Yaoyao-chan: Secretly Filmed and Leaked? Pan Shiyi's Open Telegram to the CCP | Tax Audits of the Rich | Offshore Trust Investigations
The video focuses on a clip of Pan Shiyi talking about Ren Zhiqiang and his writings, reviewing their long-standing relationship, Ren Zhiqiang's sentencing for criticizing Xi Jinping, and Pan Shiyi's experiences in the United States. The program also covers how the Pan family established an offshore trust, the 2026 personal income tax announcement regarding offshore trusts and exit management regulations, and analyzes the connection between this video and potential tax investigations.
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Full transcript:
Hello everyone, I am Yaoyao Jiang, a thinker who values logic. Yesterday, a private video of Pan Shiyi went viral inside the Great Firewall, only to be promptly banned across the entire internet. Both Pan Shiyi and Ren Zhiqiang became sensitive words. Once leaked outside the Great Firewall, the video immediately became the hottest topic in the Sinophone sphere. Let's first take a look at this 55-second video.
In September 2012, I went to New York, and my return ticket was already bought. I was just planning to spend the New Year over here, and return after the Spring Festival. Then, right after that, one of my friends got into trouble. This friend had a very good relationship with me. I studied him, and I also admired him very much. On Weibo, we were like a singing duo, interacting every day. He wrote a letter. This letter, he sent it to eleven people, and the first person was me. The rest of those people were all arrested, and I was... But wait, in America, please don't finish watching it like this.
This is clearly not a secretly filmed leak like the one of Bi Fujian (Grandpa Bi). Right there at a family dinner, the camera was placed right in front of Pan Shiyi and kept zooming and panning. Yet he efficiently stated what he wanted to say in just a few dozen seconds, and only at the end waved his hand and said, "Don't film this, I love this, absolutely don't film this." If you really wanted to stop it, you would say "don't film" in the very first second. Stopping it only after you finish saying everything is indeed very suspicious.
After watching this episode, you will find that Pan Shiyi wanted to use this so-called video leak to issue a self-exile declaration to the CCP: I am formally bidding farewell to my homeland and will not return. At the same time, he used coded language to warn Beijing that he has prepared his fallback plan, so bring it on if you dare. Why did he choose this particular time and way to break with the CCP? What are the key coded words in the video? What was written in the open letter mentioned in the video? Why did Ren Zhiqiang send the video to him first? And why did Ren Zhiqiang's arrest become his fallback card to challenge the CCP? Today we will start from that letter and that canceled plane ticket.
Throughout the video, Pan Shiyi never once utters the name Ren Zhiqiang. He uses phrases like "a good friend," "I respect him very much," and "the two of us echoing each other on Weibo" to hint to everyone that this person is Ren Zhiqiang. This is also typical of Pan Shiyi's consistent approach when facing political risks: letting the listener understand while leaving himself a layer of formal deniability.
The open letter mentioned by Pan Shiyi in the video is a long essay written by Ren Zhiqiang after the outbreak of the Wuhan pandemic in 2020 titled "The crocodile standing there is not an emperor showing off his new clothes, but a clown who insists on acting as an emperor even after being stripped naked." In that long essay, Ren Zhiqiang criticized the information censorship in the early stages of the pandemic, criticized the authorities for packaging a disaster as a victory of the system, and directly pointed his spearhead at Xi Jinping himself. Despite holding up one piece of fig leaf after another in an attempt to cover up the reality that he was wearing no clothes at all, it did not disguise his ambition to stubbornly act as an emperor. This was no longer the past debates surrounding housing prices and market policies, but a direct challenge to supreme power by an old party member.
But why did Ren Zhiqiang choose to send that article, which was enough to invite imprisonment, to Pan Shiyi first? It was not because Pan Shiyi was the most radical, nor was it because he was the most daring to oppose Xi Jinping. On the contrary, Pan Shiyi was much more cautious than Ren Zhiqiang. The reason lies in the fact that, over nearly 30 years of association, these two had formed a relationship that was difficult for others to replace. Ren Zhiqiang trusted that Pan Shiyi could understand his political judgment, and he also believed that Pan Shiyi knew the weight of those words and would handle them in the most appropriate way.
