China’s Magic Hand of Political Censorship Reaches into the U.S.

Many WeChat users in the U.S. are reacting to the censorship of their speech as China’s political censorship hand reaches into the U.S.

The U.S. Department of Commerce took down WeChat last September for threatening national security, but the court stayed the ban and WeChat users in the U.S. can still use the App normally. Some Chinese dissidents in exile in the U.S. have voiced support for Trump‘s blocking order on Chinese apps such as WeChat.

The Washington Post pointed out on July 7 that WeChat’s magic hand of censoring user postings has even reached into the United States, with accounts registered in the U.S. also reportedly blocked or even deleted by WeChat for inexplicable reasons, and friends unable to see the content.

Zhou Feng, a Chinese democracy activist who participated in the June 4 Movement and was forced into exile in the U.S., told the China Post that he had posted a tribute to Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo on his WeChat account registered in the U.S. Even though he could see the post on his status page, his friends said they could not see the content, meaning the post had been blocked by WeChat. He also described WeChat as a “prison” and said banning it would be inconvenient for Chinese immigrants, but he still supports Trump’s blocking order.

The WaPo said that in addition to Zhou Feng, many WeChat users in the U.S. have had similar experiences, as long as they post content on the platform that upsets China, they will be censored and blocked, and some even can no longer log into their accounts because they criticize China on it.

In response, Tencent spokesman Sean Durkin said that the overseas version of WeChat and the domestic version belong to two related but somewhat different “sister companies” and that each must comply with the relevant regulations of the jurisdictions in which they operate, saying that if users of the overseas version send messages to users of the domestic version, the content is naturally restricted by the relevant Chinese regulations.

Jeffrey Knockel, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, said they found that WeChat not only censors Chinese users, but also overseas users, and that even if a device is bought and an account created in the United States, the content posted is still subject to Tencent’s supervision. At the same time, he further said, Tencent used the overseas data it received to strengthen monitoring of messages circulating on WeChat in China and to screen so-called “sensitive content.