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 around it. Topping our books list this month are two titles focused on the ‘super app,’ used by 1.3 billion people. It is impossible to overestimate WeChat’s ubiquity in China, or how essential it is for daily life here. One book tells the story of the company that created it, Tencent; another lifts the lid on its operations, by a former executive. Also on t