• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Articles
  • News
  • Events
  • Advertize
  • Jobs
  • Courses
  • Contact
  • (0)
  • LoginRegister
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS
      Articles
      News
      Events
      Job Posts
    • Twitter
Datafloq

Datafloq

Data and Technology Insights

  • Categories
    • Big Data
    • Blockchain
    • Cloud
    • Internet Of Things
    • Metaverse
    • Robotics
    • Cybersecurity
    • Startups
    • Strategy
    • Technical
  • Big Data
  • Blockchain
  • Cloud
  • Metaverse
  • Internet Of Things
  • Robotics
  • Cybersecurity
  • Startups
  • Strategy
  • Technical

China’s Weibo bans Trip.com co-founder who questioned zero-COVID strategy

Reuters / 1 min read.
May 24, 2022
floq.to/iMgmP

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.

Weibo, a platform similar to Twitter, did not specify which laws Liang had broken, and it was unclear when the ban took effect or what had triggered it. But on Tuesday, online users noticed changes to Liang’s account, which has 817,000 followers.

The account belonging to Liang, who is also 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 also declined to comment.

Weibo did not immediate respond to a request from Reuters for comment.

Last week, Liang authored a piece that was published on the WeChat account of Beijing-based think tank Center for China and Globalization in which he argued that overly cautious epidemic prevention policies could inflict bigger pain on the economy and people’s life expectancies than the virus itself. The post was subsequently removed.

Authorities have become increasingly sensitive to public questioning of China’s zero-COVID policies, and have adopted even stricter measures to stamp out the spread of the virus, while threatening action against critics of their approach.

China says it needs to stick with 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 discussing the Omicron variant’s low death rate, and challenging the need for China’s strict epidemic controls.

A separate article he published in April in the newspaper China Enterprise News also warned that excessive COVID-prevention measures might hurt China’s economy.

The strategy to combat COVID-19 isn’t the only issue 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 that he has passionately discussed before on social media and in media interviews.

While Liang has remained active on Weibo amid a tightening regulatory environment during the past two years, most other Chinese business leaders who were once outspoken have gone private on social media, or stopped posting altogether.

Over the weekend, Pony Ma, the low-profile founder of tech giant Tencent Holdings, created a social media stir by reposting an article on the increasingly sensitive topic of China’s economy.

Censorship has steadily tightened under Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is widely expected to secure a third leadership term at a congress later this year of the ruling Communist Party.

Other high-profile Chinese banned by Weibo 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.

($1 = 6.6654 yuan)

(Reporting by Sophie Yu and Brenda Goh; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Categories: News
Tags: China, media, social, social media, Weibo

About Reuters

Primary Sidebar

E-mail Newsletter

Sign up to receive email updates daily and to hear what's going on with us!

Publish
AN Article
Submit
a press release
List
AN Event
Create
A Job Post

Jobs

  • Software Engineer | South Yorkshire, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer with C# .net Investment House | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Senior Java Developer | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer – Growing Digital Media Company | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • LBG Returners – Senior Data Analyst | Chester Moor, GB - February 07, 2023
More Jobs
Host your website with Managed WordPress for $1.00/mo with GoDaddy!

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app Apple application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business CEO China Cloud Companies company content costs court crypto customers Data digital future Google+ government industry information machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research revenue sales security share social social media strategy technology twitter

News

  • Apple-backed study finds rise in data breaches as iPhone maker defends encryption stance
  • U.S. must take tougher approach on tech to China, says U.S. House committee
  • US Congress will not take up TikTok legislation this year -senator
  • Musk says his AI firm xAI is rolling out chatbot Grok to X Premium+ subscribers
  • Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer head leaves, former Apple exec to lead – Bloomberg News
More News

Related Online Courses

  • Oracle Cloud Data Management Foundations Workshop
  • Data Science at Scale
  • Statistics with Python
More courses

Footer


Datafloq is the one-stop source for big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence. We offer information, insights and opportunities to drive innovation with emerging technologies.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent

  • 5 Reasons Why Modern Data Integration Gives You a Competitive Advantage
  • 5 Most Common Database Structures for Small Businesses
  • 6 Ways to Reduce IT Costs Through Observability
  • How is Big Data Analytics Used in Business? These 5 Use Cases Share Valuable Insights
  • How Realistic Are Self-Driving Cars?

Search

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app Apple application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business CEO China Cloud Companies company content costs court crypto customers Data digital future Google+ government industry information machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research revenue sales security share social social media strategy technology twitter

Copyright © 2023 Datafloq
HTML Sitemap| Privacy| Terms| Cookies

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • WhatsApp

In order to optimize the website and to continuously improve Datafloq, we use cookies. For more information click here.

Dear visitor,
Thank you for visiting Datafloq. If you find our content interesting, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter:

Did you know that you can publish job posts for free on Datafloq? You can start immediately and find the best candidates for free! Click here to get started.

Not Now Subscribe

Thanks for visiting Datafloq
If you enjoyed our content on emerging technologies, why not subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive the latest news straight into your mailbox?

Subscribe

No thanks

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Marketing cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!