The South China Morning Post reported (April 9) that Sina, owner of the Twitter-style microblog Weibo and one of China’s leading social media platforms, announced on April 8, that it had suspended or shut down more than 50 accounts which published “politically harmful information”, including of Yu Jianrong, a popular outspoken liberal intellectual with more than seven million followers. The purge comes amid a growing crackdown on social media as the government pushes tech companies to do more to censor content.

Yu Jianrong, a researcher at the rural development institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was told that his Weibo account would be suspended for 90 days. The Cyberspace Administration of China had said in January,  that it had scrubbed the web of more than seven million items in less than three weeks and deleted more than 9,300 smartphone apps to screen out information deemed inappropriate or harmful.