China has partially blocked the WhatsApp messaging service, as authorities tighten their grip on the Internet ahead of a major leadership reshuffle in Beijing.
Photographic, video and voice messages sent by the Guardian from Beijing were all blocked yesterday, but text messages were not affected. Dozens of users in China complained of a total ban on sending any type of messages on WhatsApp.
The ban comes as Chinese officials prepare for a twice-a-decade leadership shuffle later this year, with various factions within the Chinese Communist Party jockeying for control of key positions and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) likely to further consolidate power.
China operates the world’s largest censorship system, known as the Great Firewall, blocking thousands of Web sites including platforms such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, YouTube and a host of foreign news outlets.
Xi, who came to power five years ago, has pushed for tighter government controls on what information Chinese citizens inside the country can access in the name of “cybersovereignty.”
In China, WhatsApp pales in popularity compared with homegrown messaging service WeChat, which has more than 900 million users, but the US app is increasingly being used by Chinese concerned about privacy or those communicating with friends or business contacts abroad.
While WhatsApp encrypts all messages, WeChat conversations are routinely monitored.
“It would not be surprising to find that everything on WhatsApp gets blocked, forcing users in China to use unencrypted, monitored and censored services like WeChat,” a Chinese censorship researcher known only by the pseudonym Charlie Smith said.
Before this week’s ban, WhatsApp was the only service owned by Facebook still accessible within China.
The social network has been blocked since ethnic riots in China’s far west in 2009, and Instagram was banned during pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2014.
Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has made a high-profile push to get the company’s services unblocked, showering praise on Xi and other Chinese officials, but has little to show for his efforts so far.
Chinese authorities previously blocked messaging app Telegram after it became popular with the country’s human-rights lawyers.
Chinese censors were able to block messages and images in real time sent in private one-on-one chats in WeChat, a report by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said.
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