Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been unable to access his account on the Chinese social media platform WeChat since July, a government source said Tuesday, as local politicians accuse Beijing of political interference.

Tencent Holdings Ltd., the Chinese tech giant that owns WeChat, in an official comment the same day denied claims that the account had been hijacked, and said the issue appears to be merely a dispute over account ownership with a little-known Chinese company that now controls it.

James Paterson, a ruling Liberal Party senator who chairs the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, has called the episode a "blatant attempt at foreign interference," laying the blame at the foot of China.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. (Getty/Kyodo)

"The Chinese government is seeking to export censorship well beyond its borders," Paterson said in a Facebook post on Monday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian hit back at the claims in a regular media briefing on Monday. "The accusation of China's interference is nothing but unfounded denigration and smear. We never engage in and have no interest in foreign interference."

Morrison's 76,000 WeChat followers were notified his page had been renamed "Australian Chinese new life" earlier this month -- a change made without the government's knowledge, The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported earlier.

According to the report, his profile photo was deleted and the account description was also changed to "provide life information for overseas Chinese in Australia."

The account owner is now listed as Fuzhou 985 Information Technology, after the company's chief executive Huang Aipeng bought the account in November from its original owner, a Chinese national from Fuzhou in southeastern China who is registered only as Mr. Ji, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

"I don't even know who Morrison is, I saw the account has a lot of followers, so we bought it," Huang told the ABC.

Before access to the account was lost, it had been used to deliver COVID-19 updates and press releases from Morrison in Chinese for the local Chinese diaspora.

"There is no evidence of any third-party intrusion," Tencent said. "Based on our information, this appears to be a dispute over account ownership."