2020 During the
COVID-19 pandemic in China, he resigned from CCTV and found a way to get into
Wuhan, hoping to trace disappeared journalist
Chen Qiushi. In the following days, he used a
vlog to report on the pandemic in Wuhan. He disappeared on 26 February 2020, presumed detained by officers from
state security. Parts of his chase with the Wuhan authorities was caught on video and uploaded to YouTube. Li was supposedly taken to a police station, where he had fingerprints and blood samples taken, before being taken to an "interrogation room". while others stated that he returned to the hotel on 28 February. On 22 April 2020, Li posted a video on YouTube, Twitter, and Weibo, and uploaded the English subtitle to YouTube in the following days. According to Li, he was escorted on 26 February to the police station and was under investigation for disrupting public order. Additionally, police detained and quarantined him, citing his visits to sensitive epidemic areas. Li's quarantine was at first in Wuhan, and later moved to his hometown. Li stated that he had been treated well by the police during the detention, and that he had been released on 28 March. According to
The Guardian, Li's neutral tone in the video was "very different from his previous videos". Activist
Ou Biaofeng stated the authorities may have told Li to make the brief statement. At the end of his April 22 post, he quoted the
Book of Documents aphorism "the mind of man is restless, prone (to err); its affinity to what is right is small. Be discriminating, be uniform (in the pursuit of what is right), that you may sincerely hold fast the Mean." () and gave his own interpretation in English:
2023 In January 2023, Li reappeared in the public light after nearly three years of silence to give an interview, during which he recounted the events leading to his arrest in February 2020 and restated his views on the lack of freedom for Chinese citizens and his disdain of the totalitarianism and tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party. In March 2023, Li was interviewed and stated that he had graduated from the
University of Rochester and is working at an artificial intelligence lab. == See also ==