WeChat: the impact of the super app on Chinese society.

Abstract

Nowadays mobile applications are deeply embedded in the life of people: they serve several purposes and over the years have brought radical changes in our society. At the beginning the app market only covered the western part of the globe, but in the last decade in Asia, and more specifically in China, a prolific mobile applications market has arisen. Among these applications, one has attracted attention both in China and abroad for its features and their overwhelming impact on Chinese society. This thesis aims at introducing the super app WeChat, its features and its impact on Chinese society, through a journey starting from the dawn of Internet development in China in 1980s up to the mobile internet era. This work is organized as follows. In the first chapter, I provide a brief history of the Internet development in China, with emphasis on the four backbone networks and the great firewall. Then the chapter presents different tools through which Chinese people communicate online, i.e BBSes, blogs and microblogs. In the last part of the chapter I introduce the development of mobile internet and the rise of Tencent Holdings, the parent company of WeChat. The second chapter aims at describing the development history of WeChat and its main features, by also making comparisons with other Western or Chinese counterparts. The features presented in the chapter are: (I) Moments and official accounts, (II) WeChat Pay and (III) WeChat Work. Finally, the third chapter introduces and explains the impact of WeChat on Chinese society. The areas analyzed in the chapter are: (I) the social relationships among Chinese WeChat users, (II) the advantages and disadvantages of the cashless society introduced by WeChat Pay, with a focus on the elderly population and the inhabitants of rural areas and (III) the use of WeChat as a platform to promote a smart life in different fields.