In November 2022, Li Ying was a painter and art school graduate in Milan, living in a state of sadness, fear and despair. China’s strict pandemic policies had kept him from seeing his parents for three years, and he was unsure where his country was heading.
In China, after enduring endless COVID-19 tests, quarantines and lockdowns, people staged the most widespread protests the country had seen in decades. Many held roughly letter-size paper to demonstrate defiance against censorship and tyranny, in what has been called the White Paper movement.
Then Li did something that he never anticipated would become so significant: He turned his Twitter account into an information clearinghouse. People inside China sent him photos, videos and other witness accounts, at times more than a dozen per second, that would otherwise be censored on the Chinese internet. He used Twitter, which is banned in China, to broadcast them to the world. The avatar on Li’s account, his drawing of a cat that is both cute and menacing, became famous.