Text Messages of WhatsApp Blocked by the Chinese Government

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The presence of WhatsApp in China has been floating by a threat ever since Chinese government blocked users from sending videos and photos in July. The images of late Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights campaigner Liu Xiaobo were being blocked in the month of July in direct messages among users of Weibo and WeChat. Liu called for political reforms throughout his life and imprisoned in 2009 on charges of destabilization for calling for democracy in China. Now, blocking the WhatsApp is a portion of a wider trend of securing controls and restrictions under Chinese President Xi Jinping. So, the WhatsApp will no longer work in the country. A Paris-based research firm monitoring situation of WhatsApp in China has indicated that Chinese people has squeezed their ability in sending text-based messages within the country.

The Chinese government has additionally been cracking down on VPN apps, so the citizens of China can’t prevent censorship. Apple sent notifications to developers in China in July and explained that their VPN app has been removed from Apple App Store. The Symbolic Software also indicated that it will take a considerable amount of time for the Chinese government to find out how to configure its monstrous firewall to detect and block the massively encrypted protocol that are being used by WhatsApp to send text messages. The end-to-end encryption for WhatsApp might be a major reason to target it in the first place by Chinese government. The Chinese lawmakers and the National People’s Congress Standing committee passed a new cyber-security law In November 2016 in order to protect sovereignty of the government, citizen rights, and national security over the internet.