According to CNN, after US President Trump signed an executive order restricting WeChat and Tencent’s “transactions” in the United States, Chinese Americans began to worry about the seriousness of the matter. Understand that the use of WeChat is prohibited.
For the 72-year-old retired small business advocate Lian Ping (transliteration), WeChat is his lifeline to keep in touch with relatives, old classmates and friends in Beijing, Shandong and Liaoning provinces. She said: “If we didn’t have WeChat, we would really go back 40 years.”
“In China, everyone is using WeChat. It’s hard to understand how important it is to contacting Chinese people,” said Willy Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School who focuses on technology and management. “It looks like [the United States] is trying An iron curtain was put down between countries so that people could not communicate with each other.”
This is especially common among older immigrants who left China decades ago but still want to keep in touch. During the epidemic, traveling back to China is complicated and expensive, and there is an extra period of isolation. Many people will stay in the United States, which makes WeChat even more essential.
“I still want to use WeChat. It’s cheaper and it’s expensive to call (to China),” Zhang Lianping said.
Zhang Lianping immigrated to the United States in 1989 and started using WeChat in the past few years. Without WeChat, she could only post photos and call relatives and friends abroad because she could not use a computer. However, due to the large time difference between the East Coast and China, she said that it is much more convenient to leave messages on WeChat.
In the decades since she left China, her relatives and friends in China would send her photos. When her daughter has a baby in October, Ms. Zhang plans to use WeChat to send the photos to her siblings and old classmates. She said that without it, she could only post as slow as a snail.
Xiao Jian, 63, has retired, but works as a calligraphy teacher in San Diego. He said that the Chinese community has heard the rumors that WeChat is banned in the United States for several weeks and has discussed the matter on WeChat. Mr. Xiao immigrated to the United States from Yunnan in 1989 and started using WeChat about 4 years ago. He now uses this app to call his parents every Monday night.
“I was really disappointed when I heard this executive order,” he said.
Trump wrote in the executive order: “Like TikTok, WeChat will also automatically capture a large amount of user information. Such data collection may allow China to obtain American personal and proprietary information.” He also said: “The United States must take active actions against the owners of WeChat to protect our national security.”
IT Home learned that a Tencent spokesperson said that the company is “reviewing the executive order to fully understand the situation.”
“As ordinary people, most of us Chinese, including me and my students, we will not talk about anything related to sensitive and political topics.” He said, “We can use WeChat as a normal life communication platform, so We don’t worry about other things.”
If WeChat is banned in the United States, Mr. Shih of Harvard University said that Americans are likely to have to use e-mail to contact people in China, and this method of communication is not so widely used in China.
“If I send an email, I may not get a response for several weeks, or it may never get a response,” Shih said.
For Mr. Guo, a 56-year-old business owner who immigrated to San Diego from Guangdong Province in 1982, WeChat is her way to communicate with tenants of California retail malls, and also a way to chat with family and friends in China, including her in Shanghai. son.
“You can leave a long message, very detailed information. You can post, for example, like a worksheet or a travel itinerary. It is very powerful. It is really a very good communication tool,” Mr. Guo explained.
“For me, (the ban) is super inconvenient in terms of social interaction. I think it will be a big distraction for many, many Americans who do business with Chinese people in China. It will be very inefficient. Yes,” she added. “I feel very sorry for them and myself.”
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