Ba Jiong: From Hualien Truku Youth to the 'Spy-Master' Wanted by the CCP for One Million Yuan

30-second overview: This article tells how Taiwanese influencer Ba Jiong (Wen Zi-yu) transformed from a travel creator in Hualien into a political commentator with over a million subscribers. His channel "Sheturizhi" (攝徒日記 / Photographer's Diary) exposes CCP united-front operations and has attracted attention from international media including the American think tank Jamestown Foundation and Voice of America. Despite being caught up in populist controversies and legal disputes, he remains an important voice in Taiwan's online political sphere — countering CCP narratives through what he calls "reverse united-front" tactics.

"250,000 RMB — that is the price the CCP's Quanzhou Public Security Bureau has put on my head." On November 13, 2025, Wen Zi-yu, known online as "Ba Jiong," held up a Chinese wanted notice bearing his ID number and photo and spoke to the camera with his trademark sarcasm. This was not the first time he had gone head-to-head with the other side — but it was the most symbolically charged moment in his trajectory from film studies student to political influencer. ⁵¹⁵

From "Director Is a Rogue" to Sheturizhi

Born in 1994 in Xincheng Township, Hualien, Wen Zi-yu has Truku indigenous heritage. His family background is a typical cross-section of Taiwan's ethnic tapestry: his grandmother is indigenous; his maternal grandparents come from Southern Hokkien, Hakka, and Hunan backgrounds, respectively. In 2017, while enrolled in the Visual Communication program at Chung Chou University of Science and Technology, Wen represented his school at the "International University Student New Media Original Works Competition" in Shanghai, winning third place with his work Fatal Livestream. At the time he served as director, editor, and actor simultaneously, displaying an acute instinct for visual storytelling and traffic rhythms. The fan page and YouTube channel "Director Is a Rogue" (導演是流氓), operated by his team "Free Style," was the forerunner of what would become "Sheturizhi Fun TV" (攝徒日記Fun TV). ³

📝 Curator's Note: Ironically, this young man who would later be labeled by the CCP as a "Taiwan independence thug" drew some of his early creative nourishment from cross-strait film and media exchanges.

Early "Sheturizhi" content mostly covered travel and daily life in Hualien and Yilan. However, 2018 became the channel's turning point. As cross-strait tensions mounted, Wen found that political topics generated far more traffic than travel. He began pivoting to commentary on Chinese current affairs, and during the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests rose rapidly to prominence with a style that mocked "little pinks" (xiao fenhong, CCP nationalist netizens) and supporters of South Korean-origin KMT candidate Han Kuo-yu. By 2023, the China Heritage blog had identified him as one of Taiwan's representative YouTubers for "trolling little pinks." ⁶

The International Think Tank Perspective: Viral Exposés of United-Front Operations

Ba Jiong's influence had long since crossed Taiwan's borders. At the end of 2024, he collaborated with rapper Chen Po-yuan — formerly a united-front propaganda model known as "Southern Fujian Wolf" (閩南狼) — to release a two-part China United Front Documentary, exposing how the CCP lures Taiwanese influencers and uses "Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Bases" for infiltration. The documentary drew in-depth analysis from the American think tank Jamestown Foundation, which pointed out that it exposed the CCP's new strategy of recruiting Taiwanese youth through cultural exchange and monetary incentives, and sparked broad debate in Taiwan about sovereignty and social resilience. ¹¹

The international civic media platform Global Voices reported that Chen Po-yuan's transformation from a pro-China singer into a whistleblower elevated united-front issues from simple exposure to a comprehensive questioning of the intermediary system. ¹² Additionally, the Global Taiwan Institute noted that the English- and Japanese-subtitled versions of the documentary accumulated over 3 million views globally within weeks, providing rare direct evidence of how the CCP's grassroots united-front operations work. ¹³ Radio Free Asia (RFA) also interviewed Ba Jiong to discuss how his song "Nao Xiu Le" (惱羞了 / Shame and Fury) personified cross-strait relations as an "abusive lover" dynamic. ¹

The United Front Documentary: Underground Investigation and Financial Corruption

The China United Front Documentary not only exposed the surface features of CCP united-front operations against Taiwan, but also probed their underground workings and financial flows. Ba Jiong's team used undercover investigative methods, conducting field research across Taiwan and China. To bypass China's Great Firewall, they sought "friendly actors" in rural areas to pretend to support the CCP and post content that would attract users, then privately guide those users to uncensored material. Ba Jiong said: "A spark of curiosity can ignite resistance." ⁸

