[BigJ1211]

The problem is, you also take a political stance by removing him from your tournament. Intended or not, people will read this as 'shilling' for China. Now I don't follow Hearthstone, but it's quite common to ask players personal questions like "How did you prepare for this match?" and I could see someone answering that with how the HK situation has affected that (less time, extra stress etc.).

This is not automatically a political statement, but just by bringing that up they could have banned and DQ'ed him for the same reason and it would've looked just as bad if not even worse. It would still look political in that situation.