Yaoyao: Where Did Sima Nan Go?

This video provides an in-depth analysis of Sima Nan, tracing his journey from a debunker of qigong scams and a left-wing internet influencer to his role in manipulating populism and targeting enterprises through the Rao Jin business matrix. It also examines the back-end profit chains involved, his purchase of property in the United States, his penalties for tax evasion, and his eventual abandonment by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

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Full transcript:

Hello everyone, I am Yao Yao Jiang, who loves to think and values logic. Sima Nan, whose real name is Yu Li. Some people online call him "Sima Jia Tou" (Sima the Head-Clamped). Three, four, five, six, seven—at least he's fine. The thing he is best at in his life is reading the wind and steering the rudder, jumping from side to side. When the qigong craze was at its peak, he sought masters to practice, emitted qi to heal diseases, and wanted to become a master himself; later, he turned around to debunk the masters, using the wave of anti-pseudoscience to become a celebrity. Even today, some people still hold onto these so-called江湖 (underworld) tricks. At the time, they were called special abilities. In my view, this matter... it's a bit god-like. In my view, it's just a small magic trick. Can you do all of these? This is very simple, you can do it too. When Bo Xilai was popular, he sang praises for Chongqing; when Bo Xilai fell, he found an explanation for himself and continued to support Xi Jinping. Opposing capital can gather popularity, so he led a group of fans to attack entrepreneurs; when the central government emphasized support for private enterprises, he announced his support again. He fooled his fans into opposing the U.S., while he had already bought property in the U.S. long ago. For decades, he has been flexible, able to sail in both favorable and head winds. By constantly changing his stance, he has exhausted the dividends of every era, turning patriotism and party loyalty into a business. Yet, such an opinion leader with no bottom line, a glib tongue, and the ability to bewitch people was eventually abandoned by the CCP. Today, let's look at why a chameleon like Sima Nan ended up as an abandoned pawn of the CCP.

Sima Nan has had a brand for decades: the representative figure of China's anti-pseudoscience. Many people therefore think that he stood on the opposite side of qigong masters from the very beginning. In fact, when qigong was at its hottest, he himself practiced, emitted qi to heal, and very much wanted to squeeze into the ranks of the masters. But please open your eyes, it's nothing special. In the 1980s, from top to bottom, qigong became a part of Chinese people's lives. Some claimed to be able to move objects from a distance, some could recognize characters with their ears, and others claimed they could emit qi to heal diseases from thousands of miles away. Newspapers helped them spread their deeds, research institutions arranged tests for them, and some high-ranking officials and famous figures in the scientific community supported them. What ordinary people saw was: leaders believed it, experts researched it, and newspapers publicized it, so it must be true. Sima Nan was a reporter at that time, and after coming into contact with these people, he quickly believed it too. He bought scarce goods for qigong masters, followed them to perform everywhere, acted as an assistant, looked for opportunities to become a disciple, and later joined an organization that studied human special abilities. He was both curious and envious of the masters' skills, and he practiced very diligently, hoping that one day he would be able to master them. Zhang Honglin, a popular science writer who studied the qigong craze, once quoted Sima Nan's own account in his book "The Inside Story of Divine Skills": he emitted qi to heal people, at first needing to touch the patient with his hands, later trying not to touch; later on, he would let the person seeking treatment sit on the sofa in his office, claiming that he could emit qi to the other person while working. In the study class, he also invited patients to the stage to talk about their feelings after receiving the qi emission treatment. People off-stage could not see the so-called qi, nor could they judge whether the disease was cured; a patient's simple "I feel comfortable" completed the proof for the person on stage.

When Sima Nan first met Zhang Honglin, it was not out of admiration to seek scientific advice. He was there on behalf of the qigong camp to issue a challenge. According to Zhang Honglin's account, Sima Nan was acting as a messenger for qigong masters, looking to compete against those who opposed supernatural powers. It was only after the two sides talked that his perspective gradually changed. Zhang Honglin later introduced him to anti-pseudoscience figures like Yu Guangyuan and He Zuoxiu. This step gave Sima Nan a new path. He was familiar with how masters performed and knew how audiences were convinced. The things he had learned in the circle could now be used to expose them. On August 10, 1990, a report on qigong and supernatural powers was held in Beijing. Sima Nan took the stage, first striking the pose of a master, then performing a series of astonishing feats. After everyone had watched, he revealed the secret: these effects could be achieved by ordinary people who mastered the techniques. This was very, very hard. But Cui Yongyuan could eat this kind of thing. It's called cuttlefish bone, a type of traditional Chinese medicine. Commonly known as squid bone, it looks from a distance roughly like broken bowl shards. He passed it off as the real thing and ate it. After eating it, it wasn't as hard as bowl shards, and it even had the effect of treating stomach ailments.

