Angela Zou hardly writes text messages now. Sitting at her desk in an ad agency, Zou asks her iPhone where to eat. When it buzzes seconds later, she lifts it to her ear for her colleague’s reply. The conversation goes back and forth before they decide on a place for lunch.
Like millions of others across Asia, Zou is using WeChat, a smartphone app developed in China, to send voice messages, snapshots and emoticons to her friends.
Now that its walkie-talkie-style messages have become ubiquitous, she said typing feels like hard work.
WeChat’s popularity has grown dramatically since its launch last year.
Tencent, which developed the app, said in September that its users had doubled in six months to 200 million. Most are in China, though it is being launched across Asia and has users in the US and the UK.
Historically, it has proved difficult for Chinese internet firms to expand beyond the country, but WeChat is being tipped as the first Chinese social media application with the potential to go global.
However, as WeChat grows, politicians and dissidents are voicing concerns. Activists fear that the voice messaging allows security officials to monitor users’ movements in real time, and when the app was launched in Taiwan on Oct. 18, legislators said they feared that it posed a threat to national security, through the potential exposure of private communications.
WeChat is similar to the US-based messaging service WhatsApp, but it does more. An amalgamation of social media tools akin to Twitter, Facebook and Skype, it comes in eight languages.
“I used WhatsApp before I came back to China [from studying abroad] and found all my friends were using WeChat,” said Zou, 25. “Now when I want to contact someone I use WeChat first.”
The app’s features include “Look Around,” which allows users to chat to strangers nearby, while “Moments” works like Instagram.
However, like other social media, WeChat can access users’ contacts, text messages and location via GPS. In China, some fear this could potentially make targeted users susceptible to surveillance.
Hu Jia, a human rights activist jailed for three years on a charge of sedition, suspects that voicemail messages to his friends had been listened to by Guobao officials (China’s internal security bureau).
“I took a chance and assumed WeChat was relatively safe,” he said. “But the Guobao surprised me with their ability to repeat my words or voice messages verbatim.”
Tencent, the country’s biggest internet firm, said: “We have taken user data protection seriously ... and at the same time, like other international peers, we comply with relevant laws in the countries where we have operations.”
Adam Segal, a Council on Foreign Relations cyber-security expert, said: “WeChat shouldn’t be singled out ... many technologies have some type of vulnerability.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese