30-second overview: On December 8, 2024, Ba Chiong and Chen Po-yuan gave an interview in New Taipei, discussing their newly released documentary on Chinese united front operations and the topics for the next episode involving finance, temples, and Taiwan-based intermediaries. On April 19, 2025, he organized a street assembly titled "Resisting United Front Work, Safeguarding Taiwan." In November 2025, Quanzhou public security issued a wanted notice. Ba Chiong's story is therefore not just about "who exposed what," but about how the exposer becomes a message, how they bear the weight of traffic, and how the audience separates the scene, stance, and evidence.
On the morning of December 8, 2024, Ba Chiong gave a media interview near the Yongchun Park Hospital Station on the New Taipei Metro. With him was Chen Po-yuan, the original singer of "China's Boss," who later appeared with him in the united front documentary. The two had just participated in the Black Bear Civil Defense Education Association's "Taiwan Main Station Relay to Protect Taiwan" event, but the topic shifted from a walking activity to a video: how China approaches Taiwanese influencers, and how creators film these encounters.
On that day, Ba Chiong discussed the next episode of the documentary, which would cover finance, temples, and Taiwan-based intermediaries, and how China arranges things. He told reporters, "There's some concern for my life." This statement was not a prophecy of the later wanted notice, nor proof that a security threat had been confirmed. It was first and foremost a creator publicly describing their sense of risk after releasing their work.
Ba Chiong later took to the streets, received threatening letters, and was named in a wanted notice by Chinese public security. This line of events may seem like things are escalating, but what's truly worth questioning is not who is braver, but: after turning political operations into a video, can one still stand outside the camera?
📝 Curator's note: The core tension of Ba Chiong's story is not "an influencer suddenly becomes a political figure," but that he originally used his platform to observe politics, and in the end, the platform, the crowd, and the state apparatus all pushed him onto the political stage.
Let's Break Down "Exposure" First
Ba Chiong and Chen Po-yuan's documentary sparked discussion in December 2024. The Central News Agency reported that the video involved how China approaches, cultivates, and attracts Taiwanese influencers, and also documented Chen Po-yuan's turning point in his Chinese-related experiences. The report also mentioned that Chen Po-yuan apologized to those who were secretly filmed and recorded, saying he hoped everyone would wake up.
There are at least three layers of material here. The first layer is the dialogue captured or edited in the video. The second layer is Ba Chiong and Chen Po-yuan's interpretation of the video. The third layer is the re-reading of these contents by the media, think tanks, and readers. These three layers cannot be superimposed into one. The video can be an important clue, but it does not automatically become complete evidence just because it has on-site audio.
The Central News Agency's report on December 28, 2024, provided more concrete scenes. Chen Po-yuan visited the Xiamen Taiwan Youth Innovation Base, where he encountered visit arrangements, accommodation, venture capital, and investment funds, and also visited the Strait Home News, where he came into contact with topics about cultivating Taiwanese youth and influencers.
Readers can see from these contents a combination of invitations: travel is not just travel, entrepreneurship is not just entrepreneurship, and media exposure does not exist alone. When care for life, financial imagination, and content cooperation all appear in the same itinerary, political messages may not need to start with political slogans.
This is also where the term "united front work" is most easily misused. If all trips to China, business cooperation, or cultural exchanges are directly labeled as united front work, the article loses its ability to distinguish. If because the content is packaged as tourism and entrepreneurship, it refuses to acknowledge that it may have political purposes, the article is equally unable to distinguish.
📝 Curator's note: Good exposure does not divide the world into red and not-red, but breaks down an invitation into transportation, expenses, filming, publishing, audience, and response, allowing readers to see how politics hides in daily life.
Why Chen Po-yuan Is Important
If only Ba Chiong is written about, the documentary will be misread as a solo investigation by a creator. Chen Po-yuan adds another line to this story: he is not a bystander, but someone who once had a pro-Beijing image in the Chinese internet space, and later became a co-exposer.
Global Voices described Chen Po-yuan as a Taiwanese rapper who publicly explained how he became a pro-Beijing influencer, and sorted out his context of contact with Chinese institutions, being absorbed, and turning to expose. This turning point cannot directly prove all the accusations in the video, but it can explain why his self-narrative became the narrative engine of the video.
Chen Po-yuan recalled in the Central News Agency report that after returning to Taiwan for military service, he saw the late president's will at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, saying "I suddenly felt enlightened." This is his self-narrative, not a researcher-arranged awakening script. Leaving it in its original context allows readers to see how much a person's political turn depends on how they understand their own past.
