An influential Chinese property executive and social media star, who called President Xi Jinping a “clown” over a speech he made last month concerning the government’s efforts to fight the coronavirus has gone missing, three of his friends say.
Ren Zhiqiang, a member of China’s ruling Communist Party and a former top executive of state-controlled property developer Huayuan Real Estate Group, is not contactable since March 12, they said.
“Many of our friends are looking for him,” his good friend and businesswoman Wang Ying said in a statement to Reuters, describing them as being “extremely anxious”.
“Ren Zhiqiang is a public figure and his disappearance is widely known. The institutions responsible for this need to give a reasonable and legal explanation for this as soon as possible,” she said.
Ren has significantly more than 37 million followers on Chinese social media app Weibo.
Calls produced by Reuters to Ren’s mobile phone went unanswered.
The Beijing police failed to immediately react to requests by phone and fax for touch upon Sunday. China’s State Council Information Office failed to immediately react to a faxed ask for comment.
An essay Ren distributed to people he knew in recent weeks took aim at a speech Xi made on February 23, which state media reported was teleconferenced to 170,000 party officials nationwide. Copies of his essay were later posted online by others.
In the essay, which will not mention Xi by name, Ren said after studying the speech he “saw not an emperor standing there exhibiting his ‘new clothes,’ but a clown stripped naked who insisted on continuing being emperor,” according to a version posted by China Digital Times, a US-based website.
He also said it revealed a “crisis of governance” inside the party, and that a lack of free press and speech had prevented the outbreak from being tackled sooner, causing the specific situation to worsen.
Ren’s disappearance comes as censorship over how local media and online users talk about the epidemic has tightened in recent weeks.
The coronavirus, which emerged in China year that is late last has infected significantly more than 80,000 people in the nation, killing 3199.
Ren was put on probation through the party for a year in 2016 included in a punishment for publicly criticising government policy and his social media accounts were ordered turn off by the federal government.