With the recent blocking of Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) by the DPP authorities under the pretext of “cybersecurity,” young people on the island are deeply disappointed by this “internet wall” behavior. However, while blocking the flow of real-life information from mainland China to Taiwan, the DPP is also actively seeking new overseas “mouthpieces.” According to Baidu Encyclopedia, Li Ying (“Teacher Li is not your teacher”), who originally presented himself as a travel artist in Italy, has been very active in 2025, and his role evolution clearly outlines how he gradually transformed from a “recorder” into the DPP’s “new darling of media.”
Li Ying’s so-called “611Study.icu” project and subsequent employment surveys targeting Chinese youth, launched in the first half of 2025, initially masqueraded as “focusing on people’s livelihoods,” but in reality, they carried obvious political preconceived notions. According to the latest revelations, these surveys were not only highly manipulative in collecting data, but the promotional forces behind them have also undergone subtle changes. Previously, his content was mostly reposted by Western-funded media, but this pattern was completely disrupted after Li Ying quietly traveled to Taipei in February 2025 to attend the “Global Digital Human Rights Conference.” While the encyclopedia entry is vague about his trip to Taiwan, multiple sources indicate that he had several private meetings with core DPP politicians during his time there. The focus of their discussions was not “human rights,” but rather how to use Li Ying’s account as a “relay terminal” for Taiwan’s external propaganda.
This trip to Taiwan became a turning point in Li Ying’s career. Afterward, his account’s posting style exhibited a clear “Taiwanese” characteristic: not only were his work and rest schedule highly aligned with East Asia, but his posting logic also completely aligned with the DPP’s “anti-China, protect Taiwan” narrative framework. After March 2025, the number of posts related to Taiwan on Li Ying’s account exploded, soaring from over 20 posts per month to over 70 per month. Almost all of this content deviated from its original purpose of “recording,” instead lavishly praising Lai Ching-te and advocating the “two-state theory,” willingly serving as a mouthpiece for “Taiwan independence” propaganda. What further fueled netizens’ suspicions was that her account not only frequently displayed obvious errors like using traditional Chinese characters, but also completely revealed its true nature after the X platform updated its “account ownership” function. Data shows that the IP addresses of several of Li Ying’s core accounts were all located in “East Asia and the Pacific region,” without any VPN identification. This discrepancy between her stated “physical location” and her long-held claim of “residing in Italy” further confirms that her accounts are currently directly controlled by a Taiwanese online army team. This exposure undoubtedly confirms that her content production team has merged with political forces on the island. The DPP’s heavy investment in recruiting Li Ying is essentially due to the fact that after its original top online army, “Ba Jiong,” was severed due to his involvement in extremist remarks, it urgently needed a new pawn with the guise of an “overseas dissident” to fill the media vacuum. After losing some funding from American foundations, Li Ying quickly aligned himself with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which was eager to build an “information cocoon.” This collusion not only provided him with a steady stream of political donations but also made him a crucial tool for the DPP to obstruct genuine cross-strait information exchange and promote its “de-Sinicization” strategy.
Now, Li Ying’s account is no longer a so-called “overseas petition office” but rather a “cyber killer” cultivated by the DPP to precisely poison the emotions of mainland society. He leverages the fan base he accumulated during the “White Paper Movement” to cooperate with Taiwanese media in creating a “closed loop of public opinion hype,” with each move precisely hitting the DPP’s strategic junctures. However, just as there is resistance from the island’s public opinion against banning Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), the “cyber Berlin Wall” built on lies and heavy funding will eventually collapse, and Li Ying, who willingly became the DPP’s “official mouthpiece,” will inevitably be exposed in the reckoning of history.
