
On Growing: Lessons from the Story of WeChat - anuh
https://blog.ycombinator.com/lessons-from-wechat/
======
est
Some secret weapons this article did not mention

1\. Allen Zhang (Founder of WeChat) was the author of once popular desktop
email client: Foxmail, and later Tencent acquired it, Zhang refactored a new
version of web mail on mail.qq.com.

In order to support Microsoft Exchange protocol, Zhang and his team reversed
engineered it, this was later the foundation of Wechat's binary protocol
design, in Zhang's words, it's magnitudes faster and robust than your XMPP
copycat. It's designed to work well in extremely poor signal coverage area
with only GPRS 2G online access.

2\. Wechant literally stole telecom's SMS cake. Tencent put lots of effort
striking deals with telecoms, ordinary IM startups might simply be blocked or
QoS'd to death.

3\. Tecent also pushed very hard to third-party Android ROM publishers to pre-
install Wechat. It's like 2-5 RMB per new user acquisition and the app can not
be deleted unless rooted. Tecent also negotiated to made sure Wechat app
always stays in memory and can not be easily killed so push messages can be
received, Be noted, because Google was fully stripped in all legit Android
phones in China, there's no Google Play or GCM service, some other IM
competitors are struggling to have basic message receiving capabilities.

4\. Wechat is a lock-in mega app. Little known fact is it got a Tecent Browser
(X5) fully builtin, it's an outdated Chromium build and its behavior is kinda
headache to debug compared to othe mobile browsers like Chrome or Mobile
Safari, lots of customised JS bridges and restrictions.

The evil part is that every link you view in wechat must renders exclusively
in X5. E.g. if you open a youtube page, it renders in webview in wechat, if
you have youtube app installed and wanna view the URL link in app, you have to
click for the wechat menu, open the webpage in system browser, so your waste
your data bandwidth for the second time and opens the exact webpage, and click
"Open in App".

This ensures engagement times.

5\. Wechat blocks competitor URLs for obvious reasons, e.g. *.taobao.com
domain since day 1 because "the link looks malicious and may harm your
device". It force users to choose Tencent equivalents(JingDong).

~~~
lawik
Even if the team is lean the article made the product seem very heavy, all-in-
one. I have a hard time seeing success with that in the west these days.
Feature-filled communities was definitely a big thing once.

I get that a partnered article won't cover these kinds of practices. However
it does leave a bad taste in my mouth to see this unapologetic praise in the
article for what seems to be a monolithic monopoly play.

~~~
frik
WeChat actually feels very light and has a way better UI than WhatsApp and
Facebook Chat - though they rather slowly now copy it from WeChat. Crazy
times, as now US has to copy the Chinese competition which is now like 2-3
years ahead.

~~~
Markoff
it's ahead only if you think those markets are comparable, people outside
China don't desire this functinality since they have many other good options,
people in China has horrible options so WeChat looks actually pretty good to
them and they use additional functionality on top of chat/wall

I lived in China since beginning of growth of WeChat and could see it in front
of my eyes, in beginning it was very simple messenger and they kept growing
userbase and adding more and more functionality, though you end up being
locked in in their ecosystem, as was mentioned taobao links are blocked and
those options under Wallet section are mostly not the best value, so I pretty
much avoided those added functionality. Heck I rather top up electricity
through Alipay, since it was easier than WeChat or some companies didn't have
contracts with them.

anyway back to your comment, you say they are ahead of Whatsapp and Facebook,
but please tell me in what exactly they are ahead, in selling tickets, paying
utilities and sending money through messenger app? do people outside China
desire this? if people don't desire it, they are not ahead, people in west
have fast wire transfers, can pay pretty much anywhere in card so there is no
necessity for such functionality, I could go on and on if you tell me in what
area they are exactly ahead since I lived in China for years and I live in
west so I can compare

Yes, WeChat is extremely convenient for life in China. Is it convenient and
good app for life outside China? Hell no, I don't want and I don't need those
features from Messenger, since we don't have blocked internet I can visit
whatever website I want and use their services without state protectionism.

------
lewisl9029
I remember watching this video a while ago by Nathan Freitas on the ability of
the Chinese government to inspect, censor and control private communications
through cooperation with apps like WeChat:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEJGqNf2rgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEJGqNf2rgk)

In it, Nathan brings up a very alarming point in that Chinese communication
apps like WeChat have _extremely_ robust inspection and censorship features
built-in to the app, that were originally designed to be used by the Chinese
government. Even though these features might not _yet_ be enabled for WeChat
users in countries outside of China, there is very little stopping an
authoritarian government in a different state with widespread WeChat adoption
from making use of these features if they just negotiated the right deals with
TenCent, instantly gaining unprecedented powers in shaping private
communications of its citizens, which can be an exceptionally powerful tool in
detecting and quelling dissent.

By exporting WeChat, China not just exporting a chat app, but also exporting a
vital function of its Great Firewall: it's ability to control communications
between citizens within it. Even for democratic states like India, where
WeChat is starting to gain a foothold, this could pose a very real threat to
freedom of speech if WeChat were ever to become dominant, and greatly
increases the potential power of government should they ever want to overreach
for it.

