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Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s profile on China’s largest social media website WeChat has been rebranded earlier this month to push the country’s propaganda in a ‘blatant’ act of censorship.
In what intelligence chiefs are calling ‘foreign interference’, the Prime Minister’s WeChat account was turned into a pro-Beijing mouthpiece under the name ‘Australian Chinese new life’.
Aside from this, the Daily Telegraph also reported that the Prime Minister and his team have been locked out of the WeChat account since July last year. The platform has not answered their repeated requests to regain access to the account.
Liberal MP and former diplomat Dave Sharma said that the hacking of the Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s WeChat account was likely state-sanctioned.
Mr Sharma stated that while the Prime Minister can have a WeChat account so as to try and connect with Australia’s Chinese diaspora, the social media platform was ultimately controlled by the Chinese communist party.
“More likely than not, it was state-sanctioned and it shows the attitude towards free speech and freedom of expression that comes out of Beijing,” he told Sky News on Monday.
With the sudden rebranding of the WeChat account, the Prime Minister’s 76,000 followers received a notification indicating that they should opt-out immediately or they’d be automatically signed up to the bizarre new account.
Meanwhile, the Liberal chair of a parliamentary intelligence and security committee Senator James Paterson stated that the action was very concerning as the Prime Minister is the only political target known to him.
He has called for all Australian politicians to boycott the Chinese social media platform.
“What the Chinese government has done by shutting down an Australian account is foreign interference of Australian democracy in an election year,” he told Sydney radio station 2GB.
“No politician should be on WeChat and legitimising their censorship.”
Senator Paterson said it was concerning that 1.2 million Chinese Australians who use the service couldn’t access news from the Prime Minister but could still see government critiques on the platform from opposition leader Anthony Albanese.
Australian intelligence agencies are taking the latest attempt by China to inflame tensions with Australia extremely seriously, with one expert calling it ‘anti-democratic’.
With AAP
Eliza Sayon is an experienced writer who specialises in corporate and government communications. She is the content producer for Public Spectrum, an online knowledge-based platform for and about the Australian public sector.
