As more Australian politicians and media organisations sign up to the Chinese social media mega-app WeChat, questions are being raised about its new place within Australia's democracy.

Key points: Popular Chinese social media platform WeChat blocks and censors content in Australia

Popular Chinese social media platform WeChat blocks and censors content in Australia Politicians and the media use service to communicate with Chinese-Australians

Politicians and the media use service to communicate with Chinese-Australians This use of WeChat could present unprecedented challenges around censorship

There are concerns politicians using WeChat may have to self-censor their comments, avoiding criticism of China and dodging other topics Beijing finds sensitive.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten both use WeChat to communicate with Chinese-Australian voters, while several media organisations including the ABC, SBS and the Australian also have accounts.

But the news stories posted on WeChat aren't always the same ones making headlines in Australia.

China expert John Fitzgerald, from Swinburne University, told the ABC the use of WeChat among politicians and the media could present unprecedented challenges.

"We are entering uncharted territory. WeChat was not designed to work in a democracy, and a democracy can't work with WeChat," he said.

"It does not matter if it's one Australian writing to another or someone in China writing to someone in Australia — Xi [Jinping's] scissors are at work clipping away wherever people are messaging."

Canberra jumps the Great Firewall

Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison's WeChat accounts are tied to the national IDs of two unknown Chinese citizens. ( ABC News: Alistair Kroie )

To understand how those scissors work, it's important to get a sense of how WeChat blocks and censors content in both Australia and China.

Censorship is believed to apply mainly to WeChat users who register in China, and who are required to supply a Chinese mobile phone number in order to sign up. Australian users have to use an Australian phone number.

It is understood Chinese WeChat accounts are not able to see "sensitive" content sent to them by international accounts, however international accounts can usually share such content with other WeChat users outside mainland China.

Businesses, public figures and media organisations can set up "Official Accounts", which allow them to post content publicly to their followers.

Until late last year, Chinese WeChat users could not see any content posted by international Official Accounts, and this significant barrier forced foreign organisations to find ways to set up Chinese Official Accounts in order to reach WeChat's massive mainland China userbase.

However Chinese Official Accounts required a higher level of accountability: you needed to either supply the ID of a Chinese national who would act as the "account operator", or tie your account to a business registered in China.

Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten's respective WeChat accounts are both Chinese Official Accounts — and they are tied to two unknown, male Chinese citizens, whose ID details have been logged with WeChat.

"That could mean that at any stage, that unnamed Chinese national could shut down the account, which would affect either side's ability to campaign properly," said cyber security analyst Fergus Ryan from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

While the old rules around international Official Accounts on WeChat no longer apply, both Mr Morrison and Mr Shorten's accounts are still linked to those foreign citizens.

Mr Shorten's office denied the account registration process presented a security risk, and told the ABC that the Chinese citizen listed on the Opposition Leader's account was an Australian resident and an Australian Labor Party employee.

Mr Morrison's office declined to comment on the Chinese national tied to the Prime Minister's account.

Mr Shorten's office denied his WeChat account's Chinese registration could be a security risk. ( Supplied: WeChat )

Wanning Sun, an expert on China's digital media from the University of Technology Sydney, said it was possible their accounts may be subject to higher scrutiny than international accounts, given they were registered using the IDs of Chinese citizens.

However she said the criteria and principles WeChat used when deciding what content to censor remained something of a mystery.

"As far as I know, as long as the content does not touch on political topics and social issues about certain aspects of China which the Chinese Government is sensitive about, they usually leave content created by foreigners alone," she said.

Professor Sun said she would be surprised if Australian politicians on WeChat were not aware of the potential for censorship, but it was a risk they appeared willing to take to improve their electoral prospects.

And it's a risk Australian media organisations are also taking, including taxpayer-funded organisations like the ABC and SBS.

'ABC Australia is not a news WeChat account'

Peter Dutton and Huang Xiangmo. ( ABC News: Georgina Piper )

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton's private lunch with the Chinese Communist Party-aligned billionaire Huang Xiangmo, revealed in last week's Four Corners program Interference, was a top news story for days.

The specialist Chinese-language teams at the ABC, SBS and the Australian newspaper provided extensive coverage of the investigation in Mandarin, across a number of articles on their respective websites.

However none of these stories were posted on their respective WeChat accounts — the place where the majority of Chinese-Australians now get their news.

Instead, on the days the Four Corners revelations were making national headlines, the ABC Australia WeChat posted tips for learning English, a story about university rankings, and a recipe for a brown rice congee with chilli oil and kale.

