Chinese apps don't need encryption but pretends to, the government had direct access to all clear-text data. If you can't comply your business would be fucked one way or another.
Security researchers need to stop beating the dead horse. The encryption mechanism is mostly used for compliance or certification. In fact many corp-intranet middleboxes can decrypt wechat communications, it's not a bug, it's a feature.
IRL people just treat wechat as somekind of Discord with payment options. If you say something slightly wrong your account would instantly get into trouble. Just assume your wechat chat records are public one way or another.
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