Chinese dissident in Italy defies smear campaign, surveillance threats

Li Ying built a digital outlet that Beijing could not fully silence, and he has paid for it with surveillance, harassment, and fear. Based in Italy and posting as @whyyoutouzhele, the artist-turned-dissident known as Teacher Li drew a global audience by live-posting uncensored videos, photos, and firsthand accounts from China, especially during the November 2022 White Paper protests against Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy.

His account became a clearinghouse for material that was being removed inside China, a place where users could find what state censors were erasing in real time. By late 2024, ARTICLE 19 said the account had grown to more than 1.8 million followers, underscoring how an exile-based dissident could still reach far beyond China’s borders through X’s algorithm and user networks.

The personal cost became clearer in February 2024, when Li warned that China’s Ministry of Public Security was checking his followers and commenters one by one. Chinese police questioning followers is often described as being called in for tea, a euphemism for interrogation that signals pressure without formal charges. By March, reports said police were questioning people who followed him and other exiled bloggers, and that Li had about 1.6 million followers at the time. Another report said the account dropped to 1.4 million soon after the scrutiny warning, as some users unfollowed after being summoned.

The intimidation did not stop at the border. ARTICLE 19 said Li’s personal information, including his home address in Italy and passport images, was doxxed on November 28, 2022, shortly after he had turned his X feed into a global information hub during the White Paper protests. The group later said the verified Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher account told its 1.8 million followers on November 27, 2024, that it believed it had been shadow banned on X around the second anniversary of the protest movement.

That sequence has made Li a prominent example of transnational repression, the pattern in which Chinese authorities pressure dissidents, relatives, followers, and online audiences outside China. For Li, exile in Italy has not meant safety, only a different battlefield, where censorship is met not just with defiance, but with platform manipulation, online intimidation, and the constant risk of being watched.