The Jamestown Foundation analyzed the documentary from the perspective of Chinese united front work and youth and internet creators, placing it within a larger context of cross-strait influence operations. The Global Taiwan Institute also discussed how the recruitment of internet creators has become a new method of united front work.
Both analyses are useful, but they cannot replace the original content of the video. Think tanks can provide structure, the media can provide timelines, and interviewees can provide experience, but each type of material has its own perspective and blind spots.
Ba Chiong's work is therefore not "finding the truth," but pushing different materials into the same public space. The advantage of public space is that more people can check it, but the disadvantage is that editing, headlines, and emotions also enter the scene.
From Hualien to YouTube, No Biography Without Verification
Ba Chiong's early career has inconsistent descriptions in different public sources. This article does not use encyclopedia entries or retelling articles to fill in birth, school, ethnicity, awards, and studio history, nor does it write unverified details as confirmed facts.
What can be confirmed is that "Fun TV Diary" handles Chinese politics, cross-strait relations, and internet culture through videos. The channel itself is the original publishing location of the content, but the number of subscriptions, video rankings, and channel descriptions will change, so this article does not write the page's current numbers as fixed biographical data.
The 2023 interview with Radio Free Asia provided an earlier creative scene. The report discussed how Ba Chiong's team used the song "Annoyed" to handle Chinese internet nationalism, and also reviewed how he gradually came into contact with more Chinese netizens and rights protection information after the 2019 Han Kuo-yu election issue.
This line is important because it makes Ba Chiong not just an exposer who suddenly appeared in 2024. He first put elections, memes, songs, and internet comments in the same channel, and then extended the camera deeper into Chinese-related topics.
His form also changed. Early videos could use songs, roles, and parody to reduce the political threshold. Documentaries, on the other hand, need to handle sources, recording, filming ethics, and the responses of those named. The number of views may be the same, but the responsibility of evidence is already different.
📝 Curator's note: Not filling in a beautiful biography for a character is not making the article thinner, but leaving the limited certainty to the truly important turning points.
Supplementary image: Taroko Gorge scenery in Hualien. This article does not use Ba Chiong's personal portrait. The image author is CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported. Original image page: Wikimedia Commons file page.
Financial Fraud: Announcement Is Not Judgment
On December 8, 2024, Ba Chiong announced that the next episode of the documentary would discuss finance, temples, Taiwan-based intermediaries, and China's arrangements, and said he was in contact with the police.
This announcement was later easily retold as an already completed financial crime exposé. But the source can only support: Ba Chiong announced the topic at the time and publicly expressed safety concerns. The source cannot independently support all financial accusations, nor can it prove that every person mentioned is involved in criminal activity.
Sanlih News Network's report also recorded a similar announcement, using "financial fraud" to describe the direction of the next episode. This is helpful for understanding the public atmosphere at the end of 2024, but it cannot replace financial supervision, judicial documents, or the official response of the accused.
When a video claims to expose "finance," readers should first ask four questions: Where did the money come from? Who handled it? Which transaction has documentation? Which one has been confirmed by judicial or regulatory authorities? If the article cannot answer these questions, it should keep the boundary of "video claims."
This restraint is not to exempt any party from responsibility. It only separates suspicion from proof. The place where political content most needs evidence is often also the place where headlines are most likely to prejudge.
Why Influencers Become Political Nodes
BBC Chinese's 2024 summary explained how Poteman, Heyue, Zhong Mingxuan, and other Taiwanese influencers' invitations to China, political statements, and cultural exchanges caused disputes in Taiwan. The report also interviewed scholars and presented two different views: influencers may indeed become nodes of influence messages, but society may also overestimate their ability to change national identity.
This contradiction cannot be passed over with a single sentence of "cognitive warfare is terrible." Influencers have three political values. First, they have a familiar tone, which can turn policies into life content. Second, they have a pre-existing audience, so messages do not need to start from unfamiliar accounts. Third, their business cooperation does not look like political propaganda, so they are more likely to enter daily life.
The Reporter's 2026 investigation of influencers and the united front network pointed out that content nodes may span video platforms, media, social groups, tourism, and business cooperation. The report also mentioned that political narratives can be wrapped in food, urban construction, and cultural landscapes.
This framework can help us understand why Ba Chiong chose to film the base and reception, rather than just a slogan. The base is an object that allows the audience to see "who receives, who introduces, who provides resources." It turns the abstract united front work into observable actions.
