In one widely-watched video, Wang held up his Chinese passport and said, “These Ukrainian guards are not Nazis, they are IT programmers, common people, barbers — these are the people.”…

As these videos began garnering attention, sometimes racking up more than 140,000 views, the number of critics rose too, with comments calling him a national traitor.

“You don’t need this Chinese passport anymore, you have already forgotten which country you are from,” one popular comment on Douyin read. “The official position of the country should be the position of all Chinese people.”…

The comments of anonymous online strangers don’t bother him — but they do when it’s from people he cares about, such as a Chinese Embassy staff member he knew from his previous residence in North Macedonia.

He said the staffer reached out to him recently, insinuating Wang was being paid to post his videos, and asking: “Who sent you?” When Wang insisted he wasn’t doing it for money, the staffer replied: “Your current behavior is not in line with national interests. I want to cut off relations with you, let’s block each other.”