BEIJING Reuters -- A leading entrepreneur in China who had questioned the wisdom of the country's zero-COVID strategy was banned from posting on Weibo, with the social media platform accusing Trip.com co-founder James Liang of violating laws.
It was not known what laws Liang had broken and it was not clear when the ban took effect or what had triggered it, according to Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter. On Tuesday, online users noticed changes to Liang's account, which has 817,000 followers.
The account belonging to Liang, who is currently executive chairman of China's dominant travel platform, now displays a statement saying the user is currently blocked for violating relevant laws and regulations. Reuters was unable to contact Liang through Trip.com, which owns Qunar and Skyscanner, and the company declined to comment.
Weibo did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Last week, Liang wrote a piece that was published on the WeChat account of the Center for China and Globalization, in which he argued that overly cautious epidemic prevention policies could cause bigger pain on the economy and people's lives than the virus itself. The post was removed.
The authorities have become more sensitive to public questioning of China's zero-COVID policies, and have adopted even stricter measures to stamp out the spread of the disease, while threatening to take action against critics of their approach.
China needs to stick to a zero-COVID strategy because relaxing curbs could cause a high number of deaths and overwhelm its medical system.
In April, Liang posted on Weibo an article he had written on the Omicron variant's low death rate, challenging the need for strict epidemic controls in China.
In April, he published a piece in the China Enterprise News newspaper, warning that excessive COVID-prevention measures could hurt China's economy.
The strategy to combat COVID 19 isn't the only issue that the Liang has taken aim at. In his last Weibo post, on April 29, Liang published an analysis on why China had taken so long to revise its one-child policy, a topic he has passionately discussed on social media and in media interviews.
Since the tightening of the regulatory environment in the past two years, most Chinese business leaders who were once outspoken have gone private on social media, or stopped posting altogether.
Over the weekend, Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent Holdings, created a social media stir by reposting an article on the increasingly sensitive topic of China's economy.
Censorship has tightened under Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is expected to secure a third leadership term at the Congress later this year of the ruling Communist Party.
Other high-profile Chinese that Weibo has banned recently include private equity investor Dan Bin and Wang Sicong, the son of Dalian Wanda founder Wang Jianlin.
As with Liang, the specific reasons for their bans were not given, but Dan had questioned the feasibility of the zero-COVID policy and Wang had challenged the efficiency of a government-endorsed traditional Chinese medicine to treat the virus.