The same performance skills, once used to make people believe in divine powers, were now used to make people believe he had seen through those powers. Later public reports also left records of his early days practicing qigong. In 1997, "World Science" published Bi Donghai's "The Courage of Sima Nan," which, while praising him for opposing pseudo-qigong, explicitly stated that he had previously been a qigong master, performed, treated people for illnesses, and even used the term "master-level" to describe him. Regarding why he changed careers, qigong supporter He Binhui gave a very blunt explanation: Sima Nan wanted to be a master but failed, so he switched to becoming an anti-qigong master. Sima Nan began publicly exposing frauds in 1990 and quickly caught the wave of official anti-pseudoscience. At the end of 1994, the CCP Central Committee and the State Council issued a document on strengthening science and technology popularization, and voices in the scientific community opposing pseudoscience were also growing. The debates that had previously been scattered among newspapers and researchers began to enter the public eye. In 1995, Sima Nan appeared on a related CCTV program and even demonstrated the so-called mind-over-chopstick-breaking alongside Deng Nan, the daughter of Deng Xiaoping. He had transformed from someone in the qigong circle wanting to apprentice to a nationally known debunker. This growing need for propaganda pushed Sima Nan onto a bigger stage. More importantly, he truly knew how to attract television audiences: whether telekinesis was real or fake was hard for ordinary people to figure out by reading papers; he would perform it on the spot and then reveal the trick, stripping away the mystery of the masters in just a few minutes.

Everyone, pay attention. After a magician performs a magic trick and then reveals the mystery behind it, it generally adds to the master's sense of mystery. The program had conflict and suspense; CCTV brought the performances into thousands of households, and also brought Sima Nan's name into thousands of households. What anti-qigong brought Sima Nan was not just fame, but also a reputation for being "able to see through scams." Later, when commenting on politics and enterprises, he used the same program method: first tell the audience that someone is deceiving the Chinese people and harming China's interests, then point out the bad guys he has identified. The names changed from qigong masters to public intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and foreign forces, but the role he played remained unchanged. Since he had exposed qigong scams, it was easier for the audience to believe that he could see through politics, understand enterprises, and judge who was patriotic and who was a traitor. However, from being a fraud-busting star to a political commentator, Sima Nan still had to pass a more realistic test: when facing qigong masters, he could question them to the end; but when facing those who truly held power, would he still dare to stick to his own judgment?

In 2003, Sima Nan was elected as a deputy to the Beijing Dongcheng District People's Congress. At his first plenary session of the district congress, the list of the presidium was put to a vote. The moderator asked those in favor to raise their hands; he didn't. Asked those opposed to raise their hands; he didn't. Asked those who abstained to raise their hands; he did. The reason was simple. He didn't know the people on the list and didn't know their situation, so why should he agree or disagree? So he abstained. According to his later interview with "Nanfengchuang," that evening, several groups of people came to find him for dinner and talks. Just because of that one raised hand, everyone wanted to figure out what this person was trying to do. Some advised him, why abstain, just go along with the vote; the meeting should be united and harmonious. At the second meeting, Sima Nan no longer raised his hand to abstain. He explained that whether he raised his hand or not wouldn't change the meeting, and it would only make the delegation leader look like he hadn't done his job well; there was no point in doing it again.

Sima Nan hit upon a vital vulnerability of the National People's Congress system: a delegate voting according to their own understanding should be the most normal thing in the world, but in that assembly hall, it would arouse suspicion. The list of candidates needed to be approved unanimously, and delegates better understand this in advance. He saw the rules and chose to adapt. In an interview published in 2009, the headline was precisely "Independent NPC Delegate Sima Nan Chooses to Change Himself." He told reporters that he could not change anything, only himself. After serving as a delegate for a few years, he went from initially looking down upon grassroots officials to understanding and sympathizing with them, and further affirming the operation of this system. The reason he gave for this change was that grassroots matters were difficult to handle: public toilets were hard to build, electricity meters were hard to replace, and officials were also exhausted. In the end, the political conclusion he drew was that China cannot follow the path of Western democracy. However, could these difficulties prove that delegates should not vote according to their own judgment? Questions that originally needed to be asked separately were lumped together by him into an affirmation of the existing system. The person who once insisted that "if you don't know someone, you shouldn't vote indiscriminately" later used his own political experience to explain why he changed his original intention.

This transformation was very useful for Sima Nan. He could both retain his personal persona as an independent delegate who dared to speak out, and tell the authorities: I finally understand you, and I am willing to explain to the public why you make sense. He began to more and more proactively move closer to the direction approved by power. A few years later, Chongqing gave him a bigger opportunity. In 2011, Bo Xilai governed Chongqing, and Wang Lijun was in charge of the public security system. Singing red songs and cracking down on crime made Chongqing the center of national political debate. This set of practices suited Sima Nan very well. He praised Mao Zedong, supported strongman governance, and was adept at dividing complex debates into clear-cut opposing sides of us versus the enemy. Chongqing provided a visible model: strong leadership, rapid action, and public propaganda that framed these actions as venting grievances for the common people. Sima Nan went to Chongqing and met with Wang Lijun. At this time, what Sima Nan gained was the opportunity to get close to prominent political figures, as well as materials and identity with which he could talk to the public about Chongqing. What Chongqing gained was an advocate with national fame who wore the sign of an independent commentator. By 2012, Wang Lijun entered the US Consulate, and Bo Xilai subsequently fell from power.

