On May 17, an administration under the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) released a video on its official Weibo account urging parents and school teachers to check their children’s and students’ phones for 'non-mainstream' social networking apps. Eight apps were named and warned against, citing the danger they pose to minors by potentially aiding scammers in committing cybercrimes.

This recent announcement, though concerning, aligns with Beijing’s ongoing efforts to intensify control over online information, particularly on mobile devices which have become the primary access points for online information and services in China.

The eight apps targeted by the authorities in their message include six made-in-China encrypted chat and “VPN” apps: Lianxin, BatChat (Bianfu), Shimida, Seagull (Haiou), Papercraft (Zhifeiji), and Plane Booster (Feiji Jiasuqi), along with WhatsApp and Telegram, which are among the apps the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ordered Apple to remove from its China App Store just in April.

This announcement primarily highlighted domestic apps, with only two mentions of foreign apps, suggesting that the authorities are facing challenges in controlling information even on domestic apps available in the App Store.

In the case of WhatsApp and Telegram, Chinese authorities likely recognize that despite blocking these apps and making them largely unusable for most iOS users without a VPN – a category completely purged from the App Store since 2017 – many users had already downloaded these apps before their removal and could still access them using a VPN. Thus, the recent campaign aims to target residual users for whom previous app removals were ineffective.

Domestic Chinese entities and app stores such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Tencent, and Oppo, as well as app developers like Zhejiang Jianxin Technology Co., Ltd (the developer of Lianxin) and ChengDu Ciyuan Zhishi Technology Co., Ltd (the developer of BatChat), are tightly controlled by the Chinese authorities. It is also assumed that the authorities generally face more challenges with foreign platforms like Apple and Google, and developers of foreign apps.

Therefore, one may wonder why these domestic apps aren’t simply banned like the foreign ones, if they do indeed challenge the authorities’s digital surveillance efforts. There are quite a few possible reasons: legal registration provided by the CAC may prevent local police from demanding their removal directly from the App Store; the perceived threats by these apps not yet warranting national-level CAC action, or the apps may be too embedded in daily life and business, making a ban problematic both economically and socially.

Ultimately, it is alarming to see authorities resort to real-life peer surveillance to clamp down on the last vestiges of privacy and information sharing among Chinese mobile users. The MPS message even encouraged parents and school teachers to bring their minors to nearby public security offices if they are found using these apps, to determine if they are involved in criminal activities.

Nonetheless, it is encouraging to see local platforms challenging this control, much like their foreign counterparts. It is also intriguing to discover so-called "VPN" apps. While these apps may not meet the exact definition of VPNs as understood internationally, they offer sufficient privacy and freedom to users, making them "problematic" in the eyes of the authorities.

The availability of these apps in the App Store indicates a continued appreciation for privacy and free information sharing in China. This sends a reassuring message to human rights defenders and highlights the need to continue providing Chinese citizens with tools for censorship circumvention and privacy protection.