But the framework cannot reverse and judge each individual case. The specific claims of Ba Chiong's documentary still need to go back to the video, interviews, official documents, and the responses of the parties involved to confirm one by one.
📝 Curator's note: Influence is not only about "whether it can make people vote," but also about who decides that something looks like tourism, business, culture, or politics.
From Video Creator to Event Organizer
On April 17, 2025, the Central News Agency reported that Ba Chiong and others held a pre-conference press conference for the "Resisting United Front Work, Safeguarding Taiwan" assembly. Ba Chiong said that he decided to organize the event in mid-March, with the background including his report of being accused of advocating for the use of force by a Chinese spouse, as well as fans and netizens hoping he would hold an anti-united front work assembly. These are Ba Chiong's public statements about the origin of the event, not the judicial determination of the related accusations.
The pre-conference press conference also showed that his political tone began to shift from video to the scene. He criticized the Kuomintang for "having lost its party spirit and having no core values," and called on the public to stand up and resist communism. This is a verifiable interviewee's original words and political position, and should not be rewritten in the article as the common judgment of all Taiwanese people.
At 2 p.m. on April 19, the assembly was held on the Avenue of Flag. The Central News Agency reported that the event lasted about 5 hours, with Ba Chiong, Chen Po-yuan, Cao Xingchen, Shi Banming, and many political figures taking turns on stage, shouting slogans such as "Resisting United Front Work, Safeguarding Taiwan" and "Supporting Recall, Cleaning Up the Communist Party's Fellow Travelers."
Supplementary image: April 19, 2025 "Resisting United Front Work, Safeguarding Taiwan" assembly site. Photo by KOKUYO. The image is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International and has not been modified. Original file page: Wikimedia Commons.
This turning point should not be written as a "influencer becomes a political figure" inspirational story. A more accurate description is: Ba Chiong changed from a content producer to the initiator of a public event, and the audience changed from viewers to on-site participants. The medium changes, and the responsibility changes with it.
Videos can rely on editing to arrange the viewing order. Assemblies, on the other hand, must deal with the multiple sounds of the on-site crowd, speakers, slogans, political figures, and media reports happening at the same time. Ba Chiong is no longer just choosing who to film, but also choosing who can take the stage and what demands are amplified.
This is the power of mobilization, and also the risk of mobilization. When a creator's channel can be extended to a physical assembly, his words will not only be responded to in the comment area, but also reinterpreted by political parties, the media, and the state apparatus.
📝 Curator's note: Walking from behind the camera to the stage does not mean that a person gets more truth rights. It only means that more people will treat his choice as public information, and therefore need to be clearer about which are facts and which are positions.
How Cooperation Relationships Break After Private Messages Are Made Public
On August 3, 2025, the "Minnan Wolf" Chen Po-yuan announced his split with Ba Chiong in a YouTube video, and made their private conversation public. The Central News Agency, the Liberty Times, and Newtalk all reported on the controversy, but what the three articles can confirm is: the "Minnan Wolf" made the conversation content public, claiming that Ba Chiong talked about how the Nazis controlled the crowd, invented gestures, and incited the crowd, while Ba Chiong apologized in a video, saying that was a private self-mockery, and admitted that his words were inappropriate.
"Using private messages" is a statement that easily smuggles the author's position. A more accurate description is: the "Minnan Wolf" made the content that originally existed in private conversations public, and described the public action as a stop-loss for the anti-communist movement. This choice may have public exposure reasons, but it also changes the boundary of private trust. The article cannot determine the motivation of either party, but can only arrange the public actions, accusations, and responses separately.
BBC Chinese further reported that the "Minnan Wolf" believed that the civic movement they participated in had deviated from its original purpose, while Ba Chiong explained the relevant statements as self-mockery when he was in a bad mood in the apology video. BBC also sorted out the historical weight of Nazi symbols, gestures, and "stormtroopers" in Taiwan's public discussion.
The importance of this split is not who gets the last word, but that it allows the content production methods within the cooperative team to be publicly examined. During the documentary, Chen Po-yuan was a co-exposer. After the split, he became the person who exposes Ba Chiong's private words. The same public platform, from a tool for joint production to a place for mutual proof and mutual questioning.
📝 Curator's note: Once private messages are brought into the public domain, it is no longer just a problem between two people. It also becomes evidence, narrative, and power, but the three cannot be automatically equated just because there is a screenshot.