Their relationship of trust began in 1993. That year, Pan Shiyi came to Beijing from Hainan to look for projects. He had already worked in real estate in Hainan and had made his first pot of gold. However, the land transfer planning procedures and the official connections in Beijing were completely different from those in Hainan. When Pan Shiyi went to see Ren Zhiqiang, who was in charge of Huayuan, and talked about the project, he did not even understand basic real estate terminology like "Qingtong" or "Yipin." Ren Zhiqiang told him to his face that he did not understand real estate.
Their first meeting was not particularly pleasant, but they soon discovered that the other person possessed exactly what they lacked. Ren Zhiqiang was familiar with Beijing and understood land policy and the way the government operated; Pan Shiyi understood financing, products, and sales better, and he also knew better how to turn a project into a social topic. One was upright, the other flexible; one liked to speak his mind completely, the other was skilled at turning harsh words into something useful.
This complementarity was most clearly demonstrated in the SOHO New Town project. Around 2000, Pan Shiyi invited Ren Zhiqiang to visit his SOHO New Town. He had originally invited an old friend to see his proud work, and to some extent, he hoped to hear a few words of affirmation. Unexpectedly, after returning, Ren Zhiqiang wrote a ten-thousand-word essay, criticizing the project from design to management until it was torn to shreds. He also instructed his secretary to fax this letter to Pan Shiyi first, and then send it to the media.
As it happened, the fax machine in Pan Shiyi's office was out of paper, so what happened? The reporters received Ren Zhiqiang's letter first, and Pan Shiyi was the last to see it. When he discovered that the media was already reporting on how Ren Zhiqiang had criticized SOHO New Town, his first reaction was, of course, anger. An old friend of many years, you didn't tell me first, but you scolded me in the newspapers.
Later, he checked the fax records and realized it wasn't Ren Zhiqiang's fault, but rather a roll of paper that hadn't been loaded in time, which only allowed the criticism to reach the reporters first. If it had been any other developer, this matter would likely have turned into a public falling out. But Pan Shiyi did not engage in a shouting match with Ren Zhiqiang; he had his team list the problems in the letter one by one and make the necessary changes. Subsequently, he compiled Ren Zhiqiang's criticisms, his own responses, and the outside debates into a book called "Critique of SOHO New Town."
Ren Zhiqiang had originally come to find fault, but Pan Shiyi turned this criticism into a nationwide communication event. This was the first mutual achievement of these two: Ren Zhiqiang helped Pan Shiyi's property project take its pulse, while Pan Shiyi helped Ren Zhiqiang turn a piece of criticism into a public topic. What Ren Zhiqiang gave Pan Shiyi was judgment, and what Pan Shiyi gave Ren Zhiqiang was reach. The trust between them was not just expressed in words.
In 2007, Pan Shiyi acquired two projects from Ren Zhiqiang for 400 million yuan. The initial agreement was said to be just a piece of paper, about fifty characters long. Ren Zhiqiang later recalled that the two had done about 8 billion yuan worth of business together, but had never argued over a contract. The fact that real estate developers can conduct transactions worth billions without falling out speaks louder than any claim of being best friends.
By 2020, Ren Zhiqiang and Pan Shiyi had known each other for nearly 30 years. They had criticized each other, done business together, and cleaned up each other's messes time and time again. When Ren Zhiqiang wanted to hand an extremely dangerous article to the few people he truly trusted, it was no surprise that Pan Shiyi was at the top of the list.
Their complementary personalities in business led to their mutual success; but when faced with politics, these two old friends were almost poles apart. Faced with political pressure and risk, Ren Zhiqiang was always daring to speak out, and the public called him "Ren the Cannon"; while Pan Shiyi, upon sensing danger, would always leave himself a way out first. This difference did not suddenly appear after Xi Jinping came to power. Long before they met, their respective family experiences had already shaped their completely different personal attitudes toward the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Under the current situation in China, our only social responsibility is for everyone sitting here to strive to stand up and push down the wall in front of us.
In 2013, Ren Zhiqiang accepted an interview with Renwu Magazine. When talking about Pan Shiyi, he said something very interesting: "He believes in the Baháʼí Faith, I believe in the Communist Party, but that does not prevent us from being friends." The Baháʼí Faith is a religion that emerged in the 19th century in Persia, which is today's Iran, emphasizing that humanity is one family and that different religions can coexist harmoniously. Hearing this today, it sounds almost like a prophecy of their two political fates.
Ren Zhiqiang said he believed in the Communist Party not to say it for the organization to hear. In 2013, he had already stepped down as chairman of Huayuan Group, but he was still serving as chairman of Huayuan Real Estate. He truly saw himself as a member of this system. He also said that his generation valued responsibility the most and hoped to turn China into a better society. When the reporter asked him why he believed in communism, his answer was: because it is beautiful, therefore I believe.