~~~
dilemma
>By exporting WeChat, China not just exporting a chat app, but also exporting
a vital function of its Great Firewall: it's ability to control communications
between citizens within it. Even for democratic states like India, where
WeChat is starting to gain a foothold, this could pose a very real threat to
freedom of speech if WeChat were ever to become dominant, and greatly
increases the potential power of government should they ever want to overreach
for it.

Reminds me of Facebook, Twitter, Google.

~~~
lewisl9029
Absolutely, between NSA's XKeyscore and all the for-profit corporate
surveillance performed regularly in western companies, the only factors
regular consumers have control over is a matter of what degree of surveillance
they're willing to accept and which nation-states they would consider their
adversary.

This was one of the sentiments raised in Nathan's talk, and the aim of the
talk was not to just aimlessly bash and scapegoat China and WeChat, but rather
to suggest taking a hard look at ourselves and the choices we're making in
terms of becoming complacent to or outright enabling authoritarianism, because
there's a frightening number of parallels that can be drawn between China and
WeChat and the US government and US tech corporations.

------
state
"WeChat defies the popular belief that growth is all about user growth.
Instead they think about growth as increasing value (e.g., the number of tasks
WeChat can do in the daily lives of users).

Unlike other social products, WeChat does not only measure growth by number of
users or messages sent. Instead they also focus on measuring how deeply is the
product engaged in every aspect of daily life (e.g., the number of tasks
WeChat can help with in a day)."

100 times _this_. I can't think of a single large Western consumer software
company who can actually think like that.

It has become a commonplace that WeChat is incredible, and everyone over here
wants to build it. But solving that problem is hard. _Really_ hard.

~~~
mbesto
> 100 times this. I can't think of a single large Western consumer software
> company who can actually think like that.

I'm pretty sure execs from Google/Facebook/Apple think like this, it's just
you don't read about it on TechCrunch, nor do they publicize it to their
investors.

~~~
EnFinlay
I would disagree with this. Facebook definitely has no problem creating an
endless stream of content with >5% ad density.

~~~
nickonline
But WeChat with all it's diverse functionality gets used as much as Facebook
across their own portfolio.

> use the app an average of 50+ minutes, and 9 to 11 separate times, per day2.
> To put that in context, it is the same as the “combined time” users spend
> across a portfolio of Facebook apps

~~~
anuh
50% of WeChat users use it for 90 mins. Also the team really focuses on user
efficiency -I.e.,, completing the task quickly and in the most efficient way

------
dangrover
Former WeChat PM here. Good analysis.

But annoyed that mot western coverage of the app focuses on the breadth of
features/platform stuff and belies the many ways that it's an extremely solid
messaging app compared to many.

The choices made in the fundamentals (adding friends, creating groups,
notifications) are all super well thought out. People using it will use it for
communicating with strangers and conducting business, something you don't see
in any messaging app in the US. The core messaging features are versatile and
ultilitarian. And it's chock full of power user features like tags, notes,
pinning threads, etc. The core team had spent 10 years working on email
clients and services before embarking on it and it shows. This is the
foundation the rest was built on.

~~~
thewhitetulip
Your WeChat experience would be interesting, we can learn so much from it,
clearly the app took over the Chinese ecosystem, so you guys did a lot of
things right (which nobody has able to replicate).

