Citizen Power Initiatives for China v. Tencent America CA6

I. BACKGROUND

The plaintiffs in this putative class action are Citizen Power Initiatives for China (a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing democracy in the People’s Republic of China) and six anonymous WeChat users who live in California. Three of the individual user plaintiffs are citizens of the United States; the other three are citizens of the People’s Republic of China. According to the complaint, WeChat is the predominant way people communicate over the internet in the Chinese-speaking world, holding “an effective monopoly on how the inhabitants of that world communicate with each other electronically.” The plaintiffs allege Tencent turns over private user data to the government of the People’s Republic of China thus enabling surveillance and censorship. As a result, content on WeChat unfavorable to the ruling Chinese Communist Party is removed, and accounts of users who generate the content are blocked. WeChat users are at times investigated, detained, and punished by the Chinese government because of intercepted communications. The plaintiffs identify two categories of unlawful conduct. First, the complaint alleges Tencent uses “ ‘challenged practices’ ”…