When China’s prodigious tech influencer, Naomi Wu, found herself silenced, it wasn’t just the machinery of a surveillance state at play. Instead, it was a confluence of state repression and the sometimes capricious attention of a Western audience that, as she asserts, often views Chinese activists more as ideological tokens than as genuine human beings.
You’re looking at it from a logical view,
The answer is pretty much that her partner is a minority that the state hates, so they want to punish that person and anyone who supports her,
And it’s just that. Perhaps they could escape, but I presume they both have family there, and then they may not be able to return, etc.