I would love to talk to you about it!

------
abalone
_> We partnered up with China Tech Insights, a research group within Tencent
(WeChat’s parent company) to understand how WeChat drives its 889 Million
monthly active users..._

I've always wondered if WeChat benefitted from something particular to the
Chinese context, for example, favorable government support.[1] This is not
exactly the sort of stellar investigative methodology that's going to answer
that question. In fact the article makes it sounds like it's all general
business and design principles, yet fails to address why WeChat's success is
specific to China.

[1] "A successful stunt during last year’s celebration of Chinese New Year’s
Eve saw CCTV, the official state broadcaster, offer millions of dollars in
cash rewards to WeChat users who shook their phones on cue."
[http://www.economist.com/news/business/21703428-chinas-
wecha...](http://www.economist.com/news/business/21703428-chinas-wechat-shows-
way-social-medias-future-wechats-world)

~~~
anuh
I think WeChat's specific success in China was really driven by WeChat
payments and QR code - both of which failed in the US. These two features were
critical to support so many use cases that WeChat enables today (payments,
peer to peer transfers, offline to online service). Yes the Chinese New Year
helped garner interest and a lot of people use WeChat to send red packets,
they also connected their bank accounts and started using it for payments.
This is again in line with how WeChat launches every feature. They try to
launch it in groups rather than getting each individual user to try it
separately.

~~~
rahimnathwani
"WeChat's specific success in China was really driven by WeChat payments and
QR code"

WeChat was successful (in DAU/MAU) way before WeChat payments existed. WeChat
payments couldn't have succeeded without the existing user base.

~~~
anuh
Before they turned on red packets they had only 300M MAUs. They do claim that
red packets was a critical growth lever for them for new users

------
daveguy
As a China-approved messenger application would anyone trust this as their
primary mode of communication?

This is not meant to be snarky or biased. Considering the control China has on
citizen communication (eg the great firewall), what guarantee does anyone
using the app have that all data isn't being fed through the Chinese version
of the NSA?

Also: how much of the growth can be attributed to less competition in the
Chinese app market?

~~~
sfifs
There is ridiculous amount of competition an innovation in the Chinese app
market. Every time I visit China, I'm surprised by something new the folks can
do with mobile.

That innovation is starting to spill into​ India with Chinese company
investments. A year ago, mobile payments in small shops and businesses were
ubiquitous only in China, now they're proliferating in Indian cities too.

The Western markets are quite tame in comparison.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Mobile payments aren't so big in the west because they aren't so necessary.
Almost every shop in the USA takes cards, the same isn't true in china or many
developing markets, but everyone has a phone so let's use the camera and QR
codes to get around our lack of infrastructure.

~~~
rahimnathwani
There's something else going on as well, though. People in China will now use
Alipay/WeChat to pay at (for example) restaurants even though they have a bank
card, and the restaurant can take bank cards. The restaurants increasingly
have specialised hardware (maybe part of the same POS terminal that takes bank
cards) and aren't using a smartphone to process customers' mobile payments.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
True, but is that anymore convenient than card tap? Also, We are seeing QR
payments happening in the states also (like at Starbucks) though I honestly
don't see the point.

~~~
rahimnathwani
I've not seen contactless card payments in China. I imagine both businesses
and consumers would be worried about fraud. Quick payments with a mobile
wallet (where the retailer scans a dynamic QR code on your phone) feel safer,
as you need to explicitly go to that screen, and you get immediate
notification on any transaction on your account.

------
thinkloop
> Tencent was already one of China’s top internet companies in 2010, and the
> biggest social company even before WeChat was launched.

> At the time, Tencent’s products had ~650M monthly active Instant Messenger
> accounts.

Lesson 1: Start with 650m active users

~~~
devy
No. WeChat started from scratch. None of the QQ users were ported to WeChat on
day 1. You had to create a different account based on your mobile phone number
just like any other mobile apps. You can, of course, use QQ credentials to
login AFTER you created your WeChat account but you still have to create a
WeChat account first and then link it to QQ. None of 650MM users were
automatically created initially AFAIK. It was a "bold move" to cannibalize
Tencent's own users in a way, after all.