Yet after Bo Xilai's fall, Sima Nan did not cut ties with the Maoist left circle. In September 2012, Utopia hosted an event commemorating the death of Mao Zedong, and he still served as the host. How then did Sima Nan accomplish his dissociation from Bo? In January 2013, he appeared on Voice of America's "Focus Dialogues" to state that Bo Xilai personally indeed had problems and should be dealt with, while insisting that Chongqing's singing red songs and cracking down on crime deserved affirmation, and even used the fact that the Central Committee did not criticize the Chongqing model as his reason for continuing to affirm it. The trial of the Bo Xilai case talked about two issues: first, Bo Xilai's pocket issue; second, the issue of Bo Xilai not keeping a certain part of his body under control. The commentary article by Xinhua News Agency explained it very clearly: this case is an isolated case, but now some people insist on comparing this matter—for example, the Southern Media Group—trying to forcibly drag this matter to another aspect. Drag it to where? They say the essence of Chongqing's problem is the primary pathological lesion of the Chinese Communist Party's ideology. In other words, the enemy targeted by some people is not Bo Xilai or Wang Lijun, but the Chinese Communist Party. I think the CCP Central Committee has not launched any discussion regarding the political line issues and ideological line issues involved in the Bo Xilai incident. And the Chinese Communist Party has a traditional advantage in this regard in the past. One can be guilty, but that does not prevent the Chongqing model from still being correct; as long as the individuals and the political line are decoupled, and the final power of interpretation is handed back to the Central Committee, Sima Nan did not have to be buried along with the fallen Bo Xilai.

After the new leader came to power, he quickly found a coherent narrative to bridge the gap. In a 2013 exclusive interview with CCTV.com about the Chinese Dream, he linked the realization of the Chinese Dream with defending China's fundamental political system; in 2015, when discussing Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, he cited Xi Jinping's formulation regarding the two historical periods before and after reform and opening up. It is evident that his staunch support for the way of Mao Zedong relies precisely on using the words of the incumbent leader to explain things. After the 19th National Congress in 2017, Reuters interviewed Sima Nan. He explicitly affirmed Xi Jinping's strong leadership position, and even praised his diligence by citing how many words Xi Jinping had spoken, how much he had written, and how many people he had met. From Chongqing to Beijing, Sima Nan did not lose his position of speaking for power because Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun lost power. He retained the posture of a Maoist leftists while putting on the new talking points of the Central Committee. By the time the short-video era arrived, how much money could this fame and posture be converted into?

In the camera frame, there is often only Sima Nan alone.

Yet, a video from topic selection, shooting, and editing to appearing simultaneously on WeChat, Douyin, Toutiao, and YouTube cannot possibly be completed at home by him alone.

The most important person behind the camera is named Rao Jin.

Pulling the timeline back to 2008. Before the Beijing Olympics, centering around the Tibet incident and the Olympic torch relay, a large-scale nationalist mobilization emerged on the Chinese internet.

Rao Jin founded the Anti-CNN website, becoming famous for opposing Western media's reporting on China.

This website was later renamed April Media.

The people who gathered here earliest included some who wanted to correct false reports by Western media, and some who hoped that Chinese people could have a stronger voice internationally.

According to an investigative report by Southern People Weekly, around 2010, Rao Jin received 10 million yuan in investment to turn his early community project into a more complete website.

This investment was related to Eric X. Li and the Chengwei Capital.

By 2013, the investors stopped adding funds because the traffic was not ideal, and employees began demanding unpaid wages and social security contributions.

This experience taught Rao Jin early on that idealism alone could not sustain a company; he had to keep the audience clicking.

Editors also discovered that how foreigners evaluate China or what the U.S. ambassador has done is easier to attract attention than daily cultural and intellectual content.

Nationalism is not just a stance; it is a magic weapon that can repeatedly rally an audience.

In 2017, Rao Jin established Nanjing Lingsi, expanding his content business from a single website to a group of commentators with names and faces, and then pushing them onto multiple platforms.

Public records show that by 2020 at the latest, Sima Nan had entered Rao Jin's operational matrix. He had national fame, knew how to face the camera to create conflict and opposition, and had already found a safe political position.

More importantly, the credibility he built from his early days of exposing fraud allowed the audience to treat his judgments as revealing the truth.

At that time, the flagship figure heavily promoted by this matrix was still Jin Canrong.

During the Henan floods in 2021, Jin Canrong's account featured claims that U.S. weather weapons caused the disaster, which triggered a backlash.

Jin Canrong later asked someone to clarify, stating that the relevant content was operated by Rao Jin's team, and requested to change the cooperative team.

In August of the same year, Sima Nan's Douyin account, which had been inactive for more than half a year, suddenly resumed intensive updates.

Months later, accounts controlled by Rao Jin, such as "Commissar Canrong," were renamed one after another, and the partnership between Jin Canrong and Rao Jin's team fell apart.

Sima Nan began to fill the flagship position left by Jin Canrong.