The Threatened Creator, and the Suspect Who Cannot Be Written
In June 2025, while giving a lecture in New York, Ba Chiong publicly stated that he had received a death threat letter. New Tang Dynasty and the Liberty Times both reported his public statement, including his mention of how to arrange the subsequent operation of the channel if an accident occurs.
These two reports support "Ba Chiong publicly stated that he received a threat, and the media reported its content and response." They do not support the identity of the threatener, nor do they support that the threat has been confirmed by the police as a concrete attack plan. The article cannot add a suspect and motive to the source just because the event is unsettling.
For creators, threats have two effects. First, it may force people to re-arrange their lives and work. Second, it may add heroic colors to the public narrative, making every subsequent word more difficult to be calmly examined.
Therefore, the article can neither treat the threat as Ba Chiong's inevitable proof, nor treat the security risk as something that can be ignored. Both can be true at the same time: he may face real risks, and his video still needs to be verified.
How the Wanted Notice Renames a Person
On November 13, 2025, the Quanzhou Public Security Bureau in Fujian Province issued a wanted notice, seeking clues about Ba Chiong and Chen Po-yuan's suspected illegal crimes. The Central News Agency reported that the reward ranges from RMB 50,000 to 250,000, and the notice publicly released their photos, real names, and Taiwan ID numbers, and cited Article 103 of the Chinese Criminal Law to accuse them of inciting separatism.
These contents must be written in two sentences. The first sentence is what document the Chinese public security released. The second sentence is how the Chinese side accuses in the document. It cannot be written directly as the Taiwan judicial determination of the accusation, and even less so to write the reward amount as the weight of the crime fact.
BBC Chinese put Ba Chiong and Chen Po-yuan into the context of China's issuance of arrest warrants or wanted notices for Taiwanese people, explaining that this incident is not just a personal conflict, but also involves cross-border political information. The Central News Agency later reported on the Chinese official media's explanation of "why other team members were not included in the notice," pointing out that this is the narrative of the Chinese official media and public security.
Public naming will change the viewing relationship. The audience originally treated the video as a comment, investigation, or entertainment. When the creator is publicly pursued by a cross-border agency, saving, forwarding, commenting, and interviewing all have an additional layer of security issues.
But being wanted does not automatically make a person a saint. It only shows that another power system is using its own legal and political language to name him. What a democratic society should do is not to take that naming at face value, but to continue to investigate what happened.
📝 Curator's note: The most dangerous thing is not that someone names Ba Chiong, but that readers forget that "naming" itself is a political act.
When the Video Involves Named People
Ba Chiong's content also triggered legal disputes. In January 2026, Newtalk reported that the Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office decided not to prosecute in the defamation case involving Wu Tzu-yu's accusation of Chen Po-yuan's comments on Ba Chiong's video. The report pointed out that the prosecutors determined that Chen Po-yuan's criticism of Ba Chiong's video was a personal opinion within the scope of public interest, and was protected by freedom of speech.
This is not "the court certifies who is right and who is wrong," nor is it that all of Ba Chiong's videos are judged to be true or false. It is a specific case of non-prosecution, reflecting the prosecutors' judgment on speech content, public interest, and the elements of defamation.
When the video involves named people, the creator needs to handle not only filming ethics, but also the right of the accused to respond, reputation rights, and the responsibility of the audience after forwarding. The audience also cannot equate "someone was filmed" with "someone committed a crime."
This is the complexity of Ba Chiong's story that is most unsuitable for being deleted. If only the exposer is written, the article will shape the political commentator into an unquestionable hero. If only the litigation and disputes are written, the article will not see why his video can generate mobilization power in Taiwanese society.
Parody Can Bring People Closer, and Also Make Evidence Farther Away
Radio Free Asia's 2023 report mentioned that Ba Chiong used the song "Annoyed" to write cross-strait relations as a "terrorist lover" relationship. This expression turned political issues into roles, melodies, and daily conflicts, allowing audiences who don't regularly watch political commentary programs to have an entry point.
The advantage of parody is speed. The audience is first attracted by a line of lyrics, a role, or an absurd scene, and then goes back to understand what it points to in terms of institutions and history. The risk of parody is also clear: if the joke is easier to remember than the evidence, what is finally left may only be a title.
Documentaries are closer to investigations than songs, but they are still works that are filmed, edited, and published. They are not the original world itself. The audience must ask: Who said this? In what context? What is before and after the edit? Is there any other source to support it?