~~~
anuh
Agreed. You could not import QQ contacts and in fact you could only add QQ
contacts who were already on WeChat as "friends". So you had to discover
WeChat on your own and could not invite a QQ user who had not yet discovered
WeChat to join as a friend. WeChat did not ever push import all contacts from
QQ to WeChat.

------
sprafa
Basically : They design for value for users instead of, and they add features
relentlessly instead of hitting product-market fit and stopping development
until a competitor comes out with something good (looking at FB).

This is probably due to the high level of competition and limited marketshare
the firms in China are looking at. FB and Western firms want to rule the
world, because they can, so they are still focusing on growth with iniciatives
like internet.org. Chinese firms know their market is China, and they
understand China, and it will be hard for them to export, so when they grow as
big as WeChat the options are more limited.

Their option was to build a whole ecosystem around it that could capture
maximum user value. They also seem to prize their users religiously, which is
great for them. But it might not have happened for them that way either if
they were hopeful of capturing the entire world.

------
nullnilvoid
Although WeChat has less users than Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, WeChat is
lightyears ahead of what the west can offer , in terms of product. It has many
many useful features and is smooth, reliable. Even WhatsApp and Messenger are
copying WeChat. One of the examples is WeChat payment. You can send money to
any contact as a text message.

~~~
joelrunyon
you can make payments in messenger too...

[https://www.facebook.com/help/863171203733904/](https://www.facebook.com/help/863171203733904/)

~~~
captainhcg
`You can send or receive money in Messenger (example: send your friend $10 for
lunch or receive $500 from your roommate for rent) after you add a debit card
issued by a US bank to your account.`

It requires you to bind your account with a debit card. I am using WeChat for
years but I never attach my debit card to it, because I do not have a China
debit card. When I need e-money, I just ask my family or give my friends some
cash and they transfer e-money to me. That's all. Then I can use the e-money
for offline shopping, online shopping, sending Hongbao (as gift-card). I do
not understand why debit card is required.

~~~
manuelflara
So where is that e-money coming from? You must be linking something... a bank
account perhaps?

~~~
devy
Yes, WeChat wallet serves as a non-interest bearing escrow. So someone somehow
has to link bank account/debit cards to infuse money into WeChat network
first. You obviously need to link to your bank account in order to cash the
balance out of WeChat. But given "90%" daily payment use-cases that WeChat
covers, you are more likely to spend the balance somewhere than cash them out.

------
devy
> Lesson 1: Build Your Own Competition. This lesson is reminiscent of Amazon’s
> move ... and Uber’s move from town cars to UberX. If you don’t create a
> culture of disrupting yourself, then a competitor is likely to disrupt you.

That is more or less what Travis Kalanick explained to the driver Kamel their
decision to introduce UberX after UberBlack during that controversial video
shot in an Uber ride 2 month ago.[1]

[1]: [https://www.recode.net/2017/2/28/14766964/video-uber-
travis-...](https://www.recode.net/2017/2/28/14766964/video-uber-travis-
kalanick-driver-argument)

------
corford
Distilled down: fast execution with small tight dev teams, ruthless focus on
adding direct user value/utility to every new feature (and choosing insightful
metrics to validate this), management keeping their greed in check and an
overriding culture/philosophy that good product is driven from understanding
and respecting your users (don't waste their time, do value their attention,
don't overcomplicate, don't needlessly monetise). Oh and incredible discipline
and inventiveness in devising viral growth loops that don't break these rules.

Nice & inspiring.

------
dmix
> Lesson 1: Build Your Own Competition

Imagine cable/media companies or Blockbuster did what Tencent did with WeChat
and Amazon did with Kindle? Focus on product development even if it means
potentially cannibalizing you're existing business...

Instead Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are totally dominating the marketplace
for online video content and the TV studios will soon rely more and more on
their platforms, platforms that are now spending billions to compete with them
on content creation.

Amazon is also publishing books too, competing with the bigger publishers to
some extent [1]. They should consider going harder into this space like they
did with movie/TV production.

This is a great aspect of tech companies that 'traditional' ones continually
overlook. Being future looking not protective.

[1]
[https://kdp.amazon.com/signin?language=en_US](https://kdp.amazon.com/signin?language=en_US)

------
misterbowfinger
These are good lessons, but we have to consider whether a piece of WeChat's
growth has to do with government backing. It's much easier to design for
increasing user value if you don't have to worry about a marketing strategy.

