australia pm morrison loses wechat chinese

'There's 1.2 million Australians of Chinese descent who overwhelmingly use this service and now can no longer access news and information from their Prime Minister,' he said on Australian radio on Monday.įergus Ryan, senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said having the Prime Minister's WeChat account registered under the name of a Chinese citizen was 'always risky and ill-advised', and appeared to be a breach of WeChat rules.Īt Fuzhou 985 Technology, Huang said the company planned to delete the contents of the account, but would wait. Meanwhile Liberal Senator James Paterson, Chair of Parliament's Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, told media the incident was an example of 'censorship' and 'foreign interference'. In Beijing, China's foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press conference on Monday that, 'The issue of Australian politicians' WeChat accounts is between them and WeChat.' Tencent added the dispute would be handled 'in accordance with our platform rules', and it would look into the matter further. In a statement on Monday, Tencent said, 'This appears to be a dispute over account ownership - the account in question was originally registered by a PRC (Chinese) individual and was subsequently transferred to its current operator, a technology services company.' Australia PM Morrison loses control of WeChat Chinese account as election looms. No response was given by Tencent, the sources confirmed.

Australia pm morrison loses wechat chinese