WeChat has only hours left to respond to an Australian government inquiry after it refused to front a parliamentary inquiry earlier this month.
Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, Senator James Paterson, said that he has sent WeChat detailed series of questions after it failed to appear to give evidence.
“WeChat and its parent company Tencent demonstrated contempt for the Parliament of Australia through its refusal to appear before the Committee last week, but has now ‘committed to providing responsive information to the Committee in writing.’ I intend to hold them to that commitment,” Senator Paterson said in a media release on July 17.
“WeChat has until Friday, 21 July 2023, to provide a response.”
A Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app, WeChat, alternatively known as Weixin, was developed by major conglomerate Tencent.
Globally it was used by over 1.2 billion active users in the month of September 2020, with around 690,000 daily active users in Australia (pdf).
The senator said that the Committee had sent WeChat 53 questions about its ties to the Chinese Communist Party, whether it censors content critical of the CCP, if it promotes CCP propaganda, and if the app is used to “surveil and target Australian users critical of the regime.”
The company was also asked about its data storage locations, connection to state-owned media outlets, and how many registered users it currently has on both Weixin and WeChat in Australia.
“If WeChat fails to directly answer the Committee’s questions and believes these recommendations are unfavourable to its interests, it will have no one to blame but itself,” the senator said.
WeChat’s Disregard for Democratic Process: Senator
WeChat’s refusal to front the inquiry was criticised by Mr. Paterson.
“WeChat and its parent company, Tencent, continue to show contempt for the Parliament of Australia by refusing to appear before the Senate Select Committee, despite being now invited on four occasions,” he told a press conference on July 11.
Mr. Paterson noted that WeChat was the only major social media company that refused to attend the hearings.
“If they continue to refuse to appear, then the committee will have to draw inferences about them and their conduct,” he said.
WeChat Interfering Politically in Other Countries, Expert Says
Seth Kaplan, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, who advises organisations such as the United Nations, U.S. State Department, and the OECD, told the parliamentary inquiry that WeChat posed a bigger risk than Chinese music app TikTok.
“Everything that we fear about what TikTok may become already is occurring on WeChat,” Mr. Kaplan said.
“Narratives are managed, information in there is managed, dissenting views are demoted or eliminated, and it’s basically a narrative machine for the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and what it wants to promote similar to what actually happens in China.”
Mr. Kaplan also told the inquiry that he was most concerned about the way the CCP is using the social media app to directly interfere in societies politically.
He cited a case from Toronto, Canada, where a political information campaign on WeChat saw a significant shift in the votes for a candidate in a district where there was a heavy Chinese migrant presence because the candidate was critical of the CCP.
He also said it was occurring at state and local levels, which are more vulnerable than their federal counterpart.
“For the bills, for example, that are currently being debated on land sales, or technology, WeChat is managing information, helping to mobilise Chinese speakers and then basically seeking coalition partners among the non-Chinese language speaking civil society, and all of this basically is direct interference in the politics of the country.
“Instead of your democracy being a debate among people who live in the country, there’s an additional voice that plays a large part in the conversation. And that voice is controlled by a foreign government that does not have your best interests at heart,” he warned.
