[nomay]

COVID measures made WeChat a must have for anyone except toddlers, since you need to show your green COVID qr code to enter public spaces, and almost any Chinese had done one if not daily obligatory mass testing, in which various WeChat applets are required.

You can live perfectly fine without it before, buy you simply can't legally live in China without a working, updated and ready-to-open WeChat now, since last year.

The CCP also did their whole national census on a WeChat applet, it's the defacto governing tool.