Ren Zhiqiang's father, Ren Quansheng, joined the revolution in 1937, served as a cadre in the New Fourth Army, and later became the Vice Minister of Commerce. Born into such a high-ranking cadre family, Ren Zhiqiang was a true princeling (red second generation). He himself enlisted in the military and joined the CCP, later heading state-owned enterprises and serving as a deputy to the National People's Congress and a member of the CPPCC. With his older generation helping to establish this regime, and himself remaining inside the system throughout, the Party-state was not an external ruling machine to him, but something intertwined with his own family history. The Party-state, the state-family, and the family business were a trinity.
Since it was his own family, if the roof leaked, it should be pointed out; since he was a member of the family, if the management made a mistake, it should be criticized. Behind Ren Zhiqiang's sharpness was always a sense of responsibility from inside the system. He did not feel that the Party had nothing to do with him; rather, he felt it had far too much to do with him, which was why he spoke out and fired off criticisms repeatedly. This also explains why he always had a kind of underlying confidence that outsiders found difficult to understand.
In 1985, Ren Zhiqiang was locked up in a detention center for economic issues for fourteen months. After his release from prison, the ruling sent by the procuratorate did not straightforwardly declare him innocent; instead, it used the phrasing "it can be deemed that no crime was committed." Before Huayuan went public in Hong Kong in 1996, an anonymous letter used this past experience to report him for having a criminal record. To prevent tax issues from holding up the company's listing, the party eventually managed to obtain a clear certificate explicitly stating acquittal and release.
Most surprisingly, on the very second day after his release from prison, what Ren Zhiqiang said to the company leadership was still that they must continue to follow the CCP. Having personally experienced how the system could wrong a person, he did not abandon his belief in self-correction from within the system. Later on, whenever he encountered problems, his first thought remained to state the facts, look for evidence, and demand that the relevant departments make improvements.
In 2003, Beijing was recovering from the SARS epidemic. The Beijing municipal government invited a group of entrepreneurs to a symposium, hoping to hear everyone's opinions on economic policies. According to what Ren Zhiqiang later wrote in his memoirs, when it was Pan Shiyi's turn to speak, Pan was a bit nervous. Ren Zhiqiang could not sit still, hijacked the topic to directly criticize government policies, and repeatedly demanded that officials uphold market credibility. After speaking, he had other arrangements, so he stood up and left, leaving Pan Shiyi behind to bear the mayor's fury.
After the meeting, Pan Shiyi even called Ren Zhiqiang and said: "After you left, Mayor Wang took all his anger out on me." And this Mayor Wang was Wang Qishan. Opposing members... planting crops and sending young guys, meaning twenty or thirty-year-old guys whose crops just wouldn't sell. Why were you able to sell yours? Because I felt like saying nice words to people, right? First let people pick whatever they want since it's just farming anyway, and naturally it gets sold. Doing business means farming.
Pan Shiyi's family memory, however, was quite the opposite. Pan Shiyi was born in a remote village in Tianshui, where his grandfather was labeled a Kuomintang officer, his father was classified as a rightist, and the family still carried the stigma of a landlord background. According to the political classifications of that era, he was a child of a "black five categories" family.
Pan Shiyi later recalled that when he was in elementary school, his teachers held consecutive struggle sessions against him, making the whole class spit on his face. For a child, he might not even have known what exact mistakes his grandfather and father had made, but he had already understood one thing: a person's fate could change overnight because of a family label. Yesterday he could still go to school normally, and today he could be humiliated by everyone. This fear and lack of sense of security toward the Party and the system did not come from books; it came from his own childhood personal experiences.
What Ren Zhiqiang inherited from his family was a sense of ownership, whereas what Pan Shiyi inherited from his family was a sense of risk. In 2018, when talking about the differences between the two, Pan Shiyi said that Ren Zhiqiang was a princeling with underlying confidence in his heart, while he himself had walked out of a mountain ravine in Gansu and had to weigh every single word. This was not just a matter of courage, nor was it simply one being outspoken and the other being slick. The difference lay in their two completely different basic judgments of the CCP. Ren Zhiqiang believed that although the system would make mistakes, as an insider, he had both the responsibility and the qualification to push it to correct them. Pan Shiyi, however, had known since childhood that political power does not necessarily reason with you using facts; once it turns hostile, the wealth, reputation, and connections you possess might not be able to protect you.