Siyue Huawen's recruitment introduction also described this business clearly: the company manages a full-platform new media matrix of media figures and experts, listing programs including the Sima Nan Channel, the Zhanhu Think Tank, and Li Su's Commentary.

Account verification documents preserved in 2022 also show that Sima Nan's related official accounts were registered under Beijing Zhongyi Wangtian and Nanjing Lingsi, respectively.

The control relationships of these companies all point to Rao Jin.

What the audience sees is Sima Nan expressing personal opinions, but what operates behind the scenes is a corporate-style account matrix.

Rao Jin provides Sima Nan with filming, accounts, and distribution, while Sima Nan provides this machine with a famous face that can incite emotions.

Now only one question remains: what content can turn Sima Nan's face into money the fastest?

How fast the money comes, Rao Jin himself has explained.

From the end of April to early May 2020, the "Sima Nan Channel" gained more than 200,000 followers in two weeks. Backend data released by Rao Jin showed that the advertising revenue for these two weeks had already caught up with the advertising revenue of another account under his umbrella, "Commissar Canrong," over the past two years.

And this was just the beginning.

On September 28, 2021, one of Sima Nan's videos reached 8 million views.

In the following month or so, by continuously attacking Lenovo, he gained more than 5 million followers on Douyin, over 1.5 million on Weibo, and over 1 million on Bilibili.

One attack brings views, comments, reposts, and followers; surrounding the same target to continue the pursuit allows a controversy to be broken down into episode after episode of videos.

For those running accounts, making the audience angry is easier to gain attention and traffic than having them patiently understand the facts.

Why a company undergoes restructuring, how equity changes, and what is actually written in a contract requires checking data and waiting for investigations.

Sima Nan, however, can start by asking a few questions that are more likely to enrage the audience: Was state-owned property taken away? Did the Chinese people's money go into foreigners' pockets? Did ordinary people agree to such high salaries?

Once questions are posed this way, factual judgment is replaced by political alignment.

The audience does not need to understand the ledger; they only need to choose a side between patriotism and treason, between the people and capital.

Questions that originally required evidence to answer are no longer important.

Those who support Sima Nan feel they are seeking justice for the country, so they actively repost, comment, and urge for more content; those who oppose him, in order to point out errors, also click on the videos, take clips, and argue point by point.

Both sides think they are fighting a war, but the platform records the same set of numbers: views, watch time, comment counts, and new subscriptions.

The platform does not judge who is patriotic or who makes sense; it only knows that this account has become a hot topic, and a war of words can eventually be settled into money according to traffic and advertising rules.

What Sima Nan's team harvests is not just a single view. Once the audience clicks subscribe and follows the channel, they become users who can be called back repeatedly.

Today they curse Lenovo, tomorrow they curse Alibaba, and the day after they switch to another target labeled as a capitalist or foreign force.

Every time a new enemy appears, the account can reignite the anger of the same group of people.

How this business splits the money was answered by a failed collaboration.

In August 2022, Qiao Mu, a former associate professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, publicly stated that Rao Jin had approached him, hoping he would do a program with Sima Nan.

Qiao Mu proposed a fixed post-tax fee for his contributions, but Rao Jin insisted on a revenue-sharing model based on traffic and advertising income.

This was not simply inviting a scholar to express an opinion, but negotiating a traffic business: the person on camera attracts the audience, the operating company produces and distributes, and finally, they split the money earned from the content.

Some viewpoints make money when people agree, and others make money when people disagree; the biggest fear is being ignored.

Li Su, who also produces programs within this matrix, put it more bluntly: he used to work in think tanks and corporate consulting, and it was only after collaborating with Sima Nan on a few programs that he realized the money from short videos could come in "gushing."

Beyond advertising, political trust can also be converted into product orders.

As early as October 2021, during the height of the attacks on Lenovo, Nanjing Lingxi applied to register trademarks such as "Nanyou Yanxuan" (Nanyou Selected), followed by a "Nanyou Yanxuan" WeChat official account and a Youzan store.

"Nanyou" is not just an ordinary store name; it tells the buyer: you are not a stranger coming to buy things, you are a friend of Sima Nan, a person in this camp.

Ordinary merchants have to prove their products are worth buying first; "Nanyou Yanxuan" can prove that the operator and the customer share the same political stance first.

Audiences first believe that Sima Nan is acting as a gatekeeper for the country, and then believe that the store opened in his name will also act as a gatekeeper for them.

Consequently, audiences who had just been following Sima Nan in cursing capital were immediately led into the shopping portal of the company behind him.

They thought they were supporting a stance, but what the operators gained was a batch of customers who could be repeatedly sold products.

The patriotic feelings of the audience might be sincere, but the backend settlement only recognizes numbers: forwarding increases reach, arguing increases interaction, following increases account value, and purchasing directly turns into revenue.

Making money from the audience side alone is not the whole of this business.

Why did Sima Nan fixate on Red Bull, Alibaba, and Lenovo, cursing one company after another?

Because these companies can not only provide traffic, but also become public relations clients.

