CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: Person of the Year – Silenced Livestreamer Hu Chenfeng

As 2025 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2025 Editors’ Picks.” The following is a translation of CDT Chinese’s “Person of the Year” post:

On September 20, influencer Hu Chenfeng was banned on several platforms within the Great Firewall. In the space of a few days, his accounts on Weibo, Bilibili, Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese market), and other platforms were wiped out, and for some time even fan-edited clips and reaction videos were hard to find.

Over the previous two years, Hu had won attention first with videos focusing on poverty among the underprivileged, and later by visiting countries including Thailand, New Zealand, and South Korea to shoot street interviews for a “Global Purchasing Power Challenge” video series. His accounts were repeatedly hit with censorship restrictions, but he would return whenever they were lifted, adjusting his content each time to probe the boundaries of what censors would allow.

Hu entered 2025 with almost daily livestreams in which he connected with viewers and used dialogue and debate to express his view of the world. Amid steadily tightening online censorship, Hu’s streams gave fans a sense of directness and candor that was hard to find elsewhere.

Hu Chenfeng was born in Jiangsu in 1998. After graduating from high school, he first worked as a car mechanic before joining an asset management company, which he left soon after. In 2023, social media brought him to a turning point in his life. That August, after his video on the purchasing power of China’s elderly pensioners had gained widespread attention, he said during a livestream, “Chatting on these streams is exhausting … having to duck and dodge the restrictions here makes me feel like I’m always on thin ice.”

This quote was later widely seen as the most accurate summation of Hu’s situation. He hoped to express his own way of thinking, but had to be constantly wary of censorship red lines; he wanted to maintain an image of “rational debate,” but had to rely on emotive expression to sustain traffic. He managed to balance these contradictions for more than two years until, at the end of September, censors shuttered the accounts on which he had accumulated millions of followers across multiple platforms.

Going Viral, and the First Ban

Hu’s first breakthrough was a “pension purchasing-power challenge” video posted in March, 2023. In it, he followed a 78-year-old woman from Nanchong, Sichuan. With a monthly pension of only 107 yuan (less than $25 U.S.), she said, she had no refrigerator at home, and couldn’t afford meat. Hu went with her to a supermarket where they bought rice-flour noodles and meat, for which he insisted on paying. The video provoked an immediate and intense reaction on the Chinese-language internet, and drew attention to hardships of ordinary people, especially impoverished elderly people. But soon after, similar videos were deleted in quick succession, and Hu’s accounts on several platforms were banned.

After The New York Times reported on the video’s virality, Hu said during a livestream that he was proud of having reached its pages, saying, “I feel like I’ve made a mark. I haven’t been a failure.”

After a brief hiatus, Hu got back to work, and announced that he would relinquish copyright on all his content. That November, he officially launched his series of overseas purchasing-power street interviews with a video, shot on location, titled “What Will 100 RMB Really Buy You in Thailand’s Capital, Bangkok?”

Testing the Red Lines

In August, 2023, Hu Chenfeng said that his livestream had “the freest atmosphere on the whole internet. I’m proud of that. There isn’t a single livestream with a freer atmosphere than mine.”

Just a few months later, in April 2024, this “freedom” collided sharply with reality. During a livestream that month, one viewer asked: “Do you think Xi is a dictator?”

Visibly panicked, Hu immediately disconnected and frantically berated the caller: “Are you crazy?” “That’s a serious violation of livestream rules!” “This is terrifying.”

The video was swiftly deleted, but clips of the incident continued to circulate online. Soon after, Hu received his second ban.

Hu was by no means the first influencer to have someone “rush the tower” in the middle of a livestream. Back in 2019, livestreamer “Medicine Brother” had a similar experience: during an argument with a viewer on September 25, when he asked who the caller was, the other party blurted out, “I’m Xi Jinping’s son!” Medicine Brother’s face froze, and he abruptly shut down the livestream, but soon afterwards, several of his accounts were closed.

An even better-known case is that of livestreamer Li Jiaqi, known as China’s “king of e-commerce.” On the evening of June 3, 2022, he showed off a tank-shaped ice cream cake during a livestream, and was immediately taken offline. Because this took place so close to the thirty-third anniversary of June Fourth, it was widely interpreted as a case of “colliding with a sensitive date.” Li explained on Weibo later that night that his stream had been halted for “technical reasons.” He then stopped streaming for several months, only resuming in late September of that year.

China’s various livestreaming platforms now have a combined user base of almost 600 million people, representing more than 60% of the country’s total online population. With each platform often hosting thousands of simultaneous streams during peak times, even Beijing’s enormous digital surveillance system struggles to monitor all that content in real time.

