Xin Xin discusses Why China’s tech-savvy millennials are quitting WeChat

Disillusioned users are leaving China’s most popular social network over growing privacy fears, writes Laurie Chen for the South China Morning Post. The article, published this week discusses the widespread concern that Tencent – parent company of the country’s most popular messaging app – hands over user data to the authorities when legally compelled to do so. CAMRI scholar Xin Xin also suggests that “Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent have, to a large degree, benefited from the fact that the Chinese internet market is still closed to the leading international players”, but goes on to say that “their monopoly is not good news for Chinese internet users and citizens”.

Later in the article, Xin states that many Chinese media companies value profit over privacy; “it is not realistic for Chinese internet users to expect these companies to take appropriate or effective security measures to safeguard their customers’ privacy,” she says, before concluding that “it is simply against the logic of the political economy of the internet business.”

You can read the full article on the website of the South China Morning Post.

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