Chevron Corp has asked its global employees to remove Tencent Holdings Ltd’s (騰訊) WeChat from their work phones, making it one of the first US companies to heed Washington’s executive order banning the Chinese social app for alleged national security risks.
The US oil giant identified WeChat as a “non-compliant application” in a staff e-mail, asking those who had installed the app on their work handsets to delete it within days, or they would be disconnected from the firm’s network, a memo viewed by Bloomberg News said.
“Due to a recent Executive Order banning the use of WeChat, Chevron is requiring that you remove the application from your mobile device,” said the memo, which also identified the operating system and model of each employee’s phone.
“If no action is taken, prior to September 27, 2020, your access to the Chevron system will be removed,” it said.
A Chevron representative declined to comment and a Tencent spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
WeChat has emerged as a top target in US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on China ahead of the Nov. 3 US presidential election. Tensions between Washington and Beijing are escalating as his administration wages a campaign that has also ensnared ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) and its short-video service TikTok.
WeChat was supposed to disappear from US app stores on Sept. 20 under Trump’s executive order, but a San Francisco judge over the weekend issued a preliminary injunction to halt the order, saying that it is against free-speech rights.
WeChat has 19 million regular users in the US and more than 1 billion worldwide.
The app is a gateway to many of Tencent’s most lucrative businesses, including games and digital payments. It is also a heavily used marketing and communications tool for US businesses reaching out to their Chinese counterparts or consumer audience.
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