Australian politicians should ditch their WeChat accounts before the federal election to head off any political interference from China, an influential Australian think tank has warned.

But business users can continue to use Chinese social media platforms such as WeChat and TikTok, as long as they keep in mind they are using platforms that are both surveilled and censored by the Chinese Communist Party, said Fergus Ryan, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra-based think tank funded mostly by the Department of Defence and other government agencies.