In trying to balance profit and political risk, both platforms and streamers try to game the system with the official departments that oversee them. While doing their best not to cross lines that would lead to permanent bans, they are also obliged to constantly come up with new topics to keep their viewers engaged, so all they can do is remain nimble and rely on trial and error to avoid crossing any red lines.

After these first two bans, Hu chose to continue streaming with a series of street-interview videos contrasting the earnings and purchasing power of ordinary local people in Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

Apple People vs Android People

After 2024, Hu was penalized with multiple temporary suspensions and account restrictions due to a series of controversial statements he made outside his overseas purchasing-power videos. While the platforms never offered any explicit explanation for these restrictions, some have speculated that they might have been prompted by Hu’s criticism of Chinese-made electric vehicles and cellphones; his high praise for U.S. EV brand Tesla; his claim that “most families’ Lunar New Year dinners don’t taste as good as McDonalds”; or his persistent skepticism toward Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), among other opinions. While talking to viewers during one livestream, Hu suggested that TCM can harm the liver, and that his viewers should avoid it. When many viewers took issue with this, he responded:

“You need a Masters degree or higher in STEM or a doctorate in humanities to talk about TCM on this stream, okay? I’m not discriminating, we’re all equal, I just don’t want to have to keep teaching you the basics over and over.”

Those restrictions were all lifted fairly quickly, and each time, Hu got back to streaming and talking with viewers.

The controversies reached a high point in the summer of 2025. In a stream in July, Hu said:

“If a city doesn’t have a Sam’s Club, I’m telling you: young people should get out of there. Why? Because Sam’s Club does its homework before opening in a new city: how many middle-class consumers does the place have? Is the local purchasing power high enough? If not, they won’t open a branch there, not a chance. So if a city doesn’t have a Sam’s Club, don’t bother living there, because you can’t make a career or a future there.”

During a stream in August, Hu discussed Apple Stores:

“One more thing: Apple Stores are the only places I’ve ever seen disabled staff, I’m talking about staff who are sight-impaired. Tell me which Android vendor has disabled staff? Is there one? I’ve never seen it. I’ve been to so many Android companies’ stores, big ones, small ones, and I’ve never seen it. I’m telling you: you don’t have to like Apple’s products, you don’t have to like Apple this or Apple that, but I’m telling you, out of all the manufacturers, Apple’s number one when it comes to caring about people.”

Hu gradually began to use “Apple” to signify “high-end,” “discerning,” and “sophisticated,” and “Android” to refer to “good enough,” “adequate,” and “low-end.” In subsequent livestreams in August, he expanded his theory of “Apple people” and “Android people,” mocking those he saw as “unsophisticated.”

Many people calling in to his streams challenged him about “dividing people into a hierarchy” and “stigmatizing poor people.” One caller said, “You’re defining people as living ‘Android lives’ or having ‘Android education,’ or ‘Apple lives’ and ‘Apple education’ … this isn’t just memeing! This is shaming people’s dignity, experience, lives, and families, isn’t it?”

Hu never seriously addressed these criticisms, simply saying “there’s no need to politicize it” and calling it a “meme,” and insisting that he also used “Android” to mock rich callers and wasn’t just picking on the lower classes. During one stream, he explained the meme’s popularity:

“What does ‘Apple’ mean? It’s about a sense of discernment, right? When you say ‘Apple,’ you think high-end, impressive, classy, low-key luxury, substantial, right? I’m not putting that in your head, it’s already there, right? When you hear “iPhone,” you immediately think carefully crafted, flawlessly high-end, superior quality …. But when I say ‘Android,’ it’s like there’s something lacking. It’s adequate, it’ll do in a pinch, but there’s this insecurity, always trying to compare itself to Apple … isn’t that the vibe?

Once, when questioned by viewers, Hu said:

“I’m going to read one of the comments for you: ‘You’re a typical Android person, with Android logic and an Android education.’”

“There’s always backstory and context to anything I say. This guy has no education or technical skills, no family connections or money, nothing at all. So what if he unblocks toilets? Shouldn’t you check your own prejudices? All occupations are equal, it’s admirable to make a living with your hands.”

After his ban, there was a lot of discussion on Chinese social media about which red line Hu had finally crossed. One popular theory was that “Apple people vs. Android people” was seen as inciting societal antagonism. On September 30th, the official WeChat account of the Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee published a piece accusing Hu Chenfeng of engaging in three kinds of concealed attacks [literally, “three hidden arrows”] : leveraging the worship of foreign things to undermine societal consensus, profiting from young people’s anxieties, and using extreme emotions to distort people’s values.

