Wang Sicong, China’s famous scion, erased from social media after questioning Covid-19 drugs and testing

Wang Sicong, son of Chinese property tycoon Wang Jianlin and an influencer on Weibo with 40 million followers, had his account removed from the social media platform after he openly questioned China’s state-sanctioned medicine for treating Covid-19 and the government’s mandatory testing policy in Shanghai.

Wang’s Weibo account was “not viewable” on Wednesday, removed due to a “violation of related laws and regulations”, according to a notice published on the platform. The complete removal of his account follows censorship of Wang last week, when he was prohibited from publishing any new Weibo posts.

Weibo’s moves came after Wang questioned the effectiveness of the traditional Chinese medicine Lianhua Qingwen, which has been distributed to millions of people in Hong Kong, Shanghai and other Chinese cities during the country’s battle against the Omicron Covid-19 variant.

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Wang, 34, has been one of the biggest influencers on Weibo, known as China’s answer to Twitter, and has been involved in many controversies over the last 12 years. His open display of wealth in buying two Apple Watch’s for his pet dog, his sarcastic comments on other wealthy Chinese, and trolling of celebrities have made his account one of the most popular on the platform.

The only son of Wang Jianlin, the scion has been dubbed China’s “national husband” even though he has gone on record saying he would never get married. His colourful personal lifestyle, which includes frequent changes of girlfriends, has made him a target for China’s paparazzi.

In the past, Wang has been careful to avoid politically sensitive subjects, and he was able to survive previous rounds of censorship by Weibo that took down many so-called Big Vs, or verified accounts with large followings. In 2019, Wang refrained from publishing new posts for several months and in November last year he changed the setting so that only posts from the last six months were viewable.

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Wang completed his primary school in Singapore before he was sent to Winchester College, a 600-year-old boarding school in the UK. Later, he studied philosophy at University College London.

After returning to China in 2009, Wang quickly became a public figure and opened a Weibo account the following year. In a 2015 interview with the BBC in his Shanghai apartment, Wang, then 27, said he was not willing to challenge the ruling Communist Party line. “The state chooses what’s mainstream and you have to conform to that,” he said in fluent English. “If your ideals are not mainstream, then you’re wrong.”

However, Wang started to speak out after Shanghai imposed a citywide Covid-19 lockdown. Wang has been in Shanghai during the lockdown, according to multiple social media accounts.

In a post on WeChat, the social media platform that allows friends to see posts, Wang wrote that he plans to boycott the mandatory nucleic testing because it was not about the virus, but rather a test of people’s “submissiveness”. A screenshot of his WeChat post has been widely shared and viewed, as it partly reflects widespread frustration about Shanghai’s draconian lockdown measures.

Wang’s last Weibo post was on April 14, in which he shared a video and asked if the World Health Organisation had ever recommended Lianhua Qingwen as a treatment for Covid-19. In a separate post, Wang also urged the authorities to investigate Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical, the maker of the medicine.

Eastern Chinese city ramps up zero Covid with tests every 48 hours

Amid the outburst of discontent over China’s strict dynamic zero Covid-19 approach, Beijing has been ramping up efforts to clean up content it deems “harmful” by relentlessly taking new measures to threaten and censor internet users.

Popular social platforms, including Weibo and Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok, have started to display user locations based on internet protocol (IP) addresses in a bid to “prevent netizens from pretending to be locals and spreading rumours”.