I was explaining what it's like to live in China to someone and it's like explaining a dystopian cyberpunk novel, but with a level of surrealism and just plain absurdity. A Gibson novel filtered through some Philip K. Dick. You have a gigantic surveillance state with unprecedented reach and control...banning people from referencing a cartoon bear. You have a society with an extremely sophisticated cashless economy——beggars will take WeChat Pay——yet no clean water and horrible pollution.
I met a guy who said he lived in Shenzhen a while, and said that J-walking would get you an automatic deduction from your wechat pay account, assuming you were in front of a camera.
Oh come on. Pollution is highly localised. Yeah, there's a few bad cities but it's a big place and 99% of it is fine. And no clean water, really? That will be news to the billion plus inhabitants who haven't realised they're dead yet from lack of clean water, sixth sense style.
Nit picking aside - that surveillance state is maybe 5 years ahead of the west. I'm continually amazed that western governments have allowed strongly encrypted private communications to become a thing, even an expectation - this is totally unprecedented and a radical upset to the balance of power between the state and its citizens. I expect it's only a matter of time before strong end to end encryption is totally banned in the west, too.
I absolutely hate WeChat (not necessarily just for the reasons in the article, but many other technical reasons) but I'm forced to use it because all of my friends and my entire social life happens on it. And I live in the Bay Area. If I don't use it I would basically be locking myself up in a prison where I would never see my friends.
Even the majority of my friends who work at Facebook and Google use WeChat to organize social events. Hell, I've visited friends at Facebook's HQ and had to tell them by WeChat that I'm downstairs in the lobby.
I personally totally get why this happens, and the network effect is so strong that my first instinct to contact my friends is via WeChat as well. I too organize social events on WeChat, because I know my friends don't really check anything else, so in the process, I too am guilty of propagating this network effect.
I still hate the app though. I just don't hate it enough to want to ditch my social life.
sticker: gifs and emojis all shares the same sticker format. It has natively features for taking, editing and converting photos and videos directly into stickers. Generally, i find memes work a lot better in wechat.
reliability: voice and video calling is buttery smooth. I've taken wechat calls internationally between china, taiwan, us, canada, australia and france. The service is always great even in some rural areas.
consistency: it works on almost all phones of all price ranges. Maybe it's because lower tier phones are of chinese brands and they have closer collaboration with wechat. The point is that wechat works the same on a $100 dollar phone as it does the iphone.
convenience: this one is domestic to china. wechat has mini programs, which are basically web services that make native app obsolete. For example, there is an wechat version of airBNB and it works exactly like the native app. Wechat handles all of the authentication and transaction. There is no need to register for anything!
"I absolutely hate WeChat (not necessarily just for the reasons in the article, but many other technical reasons) but I'm forced to use it because all of my friends and my entire social life happens on it."
Genuinely curious - is there a non-app (ie., plain SMS) interface to wechat ?
There is a plain SMS interaction layer for groupme and because I host my own phone service at twilio, I have total control over messaging to groupme groups because I can just interact with groupme on the command line ...
I used to hold a kind of naive hope that the ham fisted Party would eventually be replaced with democracy. I remember back in 2011 my friends that were placed in moderately distinguished positions were sending their kids to Canada to collect foreign dual citizenship, fully expecting the collapse of the PRC in their lifetime.
But now I think the Party is too good at maintaining itself. It's augmented by technology like WeChat to know exactly what is going on across the whole country. Access to dissident conversations will make it even easier to tailor the kind of subtle propaganda they're getting very good at.
Will the PRC just continue to exist as it is, forever? My last remaining hope is for massive power grabs by xi jinping (already happening), followed by government ineptitude as he ages and underlings squabble, followed by chaos upon his death. Beyond that I can't see any way out.
Maybe there's a third option aside from continue the state quo or convert fully into a democracy? Maybe the party can evolve into something that's more and more benevolent to the people it governs?
