‘Teacher Li’ is among the most prolific sources of unfiltered information from behind China’s Great Firewall. But an attempt to monetise it has proven controversial

On Monday, two parallel visions of Chinese activism appeared on X. One was a video showing a small protest outside a school in western Sichuan province. The other, from a related account, was a post promoting a memecoin and something it called the “$Li vision”, adding that “some of the greatest coins had a rocky start”.

The man behind both accounts is Li Ying, a Chinese art student turned activist based in Milan. His original X account, “Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher”, is one of the most prominent news feeds in the Chinese diaspora. To his nearly 2m followers, Li shares pictures and videos of happenings in China which would be censored inside the country.