All Social Functions of Hubei Ezhou Citizen Yu Qian’s WeChat Account Blocked for Posting “Paying Tribute to Mr. Jimmy Lai”

On April 23, 2026, this outlet learned that in October 2025, after Hubei Ezhou citizen Yu Qian posted “Paying tribute to Mr. Jimmy Lai” on the X platform, Tencent Corporation of China was quickly ordered to block all social functions of Yu Qian’s WeChat account, which to this day remain unusable and cannot be unblocked.

In October 2022, Hubei Ezhou citizen Yu Qian was arrested by the Chinese Communist authorities for posting statements on Twitter protesting pandemic lockdowns, and was later sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. He was released after completing his sentence in September 2025. After his release, Yu Qian continued to be closely monitored by the authorities, who installed surveillance cameras in front of and behind his home. Yu Qian also experienced three internet shutdowns after his release, angrily denouncing the authorities’ “vile tricks of violating human rights and retaliating.” He also declared: “Tyrannical and brutal government, cruelly poisoning our people! As long as life endures, resistance will not cease!”

Yu Qian’s biography: Born on June 8, 1986, he is a citizen of Ezhou, Hubei Province, and of Xingqiao Village, Zelin Town, Echeng District, Ezhou City; he previously worked in Shanghai; he is a Christian, an active internet user, a democracy advocate, a human rights defender and a political prisoner. His commonly used Twitter account is “Yu Qian 100 @tianfushiming.”

In his early years, because of his poor family circumstances, he experienced all manner of hardship. After growing up, he worked in Shanghai; because he had a strong sense of justice, he repeatedly denounced senior leaders outside working hours for placing themselves above the law, and described himself on Twitter as “both a tank man charging the tower and Hubei’s Li Wenliang.” As a result, senior leaders concerned in Shanghai and Ezhou, Hubei Province, became extremely dissatisfied with him and designated him as a target for suppression requiring urgent stability-maintenance monitoring;

On June 4, 2010, he fasted and prayed to commemorate the 21st anniversary of June Fourth and sent text messages announcing his hunger strike. Two days later, police from the Jianghai Police Station in Fengxian District, Shanghai, summoned him on suspicion of “disturbing public order” and imposed an administrative penalty of 200 yuan;

He later refused to accept the penalty decision and immediately initiated an administrative reconsideration, suing the Fengxian District Government of Shanghai at the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court in the hope that the court would rule to revoke the administrative penalty imposed on him;

He was subsequently forced to return to his hometown in Hubei. During this period, because he continued to speak out, exposing such issues in Ezhou as corruption and collusion between officials and businesspeople, black factories everywhere, cancer villages, the anti-organized-crime campaign, airport land seizures and forced demolitions affecting 30,000 households, and government administrative fraud, Ezhou police covered the roadside utility poles in his home village with surveillance cameras;

On April 12, 2022, when Hubei Governor Wang Zhonglin visited Ezhou to provide guidance on pandemic prevention and control, although officials said that the lockdown area would be limited to approximately 300,000 people in Ezhou’s central urban area, townships immediately issued notices on static management of the whole of Ezhou in the name of the townships under the governor’s instructions, with the actual lockdown affecting nearly one million people;

In response, he posted questions online asking whether it was reasonable and lawful for the townships, without legal documents, to illegally impose additional lockdowns on 700,000 people, illegally detain people on the streets and send them for centralized compulsory study. Because his online dissent immediately sparked heated public discussion, he was summoned three times, on April 20, May 24 and June 20 of the same year, respectively, on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” or “posting on overseas Twitter and maliciously smearing the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.” During the third summons, he had neither a summons warrant nor any other summons document, was confined in a small dark room for more than seven hours, and was also placed under administrative detention for 15 days;

In September 2022, because he once again published commentary and graphic information on Twitter about the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party, he greatly angered the Hubei authorities. They therefore sent local police to install new surveillance cameras around his residence for round-the-clock home monitoring, and he was summoned several more times on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”;

Because he refused to accept this, he twice submitted administrative reconsideration applications and administrative complaints to the Huarong District Court in Ezhou during the same month, but without result. On October 12, 2022, after Yu Qian again sued the Ezhou Intermediate People’s Court and posted the tweet “There is no crime in speaking out about June Fourth; monitoring citizens’ communications is the crime,” police from the Zelin Police Station in Echeng District, Ezhou, quickly took him away, after which he lost contact with the outside world; he has not been released since being detained. His place of detention is unknown.

It was later learned that Yu Qian had first been placed under administrative detention for 15 days because of his Twitter statements, particularly his protests against pandemic lockdowns, and was arrested again immediately after leaving the detention center at the end of that period. On October 29, 2022, he was criminally detained on suspicion of picking quarrels and provoking trouble and held at the Ezhou No. 1 Detention Center. He was arrested on December 2, 2022, and was later sentenced to three years in prison for the same offense. He completed his sentence and was released at the end of September 2025.

This outlet will continue to follow Yu Qian’s situation.