In recent weeks, China’s internet has been roiled by a new wave of turbulence. Within days, two of the country’s most influential online personalities—each with audiences in the tens of millions—vanished from the digital landscape. One was Hu Chenfeng, better known as “Huzi,” whose sharp observations and unscripted style made him a singular figure in China’s social commentary sphere. The other was Zhang Xuefeng, a well-known postgraduate exam tutor whose blunt humor and high-profile livestreams had long placed him at the center of public debates.
Their disappearance might at first seem to be merely the rise-and-fall arc of two internet celebrities, but the reasons they were swept away—and the speed with which it happened—reveal something more unsettling: the increasingly absurd, hypersensitive, and contradictory environment governing public expression in China today.
Influencer Zhang Xuefeng was silenced after a patriotic comment backfired
Zhang Xuefeng’s ascent was built on a blend of irreverence and candor. As a fixture on Douyin, Weibo, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu, he commanded the attention of more than 41 million followers. Born in Heilongjiang in 1984 and trained as an engineering student at Zhengzhou University, Zhang spent nearly a decade in the shadows of the tutoring industry before his fortunes suddenly turned. A single 2016 video—“Seven Minutes Explaining 34 ‘Project 985’ Universities”—pushed him overnight into national recognition. His quick-fire critiques, often delivered with comedic timing, won the loyalty of countless students and turned him into a cultural figure in his own right.
As his influence grew, so did his willingness to provoke. In mid-2023, during a livestream, he bluntly warned young viewers against studying journalism. A storm erupted, with state media, academics, and job-seeking graduates all fighting to claim the narrative. Zhang’s later remark that liberal arts majors were essentially in the “service industry”—summarized with the painfully memorable phrase “pleasing others”—only fanned the flames.
Still, he weathered those controversies. What ultimately toppled him was not a critique of the education system but an ostentatious gesture of patriotism.
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During a September 2025 livestream following a military parade, Zhang declared he would “never emigrate” and urged his audience to stay loyal to China. The comments traveled beyond the Great Firewall, provoking foreign press coverage and a flurry of ridicule. Some derided him as a “patriotic performance artist;” others accused him of trying to force his inflated convictions onto others.
Zhang responded by revealing that local internet authorities had already contacted him, warning that his comments—now circulating overseas—posed political risk. He lashed out at unnamed “bad actors among the masses,” lamenting that his words had been exported beyond their intended audience. Days later, all his accounts were gone.
It was a twist in the tale: the very performance meant to showcase his loyalty became the reason for his downfall. In the highly calibrated political environment of China, even exaggerated patriotism can misfire when it escapes official control.
Influencer Hu Chenfeng was silenced after his poverty videos drew wide attention
If Zhang’s trajectory reflected a collision between ambition and political sensitivity, Hu Chenfeng’s rise illuminated something more elemental: the appetite for honest storytelling in an era defined by anxiety.
Born in 1998 in Jiangsu, Hu never fit the mold of a conventional commentator. He left school after high school, worked briefly in auto repair, and later earned a fund management certification that landed him a short stint at an asset management firm. By 2023 he had turned to online video, releasing content that blended everyday observation with a willingness to confront the uncomfortable.
His breakthrough came through the “100 RMB Challenge,” a series that explored how little ordinary people could buy with the equivalent of about $14.00. The episodes were simple but piercing. In one, he encountered a 78-year-old woman from Sichuan living on a monthly pension of just 107 yuan. She told him she had “never eaten meat”—her entire life shaped by scarcity. Hu followed her into a grocery store, filling her basket with staples, speaking with her patiently, and ending the video with a quiet gesture: he paid her bill.
The clip spread with astonishing speed, touching nerves across the country and inviting comparisons to state narratives portraying poverty eradication as a completed triumph. It was soon removed, and Hu’s account was banned for the first time. He later said he received death threats.
Yet the video also propelled him beyond China’s borders, where viewers saw him as exposing realities rarely acknowledged in official channels. Critics at home accused him of “inciting class antagonism,” “magnifying inequality,” and creating narratives that “could be weaponized by foreign forces.”
