China’s Mainland Network Control Further Tightened. WeChat Issued a New Censorship Rule

On January 3, local time, according to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) media reports, Tencent Holdings Limited has recently raised its supervision of WeChat users again. To this end, it announced six new blocking rules, including sending “illegal links,” adding third-party plug-ins, and using WeChat to disseminate confidential or sensitive internal information and news, etc. Violators will be permanently blocked by the WeChat platform.

It is reported that since WeChat launch in 2011, it has quickly become one of the most frequently used social networking software by Chinese around the world. Official statistics show that as of September last year, WeChat had 1.2 billion users. But as the CCP’s supervision of the domestic Internet continues to increase, WeChat has gradually become an important channel for the CCP to efficiently control domestic public opinion.According to reports, over the past two years, CCP has been tightening control over technology companies in order to isolate the exchange of information domestic and international while maintaining a lie to the Chinese public. Among these companies, Tencent had been fined six times by the Chinese CCP in July 2021 alone.