However, after getting to know Zhang Xin, I felt that the biggest change was that his perspective broadened, giving him a global vision.
In 2005, Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin began setting up an overseas structure for SOHO China's listing. On November 14, Pan Shiyi transferred the rights and interests of the relevant companies to Zhang Xin; eleven days later, Zhang Xin established an offshore trust named The Little Brothers Sector Manta. For many years thereafter, SOHO China's listing documents consistently disclosed that shares were held by an overseas trustee through multi-layered companies, with Zhang Xin as the protector and one of the beneficiaries. Right up until the public documents of 2025, this trust still controlled approximately 63.93% of SOHO China's shares through overseas companies.
Setting up an offshore trust in 2005 served not only the IPO and overseas financing of SOHO China but also left an overseas retreat for Pan Shiyi, who had always been wary of political risks. While he continued to build properties and operate companies in China, the legal ownership of his family's core holdings had already been transferred to offshore trusts, individuals, and companies, with shares and ultimate beneficiaries separated layer by layer. This type of family trust-based wealth transfer and arrangement has been highly favored by China's elite for 20 years as a way to move money earned in China to safe places overseas.
Just as Pan Shiyi was adding isolation layers to his assets, he was also helping Ren Zhiqiang dismantle the isolation layer of public expression. It was about your image; there was a stereotypical understanding among ordinary media that before you opened a coffee shop, you were a public enemy, but after you opened a Weibo account, you became a sweetheart of the masses.
Ren Zhiqiang complained that reporters always took his words out of context after interviews, so Pan Shiyi advised him to write a blog himself. Later, when Weibo emerged, it was Pan Shiyi who brought Ren Zhiqiang onto the platform. Ren Zhiqiang did not know how to type on a computer, so Pan Shiyi told him to use his phone to write by hand. Pan Shiyi later proudly said that Weibo had liberated Ren Zhiqiang, and this statement was no exaggeration.
In the era of traditional media, every word Ren Zhiqiang said had to go through interviews, editing, and censorship by reporters before it could be published. But in the Weibo era, he could pick up his phone and face tens of millions of readers directly. The man who was always worried about being taken out of context could finally decide for himself what to say and how to say it. However, what Pan Shiyi did not expect was that while he opened up an expressive space for Ren Zhiqiang, he also allowed every word of Ren Zhiqiang to reach the highest power faster.
Every argument and every criticism from Ren Zhiqiang would spread across the country within minutes. He criticized housing price policies, criticized government intervention in the market, and criticized the lack of constraints on power. Words that used to be spoken and forgotten in a conference room were now being screenshotted, forwarded, amplified, and finally delivered to the highest power.
And just as Ren Zhiqiang's political visibility grew higher and higher, the center of gravity of Pan Shiyi's wealth continued to move outward. Around 2012 to 2013, when Xi Jinping came to power, the Pan family bought several large properties in the United States. Since then, SOHO China has successively sold domestic projects, and the speed of wealth transfer has clearly accelerated. Ren Zhiqiang's political risks were getting higher and higher, while Pan Shiyi was reducing his family's wealth's dependence on China.
Because Ren Zhiqiang believed that the greater the influence, the more likely it was to push the government to correct its mistakes; while Pan Shiyi became increasingly clear that the greater the fame, the greater the political risk. Pan Shiyi sincerely admired Ren Zhiqiang's straightforwardness, but he never bet the safety of his family and wealth on the internal self-correction that Ren Zhiqiang believed in. The friendship was real, and the retreat was also real.
In 2013, the internet czar appointed by Xi Jinping summoned Weibo heavyweights like Pan Shiyi, Ren Zhiqiang, and Kai-Fu Lee to a meeting. According to a friend of Pan Shiyi who later recounted it to the media, at the beginning of the meeting, the host first asked everyone to provide suggestions on internet management. Once everyone actually started giving suggestions, they were then asked to post less critical content in the future. Ren Zhiqiang asked on the spot: "If something is done wrong, can't we even talk about it?" This anger immediately created an awkward silence. Pan Shiyi, who had been silent, quickly interjected to help the meeting host find a way out.
The two people had not changed, but the political environment had. Ren Zhiqiang still thought that since the meeting allowed everyone to offer suggestions, he had a responsibility to speak his true thoughts. But what the host saw was no longer a straightforward state-owned enterprise executive, but a communication risk with tens of millions of followers who could create a public opinion storm at any time.