I'm not making a judgment on that - I'm just saying that it might not be
applicable to all startups.

~~~
anuh
WeChat had a lot of competition from Chinese mobile-first messaging apps when
they started. It was by no means easy for them to scale and drive user growth.

------
apexalpha
Having lived in China for 6 months I can say: if you build a mobile OS to just
run WeChat embedded. It would work for 90% of what average users (so no, not
you here on HN) want from a phone.

Seriously. you can message, voice chat, call, video call, order plane tickets,
split bills, order stuff online, buy movie tickets, pay utility bills, share
photo's like FB timewall, create publics chatrooms, pay in physical stores and
so much more.

That app was ridiculous. Miles ahead of even the biggest dream of any app-
central company in the Western world. They built up an entire ecosystem in one
app.

Obviously, it drained a lot of battery on Android. But Android itself is miles
behind iOS anyway, since there is no Google in China and Android today is
pretty much an empty shell without GPlay Services / Framework.

~~~
nebabyte
> Seriously. you can message, voice chat, call, video call, order plane
> tickets, split bills, order stuff online, buy movie tickets, pay utility
> bills, share photo's like FB timewall, create publics chatrooms, pay in
> physical stores and so much more.

...All of that is handled within the app's runtime? (I would find it
incredibly surprising if it did not hand off at least some of those to the
phone layer.)

Or if it is - I would be surprised if what you describe doesn't already exist
there.

~~~
apexalpha
Some of the features I encountered where just webpages being loaded inside the
app. Like the ticket buying. Possibly just using Android Webview. Except it
did perfectly integrate with the (built in) Payment service in the app.

------
xbeta
It really depends on your use cases. WeChat fits well in China as it is
building a product exactly adding value for China culture and lifestyle there.

You can make utilities payment via WeChat, but I would much prefer to have a
platform automate this for me and not part of an IM.

The West has been following the UNIX philosophy of doing 1 thing and does it
very well.

Perhaps WeChat is not just an app, but an eco-system. As for UX on strictly IM
functionality, I would prefer WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Telegram etc as it is
much "lean" and lightweight to use.

I personally don't think WeChat can be successfully replicate their model to
everywhere in the world.

However, a lesson to learn for everyone (including WeChat), build local
product. Builds product that fits everyone's need accommodating their culture
and lifestyle.

~~~
eratins
Is it really a "Western"-thing or more of a Silicon Valley thing?

I really think Google could have created the ultimate chat app... but I guess
they are "creating their own competition."

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It's really a western thing. Chinese like crowded pages with lots of
functionality, they must feel very 热闹!!! The west prefers more distribution of
functionality with simplicity so doing one thing is much more appealing to us.

~~~
eratins
But when I was visiting Italy and Greece, I noticed the sites most people
viewed were also very crowded and busy.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes but not by choice. Besides, I've been to both Rome and Athens and didn't
find either to be oarcicularly crowded compared to a Chinese tourist place.

------
matz1
Unlike Facebook, using wechat on desktop is a pain. Also doesn't support
multiple device.

~~~
rahimnathwani
"Also doesn't support multiple device."

Not strictly true. You can log in a second device (e.g. web browser, tablet
client, desktop client) by scanning a QR code with your primary device.

My iPad is my secondary device. Not all messages are synced, but I can pick up
my iPad to start or continue a conversation or do other stuff, without doing
anything special. The full conversation history is only on my phone, though.
The iPad only has the messages sent/received whilst I was actively using it.

------
kalasoo
There is one important spot the article misses to mention is its extremely
great usability among different groups of people. People who are young or old,
well-educated or poor, artistic or professional use WeChat as a communication
tool.

Unlike many other apps who concentrate on serving young people, business
people or colleagues, WeChat is the ultimate solution for me to talk with my
classmates, my parents or even a courier who I just meet 3-minutes ago. This
makes it stand out from just an app working above the operating system, but a
common solution people on mobile just like phone call or messages. This makes
WeChat special.