As a Chinese who emigrated because of the many social problems of China, I'm not sure switching to democracy right now will be beneficial for regular Chinese. You've all heard stories about how bad mannered Chinese tourists are, but those are still somehow better than the average Chinese I'd say. Think about people who still eat shark fins today, who have no problem buying rhino horns or pangolin skins. (there are more extreme stuff, one example: https://www.animalsasia.org/intl/media/news/news-archive/fiv...). If you ever visited mainland China you probably noticed many public restrooms have no toilet paper. Some places tried to put toilet paper in but people would steal all of them right after.
I am not sure democracy can work with people like that. I fear it wont. I fear not enough educated/informed people will make democratic decisions that are harmful to themselves. I fear a democratic China will become the next Russia, the next Brazil, the next Turkey. At least the current party has done more poverty fighting than most of the third world democratic countries. (data available on world bank website)
Does China have problems? Absolutely. The question is if you really understand what are the problems, before we even start talking if the proposed solutions will work or not.
>Will the PRC just continue to exist as it is, forever? My last remaining hope is for massive power grabs by xi jinping (already happening), followed by government ineptitude as he ages and underlings squabble, followed by chaos upon his death. Beyond that I can't see any way out.
If that happens, is that a good thing? To you, or some Americans who see China as a foe, maybe. I doubt such a chaos is what the average Chinese wants.
It'll be fine as long as people in bulk are reasonably happy, which equates to the economy doing well which allows china's economy to look and feel good. "look and feel" because there seem to be many proper economists (I'm not) that see china's economy as a facade hiding junk.
When we get the big bubble pop which seems to be hastening in, their people may start to feel a lot less comfortable. We'll see then what happens but I don't think it will be remotely nice as their government will start to blame anyone but themselves (well naturally!) and political tensions will rise.
Maybe one day, if China embraces democracy, it might hope to become as prosperous as India. /s
In all seriousness, "democracy" is at this point almost meaningless as a barometer of good governance. There are a lot of spectacularly successful autocracies and a lot of dismally awful democracies. In the broad scheme of things, the CPC has done a damned good job of advancing the interests of the Chinese people. China might one day gradually transition towards democracy in the manner of Singapore, but many Chinese people are rightly fearful of the possibility of the collapse of the CPC. The most common outcome after the overthrow of a dictatorship is chaos and economic collapse, followed by a much worse dictatorship.
I think China take will the path to democracy most other democratic nations have taken including my own: As the middle class eventually grows big enough it will demand and get political influence ultimately creating democratic institutions (formal freedom of speech, parliaments, elections, referendums) as we have it in the west.
It is easy to focus on a single news story and forgetting that China is a much freer society today than it was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
This is indeed very scary especially now it requires facial recognition part... to sign up for WeChat, you need to have a valid phone number; to use WeChat pay, you got to provide real-name and official ID, bank account, etc. From the WeChat social network, relationships are easily identified.
The mere existence of such tool is destine to be misused, regardless who made it. This is what real power looks like.
There is practically no difference in these requirements versus what Facebook is requiring. Try to create a Facebook account and they will soon flag your account to require a photo for facial recognition. You can't signup for Facebook without a valid mobile number. And if Facebook does not like the photo you provide for facial recognition, they want a government ID.
"The mere existence of such tool is destine to be misused, regardless who made it. This is what real power looks like."
I encourage you to read the novel _A Deepness in the Sky_ which introduces the concept of "localizers" which are the technological end-state of "smart speakers" and social networks like wechat. Very well fleshed out and very thought provoking:
I'm glad this article was written. I think the general public is unaware of how China operates, and through education we can better protect our own civil liberties (and better understand why the China is the way that it is).
The bit about face recognition and voice imprinting is most certainly being used to populate some database, but it also serves as a CAPTCHA of sorts.
Advancements in procedural face and voice generation could create a powerful tool to beat CAPTCHA advancements, and to preserve anonymity against creeping surveillance.
Of course, China has hooks into the device manufacturers so doing this is an order of magnitude harder than it already is.
