{"id":61219,"date":"2020-12-10T14:30:18","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T03:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=61219"},"modified":"2020-12-10T13:16:35","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T02:16:35","slug":"censorship-risks-and-electoral-impact-australias-major-parties-need-to-drop-wechat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/censorship-risks-and-electoral-impact-australias-major-parties-need-to-drop-wechat\/","title":{"rendered":"Censorship risks and electoral impact: Australia\u2019s major parties need to drop WeChat"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Scott Morrison demanded three things in his emotionally charged press conference about \u2018that tweet\u2019 last week. One: an apology, two: that the Chinese government remove foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian\u2019s post, and three: that Twitter remove the post.<\/p>\n

None of the demands were met. Instead, even as the prime minister\u2019s fulmination over Beijing\u2019s deliberate provocation was still echoing around the world, the only post that was removed was his own statement on the issue that his team had posted to the Chinese social media platform WeChat.<\/p>\n

In the now-censored post, Morrison delivered a message he should have led with in the first place. He said that Australia was a \u2018free, democratic\u2019 country and was using an \u2018honest and transparent process\u2019 to deal with the allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u2018Where there are alleged events that have taken place that require action, well we have set up the honest and transparent processes for that to take place. That is what a free, democratic, liberal country does\u2019, he wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Morrison\u2019s comments were replaced with a notice from WeChat saying the post involved \u2018the use of words, pictures, videos\u2019 that would \u2018incite, mislead and violate objective facts, fabricating social hot topics, distorting historical events and confusing the public\u2019.<\/p>\n

But when the prime minister was asked if he was making \u2018representations\u2019 to Twitter and WeChat about their content-moderation decisions, he told reporters it was a matter for the social media companies.<\/p>\n

\u2018We have made our views clear on that and they can make an explanation of their action if they choose to make one\u2019, he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Deleting the social media post of Australia\u2019s leader would seem to be a fairly drastic move that would warrant a stern and strident reaction and a demand for an explanation. So why was Morrison\u2019s response to this apparent act of censorship so limp?<\/p>\n

One reason is clear. What WeChat did was totally within its rules, and the prime minister knows it.<\/p>\n

Morrison has known for at least a year and a half that, because his account is registered to an unnamed man in Fujian province, any message he posts from it is subject to China\u2019s censorship rules<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The PM is not alone. When the ABC looked into the situation in April 2019, it found no less than a dozen accounts operated by Australian politicians that were registered to random people in the People\u2019s Republic of China.<\/p>\n

The Australian politicians who have set up their WeChat accounts this way are actually in breach of the platform\u2019s terms and conditions. Under WeChat\u2019s rules<\/a>, \u2018the initial registration applicant shall not donate, borrow, rent, transfer or sell the Weixin [WeChat] account, nor permit any non-initial registration applicant to use the Weixin account\u2019. That means they could be shut down at a moment\u2019s notice, even during a hotly contested election, for example.<\/p>\n

Aside from the fact that this arrangement opens up politicians to censorship from Beijing, it also puts the PRC nationals in whose names the accounts are registered in serious danger.<\/p>\n

If one of these politicians were inclined to post a message that crossed one of Beijing\u2019s many political red lines\u2014as the prime minister did last week\u2014the account owner could be detained by Chinese authorities.<\/p>\n

In fact, just a couple of days after the prime minister\u2019s WeChat account was censored, the Victorian Liberal Party\u2019s WeChat account was stripped of its name<\/a> by the platform for breaking its rules.<\/p>\n

That account is tied to a Shanghai-based company that is registered to Locky Ge, the founder and chief executive of fintech company RoyalPay, a Melbourne-based start-up which has partnered with Tencent <\/a>(WeChat\u2019s parent company) to roll out WeChat payment to Australian consumers.<\/p>\n

So why are politicians and political parties so willing to put themselves in a position where they could be censored by Beijing and endanger the safety of Chinese citizens?<\/p>\n

After all, they could mitigate some of these concerns if, instead of using what\u2019s referred to on WeChat as a \u2018subscription account\u2019 (\u8ba2\u9605\u53f7), which requires registration via a Chinese national third party, they used a \u2018service account\u2019 (\u670d\u52a1\u53f7), which does not.<\/p>\n

The reason they don\u2019t do this? Simple. A \u2018subscription account\u2019 allows for<\/a> one push-notification-enabled article a day. A \u2018service account\u2019 only allows for four push-notification-enabled articles a month.<\/p>\n

The Australian Labor Party, presumably by contacting Tencent directly, has attempted to strike a balance between these security and censorship concerns and its electoral need to communicate directly with Chinese-Australian voters. Labor has a \u2018subscription account\u2019 that anomalously is not registered to anyone.<\/p>\n

Clearly, WeChat does not provide a level playing field. Australia\u2019s two major parties find themselves in a classic prisoner\u2019s dilemma: if either of them makes too much of a fuss about Tencent\u2019s lack of transparency, they could be penalised by the platform and give their domestic political opponents a distinct electoral advantage.<\/p>\n

That advantage isn\u2019t trivial. There are several marginal seats at the federal level in Australia (and more at the state level) with large numbers of WeChat-using Chinese-Australian voters in them. Chisholm in Victoria and Banks, and Reid and Bennelong in New South Wales are prime examples. When the difference between being in government and being in opposition comes down to a handful of seats, the use of WeChat could potentially be decisive.<\/p>\n

With the next federal election likely to be held in 2022, now would be a good time for the Liberal and Labor parties to mutually agree to stop using WeChat as a campaign channel and to start work on bipartisan legislation to properly regulate<\/a> this influential platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Morrison demanded three things in his emotionally charged press conference about \u2018that tweet\u2019 last week. 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