Chinese tech executives retreat from social media amid industry woes, tightening internet content regulations

Jean Liu Qing, president of ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing, and her father Liu Chuanzhi, founder of computer maker Lenovo, have both hidden their posts on the microblogging platform Weibo. Their accounts are now set to only display posts made within the last six months, according to a notice on their account pages on Saturday, and none of those posts are displayed publicly.

Last week, Weibo removed the official account for Wang Sicong, the son of Chinese property tycoon Wang Jianlin, who has stayed in the public eye as a social media influencer since the failure of his video game live-streaming platform Panda TV. His Weibo account, with 40 million followers, was closed after he openly questioned the efficacy of the traditional Chinese medicine Lianhua Qingwen for treating Covid-19 and the Shanghai government’s mandatory testing policy.

Over the weekend, Weibo and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat banned accounts operated by Hong Hao, head of research at Bank of Communications (Bocom) International. Hong is known for his commentary on Chinese markets and the macroeconomy. Weibo also temporarily suspended the account of Fu Peng, chief economist at Northeast Securities.

The decision by the Lius to hide their posts comes as the technology industry remains under tight scrutiny. A government cybersecurity investigation into Didi remains in limbo after Didi “forced its way” to a US$4.4 billion initial public offering in New York last July, an act later described as a deliberate act of deceit.

More recently, Didi started looking at options for delisting from the New York Stock Exchange in favour of a Hong Kong listing. However, the company was told its relisting plans would not be approved until it had made sufficient “rectifications”. In the meantime, Didi has been losing market share at home since Beijing’s probe forced the removal of dozens of the company’s apps from app stores and prevented it from registering new users.