If posting photos from a 6/4 vigil in Hong Kong got the reporter from zero to the first tier watch list, I have a feeling any biometric mismatches would quickly escalate him to the next tier.
I honestly see it going the other way. Deepfakes being used to create fake material that falsely incriminates someone. So if they have the biometrics of an account on file already, they would match a fake video circulating the service to that account and presto you are on a watch list.
I once tried downloading WeChat from Google Play but the registration process required another existing WeChat user that I may know to recommend or vouch for my account first so I couldn't complete it. Strangely enough, a few months later I needed to use it for work and this requirement disappeared. Has this ever occurred to anyone?
Yeah they occasionally get paranoid and clamp down it seems. I had installed it, made an account, then uninstalled it. When I reinstalled, I forgot my password. That flagged my # as suspicious and then it required another WeChat user(who had an account longer than, IIRC, 6 months, and who hadn't validated anyone else lately) validate me before I could continue.
A few weeks ago I tried again and all they wanted was a facebook auth to create a new account. I think they're trying to broaden adoption now. Probably a good strategy for a spy app.
What is more scary is that there are many Chinese Americans using WeChat to connect with family members. There is no doubt some of them work in the U.S. government or other sensitive companies or agencies. By tracking their location alone, the Chinese government can obtain huge amount of data.
should we ban wechat? probably yes. it's a quintessential threat to privacy, freedom, and democracy practice.
but are we able to? not at all. All big corporates and even some in government are on their side. China is where money is to make and ruling is to learn.
It's thing like this that I wonder if the the US will always have a bit of an advantage in the coming cold war. Similar to how the Soviet Union gave the West continual propaganda victories, China seems to be replicating the same mistakes. The US has done so many bad things, always seemed to win the propaganda war because the Soviet union was so unequivocally repressive.
Maybe. But both, the Soviet Union and the US had to offer something.
US: Idea of freedom and democracy
Soviet Union: Idea of equality and communism.
China lacks an ideology that can attract foreigners. Also, in all super powers since Rome it was possible for able people to become a citizen and to be part of it. Even Nazis became American (think von Braun).
Yes. China. I love WeChat I must say. Much better than WhatsApp.
Yes, Tiananmen Square. Westerners in China call it "The day when nothing happened". But I also heard different views from Western Politicians that were deeply involved with the Chinese system. The amazing thing is that the students were actually allowed to protest for a long time.
The guy in the video is just an asshole. He is harassing normal Chinese people who might get problems.
I love Chine. I understand and respect "sensitive" issues. In the end I can not become Chinese and always will be a "tolerated guest".
What is this weird notion of "respecting sensitive issues"?
Is that just a polite way of saying, "I don't discuss human and civil rights violations." Why should I respect a person's desire to not hear about their own government's crimes?
There is a strange man who shouts “no Brexit” very loudly outside parliament every day. None of the residents like him. He hasn’t been run over by a tank yet.
For forty years mothers of disappeared people have assembled in the Plaza de Mayo.¹ They have not been run over by a tank yet.
In Belgrade protests have been held for twenty-six weeks against government corruption.² The police have attempted to repress the protests, but not with tanks.
A UK student protest in 2011 continued for several months.³
There is nothing strange about protests continuing for a long time. If the party had repressed the protests with tear gas a week after they started, most liberals’ view of the party would have turned out much better than the current view. The point is that using the army on one’s own people is taken to be bad, and repressing that memory is taken to suggest that there is a deeper malaise that creates a general willingness and ability to use such force.
As for causing trouble, it is unlikely that those whom the journalist messaged will actually “get problems”; they may be put on a list, but unless they do anything further, they are unlikely to face any consequences. And had they, for example, held a public vigil without the journalist (or tried), they would have ended up in a sticky situation anyway. So I don’t see what’s wrong with the journalists’ actions.
