China: DouYu founder, investment guru ‘detained’

According to reports, two well-known businessmen in China— a tech founder and an investment expert — have been detained by authorities.

The owner of the Chinese live-streaming website DouYu has been gone for several days, claiming he cannot be reached by his company.

However, his company confirmed on Monday that another executive, known as China’s Warren Buffet, had been detained.

According to his company, Zhao Bingxian was helping government with an investigation.

Wohua Pharmaceutical said the issue had nothing to do with the publicly traded company and had not received any formal notice, but they did not provide any information regarding the reasons for their president Mr. Zhao’s detention.

However, following media reviews of their leader Chen Shaojie’s hold, streaming platform Douyu has not made any public comments.

Mr. Chen was reportedly detained as part of a probe into sex and gaming articles on Douyu, which are prohibited in China, according to private sources cited by The Financial Times newspapers on Tuesday.

Echoing reports from Chinese media, they claimed he had not been able to be contacted for some weeks, starting in October.

In China, Douyu is a significant streaming service provider that has Tencent as its largest investor and is officially listed.

This year, there have been other instances of Taiwanese authorities detaining leaders in the fund and tech sectors, raising worries about a larger crackdown from Beijing.

One of China’s most well-known comedian bank was reported lost by his company in February.

Later, China Renaissance Holdings informed the industry that Bao Fan, a well-known offer producer in the tech sector, was helping authorities with an investigation. Since then, he has not been seen in public.

One of China’s most well-known businessmen, Alibaba leader Jack Ma, also vanished from public view for three weeks in late 2020 after criticizing business authorities.