In 2016, Xi Jinping demanded that media sponsored by the Party and the government must be surnamed "Party." Ren Zhiqiang publicly questioned this, asking why media funded by taxpayers' money should only serve the Party. Soon, his Weibo account with more than 30 million followers was shut down, and he was subsequently punished with a one-year probationary period within the Party.
Ren Zhiqiang still understood this conflict as criticism within the Party. He believed that a Party member could certainly express different opinions on Party policies. But the rules in the Xi Jinping era had changed; the political slogans set by the top leader were no longer policies that could be discussed, but loyalty tests that must be accepted.
After his Weibo was banned, he did not disappear completely. One night in 2021, a Twitter account impersonating Ren Zhiqiang appeared. Ren Zhiqiang could not use his own Weibo to clarify, so he had to ask Pan Shiyi to step in. Pan Shiyi wrote on his Weibo: "I am his spokesperson now, revealing the art."
In 2018, an article about housing prices falsely attributed to Ren Zhiqiang circulated online, and it was again Pan Shiyi who clarified it for him. How could Ren Zhiqiang speak on the internet? Later, Ren Zhiqiang could only speak through Pan Shiyi's account. A man who once could face tens of millions of followers directly now had his expressive space limited to borrowing a friend's Weibo account.
During those years, Pan Shiyi became obsessed with woodworking, making furniture in a space in Beijing. He even prepared a woodworking shop specifically for Ren Zhiqiang. After Ren Zhiqiang was forced to leave public expression, he would make tables, chairs, and various wooden items there, and later even held a public welfare woodworking exhibition. Pan Shiyi helped him organize it on the spot. He also said that in his heart, only two friends could be called gentlemen, and Ren Zhiqiang was one of them. This man, even if beaten to death, would never say a lie.
At the end of 2019, an unknown pneumonia broke out in Wuhan. By 2020, seeing how the highest power packaged the disaster into a triumph of correct leadership and the superior system, Ren Zhiqiang could no longer hold back.
Following the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, demands for freedom of speech and an investigation into the truth of the epidemic surged rapidly. On February 23, Xi Jinping convened a massive televised telephone conference to summarize anti-epidemic deployments and the so-called institutional advantages to officials across the country. After reading Xi's speech, Ren Zhiqiang wrote the article that would later land him an 18-year prison sentence. This is what Pan Shiyi referred to in his video as the internal letter. The crocodile stood there not as an emperor showing off his new clothes, but as a clown who insisted on being emperor even when stripped naked.
Strictly speaking, it was not merely a private letter written to a single individual, but a political essay prepared for a few close friends that later circulated into the public space. While the article did not mention Xi Jinping by name, no one could mistake who he was actually criticizing. Ren Zhiqiang wrote that what he saw was not an emperor showing off new clothes, but a clown who insisted on being emperor even when stripped naked. He accused the epidemic of exposing the regime's suppression of information and blamed the top leader for exploiting the disaster to further consolidate his personal authority. In the past, Ren Zhiqiang discussed housing prices, the market, and specific policies; this time, he pointed his spearhead directly at Xi Jinping himself, as well as the information control system upon which Xi relied to maintain his rule.
Ren Zhiqiang, who once boasted 30 million followers, had his Weibo account ordered shut down for over four years. He sent this article to only eleven people. Pan Shiyi stated very clearly in the video that the first person was him. This placement as the first recipient was not a random sorting on a mysterious list, but the result of a 30-year relationship between the two men. When Ren Zhiqiang wrote the most dangerous article of his life, the first person who came to his mind was still Pan Shiyi.
After the article leaked, Ren Zhiqiang quickly lost contact. Pan Shiyi revealed in the video that the other ten recipients were also subsequently arrested. At the time, Pan Shiyi was in the United States, and he had already purchased his return ticket to Beijing after the Spring Festival holiday. This plane ticket was the most important detail in the entire video because it showed that before Ren Zhiqiang got into trouble, Pan Shiyi had not yet decided to leave China permanently. He still regarded the United States as a place to stay temporarily and Beijing as the place to return to. Where was his company? His friends were there, and his life of the past few decades was also there. Even with the epidemic raging, boarding a flight back to China as usual was originally his plan.
