Foreign Policy: Why is the United States banning WeChat and Tik Tok?

The White House issued two new executive orders on Thursday evening, effectively banning any US transactions with the Chinese social media apps TikTok and WeChat.

In a report published by the US Foreign Policy magazine, writer James Palmer said that this decision was taken under the international economic emergency law, on which the US sanctions program is based, and that it was perhaps the most important decision among the set of measures taken against China by the US government in recent weeks.

What is WeChat? How important is banning it?

The author pointed out that the new restrictions imposed on the famous "Tik Tok" application enhance the possibility of selling it within a short period to the American software giant Microsoft, which has expressed its interest in purchasing the application, while it may be easy to acquire the international version of "Tik Tok" from the Chinese company. WeChat doesn't change, whether in the US or China.

According to the report, "WeChat" is of great importance in China, where it was initially just a chat program and later became a stand-alone platform that combines the features of many applications such as Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Uber Eats.

The report added that it is an easy-to-use application, and provides a payment service common in Chinese cities, and even for identity systems that represent an important part of life in China - especially since the spread of the Corona virus - it has become integrated into the application.

However, WeChat has not achieved the same success as TikTok outside China, due to the difficulty of understanding most of its features without knowledge of the Chinese language, or in many cases without having a recognized Chinese identity.

WeChat's dominance in China is partly explained by the fact that this country has left little room for competition, as it banned all foreign social media for a decade or so.

What is the impact of the new restrictions?

The magazine's report indicated that the actual impact of the ban is not entirely clear, as is the case in many decisions issued by the White House. The decision regarding WeChat was so poorly worded that it appears as if it includes all dealings with Tencent. Tencent, the owner of the app, which could hurt huge sectors of the tech economy, but White House officials have made clear that it is only a matter of WeChat alone.

He also indicated that the most likely way to implement the ban is to force Apple and Google to delete the two applications from electronic application stores, and thus delete them completely from users' phones.

Despite this, users can continue to run an unsupported application, or use a VPN to access app stores of another country, but this process is complicated and annoying, and since both companies are based in the United States, the ban is likely to be applied effectively to International level too.

 Isn't Apple an important company in China as well?

According to the magazine's report, Apple's sales of phones amount to more than 3 million iPhones in China per month, making this country the second largest market for the company after the United States, and if Apple is forced to remove WeChat from the Chinese version of the store Applications That could represent a potential knockdown to the California-based tech giant.

The company's history indicates a lot of obedience to the orders of the Chinese authorities, according to the author. It has abandoned its principles to remove protest applications in Hong Kong, and Apple is likely to do everything it can to avoid a scenario in which consumers may be forced to choose between iPhones and the WeChat application.

Do these applications represent a threat to US national security?

The magazine's report explained that the applications "WeChat" and "TikTok" work as spyware, as they collect huge data about users, but American applications such as Facebook do the same thing, and China has stronger data protection laws compared to the United States, but the problem lies in the fact that this Laws become ineffective once the government intervenes, as under China's National Security Law, companies must hand over that data to the state.

The writer pointed out that the "WeChat" application is subject to intense censorship like all Chinese social media platforms, especially foreign accounts.

Since it is a popular application among Chinese immigrants, it forms a major part of the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to control the population of Chinese origin around the world.

What are the worst affected?

The writer pointed out that millions of people abroad use WeChat as a basic tool for communicating with friends and family in China, who are prevented by Chinese policies from using any other social media platforms, and for this reason this application plays an important emotional and practical role in the lives of Chinese abroad.

China's abuse of the ban

Regarding China's reaction to the ban, the writer said that the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman denounced the United States' use of national security as a pretext to ban the two applications, and accused the Trump administration of using state power to suppress non-American companies, despite the fact that China has long banned the use of both Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and you cannot access the non-Chinese Internet without contacting a VPN assistant in China.