‘Sugar daddy’ app banned from WeChat after call for its shutdown

BEIJING: Having soared to become one of the most downloaded iPhone and Android apps in China within three days, the dating website SeekingArrangement was banned from WeChat, the country’s mostused social networking platform.

Infamous for connecting wealthy older men with young women online, and sometimes referred to as a “sugar daddy” app, Seeking-Arrangement entered the country in 2015 with a Chinese language site and apps.

It has been in the spotlight since Tuesday after the Global Times newspaper posted an article calling for the government to shut down its business in China for arranging “sugar dating”. The article had been clicked more than 740,000 times as of Thursday.

Yi Shenghua, a criminal lawyer, said the services provided by such websites, though disguised as dating or matchmaking, can be classified as organising or sheltering prostitution, and the website’s founder and operator could face criminal charges depending on the amount of cash traded and the number of people involved.

Administrators of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, where the website’s Chinese business is registered as an information technology company, said police and government bodies have begun investigating the case.

“Our Chinese product is exclusively developed for the local market and would definitely abide by the law here,” said a worker at SeekingArrangement, insisting on anonymity.

He argued that the Chinese website and applications are designed as a premium platform that functions like any other legal dating site in China. The only difference would be that it targets “successful men of high quality and fine taste”.

He added that the company has zero tolerance for words such as “sugar daddy” or “sex-for-cash” in its members’ profiles, which are all screened manually by staff members.