By Chuin-Wei Yap
BEIJING -- China is putting fresh pressure on the popular
smartphone messaging application WeChat and others like it, as
authorities amp up a crackdown on the country's lively social
media.
Three government agencies will conduct a month-long "special
operation" to monitor the app, owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd., and
its competitors, the official Xinhua news agency said on
Tuesday.
"Some people have used this platform as a means to spread
objectionable, illegal and harmful information to the public,"
Xinhua said. The report singled out WeChat and said its users and
those of other mobile instant messaging services now number more
than 800 million in China.
Compared with China's Twitter-like microblog services,
WeChat--which allows users to circulate messages among groups of
people--has drawn relatively less attention from the authorities.
Other similar messaging apps include WhatsApp, Japan's Line and
Tencent's QQ.
The latest tightening steps up a campaign that began last year
to blunt the influence of social media giants in shaping public
opinion, casting a pall over a rising number of online avenues for
public debate.
The State Council, China's cabinet, didn't respond to a call for
comment. Neither did the Ministry of Industry and Information
Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, or the State Internet
Information Office, the three agencies charged with carrying out
the campaign.
Tencent representatives didn't immediately respond to requests
for comment.
The clampdown on messaging apps comes just before next week's
politically touchy 25th anniversary of the military's quelling of
the Tiananmen Square protests. It also comes as the government
grapples with an uptick in bombings and violent attacks it says are
instigated by separatists from China's western region of
Xinjiang.
Xinjiang's government news website reported Monday that suspects
nabbed in recent antiterror sweeps included people who allegedly
kept up with training and indoctrination via text messages and
WeChat, among other social media.
In reining in social media, government methods have run the
gamut from simple warnings to detentions and interrogation of
high-profile social-media figures. Beijing has also expanded its
criminal laws to make it easier to prosecute people for their
online activity, in what official watchdogs have described as "the
purification of the online environment."
The crackdown has so far been most pronounced on Sina Corp.,
which runs the country's biggest Twitter-like microblogging
service, Weibo Corp. Authorities at one point detained one of
Weibo's most popular luminaries, a Chinese-American venture
capitalist, on unrelated charges before releasing him seven months
later.
Traffic on microblogs dipped in the wake of the detention and
anti-rumor campaign, and users migrated to smaller virtual-meeting
places, a leading venue among which was WeChat, analysts say.
The Xinhua report on Tuesday, which was attributed to an unnamed
official from the State Internet Information Office, said the
government's "special operation" was now focused on mobile
messaging apps' platform for mass release of information. Such
apps, including rival services like WhatsApp or Line, typically
have functions that allow the mass dissemination of messages.
Messages on such apps aren't released into the public sphere like
Weibo or Twitter posts, but can nevertheless potentially reach
thousands of other users directly linked to the sender, or more if
the message is subsequently forwarded.
The government is targeting "rumor spreading," violence, terror,
fraud and pornography flowing through these apps, Xinhua said.
Last month, the government stripped Sina of two
online-publication and distribution licenses. It said Sina was
found to have released 20 articles and four videos that contained
lewd content.
It may have been just a matter of time before Beijing turned its
guns on WeChat. The service has more than 350 million users,
compared with 144 million for Weibo, according to the
companies.
It is unclear how the government plans to police WeChat. In
Tuesday's article, authorities are calling for tipsters to call or
email them. Unlike Weibo, where users' posts are essentially
public, WeChat's version of public messages are typically confined
to smaller social groups.
Tencent in March deleted at least 30 popular accounts that send
news updates to users on its WeChat mobile messaging application,
in a move users criticized as censorship. Tencent said at the time
it "continually reviews and takes measures on suspicious cases of
spam, violent, pornographic and illegal content."
Yang Jie contributed to this article.
Write to Chuin-Wei Yap at chuin-wei.yap@wsj.com
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