Why WhatsApp And Signal Not Blocked In China

Winter is coming for people living in China.

China is not famous for its internet openness. It's quite useless to keep track of how many top 500 websites and internet services are currently being blocked in China. And with recent developments it's quite obvious that while blocking services outside China, the government is encouraging local companies to develop similar ones, and collecting all kinds of data from its users, i.e. basically all Chinese. Some would argue it's a process that the internet itself is heading towards, what the Chinese gov is pushing, is a experiment that only this gov can do.

IM services, like Facebook messager, are among the most heavily blocked. It's understandable. First of all communication itself is dangerous for a gov like this one. Second, controlling communication is power. But what's wired is, among those IM with encryption as a selling point, like WhatsApp, signal and telegram, only telegram is blocked. In fact today, inside China, WhatsApp and signal is usable and pretty reliable. That's unbelievable in itself.

My theory is, there are 2 possilities to explain it all:

Unlike telegram, WhatsApp and signal are using AMAZON's cloud servers. China just can't simply block this one all together. AMAZON's cloud servers are so important once blocked the after effect would be so serious.

These 2 IMs are being activity used among Chinese government personnels as well. Their encryption is pretty strong. And apps are pretty well built. So why not use them instead of building something from scratch?

The thing is, most of Chinese don't bother with these encrypted IM services. They live in a different world and in that world, tightly controlled IMs actually are giving small benefits and enjoying a much much more bigger user base. If more and more people are using encryption, well let's say blocking these 2 will take the GFW about 5 minutes.

Whatever the reason is, I am happily using them on a daily basis. And I think a lot more people are using them too. Although I am aware of the fact that, encryption, is against the fundamentals of how this country is currently governed. Some day in the future they will be blocked out. Well I will build my own OTR server then. This is the internet, the math can't be beaten.