However, Ren Zhiqiang's arrest turned this return ticket into a piece of scrap paper. Pan Shiyi was the first recipient of the article and Ren's most public and intimate friend. The fate of Ren Zhiqiang and the other ten recipients was right before his eyes. If Pan Shiyi had returned to Beijing as planned, arrest would have awaited him, and the trigger would have been precisely this anti-Xi article. Once Pan Shiyi set foot in China, when he could regain his freedom and whether he would ever board a plane again would no longer be up to him.
More crucially, Ren Zhiqiang himself had proven that his status as a princeling, decades of party membership, and senior cadre family background offered no protection under Xi Jinping, as even Ren Zhiqiang could not protect himself. What reason did Pan Shiyi have to believe he could return safely? Therefore, Ren Zhiqiang's arrest actually saved Pan Shiyi. Ren Zhiqiang used his own arrest to send out the clearest danger signal: the arrests had moved from the author of the article to the eleven recipients; past personal connections and status were no longer useful, and returning this time was out of the question.
In the past, Ren Zhiqiang interpreted policies and Beijing's official circles for Pan Shiyi. In 2020, he used his own freedom to perform a final political risk assessment for Pan Shiyi. This time, Pan Shiyi understood it as well, and he did not board that transoceanic flight.
In July 2020, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced disciplinary action against Ren Zhiqiang, listing as its first point not economic issues, but his public publication of articles opposing the Four Cardinal Principles. Two months later, a Beijing court sentenced him to 18 years in prison on four charges: corruption, accepting bribes, misappropriation of public funds, and abuse of power as personnel of a state-owned company. The issue first identified by the CCP was that political article, yet the sentence ultimately handed down relied on four economic charges. Ren Zhiqiang went to prison, while Pan Shiyi remained in the United States.
Since then, SOHO China has continued to sell off its assets, and Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin have also resigned from their company posts. Both Pan Shiyi's person and money are in the United States, appearing to be safe. However, just this year, a new regulation issued by the CCP caused trouble for the overseas wealth safe that the Pan family had painstakingly managed for 20 years.
On July 24, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation issued Announcement No. 21 of 2026 on Individual Income Tax for Offshore Trusts. Clause 11 contains a crucial sentence: "Individuals who have obtained foreign nationality or long-term overseas permanent residence, but whose main economic interests originate within China's borders, may be determined as resident individuals with a domicile."
The harshest stroke of the new regulation lies right here: once an individual moves to the United States or even acquires foreign nationality, as long as Beijing determines that their main economic interests come from China, they may still be pursued regarding their offshore trust as a Chinese tax resident. This does not mean that simply having made money in China automatically makes one a Chinese tax resident for life. The key is where the main economic interests currently lie, as well as who actually funded and controls the trust property.
The second item of the same announcement stipulates that even if property is transferred into a trust through other persons or organizations, as long as a certain person actually contributes, bears, or controls it, it can also be counted as trust property placed by that person. The fourth item stipulates that income generated from offshore trusts belonging to resident individuals must be declared and taxed annually, even if it has not been actually distributed. Article 17 also involves pending tax amounts from several previous years. What Beijing wants to examine is not only whose name the trust registration is under today, but also who put the money in to begin with. Over the past 20-plus years, how has this money been circulating?
This brings Pan Shiyi's 2005 arrangement back onto the table. Pan Shiyi first gifted the relevant equity to Zhang Xin, and then Zhang Xin established the trust. Judging from the company's listing documents, the relevant entities and relationships were publicly disclosed. However, if the tax authorities initiate a look-through review, they can continue to ask: Where did the gifted wealth originally come from? Who made the major decisions? Who actually enjoys the trust benefits? If Beijing wants to turn these questions into a tax decision, it still must produce accounts and facts. But with Pan Shiyi in the United States, it cannot stop Beijing from investigating companies, properties, and capital flows within China.
At this time, Beijing still has a card to make him come back to resolve the issue. Decree No. 81 of the State Council, implemented on September 15, 2026, states clearly in Article 4 that Chinese citizens engaged in illegal and criminal activities overseas who are determined to have endangered national security and interests may be banned from leaving the country for a period ranging from 6 months to 3 years from the date of their return. Article 6 also stipulates that in cases involving national security or criminal investigation, the decision to ban departure may not be communicated to the person in advance. The danger Pan Shiyi perceived from that plane ticket in 2020 now has a clearer institutional background. Returning to China to handle matters does not mean one can still leave after handling them.
