Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison opened his public WeChat account in 2019 during the election campaign, claiming to want to communicate directly with the Chinese-Australian community to gain a better view of their issues and concerns.
On Monday, reports emerged that Morrison had been blocked since last year from accessing the immensely popular Chinese messaging app. In addition, his photo would have been removed from the account, which would now be under the control of a Chinese company, under a new name.
The posts are still there, as are his 76,000 followers. But the episode, initially reported by the Daily Telegraph in Australia, drew an angry reaction from members of the ruling party, some of whom described the case as a kidnapping.
Other conservative politicians have accused the Chinese social media platform of trying to interfere in Australia’s upcoming federal election by suppressing free speech — of Scott Morrison, presumably. The episode also sparked discussions about whether lawmakers should use WeChat to communicate with the country’s 1.2 million Chinese residents.
A spokesman for the prime minister declined to comment on the matter. The incident represented yet another tense chapter in the increasingly strained diplomatic relations between Australia and China.
James Paterson, senator from the Liberal Party — Morrison’s — and director of the powerful Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, said in a statement that the takeover of the account was an effort by the Chinese Communist Party to “interfere with our democracy and silence our freedom of speech.” “.
He pointed out that opposition leader Anthony Albanese still has his WeChat account. “We cannot let an authoritarian foreign government interfere with our democracy and determine the terms of public debate in Australia,” he said. Albanese, for his part, said that the news of his rival’s problems with the app is “really concerning”, but did not go so far as to promise that he will boycott the platform.
There is no direct evidence that the Communist Party contributed to the loss of Morrison’s account. When senior Chinese officials fall under Beijing’s displeasure, it is common for their social media profiles to disappear and for censors to delete references to them or their posts.
WeChat belongs to the tech giant Tencent. With 1.26 billion users worldwide, the app is widely used by Chinese people at home and abroad to communicate with friends and family, read the news, make payments and more. It has already been used to spread disinformation and political propaganda from the Chinese government, and it is known that there is censorship of content on the platform.
Former US President Donald Trump tried to ban Chinese-owned WeChat and TikTok from operating in the United States, calling them a threat to national security. A federal judge later issued an injunction barring the veto.
In a note confirming the changes made to Morrison’s account, Tencent said there was no evidence of hacking or third-party interference. “It appears to be a dispute over who owns the account.”
But there is still much that is not known about how the transfer took place. For a public WeChat account to change hands, the owner must fill out a paper form, which must be recognized by a notary public and submitted to WeChat, according to Tencent’s website. The report was unable to contact the Chinese Cyberspace Administration, which manages national internet affairs.
Zhao Lijian, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, told a Monday night news conference that he was not privy to the specific facts about Morrison’s account, but added: “The charge of China interference is nothing more than baseless slander and defamation. . We have no interest in interfering in other countries and we do not.”
James Paterson said that Morrison’s team started having problems logging into the account in mid-2021. The Australian government wrote to WeChat asking the platform to restore the profile, but according to the lawmaker this was to no avail. Scott Morrison’s last post dates from July last year, when the prime minister presented an economic support plan offered to Chinese residents in Australia who lost their jobs with restrictions imposed because of the pandemic.
Due to WeChat rules, which require public accounts to be registered by a person of Chinese nationality, Morrison had registered his profile through a Chinese intermediary.
According to publicly accessible information, the account name changed in October 2021 from ScottMorrison2019 to Aus-Chinese New Living. In November, Tencent verified Fuzhou 985 Information Technology, a software company based in Fujian province, as the new owner of the profile — which now says it offers information to overseas Chinese about life in Australia.
Tencent confirmed the transfer. “The account in question was originally registered by an individual from the People’s Republic of China and was subsequently transferred to its current holder, a technology services company,” it said in a statement. Over the phone, Huang Aipeng, Fuzhou 985’s legal representative, said the company now owns the WeChat profile, but insisted he had no idea the previous owner was the premier of Australia. “We didn’t know what this public account was used for.”
