Australia’s Defense Department bans WeChat from work phones

The department is also in the process of phasing out Huawei and ZTE phones

Members of Australia’s armed forces will have to return to the old-fashioned way of sending out red packets from now on with a ban coming down this week against downloading and using WeChat on their work phones.

The Australian Defense Department told the Australian Financial Review on Sunday that while it did allow limited use of Facebook, and was conducting a “security assessment” regarding WhatsApp, China’s most popular social messaging service had been officially banned from the work phones of its staff and serving personnel.

In an emailed statement to the South China Morning Post, the department stopped short of saying that the move was due to security concerns regarding the Chinese government, only stating the service did not meet its standards.

Of course, that WeChat fails to measure up to the security standards of a foreign country’s armed forces is hardly a surprise. Over the years, a number of different individuals and organizations have voiced concerns about how closely the app works with Chinese authorities in restricting and surveilling information an private messages

Posts that the Chinese government finds objectionable are often taken down, and while WeChat claims that it does not store users’ chat history, no one really believes that claim.

WeChat infamously scored a whopping zero out of 100 in a 2016 Amnesty International privacy survey, due to its lack of end-to-end encryption. For comparison, Facebook messenger and WhatsApp both scored 73 out of 100.

Meanwhile, this move also comes amid growing concerns about Chinese interference and espionage in Australian politics and society. Back in December, an Australian senator was forced to resign amid questions over his murky ties to Chinese money, inspiring Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull to evoke Chairman Mao, declaring, “The Australian people stand up!”

For its part, the nationalistic Global Times tabloid has published an article in which one Chinese expert asserts that the Australian Defense Department’s WeChat ban is actually motivated by “narrow nationalism,” while another claims that the move is aimed at pandering to the United States.

Last month, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Australian Defense Department had started to phase out the use of Huawei and ZTE phones after receiving blunt warnings from US authorities regarding the Chinese companies’ security risks. At the same time, the US also reportedly expressed its concerns over Chinese involvement in the development of fast 5G networks in the country.

Australia’s military isn’t the first to issue a public ban on WeChat. Last December, the Indian Defense Military went so far as to ask all of its personnel to uninstall more than 42 different Chinese apps from both their work and personal phones. The list included WeChat, along with Weibo and various QQ apps.

Finally, it’s probably also worth stating the obvious that Chinese military personnel are effectively banned from downloading and using a slew of foreign apps — from Facebook to Twitter to to Instagram to Pinterest — by the country’s Great Firewall.