Recently, a popular topic discussed among overseas Asians is the ban on TikTok and WeChat’s parent companies, ByteDance and Tencent, by President Trump. Some people support banning WeChat, but others do not.
On August 6, President Trump signed an executive order prohibiting any American individual or entity from engaging in any transaction on WeChat or with Tencent Holdings Ltd. WeChat threatens national security. The order will go into effect 45 days after the date of the executive order. The executive order indicated that “WeChat automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information. WeChat, like TikTok, also reportedly censors content that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive and may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party.”
This news spread quickly on many platforms and networks. Many people applauded the decision and supported President Trump by saying “WeChat is the largest brainwashing tool in the world” and “If the Chinese people think about the reason why they have only WeChat to use, then maybe they will understand. It is timely that the U.S. did this.”
However, some have created a petition on the White House website to oppose banning WeChat. The reason for the petition is that it will severely affect nearly 5 million Asian-Americans in the U.S. They claimed that using WeChat is the only effective way to communicate with their families in China.