As for the view of Chinese, it is up to you to decide what “China” actually is. Of course you should respect the “true China” in some sense, but many will claim to be that—the party, activists, people like me, etc.; at some point you must choose. The events of 6/4 are a reasonable indication of what Chinese unencumbered by excessive government restrictions on expression think, as are today’s in Hong Kong, or the long history of peasant revolts and political strife. The Chinese people’s reaction to “sensitive” issues like the Rape of Nanjing was unstinting resistance to the Japanese occupiers; to the ineptitude of the nationalists the struggle of the People’s Liberation Army; to everyday injustice the sight of the millions of petitions that are the mark not of deference to authority as it exists but loyalty to an ideal of good governance. In attempting to be a “tolerated guest” you necessarily have chosen a China, even as it seems in its simplicity to be the most neutral one. But ultimately all these choices are anything but neutral, and Chinese history would suggest that most Chinese would choose otherwise.
Then came a stage I was not prepared for. "Faceprint is required for security purposes," it said.
I was instructed to hold my phone up - to "face front camera straight on" - looking directly at the image of a human head. Then told to "Read numbers aloud in Mandarin Chinese".
My voice was captured by the App at the same time it scanned my face.
In NYC there's been a growing trend towards merchants going cashless. There are bills to prevent this. Losing ability to pay with cash means a loss of privacy and anonymity.
The WeChat dominance in payments reminds me a bit of this trend. Luckily some US local governments care about maintaining some level of privacy.
The West has to be wary of becoming a surveillance state. More often than not tech companies in the West are using China tech as an example of how they should operate. We have to protect our civil liberties. I grew up in a post-communist country in Europe, riddled with corruption and dictatorial tendencies, and it is really not a nice place. It's strange that as technology becomes a bigger part of our society, the more it is used against us.
[+] [-] _hardwaregeek|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] polskibus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neuralzen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sho|6 years ago|reply
Nit picking aside - that surveillance state is maybe 5 years ahead of the west. I'm continually amazed that western governments have allowed strongly encrypted private communications to become a thing, even an expectation - this is totally unprecedented and a radical upset to the balance of power between the state and its citizens. I expect it's only a matter of time before strong end to end encryption is totally banned in the west, too.
[+] [-] pishpash|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dheera|6 years ago|reply
Even the majority of my friends who work at Facebook and Google use WeChat to organize social events. Hell, I've visited friends at Facebook's HQ and had to tell them by WeChat that I'm downstairs in the lobby.
I personally totally get why this happens, and the network effect is so strong that my first instinct to contact my friends is via WeChat as well. I too organize social events on WeChat, because I know my friends don't really check anything else, so in the process, I too am guilty of propagating this network effect.
I still hate the app though. I just don't hate it enough to want to ditch my social life.
[+] [-] nomnomray|6 years ago|reply
sticker: gifs and emojis all shares the same sticker format. It has natively features for taking, editing and converting photos and videos directly into stickers. Generally, i find memes work a lot better in wechat.
reliability: voice and video calling is buttery smooth. I've taken wechat calls internationally between china, taiwan, us, canada, australia and france. The service is always great even in some rural areas.
consistency: it works on almost all phones of all price ranges. Maybe it's because lower tier phones are of chinese brands and they have closer collaboration with wechat. The point is that wechat works the same on a $100 dollar phone as it does the iphone.
convenience: this one is domestic to china. wechat has mini programs, which are basically web services that make native app obsolete. For example, there is an wechat version of airBNB and it works exactly like the native app. Wechat handles all of the authentication and transaction. There is no need to register for anything!
[+] [-] baby|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pishpash|6 years ago|reply
If you have genuine thoughts, use something else.
[+] [-] rsync|6 years ago|reply
Genuinely curious - is there a non-app (ie., plain SMS) interface to wechat ?
There is a plain SMS interaction layer for groupme and because I host my own phone service at twilio, I have total control over messaging to groupme groups because I can just interact with groupme on the command line ...
[+] [-] mkbkn|6 years ago|reply
And do you think having WeChat installed is a prerequisite for a good friendship?
[+] [-] tanilama|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] komali2|6 years ago|reply
But now I think the Party is too good at maintaining itself. It's augmented by technology like WeChat to know exactly what is going on across the whole country. Access to dissident conversations will make it even easier to tailor the kind of subtle propaganda they're getting very good at.
