The Smear Campaign Against Guan Heng: A Transnational Repression Operation From the CCP’s External Propaganda Machine
On December 12, 2025, Human Rights in China reported that Guan Heng (关恒), a Henan native who in 2020 secretly filmed evidence of the Uyghur concentration camp system in Xinjiang, was seeking asylum in the United States. The report sparked widespread attention to both Guan Heng’s personal fate and the broader human rights situation in Xinjiang. After the story was reposted by “Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher” (李老师不是你老师), one of the most influential Chinese-language voices on X (Twitter) in the overseas Chinese information space, videos Guan Heng had filmed on the ground in Xinjiang quickly surpassed three million views.
Shortly thereafter, a group of social media accounts began a large-scale smear campaign against Guan Heng across overseas Chinese online communities. One of the most prominent voices was a user with the handle “Sunset Pirate” (落日海盗). The primary tactic of these accounts was to cast doubt on the authenticity of Guan Heng’s footage, while simultaneously accusing him of fabricating evidence in order to support an asylum claim in the United States, which they alleged was fraudulent. However, many of these accounts had covert motivations of their own. “Sunset Pirate” was initially exposed as a propaganda operative by the YouTube creator “Xu, Who Tells the Truth” (说真话的徐某人), and subsequent open-source investigations by X blogger “Wall-Nation Frog Haha” (墙国蛙蛤蛤) revealed that “Sunset Pirate” was in fact Jin Liang (金亮), a former reporter for a CCP military-affiliated state media outlet. This episode reveals the latest evolution in China’s external propaganda strategy: infiltrating overseas information spaces through disguised, “gray-zone” identities in order to achieve political influence in a manner designed to be subtle, ambient, and difficult to detect—what Chinese officials themselves describe as “rùn wù xì wúshēng [润物细无声],” meaning influence that operates quietly and indirectly, without overt confrontation.
Malicious Attacks: From Doxxing to “Eyewitness Debunking”
Since Guan Heng uploaded his video to YouTube on October 5, 2021, malicious attacks against him have appeared in overseas Chinese online spaces and have continued uninterrupted for more than four years. Shortly after Guan Heng published the video under the pseudonym “Guan Guan,” a pro-Beijing YouTube blogger known as “Science Guy K One-Meter” (理科男士K一米) conducted a doxxing operation against him. In one of his videos, the blogger publicly exposed Guan Heng’s personal information in full, including his real name, date of birth, university, and home address, an act known colloquially as “opening the box” (kāi hé 开盒). As a result, despite residing in the United States, Guan Heng continued to face threats to his personal safety as well as harassment of his family. He was forced to endure extreme psychological pressure for years and to live an unusually low-profile and constrained lifestyle.
The smear campaign against Guan Heng reached its peak following Human Rights in China’s initial report on December 12, 2025. On December 13, “Sunset Pirate” posted a series of tweets on X claiming to “debunk” Guan Heng’s video evidence documenting large-scale detention facilities in Xinjiang. Presenting himself as “a journalist who conducted in-depth reporting on the Xinjiang Military District,” “Sunset Pirate” selectively extracted only a tiny portion of Guan Heng’s 19 minute and 48 second video. He first laid rhetorical groundwork by invoking his own reporting experience on the “International Army Games” in 2017, then leveraged his ostensibly credible résumé to assert that the facilities Guan Heng filmed were PLA training bases, not internment camps. Using this form of selective generalization and deceptive reasoning, he questioned Guan Heng’s motives and implied that the video evidence itself was unreliable. In reality, Guan Heng explicitly stated in the video that the facility in question might be a military installation, but that the structures suspected to be internment camps were located behind the military compound. “Sunset Pirate” deliberately removed this crucial detail from the clipped footage he circulated, thereby creating the false impression that Guan Heng had intentionally misrepresented a military base as a concentration camp.
