WeChat records are admissible as legal evidence in China
Correspondence with the supplier via WeChat has legal force in mainland Chinese courts.
WeChat has become the main means of communication in China, including both daily conversations and business negotiations. WeChat conversations have become admissible as evidence for civil disputes without the need for notarization.
According to D’Andrea & Partners, the requirements for WeChat correspondence to have legal force in China are as follows:
- Authenticity – the content of evidence must be authentic.
- Relevance – evidence must bear objective relevance with the subject matters.
- Legitimacy – legal form and source.
In practice, legitimacy is relatively easy to comply. During WeChat communications, both parties engage knowingly and willingly. So the main difficulty is how to prove the authenticity and relevance. We could give you the following suggestions:
Maintain the completeness of WeChat evidence, utilize the “Favorite” function in WeChat to store original record and conduct regular backups of WeChat record to avoid data loss caused by device or system malfunction.
Try to clarify the identification information of counterparties during the WeChat communication, for example, you can directly ask counterparty to acknowledge his/her identification.
WeChat text dialogue shall be clear, accurate and definite, emoji and pictures should be used with caution especially to deliver explicit information, audio quality in audio dialogue should be clear and better with subsequent written confirmation.