Asian Tech Press (Dec 1) -- Tencent's flagship social app WeChat announced Monday that it will soon start allowing app users to open external links, including links to its biggest rival Alibaba's e-commerce platform Taobao.

In an announcement, WeChat said it will allow direct access to external links in a peer-to-peer messaging. Moreover, it will open direct access to external links for e-commerce in group chats on a trial basis.

This means that after eight years, WeChat users will be able to directly open and access external links to e-commerce platforms like Taobao in a group chat.

The blocking between Taobao and WeChat, two of the most popular apps in China, began in 2013. In July of that year, Alibaba announced the suspension of third-party application services related to WeChat, and in November, some users discovered that Taobao links could not be opened directly in WeChat.

The turnaround came this year, when China's antitrust regulations were gradually tightened and the Internet giants began to gradually liberalize their restrictions.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) requested that platforms be unblocked by September 17 in accordance with the standards, solving the problem of blocked URL links among Internet companies.