Since Ren Zhiqiang was imprisoned for an anti-Xi article, and Pan Shiyi was the very first recipient, why would he personally travel back and forth to Beijing over tax and asset issues to verify whether he would become the next one? As long as he stays in the United States, can Beijing do nothing to him? Things are not that simple.
China's tax penalties cannot directly freeze U.S. bank accounts, nor can they directly seize U.S. properties. However, if Beijing escalates the tax dispute into a criminal case suspected of tax evasion and files a prosecution in China, it can request the U.S. side to investigate, gather evidence, retrieve records, and request assistance in tracking down and restricting the property involved within the scope permitted by U.S. law, in accordance with the U.S.-China Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters that took effect in 2001. If a property forfeiture judgment meeting the conditions is further issued, the U.S. side also has enforcement procedures reviewed by the Department of Justice and examined by U.S. courts.
In other words, staying in the United States can avoid the risk of not being able to leave after returning, but it cannot keep overseas assets immune from investigation. Beijing has both domestic companies and properties to exert pressure, and may also attempt to channel a Chinese criminal case into U.S. mutual legal assistance procedures. But this cross-border channel has a checkpoint specifically targeting political prosecution: Article 3, Paragraph 1, Item 4 of the U.S.-China Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters stipulates that if a request concerns a political offense, or if the judicial request has a political motivation, or if there are sufficient grounds to believe the request is made to prosecute a person for political opinions, the U.S. side may refuse mutual legal assistance.
The text states that it may refuse, and the decision is made by the U.S. Attorney General or another designated official. For this checkpoint to work, political motivation must be supported by facts visible to the outside world. It was precisely at this time that Pan Shiyi released this video.
So let us return to those 55 seconds now. Pan Shiyi hid a clear code in the video, and the true recipient is Zhongnanhai, the Chinese Communist Party. This code is a logical chain: My most respected friend wrote an anti-Xi article and was therefore arrested; the article was sent to eleven people, and I was the first; the other ten recipients were all arrested later. At the time, because I was in the United States, I had even bought a plane ticket back to Beijing, but ultimately did not go back.
Connecting these statements together reveals his political plight. He is implying that if he had boarded the plane back to China that year, arrest would have awaited him as well, and the trigger would have been Ren Zhiqiang's article. In 2020, his choice not to return was a decision to turn away from political persecution. Actively making this experience public today provides a record of the reasons and process of that decision for everyone to see. If he needs to apply for political asylum in the United States in the future, he has already left evidence with his own words.
More importantly, this is a warning issued in advance by Pan Shiyi to Beijing. In the future, if you turn my offshore trust into a criminal tax evasion case and then request the U.S. to investigate, gather evidence, and trace assets in accordance with the U.S.-China Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, what the U.S. side will see is not only economic charges, but also my experience as the primary recipient of the anti-Xi article. Article 3, Paragraph 1, Item 4 is right there, and the U.S. side can refuse assistance due to political motives.
Ren Zhiqiang's case is a precedent Pan Shiyi witnessed with his own eyes: the Party disciplinary notice pointed first to political articles, but the final sentencing landed on economic charges. If Pan Shiyi is treated as the target of an economic case in the future, the United States has reason to question why this case would target someone who dared not return in 2020 because of that anti-Xi article.
And precisely because of this, this video does not look like an accidental slip of the tongue. The scene resembles a private family banquet, with the cameraman standing right within his line of sight, and the camera constantly shifting angles. Only after he finished laying out the key facts completely did he finally say not to film. He did not mention Ren Zhiqiang by name, but everyone knew who he was talking about. He did not publicly announce that he was going to sue Beijing, yet he laid out the available political networks as clear as day.
Twenty years ago, real estate tycoons like Xu Jiayin were still expanding, but Pan Shiyi, out of fear and distrust of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), had already begun transferring his family assets overseas. This political sensitivity bought him 20 years of wealth security and personal freedom. Today, Beijing has new methods to penetrate and regulate offshore family trusts; before the tax system even makes a public move, Pan Shiyi is once again deploying defenses in advance and raising the city walls high, using the CCP's own specialty—politics—to dissolve a political encirclement that might otherwise come disguised as economic charges.
From this perspective, this 55-second video is the best social media short film directed by Pan Shiyi, who loves DSLR photography, in the era of short videos. Alright, that's all for today. Please open the little bell, viewers and friends, so you won't miss our show.
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Liu Yang reposted "I am S testing logic 11". See you in the next episode!