I would not claim to have a deep understanding of all the issues at play, but the initial spark of these protests appears to be the that China wants to institute an extradition law that would allow Hong Kong residents to be tried for acts that are considered criminal on the mainland even if they are not in Hong Kong - which would essentially gut the autonomy of the city that has existed since the "One Country Two Systems" policy was adopted after the UK returned Hong Kong to Chinese control.
The history of Hong Kong is something I feel even less qualified to exposit on than the protests, but while its position as a U.K. territory is very obviously the result of an imperialist system that has generally fallen out of favor in most of the world, the U.K.'s values of liberalism (small-l liberalism, to specify) and democracy took root there. Meanwhile, China has never had a liberal democracy, and instead, since the mid-20th Century has been under an authoritarian Communist regime.
In the past, the U.S. has defined itself as a promoter of democratic ideals, valuing freedom and civil liberties. But it has also, particularly starting with the Cold War, defined itself as a promoter of capitalism.
Capitalism is one of those words that now means very different things to different people. It could mean just the right to choose your own job and build your own business, allowing ideas to succeed or fail based on their own merits (as opposed to having a planned economy,) but there's also a version of capitalism that is preached in the West (and throughout much of the world) that considers the pursuit of profit to be the most important goal for any business person.
Through much of the Cold War, the American theory was that capitalism was intrinsically linked to liberal democracy, and so we championed it in opposition to Communism, which was both authoritarian and socialist.
Now, the irony is that Communism in China today is very good at this hard-line capitalism. There is a massive amount of money to be found in China, and it's on track to become a larger economy than the United States.
And companies stand to leave a massive amount of money on the table if they don't court China's market. But unlike in the US, where we have the first amendment, in China there is no enshrined freedom of speech. And thus, nothing bars the Chinese government legally from terminating a business' right to do business in China if someone who in some way represents that company (such as a professional e-Sports player) says something critical of the Chinese government.
So you could make the argument that Blizzard had no choice - that they stood to damage or potentially lose their business relationship with China if they did not ban this guy.
But you could also make the argument that an American company should honor American values, and that the loss of profit - even a substantial amount of profit - should be worth it if means standing up for freedom and democracy.
Perhaps Blizzard was well within their rights to do this. But we, as players, are also well within our rights to register our disappointment with our wallets. I cannot tell anyone what to do in response to Blizzard's actions. I don't even know what my own actions will be. Given the vast number of massive corporations that we now deal with on a daily basis, could we even keep track of all the ethical misdeeds that they've all committed? But also, is looking at the tangled mess that is our corporate complicity and just throwing your hands up, saying "well, what are you going to do?" just lazy? Ironically, it's harder to make a choice like this when it's not something like your grocery store or your gas station - when it's something you've opted into as opposed to a staple of modern life.
Because while Blizzard is a company that makes games in order to make money, games are a medium, like any art form, that can bring people together. I have people I've played WoW with for ten years, and I've also got characters I've lived in for over a decade (13 years at this point) that mean something to me.
It can be an embarrassing thing to feel such emotional resonance with something that was created for profit, but such is the nature of art in a capitalist society.
I would much rather simply be speculating about WoW's next expansion or whether we'll get a Diablo 4 announcement at Blizzcon than weighing the ethics of paying a company that buckled to authoritarianism in order to enjoy my video games. But I guess that's the world we live in.
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