Li Su, mentioned earlier, has an even more important identity. He has long been engaged in corporate consulting and crisis public relations and is the head of Hejun Venture Consulting.

Li Su himself has said that his cooperation with April Media was to jointly explore new media public relations after the influence of traditional media declined.

He also used the phrase "we planned" to describe the topics hyped up by Sima Nan.

The division of labor among the three became clear: Sima Nan stands in front of the camera, framing commercial disputes as national interests; Rao Jin uses an account matrix to amplify the controversy; Li Su uses his connections in the corporate and public relations industries to turn public opinion pressure into a fee-based service.

Attacking companies is no longer just a program to attract viewers; it can also become the front end of a public relations business.

This way of playing was not the first time it appeared at April Net.

In 2013, former employee Huang Weifu told "Southern People Weekly" about a deal that did not go through.

A wealthy businessman in Sanya was involved in an asset dispute over Luhuitou Park and offered 5 million yuan to find Rao Jin for help.

According to Huang Weifu, the method Rao Jin designed was to find reporters to interview in Sanya, then use online accounts to hype up the forced demolition by state-owned enterprises, and use public opinion pressure to help the wealthy businessman take over the project.

This deal did not go through in the end, but it clearly explained the operational logic: the client first proposes the desired result, and then the media and online accounts create public opinion favorable to the client.

The public thinks they are watching a social event, but what is being discussed in the background is the project and the price.

The Red Bull dispute in 2020 also brought Sima Nan into this line.

At that time, China Red Bull and Thailand's TCP Group were fighting over trademark authorization and market interests.

In July 2020, Li Su met with Yan Bin, chairman of Reignwood Group, in Shenzhen and publicly stated that he had discussed the Red Bull war with a new media public relations team.

Lawyer Chen Ruojian, who has long cooperated with Li Su, represented China Red Bull's related business and had recorded multiple dialogue programs with Sima Nan.

Just as these connections were formed, Sima Nan entered the fray to attack Thailand's TCP Group.

He no longer just talked about trademarks and contracts, but tied the other party to Hong Kong, the One-China principle, and national sovereignty, and even suggested putting Thailand's TCP Group on the unreliable entity list.

A brand dispute between companies thus turned into a political multiple-choice question.

What the audience saw was Sima Nan getting angry for national sovereignty, but what the China Red Bull side received was nationalist public opinion pressure against their commercial rivals.

In this dispute, the client's lawyer, the crisis public relations personnel, and Sima Nan, who launched the public opinion attack, had already appeared on the same line of cooperation.

A year later, a similar connection appeared with Alibaba.

In September 2021, Li Su and a cooperating lawyer met with the plaintiff who sued Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang in Shanghai.

By October, Sima Nan began to attack Alibaba Pictures, saying that its release of the "The Battle at Lake Changjin" box office poster was a "capitalist carnival."

The problem is, other producers of the same film had also released box office posters, but Sima Nan specifically singled out Alibaba for criticism.

Viewed in isolation, this could be explained as a topic selection judgment; when placed together with Red Bull and the later Lenovo, the overlap between corporate targets and the public relations and legal business of those around him makes it difficult to explain as a coincidence.

When it came to Lenovo, almost the entire commercial closed-loop was laid bare by themselves.

In the autumn and winter of 2021, common prosperity became a prominent political discourse.

Sima Nan seized upon issues such as Lenovo's restructuring, state-owned assets, executive compensation, and foreign management, continuously publishing videos that pushed Liu Chuanzhi to the center of public attention.

Chinese people harbor genuine grievances over income inequality and the loss of state-owned assets. Sima Nan focused these grievances on Lenovo, putting on the appearance of auditing accounts on behalf of ordinary people. However, rather than handing the materials he held to the relevant authorities, he generated public pressure episode after episode.

Meanwhile, Li Su publicly admitted that he, Rao Jin, and Sima Nan had engaged in a major dispute over whether to attack Lenovo. Note the phrase "whether to attack." This indicates that Lenovo was not a target Sima Nan happened to notice in the news on the spur of the moment and about which he generated a few personal thoughts, but rather a target discussed jointly by the three individuals. Following the dispute, Sima Nan continued his attacks in the foreground, while Li Su wrote a letter to Liu Chuanzhi hoping that Lenovo would hire him for crisis public relations to "plead grievances" on Liu Chuanzhi's behalf. In the letter, he also specifically detailed his relationship with Sima Nan and Rao Jin. This was, of course, no ordinary business contact. The hint Li Su handed to Liu Chuanzhi was: the person currently attacking you is in cahoots with me. Hand the public relations business and PR fees over to me, and I can influence this attack, cool it down, or even stop it completely.

One individual creates a crisis in the foreground while another charges the "aggrieved party" a fee to sell services resolving that crisis, forming a closed-loop for profit closely resembling opinion extortion. If Lenovo refused to take the bait, Sima Nan could continue to rely on the attacks to gain traffic, advertisements, and followers; once Lenovo took the bait, Li Su would secure the PR fees, and the team would then orchestrate how to cool down the conflict.

