what do you get when you combine

Venmo, Uber, Fandango,

and the TV screens from 1984?

Stay tuned.

We'll chat about it.

Hey, good to see you again.

I'm Chris Chappell.

What's the first thing you think of

when you see this?

If you're like me, it was,

“What is that boy doing on the moon

and what sinister plot does he have

against the Earth?!”

It turns out it's just the login screen for WeChat.

You might not have heard of WeChat

if you're like most people

watching this show outside of China.

And if you're inside of China—

what are you doing illegally watching

subversive content on YouTube?

Anyway, WeChat is the biggest mobile app

in China right now—

and one of the biggest in the world.

It has close to 900 million active users worldwide.

So what the heck is WeChat

and why is it so successful?

And should you be afraid?

Well, I'm in the media,

so it's my job to make you afraid.

Now it's a bit hard to describe WeChat.

That's because there's no app in the West

that does all the things WeChat does.

WeChat started out in 2011

as a basic text messaging app.

Today, it does basically

everything you can imagine.

Yes, you can chat with your friends...

But also, you can send them money

through WeChat.

Or pay your utility bills through WeChat.

Grabbing a coffee on your way to work?

Pay with for it with WeChat.

Rent a bicycle?

It's on WeChat!

Or be a lazy bum and take a taxi!

That's also on WeChat!

You can also buy tickets

for a high-speed rail or flight—say,

from Shanghai to Beijing.

When you arrive,

buy movie tickets.

Then find yourself a nice hotel.

All without leaving the WeChat app.

Wow, WeChat is so convenient!

It's like having a genie in your pocket!

There couldn't possibly be some kind of horrible,

unforeseen catch, could there?

Just because WeChat knows

who your friends are,

how much money you have,

where you live, where you work,

what kind of food you like,

what kind of movies you watch,

how you like to travel,

and precisely where you happen to be

right now at this exact moment?

Yes, there's an insane amount of information

about 900 million users

running through WeChat's servers.

Oh, and guess what?

In order to provide you

with all these great services,

WeChat, “has full permission to activate

microphones and cameras,

track your location,

access your address book and photos,

and copy all of this data

at any time to their servers.”

Now it's true that Google, Apple, and Facebook

also collect large amounts of user data

and have similar permissions.

But in the West,

there are laws protecting privacy.

“In China, there is no such regulation.

On the contrary,

the national-security law

and the new cyber-security law

grant the government access

to almost all personal information.”

So, the horrible catch is that WeChat

is the television from 1984—

the one that's always watching you.

Only it's pocket sized,

and you gave it permission

when you signed up.

So what's wrong with the Chinese government

and Communist Party having access

to all your information?

I think you know the answer to that,

but I'll give you some examples anyway.

On this show we've talked about

how the Chinese Communist Party

wants to create a social ranking system

for every citizen by 2020.

“This 'social-credit system'

would mobilize technology

to collect information on all citizens

and use that information to rate their behavior,

including financial creditworthiness

and personal conduct.”

Mega apps like WeChat

are how they're going to do it.

Didn't clock in for work on time?

Maybe you paid your utility bill a little late.

Hmmm...

you've been having a lot of

doctors appointments lately.

And you just bought Zoloft

at the local pharmacy.

WeChat is collecting all this data.

And it's required by Chinese law

to give it all to the government.

Oh, and don't think you can

talk freely on WeChat

using its chat function.

WeChat censors politically sensitive topics—

even if you're using WeChat outside of China.

That's what Citizen Lab discovered

earlier this year.

They're a research group

based at the University of Toronto.

Here's a brief list of things

that are censored on WeChat.

So don't try mentioning things like:

“Falun Gong”;

Or “Tiananmen June 4”;

Or “Free Tibet”;

Or the oddly specific

“Tough Question + Chinese Authorities Delay Submitting

Supplementary Report + Avoid UN”

If you text someone a forbidden word

or combination of words,

those texts simply won't go through.

And if that's all that happens,

you're lucky.

Let's say you're the kind of person

who keeps talking about Falun Gong,

the meditation practice is banned in China.

Maybe you use homophones

to get around the automatic censorship,

so your texts go through.

But still,

you've violated WeChat's Terms of Service.

I think number 5 applies to you:

“Undermining national religious policy,

and promoting cults and feudal superstition.”

Case in point:

In Shaanxi province,

a Falun Gong practitioner named Cai Jinrong

was detained for more than a year.

A couple months ago,

she was finally put before a judge

and told what the chargers were:

“sending messages relating to Falun Gong

on WeChat.”

And in China's Sichuan province,

a Tibetan man was arrested and jailed

for the heinous crime

of being part of a WeChat group

wishing the Dalai Lama a happy birthday.

So if you think you're safe

sending private messages to your friends...

YOU ARE NOT SAFE.

WeChat is like the One Ring

from Lord of the Rings.

The moment you put it on,

they know how to find you.

The almost 900 million people using WeChat

are having their every conversation,

every purchase,

every move monitored by a regime

that's eager to detain them for “subversion.”

But on the other hand, WeChat sure is convenient.

But before you blame WeChat

as the root of all evil,

remember that even powerful genies

have masters.

In order for WeChat—

or really any large company—

to operate in China,

it's required by law to share data

with Chinese authorities.

And it has to have a Communist Party Secretary

on staff to monitor its operations.

Just last week,

WeChat and several other Chinese mega apps

all found themselves under investigation.

“China's Cyberspace Administration

accused internet users

of 'spreading violence, terror,

false rumours, pornography

and other hazards to national security,

public safety,

and social order.'”

But don't worry about poor WeChat;

they'll come out of this just fine—

as long as they work even harder

to police their own content

and make sure it doesn't,

you know,

disrupt China's social harmony.

So essentially, the CCP uses tactics

like launching scary investigations

to force WeChat and other private Chinese companies

to do the CCP's bidding.

So how was something as frightening

and all-knowing as WeChat

able to come into being

in the first place?

It's all thanks to its relationship

with its ultimate master,

the Chinese Communist Party.

WeChat was developed

by the Chinese social media giant

Tencent.

It's the world's tenth most valuable

publicly traded company,

so it had a lot money to invest.

But according to Fortune,

Tencent, “would never have grown to that size

were it not for the company's close relationship

with China's government.”

You see, when the US allowed China

to join the World Trade Organization in 2001,

it kept the status of a “developing economy.”

That meant China had greater access

to US markets while at the same time,

the Chinese regime got to make a lot of rules

that created an unfair advantage for Chinese firms.

They began “limiting access

or demanding that foreign companies

take on a Chinese partner

and transfer their intellectual property to China

as the price of access.”

In China, plagiarization

is an established business model.

We're going to talk about that

more after the break.

But suffice it to say,

Tencent and its app WeChat

were able to grow so much

because foreign competitors were mostly kept

out of China,

and those that got in were suppressed.

So this let local Chinese companies

thrive off the foreign technology

they may or may not have stolen.

For example,

“Tencent's QQ instant messaging [app]

is based on Israel's ICQ.”

The Chinese Communist Party has a reason

for supporting companies like TenCent.

They call it,

“Made in China 2025.”

I'm assuming they're using Made in China

as if it were a good thing.

The CCP wants China to become

“the world leader in electric vehicles,

new materials, artificial intelligence,

semiconductors, bio-pharmacy,

5G mobile communications

and other industries.”

So someday, the entire world

can be using Chinese tech like WeChat.

But don't worry,

there'll still be Western companies,

and they would never share data

with Chinese authorities.

And coming up after the break,

we'll have more on all the fun things

that happened because of China's entry

to the World Trade Organization.