The government of Guangzhou, capital of the southern coastal province of Guangdong, started on Monday a pilot programme that creates a virtual ID card, which serves the same purpose as the traditional state-issued ID cards, through the WeChat accounts of registered users in the city's Nansha district, according to a report by state news agency Xinhua.

It said that trial will soon cover the entire province and further expand across the country from January next year.

The Wall Street Journal has some details of how people register:

Under the pilot program, funded by the National Development and Reform Commission, people create a basic identity card by scanning an image of their face into a WeChat mini program, reading aloud four numbers that pop up on the screen and entering their identification number as well as other information.

It obviously makes a lot of sense to use the WeChat platform to provide a virtual identity card. It's convenient for users who already turn to WeChat apps to handle most aspects of their lives. It means they don't need to carry around a physical ID card, but can let the software handle the necessary authentication when needed. That's also good news for businesses that want to confirm a person's identity.

But it's also an extremely powerful way for the Chinese government to implement its real-name policy for online activities, something that it has so far failed to push through. It will mean that the daily posts and transactions carried out using a mobile will not only be available to the Chinese authorities, but will be unambiguously linked to an individual once such digital IDs become obligatory for WeChat users, as they surely will. That, in its turn, will be very handy for implementing the proposed "citizen score" framework. Once this has been rolled out nationwide, it will form one of the most effective means of control available to the Chinese government, especially if combined with a similarly comprehensive plan to collect everyone's DNA.

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