No--I'm talking the other way around. Take a message I received in e-mail and send it to WeChat.

Not sure I follow the logic here. China has been encouraging citizen to have more children (and earlier) for years now. The country is still aging rapidly.

What happened to Japan? Terrible monetary policy? Sure. Rapidly aging population? Yes! What does that sound like to you?

In what aspect of technology is China globally competitive? Software? Outside of ByteDance, what software companies have seen considerable success in foreign markets where the Chinese protectionist government isn’t propping them up? China’s core tech advantage has always been in hardware (Huawei, Xiaomi, DJI, even Anker, etc). It’s no coincidence that many of China’s globally competitive firms are in hardware and not software.

For education, I don’t really understand. Chinese education is superior to western education in many respects. However, there are many fundamental issues that limit the ability for an average Chinese worker to be hired by global firms. Very difficult to discuss this without painting a group with broad strokes.

There’s a reason the founders of New Oriental Education sent their children to the US for university.

I learned something new (to me) today; what triggers tickles? It's actually very simple... double clicking profile photos. So, if you're curious about someone in any chat session and don't want to be perceived as a stalker, just click once.

Surprised you only learned this now :D

WeChat is indeed very useful, but internet censorship is annoying. Pro tip: WeChat groups are considered public places, so please be careful, your messages will be censored. I know this because my WeChat account has been banned. Since WeChat does not have human customer service, I am unable to withdraw my WeChat balance (my linked bank card has expired).

You are welcome to join our group chat, We are all nice people, and very few topics are off-limits.

Kind of hard to join a wechat group when you’re banned from wechat…..

We messaged each other tonight:D

there is different level of ban.
-the lowest is certain words not showing up in chat: you can say it, but others cannot see it...
-then is the ban in group chat
-then is the complete ban
Other than the last ban, you should still be able to contact custom service via the app itself, althought it does take a lot of effort to actually get a human...

You're right, I was permanently completely banned. I eventually reached out to customer service by continuously PM the official WeChat/Tencent account on other social media platforms. They told me they couldn't do anything because I was reported and banned by the "superior department".

I've had pretty good luck by calling these numbers 4009100100 / 95716 and experimenting with different prompt choices. That's general Tencent customer service (i.e. covers all of its products/companies), but you can talk with humans.

...without going into specifics (don't want to touch politics or anything personal), what led to the permanent ban?

I forwarded a Bloomberg news article (in Chinese). They told me that the reason for my ban was maliciously spreading rumors.

Yeah, that would do it. Bloomberg did a great exposé on top-level corruption in China back in the free-wheeling Hu/Wen days, and ever since then everything from them have been heavily censored. Although some of Bloomberg's hit pieces on China are actually dubious, like that 2018 spy chip story which multiple other outlets have found to not be credible.

Ironically, one year later, Chinese official media confirmed the news to be true. But my WeChat account never came back 😂