China citizen journalist who covered virus missing

A pioneering citizen journalist who documented life in the epicentre of the virus outbreak in China has disappeared.

Thirty-four-year-old lawyer-turned-video blogger Chen Qiushi was the most visible pioneer in a small but dogged movement of citizens defying the ruling Communist Party's tight grip on information.

Chen, from Qingdao, arrived in Wuhan on the last train before a transit shutdown, saying he was determined to document the unfolding epidemic.

"Why am I here? I have stated that it's my duty to be a citizen-journalist," he said, filming himself with a selfie stick outside a train station. "What sort of a journalist are you if you don't dare rush to the front line in a disaster?"

Chen and others like him are arming themselves with smart phones and social media accounts to tell stories from the locked-down virus zones in their own words.

The scale of this non-sanctioned story-telling is unprecedented in any previous major disaster in China.

It presents a challenge to the Communist Party, which wants to control the narrative of China, as it always has since taking power in 1949.

Chen spent two weeks roaming the city, filming the dead and the sickened in overwhelmed hospitals.

He visited construction sites to document the state's massive efforts to build new hospitals in a flash. He criticized a "shelter" hospital set up in a convention center as being inappropriate for infectious patients.

From Wuhan, Chen has broadcast on YouTube and Twitter, which are blocked in China.

Only people who use a virtual private network, or VPN, can see the videos.

His YouTube page sports the motto: "Don't sing the praises of the wealthy and powerful, speak only for the common people."

Chen's posts and vlogs, or video blogs, garnered millions of views - and police attention.

In an anguished video post as he neared the end of his first week in Wuhan, he said police had called him, wanting to know where he was, and questioned his parents.

"I am scared," he said. "In front of me is the virus, and behind me is the legal and administrative power of China."

His voice trembling with emotion and tears welling in his eyes, he vowed to continue "as long as I am alive in this city."

"Even death doesn't scare me!" he said. "So you think I'm scared of the Communist Party?"

Last week, Chen's posts dried up. His mother broke the silence with a video post in the small hours of Friday.

She said Chen was unreachable and appealed for help in finding him.

Later that evening, his friend Xu Xiaodong said in a live broadcast that Chen had been forcibly quarantined for 14 days.

He said Chen had been healthy and showed no signs of infection.

On Sunday, Xu said despite pleading with authorities for a call with Chen, he and others haven't been able to get in touch.

Wuhan police referred a request for comment to Hubei provincial authorities. Repeated calls to the Hubei foreign affairs office rang unanswered, playing a pre-recorded message: "Don't believe rumours, don't spread rumours".

Since graduating from law school in 2007, Chen has worked as a waiter, hotel cleaner, voice actor, police reporter, and eventually, a TV host, launching a budding media career.

In 2018, Chen started a video blog on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and quickly amassed over a million fans for his legal commentary.

He ran into trouble last year after posting videos of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Travelling to the semi-autonomous Chinese city, he attended both a patriotic pro-Beijing rally and a protest march, showing both sides to give his mainland audience a balanced perspective.

In response, authorities shut down his Chinese social media accounts and called him back to the mainland.