Censor-busting dissident shines light on overworked Chinese students
His story and more than 4,000 like it have been submitted anonymously to a crowd-sourcing website that is shining a light on overworked Chinese students who are nervous about speaking about their plight to authorities.
The site is called 611Study.ICU. The creator says that is a dark reference to the brutal schedule common at Chinese middle and high schools: classes from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. which leaves students 'sick in ICU' - or 'intensive care unit.'
And while it's not state-sanctioned, the site appears to be having an impact. Within two months of its launch, many Chinese schools have announced a return to regular class schedules.
611Study.ICU is the brainchild of an exiled Chinese pro-democracy activist, Li Ying, better known by his handle on the social media platform X, 'Teacher Li is not your teacher.'
Li, 32, is a former artist turned dissident influencer. He has become one of the most prominent voices challenging Beijing's censorship. He's best known for reposting online content that is too sensitive for China's social media platforms, such as public protests.
Li innovates not just in promoting the free flow of information but also in funding it. In December 2024, he launched a meme coin, or form of cryptocurrency, called $Li. With the proceeds from coin sales, Li says he wants to build a decentralized youth community that promotes democracy, free speech and positive change in China.
The $Li community has also focused on the plight of China's overworked labor force, but the biggest impact to date has been with 611Study.ICU.
Climb over the firewall
Li said he did not expect so many Chinese students to be willing to 'climb over the firewall' and report to him on X, which is banned in China. Mainlanders need to use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access and comment on his posts.
Li, who is based in Italy, has more than 2 million followers on X and is one of the most influential young Chinese dissidents overseas. During the pandemic, when many citizens chafed against authorities' 'zero' tolerance of social interactions, people sent him videos and photos of protests against Chinese policies.
At first, he reposted them on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, but after his Weibo accounts were deleted by Chinese authorities multiple times, Li migrated to X. Since then, he's served as a hub for sensitive news about China, putting him firmly in the crosshairs of Beijing.
Li recounted to Radio Free Asia his epiphany in how he could help publicize the concerns of citizens that go unaddressed by authorities.
He received a video showing petitioners lining up outside the State Bureau for Letters and Calls in Beijing at midnight, where they hoped to submit their grievances when the office opened the next day. He said he was struck by how difficult and exhausting the petitioners' journey must have been.
'Many people jokingly say that petitioning inside China doesn't solve their problems, and it's only after I post about them that things actually get resolved,' Li said.
This inspired him and his team to develop the concept of a 'China Overseas Petition Bureau' — a virtual platform where people wouldn't have to queue, and one that operated beyond the reach of China's censorship. The goal was to present Chinese citizens' appeals in full, without filters or restrictions.
In January, after receiving several messages from high schoolers complaining that they were being forced to return to school too soon after the winter break and were feeling overwhelmed — Li decided to first apply the 'China Overseas Petition Bureau' concept to students, which led to 611Study.ICU.
People can anonymously fill out data through the website, including daily and weekly school hours, days off each month, reports of suicides, and other information about their school – such as extra costs for after-hours classes. These submissions are then reviewed multiple times by content moderators who flag suspicious entries.
The website also provides data analysis based on the submissions. It shows that 56% of students reported spending 60 to 100 hours at school per week, and 35% reported studying more than 100 hours per week. Sixty percent reported that their classes start before 8 a.m., which violates regulations from the Chinese Education Bureau that prohibit middle and high schools from starting classes before 8 a.m.
On Feb. 1, shortly after 611Study.ICU went online, information began to circulate on Chinese social media platforms indicating that schools listed on the site were delaying the start of the spring semester.
In mid-March, Li posted two photos on his X account that purportedly showed Beihai middle school principal Wang Jiangang publicly denouncing him during a school assembly. In a message on a large screen, Wang alleged that students unwilling to study were 'being brainwashed into feeding information' to Li. The school had restored a two-day weekend after winter break, and according to the message, the principal said this was due to the impact from Li.
Li's opponents downplay his impact in this instance and say the photos of the school principal's message were doctored. They also say that education bureaus across China already had plans to reduce students' workload, and that the emergence of 611Study.ICU around the same time was just a coincidence.
Alang, a staff member of 611Study.ICU who is being identified by a pseudonym for security reasons, disputed that version of events – as do other supporters of Li, who hope that ordinary citizens might be able to push the Chinese government to make policy changes through collective action.
'I'm not saying the two-day weekend policy was entirely pushed by Li,' Alang told RFA. 'But I do think Teacher Li played a certain role in it.'
Breaking through China's information blockade
611Study.ICU team includes a dozen young Mandarin speakers scattered across the globe, including in mainland China.
The project coordinator, identified using the pseudonym Jiangbu due to safety concerns, knows only the time zones and internet identities of the interviewees. To ensure team safety, applicants must pass security tests, including proficiency in using Telegram groups and in using two-factor authentication for their email accounts.
Raised in Hong Kong, Alang, a design college student responsible for creating graphics for 611Study.ICU, was always curious when his relatives in mainland China talked about the intense academic pressure there. Alang says his family members remain unaware of his association with Li.
Despite security measures, Jiangbu revealed that some team members, including himself, have had their identities exposed. Their parents in China were questioned by authorities in China, who labeled them as 'foreign anti-China forces.'
According to Li, the 611Study.ICU website faced serious cyber attacks in May, with 'dozens of AI-generated deepfake submissions flooding the site every second.'
Despite the intense pressures, the team members said they're committed to what they are doing and to combating what Jiang calls 'this greatest and most authoritarian empire.'
'Everyone knows about the problem of overtime studying in China,' a staff member using the pseudonym Aaron Zhang for security reasons said. 'But there was no way to understand how severe it really is, or its regional distribution.'
For Zhang, the far-reaching significance of the ICU project lies in overcoming China's control of official data, to which the public has gradually lost access. At the same time, the Chinese government has tightened restrictions on third-party data providers working with foreign entities. Researchers warn that these moves will make it increasingly challenging for companies, governments and academics to assess China's future developments in key sectors.
Li's projects attempt to overcome the information blockade by prompting citizens to submit data voluntarily, although there is a downside. When data is submitted anonymously it's hard to verify its authenticity.
Not long after the overworking student project took off, Li and his team launched another initiative: Niuma.ICU, a crowdsourcing project targeting workplace overtime in China.
At the time of publication, it has collected data from 4,962 entities across China, including responses from state-owned enterprises and government departments. The statistics show that 79% of respondent entities work six to seven days a week. Nearly 40% reported working more than 12 hours per day.
In a flagging Chinese economy, Niuma.ICU has not created the kind of stir that 611Study.ICU has. Li attributes that to the benefit that the government derives from the status quo where few workers enjoy a two-day weekend.
'The more intensely factories exploit workers, the more profit the [Chinese] government can extract from it,' he said.
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