China bans its version of Donald Trump from Weibo… for saying something reasonable

China’s free-speech crackdown continues. Over the weekend, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced that it ordered both Sina and Tencent Weibo to remove the accounts of outspoken real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang for “continuously posting illegal information and having a negative impact.”

“The internet is not outside of the law,” CAC spokesperson Jiang Jun is quoted as saying in the announcement.

This is a big deal, because Ren was one of the most popular figures on Sina’s Twitter-like microblogging service. He’s been compared to Donald Trump – the two don’t share much in the way of politics, but they’re both high-profile real estate moguls that are highly active and sometimes wildly outspoken on social media. Ren’s follower count was enough to make even Trump blush, though: he had more than 37 million followers.

So why was Ren kicked off of Weibo? His most recent “crime” seems to have been posting that he feels the Chinese media should serve the people rather than serve China’s Communist Party. That may sound reasonable, but it runs contrary to what Chinese president Xi Jinping said during a recent tour of Chinese state media.

In truth, though, there’s more to it than just that. Ren is himself a Party member, but he has been quite critical of China’s government over the years, holding that true patriots criticize their government ruthlessly in order to force it to improve. His latest comments were just a few among many and, apparently, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now, in addition to having been kicked off of Weibo permanently, he’s being skewered in state media. It’s wholly possible that further punishment could follow.

What does this mean?

Practically speaking, Ren’s Weibo ouster suggests a few things.

First, it suggests that Xi Jinping isn’t interested in tolerating online criticism from wealthy celebrities any more than Hu Jintao was. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as famed investor and outspoken Weibo celebrity Charles Xue was detained and forced to confess on television early in Xi’s reign. But that case at least ostensibly had a criminal component: Xue was reportedly arrested for paying prostitutes, and he admitted to those charges on television, although he also admitted to wrongdoing on Weibo. But with Ren, it couldn’t be clearer: China’s government is punishing him exclusively because of the critical things he’s said on Weibo.

Second, it probably means the end of all interesting political speech on Weibo. Previous crackdowns, tightening censorship, and the detentions of popular Weibo users like Charles Xue and Kaifu Lee, have already made critical commentary pretty rare on Weibo, but Ren’s ouster should be the final nail in the coffin. He’s about as influential, wealthy, and powerful as anyone other than a major Party leader could be – he’s even friends with Communist Party discipline chief Wang Qishan. If Ren Zhiqiang can’t get away with being critical on Weibo anymore, nobody can (except perhaps for users so obscure that their comments aren’t noticed by anyone in the first place).

Finally, Ren’s removal isn’t great news for Sina Weibo. It has already more or less lost the social media war with Tencent’s WeChat, but the removal of a popular and widely-followed figure like Ren Zhiqiang gives millions of users one fewer reason to even bother opening the app.

(h/t to Shanghaiist and CDT for spotting this)