It’s Li’s first ever visit to Taiwan. He is here for a human rights conference in the island state off the coast of China. It has been several years since he has been so close to his homeland, with his last visit to China coming in 2019, back when he was studying art in Italy and posting short stories on the internet. Had he left it at that, he would have the option of boarding a plane tomorrow morning and, two hours later, arriving in the country he still loves, as he says. “But for me, there is no going back.”
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 24/2025 (June 7th, 2025) of DER SPIEGEL.
Li Ying, 33, who goes by the nickname “Teacher Li,” is today likely China’s most effective dissident. He has managed to do something that Xi Jinping’s regime wants to avoid at all costs: He is able to share uncensored information with hundreds of thousands of fellow Chinese. He has two million followers on X and operates a daily news broadcast on YouTube. He calls himself “Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher,” a brand of humor that matches up well with his profile picture: a hand-drawn kitten. “China’s most dangerous cat,” as he is fond of joking.
There is likely no country in the world that invests as much in censorship as China does. Media outlets are tightly controlled, and every social media post that is critical of the government is quickly deleted. Indeed, it is best to avoid typing the words “Xi Jinping” at all because it immediately attracts the attention of Beijing’s army of online watchdogs. The “Great Firewall” that surrounds the Chinese internet blocks numerous foreign media outlets and Western social media platforms. Those who use a VPN without authorization are in violation of the law.
Many do it anyway to have a bit of online freedom. And to read Teacher Li.
“I get around a hundred submissions a day,” Li says. He opens his inbox and scrolls through photos and videos. “Here, someone has sent in their employment contract because it’s apparently been violated … Here, there are protests about an insolvency … Here is a scandal at a funeral home.”
Li’s laptop showing the “Teacher Li” account: “For me, there’s no going back”
Li’s account isn’t always focused on grand declarations of regime opposition. He frequently shares snippets of daily life offering a more nuanced view of Chinese society than that presented by local media outlets. A disabled mother unable to find healthcare for her child. Schoolchildren protesting against weekend classes. But then there are videos like that of the bold 22-year-old on a bridge in the province of Hunan demanding the overthrow of “dictator Xi Jinping” – who sent his manifesto directly to Li.
Teacher Li acts as a virtual channel through which the Chinese broadcast their displeasure to the world. And as the medium they turn to when they want to know more than just the achievements of Comrade Xi on any given day.
He is, in short, perhaps China’s most important news agency – a cat lover on the edge of the Alps.
“I see myself as a hole in a tree trunk,” Li says. “People whisper their secrets into tree holes because they know they are safe there. And the hole doesn’t speak back to them.”
He is sitting on the bed in his hotel room. It is the morning after the photo shoot, and his stubble is visible in the daylight. Clothes are lying about on the floor, along with two partially packed suitcases. He is telling the story of fall 2022, when his life changed for good within the space of just a few days.
Li Ying had just completed his studies at an art academy in Tuscany when protests broke out in China. People in Shanghai and other cities were suffering under the seemingly endless and increasingly arbitrary measures associated with the government’s “zero-COVID” policy. In November 2022, the pent-up frustration burst forth, and thousands took to the streets. As symbols of their powerlessness, they held up blank sheets of paper. Ultimately, the “White Paper Movement” produced demonstrations of a size the country hadn’t seen since 1989. That was the year the army violently quelled pro-democracy student protests on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The White Paper Movement in November 2022 in Beijing
How, then, could people in China’s digital cage share information about demonstrations without putting themselves in danger? Through Li.
Sitting in disbelief at his desk in Milan with his cats, he heard people on a video shouting words that require unimaginable courage in China: “Xi Jinping, resign!” He posted it.
Li was not known as an activist at the time. He had been living in Italy since 2016 and had been posting short stories on Chinese social media for a while, giving him a certain reach. But once his content grew more political, the censors blocked his accounts. So he moved over to Twitter, as X was still called at the time.
Li’s post about protesters who called out “Xi Jinping, resign!” in November 2022 in Shanghai
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There, videos of the White Paper Movement spread rapidly. Participants began sending Li videos so that he could post them on their behalf. Soon, he was receiving dozens of messages per second, he recalls. He reduced his sleeping hours to the bare minimum. He was alone, after all. And in his inbox, history was happening.
“That was the dividing line when my old life ended and my new life began,” Li says.
His old life began in 1992 in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui. Li grew up in a privileged family, with both his parents working as art professors in the metropolis of Fuyang. “I was raised on a university campus. I knew nothing of how the population at large lived, the farmers and the workers.”
His father, though, spoke frequently about the wounds of the past. During the civil war, Li’s grandfather had been a medic with the Kuomintang, the Chinese national government that was overthrown by the communists in 1949. “Because of my grandfather, my father was seen as a counterrevolutionary from the moment he was born.” The repression, the famines, Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution – all of that left its mark on his family’s history.
“Traitors” being publicly presented during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976): “I saw it as the price for a strong fatherland”
And yet, says Li, he used to be a “Little Pink” when he was younger. The term is Chinese slang for young nationalists who are fanatic adherents to Communist Party ideology. “I saw the fact that some people had to sacrifice their rights as the price for a strong fatherland.”
After all, it didn’t affect him personally, the talented young artist who started giving painting classes as a teenager, earning him his nickname, “Teacher Li.” A prodigy who would hold his first exhibition at the tender age of 19. These days, he hardly paints anymore at all.
