The Municipal Bureau of Justice in Karamay, Xinjiang posted—and later deleted—a skit to Douyin (Chinese TikTok) boasting thatWeChat automatically records user activity and shares it with law enforcement. The short video skit warned against sharing pornography and engaging in other unspecified “illegal activity” on WeChat. CDT has translated the skit in full:
Liang Yong (LY): Woah, cool!
Boss Fei (F): What’s up, Liang Yong?
LY: Boss Fei, WeChat has started automatically reporting illegal activity.
F: Yes, that’s right! If you use WeChat to send pornographic videos or engage in other illegal activity, the app will screenshot and record evidence, and then share it with law enforcement agencies. Trying to delete it afterwards is pointless.
LY: Technology is the new black magic: it leaves criminals with nowhere to hide. [Chinese]
Xinjiang residents are subject to intense digital surveillance, including spot phone searches that criminalize digital copies of the Koran as signs of extremism. Karamay is a particularly sensitive place. It was the site of one of the greatest tragedies in modern Chinese history. In 1994, 325 students died after a fire broke out during the performance of a variety show for visiting cadres. The high death toll was attributed to a command, issued by an unknown adult in the audience, telling the students: “Everyone sit down. Don’t move. Let the leaders leave first!” Discussion of the fire is strictly censored within China. In the early days of China’s “zero-COVID” policy, a WeChat blogger who noted the similarities between the fire hazards created by pandemic lockdowns and those that exacerbated the death toll of the 1994 fire was interrogated by police. The prescient observation did not spur change and, in 2022, a fire killed at least 10 people in a locked-down Urumqi apartment building. The latter fire sparked mass anti-lockdown protests across China that veered, in some instances, towards anti-Xi Jinping, pro-democracy demonstrations.
(To learn more about the 1994 Karamay fire and its lasting political salience, consider purchasing a copy of the 2023 China Digital Times Lexicon.)
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