Lessons From China on the Coronavirus and the Dangers of App Consolidation

While quarantined in her Wuhan apartment for days on end, the woman who calls herself “Sister Ma” suddenly found herself blocked from her account on WeChat, a platform used by more than 1 billion people in China. Without WeChat, she was cut off from communication with friends and family, the ability to order critical supplies, and contact with her children’s school. “My life is falling apart,” she wrote on a now-deleted but archived message on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. Others who found themselves in the same situation described losing all of their digital documents, professional contacts, and access to their digital cash and paid media subscriptions. Tencent, the company that owns WeChat, has been using keywords—like using coronavirus in conjunction with U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or epidemic spread plus Xi Jinping—to silence unwanted discussions of the coronavirus on WeChat, with potentially negative effects on health and safety. But the censorship extends much further than this message-by-message suppression. As Sister Ma’s story demonstrates, Tencent also has been shutting down and suspending the WeChat accounts of those who critique the government’s handling of the virus, and not just in China. Account shutdowns and suspensions in the United States, Europe, and Canada highlight both the growing reach—and power—of China’s chilling suppression apparatus. Once kicked off WeChat, users are often cut off from communiciation with friends and relatives still in China.