Will the PRC just continue to exist as it is, forever? My last remaining hope is for massive power grabs by xi jinping (already happening), followed by government ineptitude as he ages and underlings squabble, followed by chaos upon his death. Beyond that I can't see any way out.
[+] [-] theseadroid|6 years ago|reply
As a Chinese who emigrated because of the many social problems of China, I'm not sure switching to democracy right now will be beneficial for regular Chinese. You've all heard stories about how bad mannered Chinese tourists are, but those are still somehow better than the average Chinese I'd say. Think about people who still eat shark fins today, who have no problem buying rhino horns or pangolin skins. (there are more extreme stuff, one example: https://www.animalsasia.org/intl/media/news/news-archive/fiv...). If you ever visited mainland China you probably noticed many public restrooms have no toilet paper. Some places tried to put toilet paper in but people would steal all of them right after.
I am not sure democracy can work with people like that. I fear it wont. I fear not enough educated/informed people will make democratic decisions that are harmful to themselves. I fear a democratic China will become the next Russia, the next Brazil, the next Turkey. At least the current party has done more poverty fighting than most of the third world democratic countries. (data available on world bank website)
Does China have problems? Absolutely. The question is if you really understand what are the problems, before we even start talking if the proposed solutions will work or not.
>Will the PRC just continue to exist as it is, forever? My last remaining hope is for massive power grabs by xi jinping (already happening), followed by government ineptitude as he ages and underlings squabble, followed by chaos upon his death. Beyond that I can't see any way out.
If that happens, is that a good thing? To you, or some Americans who see China as a foe, maybe. I doubt such a chaos is what the average Chinese wants.
P.S. PRC doesn't allow dual citizenship.
[+] [-] tempguy9999|6 years ago|reply
When we get the big bubble pop which seems to be hastening in, their people may start to feel a lot less comfortable. We'll see then what happens but I don't think it will be remotely nice as their government will start to blame anyone but themselves (well naturally!) and political tensions will rise.
[+] [-] jdietrich|6 years ago|reply
In all seriousness, "democracy" is at this point almost meaningless as a barometer of good governance. There are a lot of spectacularly successful autocracies and a lot of dismally awful democracies. In the broad scheme of things, the CPC has done a damned good job of advancing the interests of the Chinese people. China might one day gradually transition towards democracy in the manner of Singapore, but many Chinese people are rightly fearful of the possibility of the collapse of the CPC. The most common outcome after the overthrow of a dictatorship is chaos and economic collapse, followed by a much worse dictatorship.
[+] [-] chvid|6 years ago|reply
It is easy to focus on a single news story and forgetting that China is a much freer society today than it was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
[+] [-] ConfusedDog|6 years ago|reply
The mere existence of such tool is destine to be misused, regardless who made it. This is what real power looks like.
[+] [-] srslack|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eunos|6 years ago|reply
Isn't that a basic KYC procedure for every financial product like banking?
[+] [-] rsync|6 years ago|reply
I encourage you to read the novel _A Deepness in the Sky_ which introduces the concept of "localizers" which are the technological end-state of "smart speakers" and social networks like wechat. Very well fleshed out and very thought provoking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Localize...
[+] [-] throwawe32|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] horyzen|6 years ago|reply
[0]https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18256226/facebook-wechat-m...
[+] [-] gen3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cypher|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pixelmonkey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beager|6 years ago|reply
Advancements in procedural face and voice generation could create a powerful tool to beat CAPTCHA advancements, and to preserve anonymity against creeping surveillance.
Of course, China has hooks into the device manufacturers so doing this is an order of magnitude harder than it already is.
[+] [-] mortenjorck|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Swinx43|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpflan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NotPaidToPost|6 years ago|reply
We can imagine the reasons for that.
[+] [-] netwanderer3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 01100011|6 years ago|reply
A few weeks ago I tried again and all they wanted was a facebook auth to create a new account. I think they're trying to broaden adoption now. Probably a good strategy for a spy app.