In November, former Global Times editor Hu Xijin posted about Hu Chenfeng’s ban, saying: “Stirring up hype and inciting antagonism in a reckless bid to increase traffic should, under the current regulatory system, merit a temporary suspension and a warning. If that doesn’t teach him a lesson, making an example of him with a permanent ban might be necessary, for the sake of societal governance.”

In December, a notice from the Cyberspace Administration of China identified Hu Chenfeng by name, noting his use of terms like “Android people” and “Apple people” on multiple platforms over an extended period of time, and saying that this “incited social antagonism,” and that his accounts had all been closed as a result. This official explanation explicitly articulated that the ban was a matter of government policy.

But people online immediately questioned the term “inciting social antagonism,” noting the reality that class, rural-urban, status, and ideological antagonisms have long existed and often even been incorporated into official narratives. The real reason for the ban, then, might not be “antagonism” itself, but rather the type of values Hu Chenfeng had displayed: the Western products, market logic, and personal choice he had openly espoused sat uneasily alongside official ideology and cultural narratives.

Some social media users responded with questions like: “Couldn’t the dual-track pension system be seen as stirring up antagonism? Are you police, or auxiliary police? Do you have urban or rural household registration? Are you a teacher with or without civil-service status? Are you a company employee, or on a temporary contract through a staffing agency?”

The irony, some felt, was that Hu had once joked on a livestream that the government should stop cracking down on the livestreaming industry:

“Streams and short videos are a reservoir. All kinds of people join the industry. It doesn’t matter if they’ve got a PhD, Master’s degree, or elementary school diploma; it doesn’t matter what they were doing before; everyone’s doing short videos, and thinks they can make it big and earn a fortune. It’s like with the stock market, and everyone thinking they’ve got what it takes to make money trading shares. So livestreaming works on the same principle as A-shares: you can’t really make money, you’re just given the fantasy of making money, and this draws in great flocks of people and keeps them docile.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

In a now-deleted answer on Q&A site Zhihu, user “Ray” described the conflict between Hu and the system like this:

“Obviously, we’re into stage two of the ‘boss battle.’ The trick in the first phase was ‘Who said you could say that?’ That’s now evolved into ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re really trying to say.’”

Another Zhihu answer, from user “glbsiD,” read:

“Hu Chenfeng’s level is very limited. In terms of ideology, a lot of his views wouldn’t be considered liberal on Zhihu; they’re essentially pretty conservative. Still, in this context, he’s left wing.”

In line with these assessments, others noted that Hu had shared his income and tax records during livestreams. “A real taxpayer daring to publicize his income and tax records—for that alone, he can’t be all bad,” commented Zhihu user “Dabing.”

Others offered more abstract explanations of the “danger zone” Hu had blundered into. Zhihu user “Cheng” wrote, “In China, there are three red lines you can’t cross: the intellect of the lower class, the self-esteem of the middle class, and the material interests of the upper class.”

Even among those who disagreed with Hu’s views and the way he expressed them, a fair proportion were willing to defend him, and felt that he’d touched on realities that warranted discussion, but were rarely discussed.

Another Zhihu user, “MIA,” looked back over Hu’s rise to popularity with the video on the elderly Sichuan woman’s purchasing power and his repeated suspensions, and wrote that by “candidly and simply revealing the problems facing those at the bottom of society,” Hu had inspired creators both inside and outside the Great Firewall to pay attention to and document those people’s lives. “He doesn’t try to distract you with grand narratives, he puts things in concrete relatable terms like Apple, Sam’s Club, Tesla, and so on. Where one Hu falls, ten thousand will rise. In terms of drawing people’s attention to these overlooked groups, ‘Master Hu’ can’t be faulted.”

Hu’s influence in China’s current online ecosystem was down to his ability to navigate the few loopholes that remain, showing how an ordinary person can speak out, change tack, retreat, and speak out yet again despite the pressures of censorship, algorithms, public opinion, and commercial interests. He neither rebelled against the system, nor defended it; his story was one of an individual’s struggle in a rapidly shrinking public space. In such a narrow and precarious public opinion space, authentic expression can no longer rely on rhetoric, but must involve risk-taking. So many of those who witnessed Hu’s rise and fall could see their own position in the system reflected in it: insignificant and constrained, but with occasional flashes of visibility and resonance.

Hu Chenfeng’s risk-taking brought realities that had been hidden by censorship back to the surface: inadequacies in the pension system; consumer and class anxieties; young people’s lack of agency in life; and more. When regulators finally chose to close down all his channels of expression, what was really lost was perhaps not a particular influencer, but a public sphere that could accommodate noise, contradictions, raw expression, and genuine emotion. The boundaries for public expression are steadily closing in, erasing not just specific social media accounts, but modes of expression that might otherwise have existed.