Puma Shen: He Researched China's Cognitive Warfare — Then China Plotted His Coordinates on a Satellite Map

One afternoon in the 2010s, a law doctoral student in his early thirties followed a warden through a Taipei juvenile detention center. The floor had just been mopped; the water marks hadn't dried. The warden stepped through them. The visiting group followed. He paused and stepped around. Two teenagers mopping the floor looked up, bowed, and quietly said, "Thank you." ¹

That evening, he wrote a question in his notebook: "Why is it that the way we treat people can differ so enormously depending on where we are?" ¹ That question would carry him from criminal law to criminology, from academia to civil defense, from researching China's cognitive warfare operations to being formally indicted by Chinese public security, warned by CCTV that "you're next," and having his Taipei home coordinates published by a Chinese Weibo account using a commercial satellite.

His name is Puma Shen — stage name Puma (撲馬), legal name Shen Po-yang. Born in Taipei in 1982; associate professor and director of the Graduate Institute of Criminology at National Taipei University. ² He spent seven years studying the PRC's information warfare and cognitive operations against Taiwan. In the eighth year, those operations came for him.

30-second overview: Puma Shen (born 1982) is associate professor and director of the Graduate Institute of Criminology at National Taipei University. In 2021, he co-founded Kuma Academy with strategist Ho Cheng-hui; tech billionaire Tsao Hsing-cheng (曹興誠) donated NT$600 million in support, targeting three million "Kuma Warriors" trained within three years. ³ He took office as a DPP at-large legislator in February 2024. ⁴ From October 2024, China escalated against him six times in one year. On October 28, 2025, he became the first elected Taiwanese official indicted by China under "splitting the nation" charges. ⁵ On November 9, CCTV broadcast a seven-and-a-half-minute exposé warning, "Back off — or you're next." ⁶ On New Year's Day 2026, a Chinese Weibo account published satellite imagery of his home and workplace in Taipei. ⁷ He kept flying — to The Hague, to Germany, to France. On Valentine's Day 2026, he was on a plane bound for Paris. ⁸

"Don't Talk Back to the Teacher"

On a grade-school contact notebook, a teacher once wrote: "Don't interrupt or talk back while the teacher is speaking. Po-yang is not a bad kid, but occasionally loses control and shows disrespect." His mother replied: "He is indeed disrespectful and arrogant." In middle school he gave a teacher the middle finger. ¹ When Mirror Media profiled him at thirty-seven, he still had an afro, T-shirt, shorts. His favorite fictional character: Yang Guo from The Condor Heroes — "Complete defiance. That's the version of him I love most." ¹

He moved through the Fuxing kindergarten, elementary, and junior high chain, then graduated from Jianguo High School and entered National Taiwan University's law department. ⁹ He noticed class divisions early: "Fuxing classmates talked about a new Japanese restaurant; Jianguo classmates ate pork chop rice; they ate black sugar ice — the kind with only sugar water added." ¹ In college he started tutoring bar exam candidates, adopting the stage name "Puma" because it was easier to remember. ¹⁰ That name followed him across twenty years — from cram school to academia to think tanks to the Legislative Yuan. Today all his official social media accounts run as @pumashen. ¹¹

Two scenes pivoted him from "law instructor" to criminologist.

The first was a senior colleague's retail case. The colleague represented a large chain retailer against a fruit farmer. "The farmer was intimidated into settling, but the amount was high — basically destroyed a family." The colleague told him: "The law is the law. He shouldn't have broken it." Shen wrote down: "The longer you study law, the more likely you'll become the person you never wanted to be." ¹

The second was that detention center visit. Two boys bowed to him. He couldn't stop thinking: the same teenager, pursued on the streets — but inside this place, an object of sympathy. What kind of lens you use on a person determines what you do to them.

📝 Curator's note
A scholar who would go on to study state violence — his academic instinct about "how people are treated" began with two teenagers bowing over a wet floor. Fifteen years later, when he was indicted by Chinese public security and made into a CCTV mockumentary, he consistently refused to write himself as a victim. That restraint very likely traces back to that afternoon in the detention center.

Puma and Two Decisions to Leave the United States

Shen's academic timeline reads like a boarding pass collection. NTU Law LL.B. (2004), University of Pennsylvania Law LL.M. (2007), NTU Criminal Law LL.M. (2008), UC Irvine Ph.D. in Criminology, Law and Society (2017). His dissertation advisors were white-collar crime heavyweights Henry Pontell and Elliott Currie. ¹²

He spent five years in Irvine, "the safest city in America" — "all the streets look the same, to confuse burglars; you don't need to lock your doors." ¹ When he graduated in 2017, he had tenure-track offers from NC State and other American universities. ¹³ All five of his dissertation committee members urged him to return to Taiwan: "You care so much about Taiwan — why not go back?" ¹

His own explanation for the choice was brief: "The air is already bad but I've been breathing it since I was a kid. I've eaten the plasticizers. It's just home." ¹

He returned to Taipei in 2017 and joined National Taipei University's Graduate Institute of Criminology as an assistant professor. He became director in August 2023. ² His faculty page lists criminal law, sociology of law, criminal policy, and white-collar crime as research areas. ² But his Ph.D. training was not in a conventional law school — UC Irvine placed him in the School of Social Ecology, crossing criminology, urban planning, public policy, and environmental psychology. ¹⁴ That training determined how he would later approach PRC cognitive warfare research — not through legal statutes, but through "how people are shaped by their environment."

Two years after returning, he turned that lens in a new direction.

"Deceiving Taiwan Is Cheaper Than Attacking It"

In 2018, Shen began systematically collecting evidence on PRC information warfare operations against Taiwan. He broke down China's united front apparatus into five operational lines: the Ministry of State Security, the United Front Work Department, the Taiwan Affairs Office, the People's Liberation Army, and the Communist Youth League. ¹⁵ Each line has its own budget, tools, and tempo. This analytical framework became the standard vocabulary for Taiwanese civil society to understand cognitive warfare.

In 2019, he and a group of independent researchers co-founded Doublethink Lab (台灣民主實驗室), serving as its chairman. ¹⁶ On April 25, 2022, they released the China Index — a dataset covering more than eighty countries across nine dimensions (media, arts, economy, society and culture, military, law enforcement, technology, politics, foreign affairs), comprising ninety-nine indicators. ¹⁷ The Index remains one of the most frequently cited datasets in international policy circles tracking Chinese global influence. On the strength of this work, Shen testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) in March 2023. ¹⁸

In July 2024, he and Doublethink Lab researcher Wu Ming-hsuan published _Deceiving Taiwan Is Cheaper Than Attacking It: A Q&A on China's Cognitive Warfare Against Taiwan_ (Locus Publishing). The title is the argument: for Beijing, military force is too costly; manipulating Taiwanese voters to abstain or vote wrong is cheap. ¹⁹ The phrase became shorthand across the Taiwanese press for describing Beijing's strategy.

But writing a book doesn't make you an enemy of the Chinese state. Something else did.

Three Million Kuma Warriors

At the end of 2021, Shen and Taiwan Strategic Gaming Association researcher Ho Cheng-hui co-founded Kuma Academy (黑熊學院). ²⁰ The academy's mission is civil defense education for the general public — teaching firefighting, search and rescue, cybersecurity, anti-fraud awareness, AED/CPR, bleeding control, and emergency shelter procedures to any Taiwanese willing to learn. ²¹

On September 1, 2022, Tsao Hsing-cheng — the former UMC chairman who had just walked away from the Chinese market in defense of Taiwanese sovereignty — held a press conference announcing a NT$600 million donation to Kuma Academy as part of a larger NT$3 billion pledge to Taiwan's defense. ²² Shen said at the event: "We hope every household has a 'Kuma Warrior' who knows how to protect their family when danger comes." ²³ The goal was set: train three million Kuma Warriors in three years. ²⁴

Three million — out of Taiwan's 23 million people, subtracting children, the elderly, and those with disabilities, that's roughly one in five adults. Tsao's NT$600 million was structured with phased disbursements tied to verified milestones — designed to be audited, not just announced. ²⁵

The first Kuma Academy basic training cohort in September 2022 filled immediately, with over 3,000 on the waitlist. ²⁶ Curriculum modules: firefighting, search and rescue, emergency medical response, shelter procedures, cybersecurity, information literacy, public order awareness, AED/CPR, wound assessment, and bleeding control. ²⁷ The outdoor exercise "Blue Magpie Operation" runs periodically, simulating non-combatant evacuation and medical care under wartime conditions. ²⁸

It's worth noting that Shen is not the legal representative of Kuma Academy. In an X post he explained: "I desperately want to be the responsible officer, but the regulations and internal DPP rules mean that neither I nor my family members can serve in that capacity." ²⁹ His roles as deputy executive director of the DPP's think tank and later as a legislator required legal separation from the NGO he co-founded.

📝 Curator's note
A civil defense system designed through a criminology framework: one in seven adults knowing how to administer first aid, spot disinformation, and apply a tourniquet when the power goes out. Shen's research describes how the threat arrives; Kuma Academy's training prepares people to hold on after the impact. One person is running both tracks simultaneously. The symmetry is almost unnervingly calm.

Six Times in One Year

On November 15, 2023, the DPP published its at-large legislative candidate list for 2024. Shen was ranked second — behind only children's rights advocate Lin Yueh-chin. ³⁰ He was elected on January 13, 2024, and took office as an 11th-term legislator on February 1. ⁴ He has led the DPP caucus's push for ten national security legislative amendments (covering the Cross-Strait Relations Act, the Hong Kong and Macau Relations Act, the Nationality Act, the National Security Act, the Communications Security Act, the Anti-Infiltration Act, the Cybersecurity Act, the Criminal Code, the Military Criminal Code, and the National Intelligence Work Act). ³¹ Since 2025, he has served as a convener of the Legislative Yuan's Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. ³²

Then came October 14, 2024. Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesperson Chen Bin-hua announced that Shen, Tsao Hsing-cheng, and Kuma Academy itself had been added to the "diehard Taiwan independence elements" (台獨頑固分子) blacklist — prohibiting entry to mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau by them and their immediate family members. ³³ That was the first time Shen was directly named.

From that day, the escalation climbed one step at a time. Shen summed up the sequence in one line in his October 28, 2025 Facebook post: "This is the sixth time in one year." ³⁴

Those six steps happened in thirteen months. The legal basis for the Chongqing prosecution was the Criminal Code combined with Beijing's June 2024 "Twenty-Two Provisions on Punishing Diehard Taiwan Independence Elements" (懲獨二十二條). ³⁸ The public security bulletin also published a tip-line email ([email protected]) and phone number (023-65697660), inviting anyone with "leads" to come forward. ³⁹

Shen's response on Facebook that same day:

"This is the sixth time in one year. This time they went straight to a public security criminal investigation. Next up is probably an arrest warrant and trial in absentia. Doesn't matter — Taiwanese people aren't afraid." ³⁴

"Eliminating those who raise questions, eliminating those who defend Taiwan — how very communist of them." ³⁴

When his father's company was sanctioned in June 2025, he used the same register: "What an honor — sanctioned by the TAO for the third time in a single year." ⁴⁰

CCTV's "Global Arrest" Threat

Twelve days after the indictment, on the evening of November 9, 2025, CCTV's news channel broadcast a segment running approximately seven and a half minutes exposing Shen's alleged conduct. CCTV claimed he used Kuma Academy to spread claims that "China is about to take Taiwan by force" and to train "violent Taiwan independence extremists." The narration closed with a warning: "Back off — or you're next." ⁴¹³⁷

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) characterized the segment at a press conference as "transnational repression" — not an attempt to arrest anyone, but an effort to induce self-censorship in Taiwanese society before people speak. ⁴² Shen posted that night:

"Must you do exactly what I predict you'll do every time? Show some creativity." ⁴³

"China moved fast — using the threat of a global arrest warrant to stop me from traveling. CCTV made a seven-and-a-half-minute mockumentary about me, threatening a global arrest." ³⁷

"Wanted warrant or not, Nobody cares — Taiwanese people genuinely do not take the CCP seriously." ³⁷

He also posted a short video directed at a CCTV screenshot: "Taiwan and China are one country on each side (一邊一國). Don't dream of extending your reach into Taiwan through fabricated charges." ⁴⁴

The international response consolidated within two days. Human Rights Watch Asia Deputy Director Maya Wang issued a statement on October 31 calling the Chongqing case extraterritorial abuse of Chinese law. ⁴⁵ Multiple international human rights organizations voiced solidarity. The U.S. State Department expressed public concern. ⁴⁷ IPAC (Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China) co-founder Luke de Pulford posted a public statement of support. ⁴⁸

The Legislative Yuan itself moved. On November 19, 2025, the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee — the same committee Shen convenes — passed a censure motion. Wang Ting-yu said in the floor debate: "Holding a different view still entitles one to the protection of the state and the constitution. The People's Republic of China has no standing to take this kind of political action against anyone on fabricated grounds." ⁴⁹

It's worth noting that China had not yet placed Shen on the Hong Kong National Security Law bounty list; the highest-profile bounties at that point — up to RMB 250,000 — were on Taiwanese YouTubers "Ba Jiong" (八炯) and "Minnan Wolf" (閩南狼). ⁵⁰ But the combination of a "splitting the nation" indictment and a CCTV "global arrest" threat had pushed him close to that threshold.

The Screw on His Doorstep

As Beijing's campaign against Shen intensified, his private life was also under escalating pressure.

At the end of August 2025, appearing on host Cheng Hung-yi's program Voice of the Era, he publicly disclosed for the first time that he was "constantly" being tailed. The most brazen incident happened at his front door: a motorbike's "screw" was actually a pinhole camera, with a battery hidden in the seat cavity and the exterior camouflaged to look like hardware. Shen photographed the license plate and called police — the motorbike vanished in under an hour, and the plate has remained a dead end. ⁵¹

Harder to absorb was the threatening letter. It included a photo of Shen and his wife Tseng Hsin-hui — with the character "death" (死) written across her clothing — and threatened to slit their daughter's throat. ⁵¹ Shen said on the program: "This is despicable. But it's exactly what the Communist Party does, and we prepared ourselves for it long ago." His wife Tseng Hsin-hui responded with anxiety, insomnia, deteriorating health, and social withdrawal. ⁵¹

📝 Curator's note
Shen's daughter is not his biological child. He and his wife went through a two-year adoption process with the Garden of Hope Foundation (勵馨基金會); in 2021 they welcomed a thirteen-month-old girl. They use the concept of a "tummy mommy" (肚子媽媽) to explain her birth mother's role to her. ⁵²
The child he chose to bring home later became the child whose throat was threatened in a letter mailed to their door by the Chinese Communist Party.

The Hague, the Satellite, Valentine's Day

He didn't go underground. After November, he traveled more frequently and more conspicuously.

On November 12, 2025, he testified at a German Bundestag hearing on "The Threat Posed by Disinformation from Authoritarian States to Democracy and Human Rights," appearing as both expert witness and legislator. Afterward, he told reporters: "Taiwan must not fear the Chinese threat. We must all be fearless and stand with the democratic and free world." ⁵³

Nine days later, on November 21, he arrived in The Hague, attending the 209th Executive Committee of Liberal International (LI) and the IPAC Hague session with DPP legislator Fan Yun. He posed for a photo at the entrance of the International Criminal Court. ⁵⁴ His caption: four Chinese characters — 沒在怕 (not afraid). The next day, at LI's panel on "Defending Democracy in an Era of Political Manipulation," he labeled China's actions with an academic term:

"China really wants to stop me from these international engagements, so it keeps trying to use sanctions to prevent me from traveling. These moves prove precisely that China is a paper tiger — mostly symbolic propaganda for domestic audiences. Taiwan shouldn't be afraid." ⁵⁵

(gesturing to the ICC building behind him) "This is where dictators are tried for war crimes or genocide." ⁵⁵

On New Year's Day 2026, Beijing escalated again.

A high-follower Chinese Weibo account posted a threat to pursue Shen, claiming to have custom-ordered high-resolution imagery from the commercial satellite "Jilin-1" (吉林一號) and publishing what it said were coordinates for Shen's residence (near Daan Forest Park in Taipei) and workplace (Jinan Road Section 1, near the Legislative Yuan). ⁷ The Chinese state media account "Today's Taiwan Strait" amplified the post. ⁷ Two days later, Taiwan's Foreign Ministry issued an unusually sharp statement:

"After threatening a global arrest warrant against our legislator Puma Shen, China has now further employed the despicable authoritarian tactic of doxxing, threatening the safety of our citizens… This not only violates protections in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the ICCPR, but constitutes a comprehensive assault on personal privacy — a loss of civilizational standards that warrants the deepest contempt." ⁵⁶

The National Police Agency simultaneously announced full protective measures for Shen. ⁵⁷ The Ministry of Digital Affairs requested that Meta and Google act; within days, the relevant posts, videos, and images were removed. ⁵⁸

On January 3, Shen replied on Facebook:

"China marked my coordinates. What it revealed was its collective inferiority complex before democratic Taiwan." ⁵⁹

"To those who were just out here talking about my dashcam footage — Puma Shen isn't calling you collaborators, because your level isn't anywhere close. But academically, there's a term for you: 'Useful Idiots.'" ⁵⁹

On January 24, he posted a long Facebook analysis breaking China's 2026 strategy against Taiwan into three axes: physical disarmament (opposition party budget cuts to defense and diplomacy), psychological cognitive shift (the "doubt America" narrative affecting roughly 5% of swing voters), and electoral resource capture (assets and media legislation). His closing line: "My greatest function is probably still as a 'target' (箭靶)." ⁶⁰

That word "target" began recurring in his self-description — a label he gave himself. A researcher who took the label his subject had applied to him, pinned it to himself, and kept working.

On February 7, he flew to France for an eight-day diplomatic mission. France's significance: home to INTERPOL's headquarters, and France has an extradition treaty with China — theoretically the highest-risk country for someone under threat of a Chinese arrest warrant. He went anyway. Mission content: Taiwan's new Ministry of National Defense All-Citizen Defense Handbook, cognitive warfare response, social media and cyberwar, and national resilience. France had released a similar guide in 2025; Shen noted French counterpart agencies had drawn on Taiwanese designs. ⁸

He spent Valentine's Day on the plane. Back in Taiwan, he wrote: "Despite bearing the pressure of Beijing's global arrest threat, I completed the eight-day diplomatic mission as planned. I spent Valentine's Day on a plane. And there's another one coming up. I will, together with my country, keep standing on the front line." ⁶¹

From Target to Candidate

In early April 2026, the DPP's election strategy committee convened. United Daily News reported that internal sources said the party was planning to field Shen as its Taipei Mayor candidate. ⁶² By mid-to-late April it appeared nearly decided. Former Interior Minister Hsu Kuo-yung publicly endorsed it. ⁶³ A TVBS poll from December 2025 showed incumbent Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) at approximately 64% and Shen at approximately 22%. ⁶⁴ A significant gap — but electoral prospects are not this article's subject.

On April 25, he cut the afro he'd kept for over a decade and appeared alongside Mayor Chiang for the first time at Songshan Cih-hui Temple's Mother's Cultural Festival. ⁶⁵ Yang Guo had cut his hair.

From a juvenile mopping floors to a CCTV mockumentary, from a single desk and a dissertation to a dot on a satellite map, from "cannot legally be the director of Kuma Academy" to "possible Taipei mayoral candidate" — Shen's position has shifted several times. He uses the same line to annotate every transition: "I'm the target." It's self-deprecation, and it's dispassionate academic observation. In Beijing's operational logic against Taiwan, he is indeed the one designated to be aimed at. A researcher who took the label his subject had applied to him, pinned it to himself, and kept working — that's not something many people can do.

Where Are the Boys Who Bowed?

Back to that afternoon with the mops. The moment Shen paused and stepped around the water marks. The teenagers bowed. Fifteen years later he sat on the other end of a Chongqing public security bulletin; "death" was written across his wife's image; his home coordinates were published on a Chinese state-media-amplified Weibo account.

He wrote one short sentence in June 2025. The day his father's company was sanctioned, he posted four characters: "What an honor." ⁴⁰

The question from the detention center visit is still inside him: "Why is it that the way we treat people can differ so enormously depending on where we are?" He studied that question for twenty years. Eventually the things he studied came for him and made him the target. But he had studied them long enough to know that a target doesn't have to become a victim first — it can become the one asking questions. So from The Hague to the Bundestag to France, every stop carried the same grammar: you can do this to me, and I will keep doing my work.

In late April 2026, he cut his hair and prepared for another election. But on China's satellite map, the target coordinates are still there.

Further Reading:

• Cognitive Warfare Against Taiwan — The full framework of PRC information warfare against Taiwan; Shen is one of its principal researchers
• Tsao Hsing-cheng: From Chip Tycoon to Anti-CCP Defender — Also blacklisted alongside Shen; his NT$600 million donation funded Kuma Academy
• Lai Ching-te — Also on the "diehard Taiwan independence elements" list; publicly backed Shen in November 2025
• Taiwan Defense Modernization — The complementary relationship between Kuma Academy's civil defense education and formal national defense

References