Chinese smartphone users have the world at their fingertips. With a few taps, they can order food, message their friends, send money, read the news, play games, hail a taxi, pay off utility bills and more through a single app like WeChat.
But there's a catch. All this convenience comes with a heavy price: their freedom and privacy.
Thanks to China's internet giants — Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba — the authoritarian regime now has the means to monitor a user's every action, purchase, thought, and location in real-time. The Chinese government has long sought the means to more closely keep tabs on its citizens, but with smartphones, people are voluntarily logging their every move for the government in a single, convenient place.