A court announces the sentence for Ren Zhiqiang after he disappeared from public view in March after publishing an essay online that accused the Chinese President of mishandling the outbreak.
The former chairman of a state-owned real estate company who publicly criticised Chinese President Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been sentenced to 18 years in prison on corruption charges.
In a commentary that circulated on social media, Ren criticised a February 23 video conference with 170,000 officials held early in the pandemic at which Mr Xi announced orders for responding to the disease. Ren didn't mention Mr Xi's name but said, "standing there was not an emperor showing off his new clothes but a clown who had stripped off his clothes and insisted on being an emperor".
"People did not see any criticism at the conference. It didn't investigate and disclose the truth," Ren wrote, according to a copy published by China Digital Times, a website in California.
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