Australia to boycott wechat ahead of elections

Australian politicians are facing calls to boycott WeChat after Prime Minister Scott Morrison appeared to be blocked from using the Chinese social media platform.

As first reported by NewsCorp, Mr Morrison’s account had been taken over and rebranded, drawing accusations of foreign interference.

WeChat has become an increasingly important campaign tool for Australian politicians to connect with Chinese speaking community members.

But independent researcher Alex Joske said the risks posed by the social media platform meant WeChat should no longer be relied on given the national security concerns.

“Politicians in especially electorates with large Chinese speaking communities have started to view WeChat as an indispensable part of their campaigning,” he told SBS News.

“[But] political parties and the government shouldn’t be letting the serious risk of political interference and surveillance through WeChat continue.” 

It's understood requests by the prime minister's office to have the account restored have been ignored.

The account had been rebranded "New Life for Chinese Australians", and the description changed to "providing living in Australia information for the Chinese community".

But SBS News Chinese has been in contact with the new operator of the account who claims he acquired it legitimately.

Aipeng Huang, under whose name Fuzhou 985 Information Technology Ltd was registered, said that he knew nothing about the background of this account, and the transfer was “a completely legal commercial activity”.

“The original owner transferred it to us. I personally was not aware of anything about the account (prior to the transfer),” Mr Huang said when explaining how they acquired this account.