Users in North America say the app has blocked them from sharing content displeasing to Chinese authorities. Some support Trump’s ban effort, which will be the subject of a court hearing Jan. 14. NEWARK — Zhou Fengsuo, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, hoped to leave Chinese censorship behind when he fled to the United States and became a U.S. citizen. But Chinese censors have caught up with him, through the social-networking service WeChat. The mobile app, born in China and used by Mandarin speakers around the globe, has long blocked Zhou’s friends in China from seeing the political posts he shares from the WeChat account he created in the United States, Zhou says. Then about a year ago, the problem got worse, he says — friends with both U.S. and Chinese accounts said they couldn’t see his timeline posts, whether the material was political or mundane. On a recent morning at Zhou’s third-floor walk-up apartment, he and his colleague, Ouyang Ruoyu, took out their phones to demonstrate the blockade. On Zhou’s phone, his recent WeChat posts were visible — pictures of fall foliage in the Catskills, a message celebrating the memory of the dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. But viewed from the U.S.-registered account on Ouyang’s phone, the space beneath Zhou’s profile photo was an empty white screen. Two of Zhou’s other friends living in the United States, also using accounts created in the United States, said they couldn’t see Zhou’s posts either. Seeing this kind of censorship leak into the United States is why Zhou says he supports the Trump administration’s push to ban WeChat. “WeChat is a prison. It’s a gulag,” said Zhou, who runs the nonprofit group Humanitarian China. “For the United States, it’s a Trojan horse to influence society at every level. … That’s why it must be banned here.” Government should take bigger role in promoting U.S. technology or risk losing ground to China, commission says A dozen WeChat users in the United States and Canada shared censorship stories with The Washington Post, ticking off cases of messages that they sent from their North American phones disappearing before reaching friends — at times when those friends were also located in the United States and Canada. Some users also spoke about being unable to log into their accounts after sharing information critical of China. Several of these users said they, too, support the White House’s aim of banning the app. Others said they don’t support a ban, but want the United States to pressure WeChat’s owner, the Chinese tech giant Tencent, to stop censoring content. “Sue it, punish it, fine it,” said Yang Jianli, a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre who now runs a nonprofit organization in Washington. The group, Citizen Power Initiatives for China, is attempting to organize a class-action lawsuit against Tencent, recruiting U.S.-based plaintiffs who have experienced censorship or other problems on WeChat. In an emailed statement, Tencent spokesman Sean Durkin said the company “operates in a complex regulato