Then came a moment that brought astonishment even among his detractors. On Sept. 22, 2025, social media users noticed that display iPhones in Apple’s flagship stores—from New York and Los Angeles to Singapore, Melbourne, and Hong Kong—were showing Hu Chenfeng’s portrait.
Whether by coincidence or design, his face had become a global marketing image for one of the world’s most influential brands. Chinese netizens interpreted the discovery as an irony too striking to ignore: a young man silenced at home but elevated abroad.
Hu’s ‘Apple vs. Android’ metaphor sparked national debate
What ultimately made Hu a lightning rod was not merely his attention to inequality but the language he used to describe it. Over time he developed a shorthand: “Apple people” and “Android people.” To him, Apple symbolized higher income, better education, and more stable futures, while Android represented the opposite.
He applied this metaphor to everything from housing conditions to career paths. A dilapidated apartment became “an Android home.” A student studying abroad in New York with a 30,000-yuan monthly rent lived “an Apple life.” The comparison was sharp, almost too honest, and instantly polarizing. Some accused him of “insulting the poor,” while others said he had offered the clearest terminology yet for understanding China’s widening social divide.
His views extended well beyond phones. He insisted that Apple made superior products, that Chinese cuisine was unhealthy, that Toyota was the best gasoline car and Tesla the best electric car, and that young people should avoid cities lacking Sam’s Club, Apple Stores, direct flights to major Western countries, or large metro systems.
None of these opinions were radical; indeed, they reflected mainstream views among China’s middle class. What made them dangerous was the audience Hu was speaking to—a mass of disaffected young people living far from the realities he described.
Some called him “China’s only Chinese-born American beauty,” others “a capitalist without capital,” still others “America’s sharpest sword.” The labels reflected as much about China’s polarized discourse as they did about him.
A viewer’s question showed Hu’s fear of being silenced by the CCP
One moment in particular came to define the fragility of his position. During a livestream, a caller suddenly asked: “Is Xi an autocrat?”
Hu instantly cut the microphone. Panic flashed across his face. He scolded the caller for asking “illegal” questions and warned repeatedly that such remarks could lead to arrest. For more than a minute he lectured his audience on the dangers of speaking too freely online. It was, in tone and delivery, a portrait of someone fully aware of the system’s invisible perimeter.
Even that caution did not spare him. His account was banned soon afterward.
On Sept. 20, 2025, Hu’s accounts on Douyin, Bilibili, Weibo, and various applets were simultaneously erased. The platforms cited violations of “relevant laws and regulations,” though none offered specifics.
Commentators suggested he had broken a combination of unwritten rules: provoking resentment, diminishing domestic brands, and offering social critiques too raw for the current climate.
Yet Hu seemed prepared. He posted a U.S. visa, prompting speculation that he intended to leave the country. In his final online message, he wrote that he made videos primarily for income—but if, in the process, he could help society “improve even a little,” he would consider the work meaningful. “I stand by everything I’ve said,” he wrote. “I’ve kept my conscience.”
Visibility has become a political risk in China
The stories of Hu Chenfeng and Zhang Xuefeng converge on a single point: in China today, visibility is both a blessing and a threat. Traffic brings wealth, influence, and relevance—but also constant exposure to political crosswinds.
One drew censure for revealing poverty too plainly; the other for offering patriotism too loudly. Both found themselves in an absurd landscape where speech is judged not only by content but by timing, context, and alignment with shifting currents of control.
In a system where even applause may be scrutinized for enthusiasm, where sincerity can be reinterpreted as provocation, and where the boundary of what is permissible moves without warning, the fates of Hu and Zhang illustrate a broader truth:
In contemporary China, traffic is a risk, and influence is a liability.
Their disappearance from China’s digital stage is more than a personal misfortune. It is a reflection of a society tightening its grip on expression—and of an era increasingly defined by its own contradictions.