The documentary also revealed corruption in Fujian's united-front funding: official records showed NT$5 million paid to Taiwanese influencers, but only NT$1 million was actually delivered — the difference was skimmed by united-front officials, bank executives, and provincial leaders. ⁸ Additionally, in 2025 Ba Jiong publicly reported on Chinese spouse influencer Liu Zhen-ya (Yaya), who was living in Taichung and promoting "military reunification" rhetoric — leading Liu to leave Taiwan for Fuzhou, where she filmed a video denouncing Ba Jiong as "human scum." ³

Terror in New York and the Reverse Bounty

In June 2025, while conducting anti-CCP lectures in New York, Ba Jiong received a death threat letter in simplified Chinese. The letter explicitly threatened: "I will shoot you at the Flushing lecture venue" and specified a "Glock 17 pistol." ⁹ Faced with the death threat, Ba Jiong responded with his trademark sarcasm: "Sure, shoot me in America — guns are extremely easy to obtain there." He even "made arrangements for his affairs": should something happen to him, the YouTube channel would be passed to @callmehow. ⁹¹⁴

Responding to the Quanzhou bounty, Ba Jiong not only announced he would "fly to China and turn himself in," but also issued a "reverse wanted notice" for TAO (Taiwan Affairs Office) Director Wang Hu-ning and Song Tao, and called on Taiwan's National Immigration Agency to permanently bar Liu Zhen-ya from re-entering. Notably, after Quanzhou Public Security published his ID number, Taiwanese netizens discovered he had an unpaid NT$36,000 speeding fine on Provincial Highway 72 — a small online episode that became part of the lore. [*]

Controversies: Democracy's Red Lines

Despite Ba Jiong's secure standing in the anti-CCP camp, his aggressive style has generated considerable controversy. In August 2025, he sparked a dispute over private remarks involving Nazi symbols, and subsequently filmed an apology clarifying it was "ironic self-mockery." ³ In November of the same year, he spread inaccurate information about firefighting at a fire at Hung Fu Court in Hong Kong, and on December 2 admitted his fact-checking had been insufficient and apologized. ³ He also sued KMT city councilor Chan Chiang-tsun for aggravated defamation, but in January 2026 the prosecutor determined Chan's statement amounted to personal opinion and ruled not to indict. ³

📝 Curator's Note: When anti-CCP tactics begin to borrow the tools of authoritarianism, or when the pursuit of traffic comes at the cost of fact-checking, this is not just a personal stumble — it is a warning sign that Taiwan's online politics is drifting toward extreme populism.

The Self-Surrender Performance Art — Sequel

From March through April 2026, Ba Jiong continued his "self-surrender" performance art. After being rebuffed at the Chinese Consulate in New York, he proceeded to the Chinese Embassy in Washington in early April for his fifth "self-surrender" test — and was again given the cold shoulder by staff. Ba Jiong mocked: "The motherland puts out a warrant for me, then won't let me turn myself in. One moment I don't matter; the next moment they're offering a bounty for someone who doesn't matter." ¹⁰¹⁶

As of April 2026, Ba Jiong's "Sheturizhi Fun TV" had surpassed 1.3 million subscribers. Starting from being a Truku youth from Hualien, and using humor, mockery, and fearless action, he has become Taiwan's most vivid anti-CCP, Taiwan-defending symbol of the internet age. Confronted with a million-yuan CCP bounty, death threats, and cross-national pursuit, he has not retreated — he has pressed forward, turning personal risk into a weapon for exposing united-front operations, and with his "self-surrender performance art" let the world see the absurdity of the CCP's paper-tiger wanted notices. Whatever international think tanks may make of him, his story proves that an ordinary Taiwanese young person, armed with genuine courage and curiosity, can ignite the spark of resistance. He is not a traffic monster — he is an "anti-CCP vanguard" defending Taiwanese democracy: a "spy-master" who uses a camera and a keyboard to keep speaking up for a free Taiwan.

Further Reading:

• Shen Po-yang (zh only 沈伯洋) — A Taiwanese legislator and Black Bear Academy co-founder also targeted by the CCP; in 2025 he became the first elected politician to be criminally charged in China under the crime of separatism
• Cognitive Warfare (zh only 認知作戰) — The full framework of the CCP's information war against Taiwan; Ba Jiong's humorous satire has become a representative tool of popular resistance
• Lai Ching-te (zh only 賴清德) — Taiwan's president, also listed on the CCP's "stubborn Taiwan independence elements" list alongside Ba Jiong

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