But foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian tweeted Friday that “If WeChat is banned, then there will be no reason why Chinese shall keep iPhone and apple products”. Zhao had already on Thursday said, “many Chinese people are saying they may stop using iPhones if WeChat is banned in the US”, and accused the US of “systematic economic bullying of non-US companies” by targeting the Chinese app.
“I use Apple, but I also love my country,” one user on the Twitter-like Weibo platform. “It’s not a conflict.” “No matter how good Apple is, it’s just a phone. It can be replaced, but WeChat is different,” another user argued. “Modern Chinese people will lose their soul if they leave WeChat, especially business people.”
WeChat, known in mainland China as Weixin, has more than 1.2 billion active users. Trump’s executive order against WeChat forces the platform to end all operations in the United States and bans Americans doing business with it. Apple accounted for eight percent of China’s smartphone market in the second quarter of 2020, according to Counterpoint Research, far behind domestic leader Huawei.
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