s my job to make you afraid.
Now it’s a bit hard to describe WeChat.
That’s because there’s no app in the West
that does all the things WeChat does.
WeChat started out in 2011
as a basic text messaging app.
Today, it does basically
everything you can imagine.
Yes, you can chat with your friends...
But also, you can send them money
through WeChat.
Or pay your utility bills through WeChat.
Grabbing a coffee on your way to work?
Pay with for it with WeChat.
Rent a bicycle?
It’s on WeChat!
Or be a lazy bum and take a taxi!
That’s also on WeChat!
You can also buy tickets
for a high-speed rail or flight—say,
from Shanghai to Beijing.
When you arrive,
buy movie tickets.
Then find yourself a nice hotel.
All without leaving the WeChat app.
Wow, WeChat is so convenient!
It’s like having a genie in your pocket!
There couldn’t possibly be some kind of horrible,
unforeseen catch, could there?
Just because WeChat knows
who your friends are,
how much money you have,
where you live, where you work,
what kind of food you like,
what kind of movies you watch,
how you like to travel,
and precisely where you happen to be
right now at this exact moment?
Yes, there’s an insane amount of information
about 900 million users
running through WeChat’s servers.
Oh, and guess what?
In order to provide you
with all these great services,
WeChat, “has full permission to activate
microphones and cameras,
track your location,
access your address book and photos,
and copy all of this data
at any time to their servers.”
Now it's true that Google, Apple, and Facebook
also collect large amounts of user data
and have similar permissions.
But in the West,
there are laws protecting privacy.
“In China, there is no such regulation.
On the contrary,
the national-security law
and the new cyber-security law
grant the government access
to almost all personal information.”
So, the horrible catch is that WeChat
is the television from 1984—
the one that’s always watching you.
Only it’s pocket sized,
and you gave it permission
when you signed up.
So what’s wrong with the Chinese government
and Communist Party having access
to all your information?
I think you know the answer to that,
but I’ll give you some examples anyway.
On this show we’ve talked about
how the Chinese Communist Party
wants to create a social ranking system
for every citizen by 2020.
“This ‘social-credit system’
would mobilize technology
to collect information on all citizens
and use that information to rate their behavior,
including financial creditworthiness
and personal conduct.”
Mega apps like WeChat
are how they’re going to do it.
Didn’t clock in for work on time?
Maybe you paid your utility bill a little late.
Hmmm...
you’ve been having a lot of
doctors appointments lately.
And you just bought Zoloft
at the local pharmacy.
WeChat is collecting all this data.
And it’s required by Chinese law
to give it all to the government.
Oh, and don’t think you can
talk freely on WeChat
using its chat function.
WeChat censors politically sensitive topics—
even if you’re using WeChat outside of China.
That’s what Citizen Lab discovered
earlier this year.
They’re a research group
based at the University of Toronto.
Here’s a brief list of things
that are censored on WeChat.
So don’t try mentioning things like:
“Falun Gong”;
Or “Tiananmen June 4”;
Or “Free Tibet”;
Or the oddly specific
“Tough Question + Chinese Authorities Delay Submitting
Supplementary Report + Avoid UN”
If you text someone a forbidden word
or combination of words,
those texts simply won’t go through.
And if that’s all that happens,
you’re lucky.
Let’s say you’re the kind of person
who keeps talking about Falun Gong,
the meditation practice is banned in China.
Maybe you use homophones
to get around the automatic censorship,
so your texts go through.
But still,
you’ve violated WeChat’s Terms of Service.
I think number 5 applies to you:
“Undermining national religious policy,
and promoting cults and feudal superstition.”
Case in point:
In Shaanxi province,
a Falun Gong practitioner named Cai Jinrong
was detained for more than a year.
A couple months ago,
she was finally put before a judge
and told what the chargers were:
“sending messages relating to Falun Gong
on WeChat.”
And in China’s Sichuan province,
a Tibetan man was arrested and jailed
for the heinous crime
of being part of a WeChat group
wishing the Dalai Lama a happy birthday.
So if you think you’re safe
sending private messages to your friends...
YOU ARE NOT SAFE.
WeChat is like the One Ring
from Lord of the Rings.
The moment you put it on,
they know how to find you.
The almost 900 million people using WeChat
are having their every conversation,
every purchase,
every move monitored by a regime
that’s eager to detain them for “subversion.”
But on the other hand, WeChat sure is convenient.
But before you blame WeChat
as the root of all evil,
remember that even powerful genies
have masters.
In order for WeChat—
or really any large company—
to operate in China,
it’s required by law to share data
with Chinese authorities.
And it has to have a Communist Party Secretary
on staff to monitor its operations.
Just last week,
WeChat and several other Chinese mega apps
all found themselves under investigation.
“China’s Cyberspace Administration
accused internet users
of ‘spreading violence, terror,
false rumours, pornography
and other hazards to national security,
public safety,
and social order.’”
But don’t worry about poor WeChat;
they’ll come out of this just fine—
as long as they work even harder
to police their own content
and make sure it doesn’t,
you know,
disrupt China’s social harmony.
So essentially, the CCP uses tactics
like launching scary investigations
to force WeChat and other private Chinese companies
to do the CCP’s bidding.
So how was something as frightening
and all-knowing as WeChat
able to come into being
in the first place?
It’s all thanks to its relationship
with its ultimate master,
the Chinese Communist Party.
WeChat was developed
by the Chinese social media giant
Tencent.
It’s the world’s tenth most valuable
publicly traded company,
so it had a lot money to invest.
But according to Fortune,
Tencent, “would never have grown to that size
were it not for the company’s close relationship
with China’s government.”
You see, when the US allowed China
to join the World Trade Organization in 2001,
it kept the status of a “developing economy.”
That meant China had greater access
to US markets while at the same time,
the Chinese regime got to make a lot of rules
that created an unfair advantage for Chinese firms.
They began “limiting access
or demanding that foreign companies
take on a Chinese partner
and transfer their intellectual property to China
as the price of access.”
In China, plagiarization
is an established business model.
We’re going to talk about that
more after the break.
But suffice it to say,
Tencent and its app WeChat
were able to grow so much
because foreign competitors were mostly kept
out of China,
and those that got in were suppressed.
So this let local Chinese companies
thrive off the foreign technology
they may or may not have stolen.
For example,
“Tencent’s QQ instant messaging [app]
is based on Israel’s ICQ.”
The Chinese Communist Party has a reason
for supporting companies like TenCent.
They call it,
“Made in China 2025.”
I’m assuming they’re using Made in China
as if it were a good thing.
The CCP wants China to become
“the world leader in electric vehicles,
new materials, artificial intelligence,
semiconductors, bio-pharmacy,
5G mobile communications
and other industries.”
So someday, the entire world
can be using Chinese tech like WeChat.
But don’t worry,
there’ll still be Western companies,
and they would never share data
with Chinese authorities.
And coming up after the break,
we’ll have more on all the fun things
that happened because of China’s entry
to the World Trade Organization.
WTO?
You’ll be saying WT-.
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