Considering that WeChat does video and audio calls it's pretty reasonable that wechar asks permission to use the microphone. I think you've been caught up in fearmongering. China isn't going to invade Taiwan any time soon. There has been little to any real indication they would or even could. You've gotta understand that the CCP is authoritarian but no government is that competent to be keeping tabs on a random Americans conversation that they had at some point at some time who may more may not be ever visiting China. I'm not saying China is run by good people, I'm saying no government is competent enough to actually 1984 anyone in real life.

It's like the social credit system that doesn't really exist. The CCP put out a vague instruction to have a credit system based on social stuff because many Chinese people don't have banks thus don't have access to regular credit systems. Random cities and provinces came up their own systems with random rules and regulations. Then basically all of them were walked back because they were stupid and random and overbearing, and the CCP delegating their vague orders gives them plausible deniability in that they blamed the stupid systems on local government and played the good guy when they ordered them walked back.