A number of cyber security analysts call this caused by the Chinese government, aliases blocked. And the temporary blocking of Facebook's services could have evolved into full blocking.
If it eventually gets banned completely, WhatsApp will join a number of other services and sites that are already included in the list of blockers whose list of contents is growing every day.
Previously, WhatsApp is still accessible in China, unlike his two siblings Facebook and Instagram are equally inaccessible except using a virtual private network (VPN).
Blocking WhatsApp and other apps will certainly be advantageous for similar local apps. For example WeChat, which is without blocking WhatsApp is actually already very large and popular in China.
Another example is the blocking of Google, which certainly benefits its local competitors, namely Baidu, and Weibo which is a Chinese version of Twitter, as quoted from The Verge.
