Tencent’s WeChat blocks Australian prime minister, lawmaker says, alleging Chinese government interference
- Senator James Paterson said the team of Prime Minister Scott Morrison had trouble accessing the popular Chinese messaging app for months
- The app is widely used by politicians to reach the country’s large Chinese diaspora
Senator James Paterson, chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, said on Monday the prime minister’s team had been having trouble accessing the WeChat account for months. It was finally taken out of the government’s control in early January despite formal representations from Morrison’s office, he told radio station 4BC.
“My view is given that WeChat is such a closely controlled company by the Chinese Communist Party, that this amounts to foreign interference in our democracy and in an election year no less,” he said.
The prime minister’s office had no immediate comment on Monday. Efforts to find Scott Morrison’s WeChat account on Monday morning in China were unsuccessful.
A Tencent spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Many Australian politicians, including opposition Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese, have WeChat accounts posting in Mandarin in an attempt to reach out to China’s large diaspora. In the 2016 census, about 5.6 per cent of the population said they had Chinese ancestry – more than one in 20 citizens.
