WeChat, often described as a digital “Swiss army knife,” is a super app operated by Tencent, one of China’s tech giants. Launched in 2011, it has become an integral part of everyday life in China, boasting over 1.3 billion monthly active users. While the app’s use for messaging, shopping, bill payments, and access to government services is well-known, its role in the digitalization of police services has been largely overlooked. This raises an important question: To what extent has WeChat become a policing platform for Chinese authorities?
WeChat as a State Surveillance Tool
WeChat’s role in state surveillance is well-documented, particularly its ability to filter and censor keywords and images on both its domestic and international versions. Like other Chinese communication platforms, the app must comply with strict domestic laws, regulations and guidelines that enforce censorship, data privacy, and propaganda requirements.
Censorship in China has a long history. In 1998, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) – the national law enforcement and public security authority – built the Great Firewall to ensure that the country’s economic modernization was accompanied by the suppression of free speech. The Great Firewall remains effective, with social media companies employing up to 1,000 censors each. This effort is supported by 20,000 to 50,000 internet police officers and 250,000 to 300,000 commentators tasked with disseminating party-state propaganda.
New regulations also hold internet companies legally responsible for real-time content moderation. This is in line with Xi Jinping’s 2016 speech at the Symposium on Cybersecurity and Informatization, during which he made it clear that internet companies must bear “primary responsibility” for content governance.
WeChat’s influence, however, extends beyond China. Researchers in Australia discovered that the app significantly shapes the political views of Chinese-speaking Australians. For instance, during the 2023 referendum on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians through the creation of an advisory body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, WeChat was one of the platforms used to spread misinformation, disinformation and fake news. This included content rooted in racism, conspiracy theories and colonial denial. Despite this, the app claims its services do not extend to Australia, with its representatives having refused to attend a Senate hearing on foreign interference on these grounds.
From Chat to Control: China’s Digital State Infrastructure
WeChat is a key player in the Chinese government’s digitalization strategy. The app’s integration into government services began in 2015 when Li Keqiang – then a State Council minister – introduced the “Internet+” reforms. These reforms aimed to address China’s slowing economic growth by leveraging big data for market regulation, management and supervisory systems, and public service delivery.
Following the Internet+ reforms, the MPS mandated WeChat’s integration into public security by issuing the 2016 Guiding Opinions for Further Promoting “Internet+ Public Security Government Services.” Setting ambitious targets, these guidelines aimed for a fully integrated government service platform by the end of 2017 and a national-level interconnected public security network by 2020. Though the full vision remains unrealized, the guidelines led to widespread adoption of Internet+ reforms across Chinese provinces, a trend that became known as “WeChat policing.”
With provincial- and local-level public security agencies rushing to meet new work reporting requirements and expand online services, WeChat became a widely used policing platform. By the time Internet+ reforms were rolled out, Tencent had already introduced its “micro-police big data platform,” integrating police data into WeChat. In its white paper, Tencent emphasized that by 2015, 99.1 percent of China’s 334 prefecture-level districts had official WeChat accounts, 65.4 percent of which were small county and township accounts.
With Tencent recognizing its early market entry as an opportunity, WeChat quickly became a convenient platform for police departments that people in China knew how to use. Both WeChat and Weibo introduced mini-apps within the WeChat interface, enabling provincial- and local-level police departments to share information, collect data, and offer public services. In 2020, over 40 percent of the Chinese population was estimated to follow a public security WeChat account.
WeChat as a Digital Policing Platform
For local police departments with limited resources, WeChat policing offered a quick and cost-effective way to meet government targets without significant investments in software updates. A review of 53 government procurement documents revealed that WeChat policing projects ranged from simple content creation contracts to those facilitating complex integration with public security systems. While larger projects focused on merging information sources to enhance public service delivery, smaller projects primarily sought to update public-facing WeChat accounts and meet engagement metrics such as follower and subscriber counts.
Some cities even established “community policing” groups reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, encouraging citizens to monitor their neighbors and report suspicious behavior. In 2019, Shanghai police department reported that 6,000 WeChat police stations had received more than 110,000 tips from citizens acting as police volunteers. These tips then led to the identification of illegal rental housing activities and drug users through discarded trash.
WeChat’s “wanted” feature allows police officers to post criminal information collection notices and solicit tips through official public security accounts, encouraging netizens to report criminal activities. A real-time alarm system was designed to enable users to report emergencies by sharing personal details (such as authenticated names, contact information, and incident locations verified via geolocation) through WeChat’s metadata. This information then facilitates real-time audio and video interactions with security personnel.
Conclusion
WeChat is deeply embedded in China’s digital government framework, serving as a key tool for police and public security operations across national, provincial, and local levels. This integration has enhanced the digitalization of MPS services, making processes like paying traffic fines and updating driver’s licenses more convenient and efficient.
Moreover, WeChat has transformed police operations by streamlining crime reporting, collecting investigative tips, and supporting day-to-day police work across different regions. Through WeChat policing, large amounts of personal data were collected and integrated, allowing police to authenticate names, phone numbers, photos, and national ID numbers of WeChat users, all of which can be matched with devices’ geolocation.
Today, WeChat is more than just a communications platform. It has become an essential part of China’s public security infrastructure, encompassing digitalized police services, and expanding surveillance capacities, with early reports on these already emerging.
Written by
Ausma Bernot
Dr Ausma Bernot is a Lecturer in Criminology at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology and crime, with a particular focus on surveillance and technology governance.