When “Sunset Pirate” posted these messages, Guan Heng was at a critical juncture—the eve of his appearance before a U.S. immigration court. Guan was scheduled to attend his asylum hearing on December 15. The sudden attempt at that moment to set the public narrative that “Guan Heng is not trustworthy” constituted a serious blow to his asylum case. If the court was influenced by this claim and ruled to deny asylum, and subsequently deported Guan Heng back to China, he would inevitably be subjected to harsh and potentially life-threatening treatment. The agenda-setting tweets posted by “Sunset Pirate” were widely reposted. Analysis shows a rare and previously unseen trend among those amplifying them: a group of accounts that have long exhibited clear pro-CCP leanings and routinely defend CCP policies, together with a small sub-group of accounts that usually present themselves as anti-CCP or “pro-democracy,” were brought together by “Sunset Pirate’s” posts. Overall, pro-democracy voices overwhelmingly support Guan Heng, but this small sub-group broke off from the majority, converged with the pro-CCP accounts, and jointly attacked Guan Heng.
A large volume of coordinated “troll army” commentary also appeared beneath posts related to Guan Heng’s case. Here, the attacks against Guan followed two main lines. The first echoed “Sunset Pirate’s” whitewashing narrative, asserting that what Guan filmed was a military base rather than an internment camp. The second smeared Guan by alleging that he intended to deceive the U.S. government in order to obtain fraudulent asylum, while praising U.S. immigration enforcement actions taken against him. This further corroborates the convergence phenomenon described above.
Recruitment Recording Exposes the CCP’s External Propaganda Strategy
On December 18, the well-known military affairs commentator “Xu, Who Tells the Truth” (说真话的徐某人) publicly released on X a phone recording between himself and “Sunset Pirate” (later identified through investigation as Jin Liang, 金亮), recorded in August 2024. The full, unedited recording was uploaded to YouTube on December 20:
According to the recording, Jin Liang claimed to be a former intelligence officer with Beijing public security, and described himself during the call as an intermediary recruiting collaborators for the CCP’s external propaganda apparatus. He attempted to recruit “Xu” into the CCP’s overseas propaganda network at a rate of €40,000 per month, while taking a 30 percent commission for himself. In the recording, Jin Liang identified himself as a Christian and said he believed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
According to his explanation, the CCP no longer seeks overt, slogan-driven propaganda of the kind associated with figures like Hu Xijin or official state media, but instead aims for a strategy of subtle, low-visibility influence (rùn wù xì wúshēng [润物细无声]). They prioritize influencers in overseas Chinese communities who maintain an appearance of “objective neutrality” and have relatively “clean” backgrounds—that is, those who have not deeply participated in anti-CCP political activities and have not been definitively labeled by the top leadership. In addition to “Xu,” Jin Liang claimed he had already secured cooperation from a music blogger in Italy, a food blogger in Japan, and an auto-repair blogger in Philadelphia—lifestyle influencers rather than overt political commentators.
Jin Liang instructed “Xu” to focus his military commentary on issues such as internal problems within the Ukrainian armed forces and equipment obsolescence, drawing implicit parallels to suggest that Taiwan’s military would likewise be ineffective, thereby fostering defeatist sentiment in Taipei. Regarding so-called “red lines,” Jin Liang stated that collaborators must adhere to the principle of “minor criticism to enable major assistance” (xiǎo mà dà bāngmáng [小骂大帮忙]): one could criticize the Communist Party, criticize pandemic policies, and even criticize government departments, but must never criticize the “Number One figure,” Xi Jinping. Jin Liang also emphasized that no instructions should ever be written down, that payments would be made through covert channels, and that no written contracts would be signed.
Within just a few hours of the release of Xu’s audio evidence, “Sunset Pirate” deleted both his X and YouTube accounts without offering any explanation (the X account was later restored but has shown no new posting activity). This abnormal “light-speed disappearance” runs counter to ordinary behavior and indirectly corroborates the authenticity of the recorded phone call released by “Xu.”
Based on the statements attributed to “Sunset Pirate” after his exposure, as well as the long-term behavioral patterns of CCP online influence operations, it is clear that the issues currently ranked as most sensitive—and therefore most rigidly enforced as “red lines” by the CCP—include Xinjiang (Uyghur-related issues), Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. These are framed by the CCP as matters involving so-called “separatist forces,” and repression and human rights violations in these regions are correspondingly more severe and more carefully concealed. Criticism directed at Xi Jinping personally constitutes another high-pressure red line. Beyond these areas, CCP-affiliated online actors and their overseas collaborators are afforded a certain degree of latitude to criticize the Communist Party as an institution and some of its specific policies. This style of commentary may, to some extent, serve as an indicator for identifying CCP collaborators operating covertly within overseas Chinese-language discourse. The convergence of ostensibly anti-CCP accounts and openly pro-CCP accounts in attacks against Guan Heng conforms to this pattern of disguised CCP online influence activity.