The 2022 protests were quickly put down by the regime, with many participants being arrested. In exile, though, Li remained a megaphone for the silenced. “I would boot up my computer in the morning and not turn it off until the evening.” Only after a year did he start putting together a small team. “Today, there are more than 20 of us all over the world.” They screen submissions, prepare content and check facts. How thoroughly? Hard to say. Most do it as a side gig, Li says, primarily paid through voluntary subscriptions. Li has become a dissident and an editor-in-chief in one.
“Journalists, analysts, authors – all of us use him as a source,” says human rights activist Yaqiu Wang, who lives in the U.S. “Li is the most important Chinese activist abroad. Even larger media outlets that report on China recycle news that only became known through his posts.”
Fengsuo Zhou, one of the student leaders from 1989, sees Li as a kind of heir. Not long ago, Zhou visited him in Italy. The two men went hiking together. “His work reminds me of what I did on Tiananmen Square,” says Zhou, who is also based in the U.S. Back then, he and the other activists would create pamphlets using a printing press to make the masses heard, he recalls. “Today, Li does it on social media.”
On the Chinese internet, it takes about 30 seconds to get a decent idea of what the regime thinks of Li. On Baike, the heavily censored Chinese version of Wikipedia, there is a long entry about him. The category? “Internet Traitor.” A chapter entitled “Character Evaluation” reads: “After he moved abroad, Li Ying began earning his money by slandering China to pay for his corrupt lifestyle and was identified as an immoral person.”
His old Chinese address and mobile phone number were leaked, as were those of his parents. Somebody who must have had access to official documents published his ID number and passport photo. Once, early on, Li allowed himself to be photographed for an interview. But after everything that he has experienced since, he says he doesn’t want new pictures of himself circulating. “They harass me in every way you can imagine.”
Activist Li in Taipei: “They harass me in every way you can imagine”
Videos of cats being tortured have become a frequent presence in his inbox. Once, when he ordered painting supplies online, the vendor in China was visited by officials demanding his address in Italy. The police have also paid countless visits to his parents in an effort to force his return, he says, threatening to eliminate their pensions if he refused. Later, someone posted fake pornographic content of them.
After followers told him that they had been questioned about why they follow Li, he called on them to unfollow him. Within just a few days, about 200,000 of them complied.
Li has frequently changed residences in Italy, a response, he says, to the numerous informants in the overseas Chinese community who cooperate with the regime. “Former classmates of mine have told me that they have been asked about my daily life. When do I get up? What restaurants do I go to? What kind of friends do I have?” He believes someone is trying to assemble a psychogram of him in order to exploit potential weaknesses.
But Li doesn’t give the impression of being demoralized. On the contrary, he seems full of self-confidence. During the short walk through the hotel lobby, he gently places a guiding hand on his visitor’s back. He often laughs as he talks. If he is at odds with himself, he doesn’t let on. “I wake up on the morning and can immediately see everything that is happening in China. It’s not a lonely feeling. It gives me a sense of purpose.”
And yet, he has just triggered a controversy that could ultimately drive a wedge through his community. A controversy about money.
It is an age-old dilemma among dissidents in exile: They are transformed into heroes overseas. Big media organizations interview them, and they are admired for their courage. But courage doesn’t pay the rent, and being a regime critic is not an occupation.
Li says his subscription income varies between 3,000 and 7,000 euros per month, making it difficult to pay his team. One possibility would be to accept funding from Western governments, such as the U.S., China’s geopolitical rival. “But I don’t want to be controlled by anyone,” he says.
Which is why Li, together with other political influencers, founded his own cryptocurrency in late 2024. Called “LiCoin,” he believes it is perfect for his purposes: decentralized, not state-controlled, and donors can remain anonymous.
But the project wasn’t well-received by his followers. Not long before, another Chinese opposition activist had been found guilty of crypto-fraud in the U.S. Many started wondering if the selfless Teacher Li had likewise become a shady profit hunter. Share prices collapsed immediately after launch.
“He made the decision to enrich himself,” believes Huang Yicheng, one of the protesters from 2022 who sent Li videos directly from Shanghai. He now lives in Germany. For two years, Huang says, he and Li would speak frequently on the phone. “At first, he always sounded optimistic. He believed that China would soon become a democracy, and all of us could then go back home. The disappointment that this didn’t happen, combined with the harassment from the regime, has made him cynical.”
Li denies this. “I have never been interested in profit, nor am I now,” he insists. He wants to professionalize the opposition, he says, to get away from the situation in which dissidents are forced to operate completely on their own. That, he adds, costs money.
Just a few days after the conversation, news will break that Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America are to be shut down – two of the most important media outlets where Chinese in exile can practice journalism in their native languages. The two outlets, both funded by U.S. Congress, have been broadcasting news for people in China and in other authoritarian countries for decades. Now, they are in danger of falling victim to Donald Trump’s own cultural revolution.
Li packs his things. He has to leave for the airport soon. The direct flight from Taipei to Rome isn’t an option, he says. Instead, he will fly east, in the wrong direction, first crossing the Pacific and making a stopover in the U.S. before heading onward to Europe. “So that I don’t have to fly through Chinese airspace,” Li says. He has been strongly advised not to do so. By whom? He asks that such information not be published.
Teacher Li has powerful enemies. And powerful friends.