This also explains why Sima Nan was willing to spend so much time surrounding a few enterprises for prolonged attacks: every extra video produced brought an extra trace of traffic in the foreground, and the "solutions" sold in the background carried an extra increment of pricing. Li Su later publicly stated that Sima Nan and Rao Jin both believed that his explanation of the relationship among the three in the letter was akin to "playing with fire." This remark did not stem from a sudden onset of moral burden on their part, but rather from Li Su violating the rules of this business. The relationship among the three could be used as a subtle hint, but it could not be put down in black and white for Liu Chuanzhi to know. As long as the relationship remained hidden in the background, Sima Nan could still play the role of an independently vocal patriot, and Li Su could likewise play the role of a PR expert coming to extinguish the fire. Once Liu Chuanzhi realized that the arsonist and the fire extinguisher salesman were sitting at the exact same table, the PR invitation was reduced to one blunt remark: pay up, and I'll settle things with my friend for you.

Lenovo ultimately did not respond, and this closed-loop was not completed on Lenovo. But Li Su's letter had already exposed its operational mechanism. Facing questioning, Sima Nan reduced his relationship with Rao Jin to a trivial matter. He stated on his WeChat Moments that he needed two young people to record his program, and those two individuals happened to be under Rao Jin's command, describing it as "just that kind of matter."

Yet on the day before the publication of "Unmasking the Traffic Machine and Monetization Mystery Behind Sima Nan," the previously mentioned "Nanyou Selected" was still updating normally; on the night the article was published, the related WeChat Official Account articles were deleted, and the Youzan store was also deregistered. If this were merely an ordinary store, why would it vanish overnight after the commercial relationship was exposed? Its existence and disappearance spoke volumes more than "two young people coming to record a video."

As some information regarding this matrix became known to outsiders, people began to ask: were every burst of anger and every anti-American and anti-Western remark made by Sima Nan in front of the camera his personal stance, or were they commodities produced by this business system? In 2022, online disclosures revealing that Sima Nan had long ago purchased a home in the United States turned this inquiry into a stern interrogation.

"Do you have a house anywhere?"

"I have one in the US, it's my wife's"

"Relatives of their family have lived in the United States for some time"

"Houses in America are cheap and can appreciate in value"

"My family and I, and my wife"

"Friends of their family bought a small house together over there"

"Ah, there is such a thing, yes." Faced with disclosures accompanied by real estate documents, Sima Nan finally admitted in August 2022 that he had bought a house in the United States as early as 2010. He referred to it as a "small house," with a total price of $257,000. At the exchange rate of the time, this amounted to about 1.75 million RMB, nearing 2 million RMB. What was the weight of 1.75 million RMB in 2010? That year, the per capita disposable income of urban residents nationwide was only 19,109 RMB. Calculated against this average, an urban resident would have to go without eating or drinking for over ninety years just to afford the purchase price of Sima Nan's "small house."

What looked even uglier was not the amount of money, but the fact that while he converted his money into US dollars and invested in property in the United States, he simultaneously indoctrinated his base with notions of the corruption and decay of the Western world. As early as 2008, Sima Nan was already high-profile in his attacks on universal values. He dismissed the common values underlying democracy, freedom, and human rights as myths peddled by the West to China, even labeling them a "worldwide, organized political deception." Those who believed in these values were in turn categorized by him as belonging to the "naive, romantic, and gullible factions." In that same interview, to prove that freedom of movement in the United States was false, he even gave a hypothetical scenario: if Sima Nan wanted to live in California, the United States would not grant him a visa. Little did anyone expect that two years later, before the person even migrated over, his money would make it to California first.

We have now arrived in the United States.

In the 20,000-acre Los Angeles Bay, right now, it is the afternoon. That same year, he described the United States in an article as a place where "three sentences fail to settle anything," leading them to resort to force and "blow your house to smithereens." In his narrative, the United States is a hegemonic country that deceives the Chinese people under the guise of democracy, human rights, and universal values. The audience doesn't need to understand complex facts; they just need to remember one answer: the West is deceiving China, and anyone speaking up for the West is also suspicious. Not long after saying these things, in 2010, Sima Nan forked out 1.7 million RMB and bought a house in California, USA.

By 2011, after Ai Weiwei was arrested, Sima Nan accused Ai Weiwei in his program of taking "foreign money" to engage in politics, and claimed that Ai Weiwei's reputation was the joint creation of the Western world and domestic media. When others had financial ties to foreign countries, it could become political suspicion in his words; yet when he himself sent a large sum of money into the US housing market, he kept it hidden so his audience wouldn't know.

During the 2012 Spring Festival, Sima Nan flew to the US again and was injured in the head and neck by an escalator at Washington Airport. This accident quickly turned into an internet joke because his public posturing and private life had finally collided. "Opposing the US is a job, going to the US is a life" has since become an inescapable label.