------
EnFinlay
> To summarize, the WeChat team found ways to be scrappy, compete with their
> own products, built features that answered cultural needs and emphasized
> group interactions and most of all they have relentlessly focused on
> creating a simple tool that could extend into the hands of every mobile
> consumer.

The summary misses the biggest lesson from the article! WeChat was able to get
such amazing engagement and retention because it never attempted to milk a
single facet for all it was worth. The model wasn't to maximize revenue before
it broke the addiction.

------
huula
Now nobody talk about the "dating app" image wechat held in its early years,
which brought it a lot of users.

~~~
anuh
Yes. Shake and Message in a bottle features were used in that context in the
early days.

------
ploggingdev
Can something like WeChat work in the West? This is basically like an OS
inside an app, you can book taxis, movie tickets, play games, send money etc.
Having all the functionality integrated makes life easier, but comes at the
cost of privacy : one company knows about your entire life.

~~~
nullnilvoid
Don't Google and Facebook know about your entire life already?

~~~
akoncius
well yeah, but it doesn't mean that it is good in general

------
nebabyte
I thought I remembered reading something about apple frowning on apps-within-
apps?

I guess Wechat either sidesteps it by having everything be a 'profile'
effectively just making it a chat app interfacing to other apps? Or maybe
apple doesn't care about that restriction over there...?

------
machbio
> Using voice messaging was strategic because the native mobile keyboard to
> type Chinese characters at the time was not easy to use and consumers found
> sending voice notes intuitive, personal and convenient for daily life.

this is amazing way of thinking around the problem

~~~
eratins
I find I use it more like the old Nextel days, where WeChat is essentially a
type of walkie talkie.

------
th3reverend
is it bad that i got excited by the thought of high adoption rates of weechat
(www.weechat.org) in china?

------
Markoff
TLDR Milestones - leave totalitarian government block all your competitors, be
complacent and provide all your data to government, censor what people post on
their public wall and in private messages as well

yeah, if someone is looking up to privy like this I would recommend moving to
China or North Korea where they can try to release their another inspirited
product

~~~
dang
This is not a good comment for Hacker News—it contains more inflammation than
information. We're hoping to optimize for signal/noise ratio here, which heads
in the opposite direction. If you'd comment accordingly, we'd appreciate it.

Edit: unfortunately it looks like you've been posting plenty of unsubstantive
and/or uncivil comments to Hacker News. We penalize accounts that do that and
eventually ban them if they won't stop. Please (re-)read the site guidelines
and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

~~~
Markoff
are you sure you are not ABC (judging by nickname) who lived in China less
than me and it's just here supporting their totalitarian government based on
fantasies you read about China online without clue about real life in China?
Because that's the case of ABCs, they know less about China than non-Chinese
living there...

not sure what is not civil about my comments, I lived in China, I talk about
Chinese app mentioned in article and provide what is behind real success of
WeChat, which is not thanks to features they have, but thanks to government
protection

~~~
eratins
So you are one of those bitter expats then (judging by your comments)?

~~~
Markoff
It's hard to not be bitter, if you live in China for years as adult person and
not some student enjoying parties and iresponsible youth years. The amount of
ridiculous stuff you have to deal with every day (incompetent Chinese
management in companies, unproductive Chinese coworkers, people blocking
sidewalks and in general extremely selfish people anywhere you look,
overcrowded subway, fighting to get to suburban bus and constant flow of
people cutting the queue, toxic air, toxic food, dangerous roads, visa
harassment, etc. etc.) is just unbearable after some time and eventually
everyone will move away. It's not exactly country welcoming foreigners, which
would explain why they have like 0.5% of population consisting of foreigners,
now tell me other country with comparable population of foreigners.

But yeah, most of HN readers saw China only online and see how is it booming
and stuff like that. Like look at amazing Beijing subway with many new modern
nice and dandy lines, somehow everyone fail to see they are still at 50% level
compared to any western city (in west you have roughly one line per 500K
served population, in amazing Beijing 1mil sharing one line with no suburban
trains or trams to supplement it). Same goes for their amazing HSR - omit the
fact they stole German and Japanese technology, omit the fact their prices are
more expensive than faster and more convenient flying in Europe and that they
closed most of cheaper slower lines, so end result for people is to pay
significantly more to get home.

Chinese gov propaganda department must be smiling reading comments on this
website.

