City in Xinjiang removes video boasting WeChat records user actions for law enforcement

The municipal justice bureau in Karamai, Xinjiang, posted — and later deleted — a skit on Douyin (China’s TikTok) that boasted that WeChat automatically records users’ actions and forwards them to law enforcement. The short video skit warned against sharing pornography and engaging in other unspecified “illegal activities” on WeChat. CDT translated the scene in its entirety:

Liang Yong (LY): Wow, cool!

Boss Fei (F): What happened, Liang Yun?

LY: Boss Fei, WeChat has started automatically reporting illegal activities.

F: Yes, that’s right! If you use WeChat to send pornographic videos or engage in other illegal activities, the app will take a screenshot and record the evidence, and then provide it to law enforcement. Trying to remove it afterwards is pointless.

LY: Technology is the new black magic: it leaves criminals nowhere to hide. (Chinese)

Although algorithmic surveillance and censorship WeChat conversations are well documented (there were even used as a digital prank tool), the automatic saving and submission of “evidence” has raised eyebrows on the Internet. The video was removed after briefly going viral.

Residents of Xinjiang are subject to intense digital surveillance, including spot searches by phone which criminalize digital copies of the Koran as signs of extremism. Karamai is a particularly sensitive place. It was the site of one of the greatest tragedies in modern Chinese history. In 1994, 325 students died in a fire during a stage performance for visiting staff. The the high death toll was attributed to the commandwhich is issued by an unknown adult in the audience telling the students: “Everyone sit down. don’t move Let the leaders go first!” There is discussion of the fire under strict censorship within China. In the early days of China’s “zero COVID-19” policy, a WeChat blogger who noted the similarity between the fire hazards caused by the pandemic lockdown and those that increased the death toll from the 1994 fire, police questioned. Predictive surveillance did not prompt change, and in 2022, a fire killed at least 10 people in a locked apartment building in Urumqi. Last the fire sparked mass protests against the blockade throughout China, which in some cases deviated to against Xi Jinping, pro-democracy demonstrations.

(To learn more about the 1994 Karamay fire and its lasting political significance, consider purchasing a copy 2023 China Digital Times Lexicon.)