I must admit my feelings are multifaceted. On one hand, I’ve benefited from WeChat - been inspired by articles on official accounts, moved by interactions in Moments (and of course, agonized over how to post high-quality content). I can even see and appreciate WeChat’s restraint in certain aspects. However, on the other hand, I know what such a national-level application can be used for. I know its suppression of the open internet and “links” (at the same time, I’ve witnessed how links can be misused and Baidu’s repeated need to clarify that not all web pages in their app belong to them).

At this level of understanding, I choose not to speak out - not that my voice would make any difference, but as a personal stance I maintain. Let those who like and benefit from it continue using it, let those who despise and are harmed by it leave. This is what a free world should be like. When you tell me how great WeChat is, I’ll say “oh well, oh well, fine fine” (the origin of my Telegram channel name). When you tell me how terrible WeChat is, I’ll probably still say “oh well, oh well.”

Of course, when someone says “oh well” too much, it becomes tedious. But honestly, it’s not that I don’t have feelings - it’s that I have strong feelings on both sides, to the extent that I need to spend most of my time repairing my own internal divisions. (Just kidding! Most of my time is spent reading and playing games.) So I want to discuss, purely from the perspective of the US ban on WeChat, the matter of living overseas but still primarily using WeChat.

The Chinese population in Ireland isn’t very large. The 2008 estimate was around 60,000 people, while Ireland’s total population in 2019 was approximately 4.9 million. After the 2008 economic crisis, I heard from people around me that many Chinese returned home, so I can only speculate that the number of Chinese in Ireland probably doesn’t differ too far from 60,000.

This small circle of tens of thousands is enough for people to live quite comfortably here by selling handmade workshop products (mainly food). WeChat and cash payments almost perfectly avoid taxation issues. If one wanted, using RMB on WeChat, one could live entirely in Ireland. All small-screen time can be devoted to WeChat, TikTok, Weibo, and Bilibili, while big screens have the magical website Donau. Donau’s existence makes it seem like “copyright” is being repeatedly beaten on the ground. Content from China is transported out, European and American content comes with subtitles included, and adult films aren’t left behind either. Countless advertisements for overseas shopping services, study applications, exam and assignment proxies, and investment immigration fill the platform.

With the help of WeChat and Donau, Baidu search being extremely difficult to use doesn’t seem very important anymore. Only when Baidu Maps is really unusable might someone choose Google Maps - this might be the only moment many people “go abroad” in the digital world.

In short, the simplified Chinese local area network world, and its extensions exemplified by “Donau,” is sufficient to make any place on a mobile phone virtually indistinguishable from being in China. This sounds like a perfect realization of the early World Wide Web slogan, but it’s actually the greatest rebellion against the WWW. This is building walls of thinking in the name of freedom. Inside the walls is a peaceful comfort zone, but when people put down their phones, they can’t see reality either.

How can reading local media and obtaining local information primarily through WeChat official accounts run by overseas Chinese be the most common method? Such media has its space and necessity, but how can anyone make it their main means of understanding local information? When someone living overseas uses WeChat for most of their time, WeChat distorts their reality.