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By Shan Li 

The Trump administration's decision to ban WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging app, has sent Chinese-Americans scrambling to find alternative forms of communication with friends and family in China.

"The bridge between me and my family in China, it will be cut off," said Ada Lin, a Manhattan-based counselor advocate at the Chinese-American Planning Council.

WeChat, owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., has more than 1.2 billion users world-wide. In China, it is known as the do-everything app where consumers, companies and governments go to communicate, make payments, do business, and much more.

On Friday, the Trump administration said it would ban the use of WeChat in the U.S., along with downloads of the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok, over national security and privacy concerns. Under rules laid out by the Commerce Department, U.S.-based individuals will no longer be able to download or update either app through Google's and Apple Inc.'s app stores after midnight on Sunday.

While TikTok could still skirt a U.S. ban under a deal being worked out involving Oracle Corp. and other U.S. companies, WeChat users will be hit hard. All money transfers through the app for U.S.-based users will be blocked. The functionality of the app will further deteriorate with the end of U.S. support for the app through internet traffic services such as data hosting and content caching.

In the U.S., WeChat has been downloaded nearly 22 million times from the Google Play and Apple App store since January 2014, according to research firm Sensor Tower. That accounts for roughly 7% of the app's total downloads outside China over that period.

Many Chinese-Americans and U.S. businesses with a largely Chinese clientele say they rely on WeChat as their primary tool for keeping in touch with people in China and in Chinese communities throughout the world. Other popular platforms such as Google, Facebook and WhatsApp are banned in China, and more niche messaging apps such as Signal aren't widely used.

Ms. Lin said she uses WeChat almost daily. At least twice a week, the 24-year-old said, she uses it to videochat with her aunt and cousin in the Chinese city of Fuzhou. Ms. Lin also relies on the app to communicate with the parents of students who are part of the after-school program she helps run in Manhattan.

Ms. Lin said she has already discussed substitute tools with her mother, who also lives in the U.S. and uses WeChat to stay in touch with her sister in China. But so far, neither has come up with a viable and cheap solution.

"International calls are really expensive," she said. "We just can't think of another way."

As for the parents whose children participate in her New York program, Ms. Lin has already proposed switching to the Japanese chat app Line, which has a similar feel to WeChat.

"But many of them don't have an account," she said. "Most of them don't have another app" besides WeChat.

Monty Dunn, an anesthesiologist in San Francisco, said WeChat has allowed him to stay in touch with friends from his Shanghai childhood and with people he befriended in the U.S. who have moved back to China. He said even family members living in San Jose, Calif., rely on WeChat to stay in contact with him and each other.

"It's like Facebook," he said. "I use it almost daily."

Losing access to WeChat, he said, will be "a huge inconvenience." Dr. Dunn predicted that the move could cost President Trump support among many Chinese-American voters in the coming November election.

"There are a lot of Asian immigrants who tend to be conservative and would vote for him," he said. "But this will piss off a lot of people. It's going to affect everyday life for no reason."

Many small U.S. businesses, especially Asian supermarkets and restaurants, have come to rely on WeChat as an ordering and marketing tool over other such services, such as Postmates or Seamless.

Jina Zhou, manager of Kung Fu Steamer in Brooklyn, said about 60% of the restaurant's business comes through WeChat as bulk orders from businesses or individual customers. Ms. Zhou said she had hoped the ban would never be implemented. Despite weeks of discussions with staff, she has yet to figure out a viable alternative for the eatery.

"We could try Facebook, but a lot of our customers are Chinese and don't use Facebook," Ms. Zhou said. "We'll keep using WeChat until we can't use it anymore."

Other technologically savvy users say they are confident a workaround can be found.

Charles Lei, a film producer who divides his time between Beijing and North America, said he plans to update WeChat -- "the go-to app for maintaining relationships," as he put it -- every time he travels outside of the U.S. But for other Chinese-Americans who don't often leave the country, and Chinese students studying in the U.S., it will be a huge blow and tarnish their ideals that America is a true champion of freedom, he said.

"Trump is becoming Xi," said Mr. Lei, referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Trump is doing exactly the same thing the Chinese are doing" with the internet.

The app isn't only convenient for keeping in touch with family in the U.S., China and Taiwan, he said, but its breezy mobile-payment function can be used in stores in big cities such as Vancouver and San Francisco. That means he will just use credit cards instead, he said.

If WeChat slows down too much, Mr. Lei said he may consider giving up his iPhone in favor of one running on the Android operating system, which has access to other app stores where he could find WeChat updates.

He said he has been eyeing a high-end phone made by Huawei Technologies Co., the Chinese tech company that has been mired in its own controversy with the U.S. government. "This may cause me to switch," Mr. Lei said.

Write to Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 18, 2020 18:17 ET (22:17 GMT)

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