[+] [-] hunter2_|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] educationdata|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vajaya|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knolax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AFascistWorld|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorblumesea|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joyjoyjoy|6 years ago|reply
US: Idea of freedom and democracy
Soviet Union: Idea of equality and communism.
China lacks an ideology that can attract foreigners. Also, in all super powers since Rome it was possible for able people to become a citizen and to be part of it. Even Nazis became American (think von Braun).
It is not possible to become a Chinese citizen.
[+] [-] Libelula|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joyjoyjoy|6 years ago|reply
Yes, Tiananmen Square. Westerners in China call it "The day when nothing happened". But I also heard different views from Western Politicians that were deeply involved with the Chinese system. The amazing thing is that the students were actually allowed to protest for a long time.
The guy in the video is just an asshole. He is harassing normal Chinese people who might get problems.
I love Chine. I understand and respect "sensitive" issues. In the end I can not become Chinese and always will be a "tolerated guest".
[+] [-] tuxxy|6 years ago|reply
Is that just a polite way of saying, "I don't discuss human and civil rights violations." Why should I respect a person's desire to not hear about their own government's crimes?
[+] [-] heraclius|6 years ago|reply
For forty years mothers of disappeared people have assembled in the Plaza de Mayo.¹ They have not been run over by a tank yet.
In Belgrade protests have been held for twenty-six weeks against government corruption.² The police have attempted to repress the protests, but not with tanks.
A UK student protest in 2011 continued for several months.³
There is nothing strange about protests continuing for a long time. If the party had repressed the protests with tear gas a week after they started, most liberals’ view of the party would have turned out much better than the current view. The point is that using the army on one’s own people is taken to be bad, and repressing that memory is taken to suggest that there is a deeper malaise that creates a general willingness and ability to use such force.
As for causing trouble, it is unlikely that those whom the journalist messaged will actually “get problems”; they may be put on a list, but unless they do anything further, they are unlikely to face any consequences. And had they, for example, held a public vigil without the journalist (or tried), they would have ended up in a sticky situation anyway. So I don’t see what’s wrong with the journalists’ actions.
As for the view of Chinese, it is up to you to decide what “China” actually is. Of course you should respect the “true China” in some sense, but many will claim to be that—the party, activists, people like me, etc.; at some point you must choose. The events of 6/4 are a reasonable indication of what Chinese unencumbered by excessive government restrictions on expression think, as are today’s in Hong Kong, or the long history of peasant revolts and political strife. The Chinese people’s reaction to “sensitive” issues like the Rape of Nanjing was unstinting resistance to the Japanese occupiers; to the ineptitude of the nationalists the struggle of the People’s Liberation Army; to everyday injustice the sight of the millions of petitions that are the mark not of deference to authority as it exists but loyalty to an ideal of good governance. In attempting to be a “tolerated guest” you necessarily have chosen a China, even as it seems in its simplicity to be the most neutral one. But ultimately all these choices are anything but neutral, and Chinese history would suggest that most Chinese would choose otherwise.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/28/mothers-plaza-...
2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/headlines/4804638...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Hetherington_House_Occupa...
[+] [-] joyjoyjoy|6 years ago|reply
Have a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon%27s_New_Map
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nCSXvCM3ogI/WZhtafxpPoI/AAAAAAAAX...
[+] [-] ngcc_hk|6 years ago|reply
As Leo or is it Smith would say ... “upgrade”.
The matrix totally own you.
[+] [-] panarky|6 years ago|reply
I was instructed to hold my phone up - to "face front camera straight on" - looking directly at the image of a human head. Then told to "Read numbers aloud in Mandarin Chinese".
My voice was captured by the App at the same time it scanned my face.
Afterwards a big green tick: "Approved"
[+] [-] anonu|6 years ago|reply
The WeChat dominance in payments reminds me a bit of this trend. Luckily some US local governments care about maintaining some level of privacy.
[+] [-] quotz|6 years ago|reply