The ABC's WeChat is a China-registered official account, tied to a business registered in Shanghai wholly owned by the national broadcaster — this makes its posts accessible in mainland China, and vulnerable to Beijing's censorship regime.

It is managed by ABC International, and operates separately from the ABC's Chinese-language news team.

An ABC International spokesperson said the Four Corners investigation was not shared on WeChat as its account was "lifestyle focussed and aims to showcase Australian culture, conversations and stories".

"As it is targeted at a mainland Chinese audience, it does not have a news and current affairs brief because the authorities would block the content," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson denied the decision not to post stories about political interference on WeChat was a form of self-censorship, as "ABC Australia is not a news WeChat account".

While foreign interference was making headlines in Australia, ABC Australia was posting about congee. ( WeChat: ABC Australia )

However the account has posted news stories in the recent past. A couple of weeks ago it published a budget preview, and it shared multiple stories late last year on the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Beyond questions of self-censorship, Professor Sun said the "real problem" with the ABC's use of WeChat was that it focused on mainland Chinese audiences, instead of better serving Chinese-Australians.

"The ABC chooses to waste resources on soft, light content to appeal to Chinese audiences in China, but with minimum impact," she said.

"In the meantime, ABC Chinese has largely failed to reach out, resonate, and serve the interests and needs of the Australian Chinese audiences, most of whom are on WeChat."



SBS Radio censored on WeChat

While WeChat has become an arena for Australian conversations, players need to follow Beijing's rules.

SBS Radio's WeChat is an international account, and it explicitly pitches its stories toward Mandarin-speaking WeChat users in Australia.

SBS Radio posts about a wide range of subjects on WeChat, including the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. ( WeChat: SBS Radio )

This would, generally speaking, put the account at relatively low risk of facing censorship on WeChat. Moderators are more concerned about news that could stir up trouble in China.

However the ABC understands that SBS Radio has had some stories removed from its WeChat account due to keyword restrictions, a form of censorship that filters out news stories deemed potentially damaging to Beijing.

Asked about the issue of censorship, and why SBS Radio's comprehensive coverage of the foreign interference debate has rarely been shared on its WeChat, an SBS spokesperson said "restrictions of the platform" did not influence their editorial approach.

"SBS Radio approaches news related to China as it does any other subject, focused on providing Australian audiences with accurate, impartial and balanced reporting," the spokesperson said.

As an international account, SBS Radio can only publish articles on WeChat once a week, and the spokesperson said it focused on posting "less time-sensitive" news stories that were "relevant to audiences settling into life in Australia".

It appears as though The Australian's WeChat account may have faced censorship, too.

In one story about ASIO funding viewed by the ABC, a reference to the threat of foreign political interference coming "predominately from China" was cut from the WeChat version.

On the top left, the WeChat version of the article is missing the line about the threat of interference coming "predominately from China". ( WeChat: The Australian )

The offending line was present in both the English and Mandarin versions of the story on The Australian's website.

The newspaper declined to respond to questions asking why this line was omitted.

Beijing 'curating' Australian debate

When it comes to WeChat news accounts aimed at Chinese-Australians, SBS Mandarin and the Australian are small players, and official accounts run by local Chinese-language outlets in Melbourne and Sydney have far larger readerships.

But some of these accounts have been accused of toeing Beijing's line on political issues.

Chinese-language outlets in Australia are said to regularly rehash stories published by state media in China. ( Reuters: Thomas Peter/Illustration )

Tom Sear from UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy, who is currently researching the news stories these Australia-based accounts post, told the ABC they frequently repurposed articles published in official Chinese state media.

"When you go and do a content comparison of Chinese domestic news — the writing from China — and what appears in the official accounts, 86 per cent of stories are identical," he said.

Not that they post much about politics or foreign policy to begin with — the business model for publishers on WeChat is based on clicks, so celebrity gossip is often a far more lucrative topic.

Mr Sear said only 0.26 per cent of the stories posted were related to Chinese politics, in the 18-month period that he and his colleagues analysed the WeChat accounts.

Professor Fitzgerald said the popularity of these accounts, combined with the apparent censorship of more robust media outlets, indicated a possible strategic element to WeChat's censorship within Australia.

"[WeChat's] a very effective instrument for curating what can and cannot be said in Australia, and chiefly among Chinese-Australians, on matters Beijing considers sensitive," he said.

"We find endless 'news' circulated on WeChat by opportunistic Chinese language media entities … promoting China's interests in Australia and the region.

"And yet we find Australia's taxpayer-funded specialist Chinese language services such as SBS reluctant to upload news at all — for reasons we can only speculate about.