The base that Sima Nan wants to capture is not a group of people who can also pull out 1.75 million RMB to buy a house in the US, but ordinary people who worry about wages, mortgages, medical care, and their children's schooling. They contribute clicks, shares, and orders to Sima Nan, and Sima Nan in turn directs the dissatisfaction in their lives toward the US, the West, and so-called foreign forces. The online saying, "Eating instant noodles while worrying about the American imperialism," satirizes not the fact that ordinary people have no money, but that some people deliberately turn ordinary people's life anxiety into anti-US sentiment.

After his real estate exposure, Sima Nan explained that friends told him the property would appreciate in value, and relatives and friends were in the US, making it convenient to manage. These reasons were all very practical: returns, family ties, and convenience in life. When it came to making his own choices, he was never delayed by anti-US slogans. He later half-jokingly said that in 2010 he thought too well of the United States and failed to recognize the "hooligan nature of imperialism." If he truly recognized it later, why didn't he sell the house? While his verbal understanding of the US grew deeper year by year, the assets left in the US to appreciate remained completely untouched.

Faced with persistent questioning, he claimed that his real estate was exposed because he attacked Lenovo and offended capital. But this house was bought eleven years before the Lenovo controversy, and Lenovo left unanswered why anti-US slogans only constrain the audience and never constrain his own wallet.

By July 4, 2023, Sima Nan attended the Independence Day event at the US Embassy in China. Before going, he first asked if mobile phones were allowed in, and upon learning they could be brought inside, he prepared to take photos. He posed for photos against a backdrop simulating a US West Coast beach, took pictures with the US ambassador, tasted various foods, and even seriously compared the ice cream at the US embassy and the Russian embassy. Some asked, how could an "anti-US fighter" eat, drink, and hold hands for photos with the US ambassador? Sima Nan replied that this is called diplomatic etiquette: "When people invite you to dinner, why would you act tough with them?"

It turned out he understood completely that meeting, dining, and taking photos with Americans does not equal betraying China; buying a house in the US can also be just about investment and life. But when it comes to Ai Weiwei, Lenovo's foreign executives, and intellectuals, foreign money, foreign friends, and foreign experiences are once again pulled out one by one to become materials for political trials. For others, foreign relations can be framed by him as criminal evidence; for himself, buying a house is an investment, going to the US is a life, and dining at the embassy is etiquette. Sima Nan doesn't fail to distinguish between the government and the people, or politics and life. He simply reserves this dividing line for himself and refuses to leave it for those he attacks.

In March 2023, Jack Ma, who had disappeared for a long time, returned to China. At this time, officials increasingly emphasized the protection of private enterprises. On March 28, the Cyberspace Administration of China proposed at a press conference to tackle the problem of damaging the online rights and interests of enterprises and entrepreneurs, and malicious attacks and extortion against enterprises were also included in the scope of rectification.

During the same period, Sima Nan wrote "Circling the Tree Three Times, Which Branch Can It Rely On?", welcoming Jack Ma back and encouraging Xu Jiayin to resume operations. In his articles, the fact that these enterprises can continue to develop after encountering difficulties and undergoing rectification is proof of the resilience of the Chinese economy. In the past, entrepreneurs' wealth, expansion, and mistakes could become materials for him to criticize capital; now, entrepreneurs' resumption of operations is used by him to prove the superiority of the system. How things are explained depends on what conclusion he needs to serve this time.

In July, the CCP Central Committee and the State Council issued an opinion on promoting the development and growth of the private economy. Sima Nan immediately expressed his support. Subsequently, he wrote another article titled "Please Let Chairman Mao Judge," in which he attempted to explain his previous remarks. One passage in particular illustrates his habit of judgment. People often use the "56789" formula to summarize the contributions of the private economy in terms of tax revenue, economic aggregate, innovation, employment, and the number of enterprises. Sima Nan had previously questioned these figures. Now, he explained that when he first raised his doubts, this narrative had not yet entered central documents; later, when central documents began to adopt it, it did not change the principle that the public ownership system remains the mainstay. He wanted to prove that he was not wrong before, and he is not wrong now.

However, when verifying a set of economic data, one should first look at where the statistics come from, how they are calculated, and which enterprises are included. The reason he specifically provided when explaining himself was whether or not the central documents had adopted it at the time. This can be compared with his approach to Chongqing in 2013. At that time, he said the central government had not criticized the Chongqing model, so he continued to affirm it; ten years later, he used the central government's expression on the private economy to explain why he could continue to be correct.

Sima Nan thought that by changing his tune to align with private enterprise policies, he could pass the test once again. But this time, changing his tune failed to save his position. In November 2024, Sima Nan's accounts on multiple platforms stopped updating. The South China Morning Post quoted informed sources at the time as saying that he had been banned for one year, with no specific reason given. On February 17, 2025, Xi Jinping held a symposium for private enterprises, once again demanding support for private enterprises and the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of entrepreneurs. Regardless of how much these promises were implemented, the signal publicly released at the time was clear: private enterprises should be allowed to continue investing and operating, and maintain confidence in the economy. A month later, it was Sima Nan's own ledger that was put on the table.