Open-Source Intelligence: Uncovering The True Identity of “Sunset Pirate”
On December 20, X blogger “Wall-Nation Frog Haha” (墙国蛙蛤蛤) published a detailed open-source intelligence (OSINT) investigation report revealing the true identity of “Sunset Pirate.” According to information disclosed by “Wall-Nation Frog Haha” and verified through multiple independent cross-checks, the account holder’s real name is Jin Liang (金亮). Born in 1981, he is a Beijing-born Manchu (a status that reportedly earned him bonus points on the Beijing university entrance examination in 2000). He previously resided in or near Philadelphia, in the United States, but his current location is unclear. Jin joined the PLA Daily (解放军报) no later than 2009, and served as a military-channel producer at Beijing Time (北京时间) in 2016. He had privileged access to sensitive military locations, including restricted military zones in Xinjiang and the Zhurihe training base in Inner Mongolia. The investigation also found that Jin Liang had long operated under the username “Sunset Pirate” on Sina Weibo, where he posted content sharply criticizing Huawei during the “Huawei 251 incident.” As a result, he was regarded by many Chinese nationalists as an adversary.
Guarding Against the Professional Infiltration of “Gray-Zone Agents”
The exposure of “Sunset Pirate” (Jin Liang) illustrates a paradigmatic escalation in the CCP’s methods of transnational repression. Jin Liang did not present himself as an official mouthpiece. Instead, he leveraged his past social media record, marked by ostensibly “anti-system” rhetoric and appeals to “universal values,” to carefully construct the persona of an “enlightened insider” or “independent observer.” This camouflage made it easier for him to gain the trust of overseas dissident communities, enabling him to sow division or introduce misdirection at critical moments.
In actions targeting Guan Heng, Jin Liang drew upon professional expertise acquired within the system—such as military geography and media manipulation—to conduct a targeted attack against a grassroots documentarian. He deliberately avoided ideological debate and instead focused on so-called “technical details,” employing selective evidence and misleading generalization. Amplified through reposts and commentary by numerous accounts suspected of external-propaganda coordination, this strategy severely polluted the information environment surrounding Guan Heng’s case on X and other overseas platforms.
Accounts like Jin Liang’s exemplify a category of deeply embedded CCP online operatives who can pose as part of dissident communities within boundaries set by the Party, yet reliably align with CCP directives on core red-line issues—engaging in what is often described as “minor criticism to render major assistance” (小骂大帮忙). Some of these actors, like Jin Liang himself, even reside in the United States.
Conclusions and Further Developments
Following the escalation of Guan Heng’s case, and amid sustained public attention, federal immigration authorities withdrew their court motion on December 19 to deport Guan Heng to Uganda. One day later, Jin Liang’s identity was fully exposed. Together, these developments form a closed evidentiary loop: Guan Heng is not only a legitimate asylum seeker, but also a priority target subjected to surveillance and coordinated smearing by CCP system-embedded professionals operating transnationally. Jin Liang’s hasty deletion of his accounts after exposure further corroborates—by negative inference—the sensitivity and authenticity of Guan Heng’s evidence.
Human Rights in China calls on the international community to continue closely monitoring developments in Guan Heng’s case. Furthermore, HRIC urges governments, immigration authorities, law-enforcement agencies, and judicial institutions worldwide to exercise heightened vigilance toward the CCP’s external propaganda system, as it undergoes a tactical shift.
This system is moving away from overt state-media messaging and toward highly subtle, low-visibility influence operations which rely on the covert recruitment and deployment of system-embedded professionals masquerading as “independent observers,” “religious believers,” or even “anti-establishment figures,” such as Jin Liang operating under the alias “Sunset Pirate.” Their purpose is to disseminate disinformation and to carry out precision transnational repression against dissidents abroad. If allowed to proceed unchecked, the CCP’s external propaganda system will not only endanger individuals, but will also compromise the integrity of the judiciary and legislative branches in democratic states.