These questions do not weaken political criticism, but make the criticism harder to be counterattacked as "just emotion."
📝 Curator's note: Verification is not to break the story into a soulless data table, but to ensure that every person in the story is not spoken by the author on their behalf.
The Risk of Family Members Being Involved in Public Figures
At around 7:40 a.m. on May 10, 2026, the Zhongshan Second Police Station in Taipei City received a report of a dispute at a breakfast shop on Linsen North Road. Mirror Weekly reported that two women had a dispute, and the men who were with them also shouted at each other, with one man claiming to be carrying a folding knife, and the police confiscated the knife and took him back to the station for investigation.
The reports of Sanlih, Eastern TV, and Newtalk further pointed out that there was pushing, pulling, snatching phones, and a woman being pushed down and injured at the scene. The police took the relevant people back for questioning in accordance with the Social Order Maintenance Act, and the victims filed complaints of injury, threat, and obstruction of freedom, and the case was transferred to the district prosecutors' office for investigation.
On May 19, Ba Chiong posted on Threads that his sister and another woman were the parties involved in the incident, and claimed that his sister was later retaliated against and sent to the emergency room, and the other party was still shouting in the hospital and forcing a settlement. This is the public statement of Ba Chiong and his family, which the media can report, but the article cannot write "retaliation" directly as a fact that has been recognized by the judiciary.
This incident has no source support for a causal relationship with the Minnan Wolf split, and it cannot be written as the same political threat line. What it really adds is another kind of risk: a public figure's family members may be noticed because of their identity, and private conflicts may also become public safety appeals through social media platforms. At this time, the most important thing is not to add a conspiracy interpretation to the event, but to put the police's preliminary investigation, the family's statement, and the part that is still pending judicial clarification back in their original positions.
📝 Curator's note: A character article should not only record the moment when the character stands on the stage, but also remember that his family members did not automatically agree to become part of the public narrative.
A Conclusion That Should Not Be Simplified
Ba Chiong turned an abstract noun into many concrete scenes: Xiamen's Taiwan Youth Innovation Base, the introduction of accommodation and venture capital, recording and filming, the podium on the Avenue of Flag, the threatening letter received in New York, and the wanted notice issued by Quanzhou Public Security.
These scenes are connected to each other, but they are not the same kind of evidence. The base report is the content of the video and the media's retelling. The threat is the creator's public statement and the media's report. The wanted notice is the Chinese public security document and the Chinese official accusation. The litigation is the non-prosecution decision and the media's report on the legal reasons.
Writing all of them as "Ba Chiong exposes the truth" is too fast. Writing all of them as "Ba Chiong creates controversy" is also too fast. A more fact-based way of writing is: Ba Chiong repeatedly puts himself in the position of information generation in Taiwan's internet political environment, and therefore accepts a higher intensity of public review.
This position is easy to misunderstand as authority. In fact, it is more like a high-risk intermediary: bringing fragments into the public space, allowing more people to see, and also allowing more people to have the opportunity to misread, forward, attack, or verify.
Readers can take a simple method. When seeing a video, first distinguish what the picture captured. When seeing a title, distinguish who the title has concluded. When seeing a reward or threat, distinguish documents, accusations, and factual determinations. When seeing legal news, distinguish non-prosecution, judgment, and public opinion victory.
📝 Curator's note: What Ba Chiong is most worth remembering is not where he always stands, but that he allows Taiwanese people to see how political messages can move from the base, songs, live broadcasts, assemblies, and a wanted notice. Every move requires asking again: where does the evidence end?
Ba Chiong's story is still changing. This article does not predict his next identity, nor does it fill in the motivation that the source has not provided for any party. What can be confirmed is that from the end of 2024's documentary to 2025's assembly, threats, and wanted notices, he is no longer just the person holding the camera. He has become a public node that cannot be bypassed when discussing united front work, influencer politics, and speech boundaries in Taiwanese society.
Extended reading:
- Cognitive Warfare — Understand how internet content is put into a larger information warfare context.
- Shen Bozhi — A contrasting case of Chinese official threats and wanted notices for Taiwanese public figures.
- Chen Zijian (Retina) — A comparison of different paths of political satire, news tone, and internet creators.
References
Image licensing record: This article uses two Wikimedia Commons supplementary images with hot links. The first is a Taroko Gorge landscape in Hualien, by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported. The second is the scene of the April 19, 2025 assembly, by KOKUYO, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 International. Both images are unmodified and each accompanied by the author, license link, and Commons original file page.