On March 21, Beijing tax authorities announced the handling results. The investigation covered the period from 2019 to 2023: Sima Nan had underpaid personal income tax, value-added tax, and other taxes totaling 4.6243 million yuan through means such as concealing income and false declarations; a film and television planning center in Beijing that he actually controlled had underpaid corporate income tax by 753,200 yuan through falsely listing costs and expenses and violating regulations to enjoy preferential treatment for small and micro enterprises. The total underpayment for both was 5.3775 million yuan. Including late fees and fines, the final amount recovered was 9.2694 million yuan, which has all been deposited into the treasury. Sima Nan later described this money as "paying over 9 million yuan in fines and late fees," which is inaccurate: the 9.2694 million yuan also included the taxes that should have been paid in the first place.

So, can we deduce exactly how much he earned from these taxes? It is impossible to calculate the exact total income based solely on the announcement, because personal income tax, value-added tax, and other taxes were not separated. But tax investigators later disclosed a more direct figure to The Beijing News: in several of the tax years involved, Sima Nan had concealed nearly 7 million yuan in "partial short video income" alone. Note that this is partial income, not total income.

There is another account on the corporate side. The statutory corporate income tax rate is 25%. If the 753,200 yuan in underpaid taxes is roughly converted at this rate, the corresponding taxable income is approximately 3.01 million yuan. Since this involves both falsely listing costs and violating regulations to enjoy preferential treatment, this is only a magnitude judgment and cannot be taken as accurate profit, let alone simply added to personal income; but it is enough to show that this is not as simple as a retired old man occasionally filming a few videos and picking up some labor fees.

Faced with these figures, Sima Nan's explanation is: over the past six years, he received a total of more than 6 million yuan from an MCN company responsible for account operations; the other party promised to withhold and pay taxes on his behalf but failed to do so. He said he had asked for tax invoices, but just did not realize the importance of the issue. This explanation shifted the responsibility as much as possible to the company behind the camera. These 6 million-plus yuan were only the remuneration paid to him by one MCN, which does not equal his total taxable income. However, the partner agency told The Beijing News that Sima Nan had signed authorization agreements and received commercial contracts, but had never signed them; the company had communicated with him many times about personal income tax issues, but received no response. Tax investigators clearly stated that even if the payer did not withhold taxes, Sima Nan still had the obligation to declare them himself. Continuing to conceal income and make false declarations during the annual settlement cannot be explained away by a simple "I don't understand taxes."

Furthermore, whether the MCN withheld taxes for him only involves a portion of his personal income and cannot explain why the enterprise he actually controlled falsely listed costs and why it violated regulations to enjoy preferential treatment for small and micro enterprises. This is not the first time Sima Nan has done business. As early as 1992, he served as the general manager of an advertising company, later held shares in film and television planning enterprises, and set up a personal studio. When criticizing others' operations, he could talk about everything from equity to state-owned assets; when it came to his own income and declarations, he portrayed himself as an old man who trusted others too easily and didn't even understand tax invoices. This set of explanations is hard to hold up.

How far was this case from criminal liability? Shi Zhengwen, a professor of fiscal and tax law at the China University of Political Science and Law, analyzed that the underpayment of over 5.37 million yuan already falls under the category of "a huge amount" as stipulated by the Criminal Law, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years. The reason Sima Nan did not face criminal prosecution was not because the amount was too small, but because he paid the taxes, late fees, and fines in full after being pursued by tax authorities, and met the conditions for first-time administrative handling, thus qualifying for the provision that criminal liability is not pursued after payment.

Sima Nan previously criticized Viya for tax evasion, saying that the matter was "very egregious and no longer just a moral issue." Now, the same ruler has finally been applied to him. This tax bill resolved a legal issue but left behind a political one: why were the old accounts from 2019 to 2023 investigated and publicly reported only after Sima Nan was banned from posting?

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to discipline someone, it usually does not announce a political decision first. Officials are investigated starting with corruption, while business owners, celebrities, and influencers are often investigated starting with taxes. Economic issues involve ledgers and numbers; they can be used to take someone down while hiding the political reasons behind "handling according to the law." The fact that Sima Nan evaded taxes is true; but when to investigate, whom to investigate, and to what extent to make it public are also in the hands of power.

On the day after the tax announcement, even the pro-Beijing Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao publicly criticized Sima Nan. With tax authorities chasing the debt and pro-Beijing media tearing him down, the signal is clear: Sima Nan has been abandoned by the CCP. Why abandon him so suddenly? The most reasonable inference is that when the authorities needed populism to besiege capital, Sima Nan was a useful knife; when the economy is under pressure and the top leadership is trying to reassure private enterprises, this knife is not only useless but also a hindrance. He can change his tune, but the public opinion stirred up by Sima Nan's silver tongue in the past cannot be completely deleted as long as he still shows his face online; the only way is to ban him.

Is this the whole reason? There is currently no public material that can answer this. Perhaps there are undisclosed conflicts of interest, or perhaps power just needed to pick someone to make an example of. Sima Nan spent his whole life guessing what power wanted next. In the end, power did not tell him why; it only handed him a tax bill for 9.2694 million yuan and, at the same time, gagged him.