With the aid of today’s technologies, autocratic governments have never before been able to exert so much control over their populaces: Covid and the associated contact tracing have been a further boon in this respect. In China, the nexus of control and tracking is found in one ubiquitous app: WeChat. This was amply illustrated in Henan Province recently, when QR health codes within the app turned red without explanation for those protesting a bank fraud, hindering their action. That is just one example of how technological infrastructure can be abused, and obscurities around WeChat’s back-end only add to the questions…