The Karamay Municipal Bureau of Justice, in Xinjiang, published – then deleted – a sketch addressed to Douyin (Chinese TikTok) boasting that WeChat automatically records user activity and shares it with law enforcement. The short video skit warned against sharing pornography and engaging in other unspecified “illegal activities” on WeChat. CDT translated the sketch in its entirety:

Liang Yong (LY): Wow, cool!

Boss Fei (F): What’s up, Liang Yong?

LY: Boss Fei, WeChat has started to automatically report illegal activities.

F: Yes, it’s true! If you use WeChat to send pornographic videos or engage in other illegal activities, the app will capture and record the evidence, then share it with law enforcement. Trying to delete it afterwards is useless.

LY: Technology is the new black magic: it leaves criminals nowhere to hide. (Chinese)

Although algorithmic surveillance and censorship WeChat conversations are well documented (it has even been used as a tool for digital pranks), the automatic curation and submission of “evidence” has raised eyebrows online. The video was removed after briefly going viral.

People in Xinjiang are subject to intense digital surveillance, including spot phone searches which criminalize digital copies of the Quran as signs of extremism. Karamay is a particularly sensitive place. It was the scene of one of the greatest tragedies in modern Chinese history. In 1994, 325 students died after a fire broke out during a performance of a variety show for visiting executives. THE a high death toll was attributed to a commandissued by an unknown adult in the audience, telling the students, “Everyone, sit down.” Don’t move. Let the leaders go first! The discussion about the fire is strictly censored in China. At the start of China’s “zero-COVID” policy, a WeChat blogger who noted the similarities between fire risks created by pandemic lockdowns and those that exacerbated the death toll from the 1994 fire has been questioned by police. This prescient observation did not lead to change, and in 2022 a fire killed at least 10 people in a locked building in Urumqi. The last fire sparked massive protests against lockdown across China which have veered, in some cases, towards Anti-Xi Jinping and pro-democracy protests.

(To learn more about the 1994 Karamay fire and its lasting political significance, consider purchasing a copy of Glossary of China’s digital times 2023.)