In just sixteen days, Luo Yonghao engaged in five public verbal battles. When Luo Yonghao turned his cannons toward Yu Minhong, he was simultaneously reported for tax evasion by his former investor Zheng Gang. At the same time, he was also dealing with Mr. Savage, former partner Huang Bin, Xibei, and Weibo influencer @Li Ji. Luo Yonghao, who made enemies everywhere, also became a target and was suffering a backlash.
On the evening of September 27, a Weibo post with an IP location in Seoul, South Korea was published. Zheng Gang, founding partner of Zihui Venture Capital and an investor from Luo Yonghao's Smartisan Technology era, filed a real-name report against Luo Yonghao and Be Friends. He claimed that someone registered dozens of shell companies for money laundering under the names of Jinwei, Li Jun, Luo Yongxiu, and Huang He, and deregistered dozens of limited partnership enterprises involved in money laundering, constituting major tax evasion.
He also launched another effort, soliciting top law firms and accounting firms across the internet to jointly audit Smartisan Technology's fifteen years of messy accounts, promising to pay 10% to 20% of recovered funds as compensation, with a maximum of 30%, involving approximately 300 million yuan. He left a message saying that even if you deregister now, you can still be brought back from the dead, and we will see how much tax you owe and how much money flowed through these limited partnerships, and he previewed that he would list the company names one by one the next day.
Luo Yonghao's response was almost simultaneous. He called it a false accusation and said he had already taken screenshots as evidence, reminding people that too many online hooligans have no idea that false accusation is a crime. He also reposted the other party's post, saying that the content had been forwarded more than 250 times and needed only about 240 more to meet the filing threshold. In the early hours of September 28, he posted again, completely turning his spearhead toward the person, saying that Zheng Gang, who was suspected of illegally leaving the country, posted from South Korea falsely accusing him of tax evasion and that the post made it to trending topics. After this filing, it would likely be enough to sentence Zheng Gang.
However, tech blogger @Xiong Ge AI Counterattack Notes commented that the reason Zheng Gang went from a well-known investor to a deadbeat was surely because he invested in the Smartisan Technology project and mortgaged his house to lend money to Luo Yonghao. He also mentioned that a million people in this world could mock Zheng Gang, including himself, but Luo Yonghao should not mock him for being a deadbeat.
Luo Yonghao Makes Enemies Everywhere
Just as Luo Yonghao faced Zheng Gang's real-name report, he was busy aiming his cannons at former boss Yu Minhong. In mid-September, a consumer posted a disassembly video showing that a universal wheel stool bought in the Be Friends livestream room was filled with moldy wood boards, waste sponge, and construction debris, emitting a strange odor long-term. The supplier then repeatedly called demanding the video be deleted, calling it a standard industry practice. The registered entity of the involved store, Xiamen Guantang International Trade Co., Ltd., was established in August 2026. On September 25, Be Friends apologized and announced delisting and refunds without returns. Luo Yonghao, in his capacity as chief supervision officer, admitted this was a serious quality management accident.
On September 27, Luo Yonghao posted on Weibo that the Be Friends livestream room sold two to three million inferior wheeled stools, and after discovery publicly apologized and launched full refunds without returns. He added that Yu Minhong also accidentally sold 10 million of the same inferior wheeled stools and was the largest seller across the entire internet. Yet until now, he has not admitted fault, apologized, or offered full refunds. After that, he posted multiple consecutive pieces of content, directing the fire from the Be Friends livestream room's sale of inferior wheeled stools toward Yu Minhong and East Buy.
On September 28, he went to the comments section under Yu Minhong's "Yu Ni Tong Xing" video, where the top-liked comment was left for him: "Third day of playing deaf and dumb after the inferior wheeled stool incident broke out." That same day he also asked where these thuggish companies and thuggish entrepreneurs who play deaf and dumb get their confidence from. As of publication, East Buy had not responded, and the product link could no longer be found on the platform.
Yu Minhong's refusal to engage has a tradition. The knot between these two was tied in December 2000, when 28-year-old Luo Yonghao wrote a job application letter to Yu Minhong, principal of Beijing New Oriental School. He had dropped out of high school, sold goods at street stalls, traded futures, and his only credential was a high TOEFL score. Yu Minhong gave him three trial lecture opportunities, and he barely passed on the third try. He resigned in June 2006. By his own account, the real reason was a single sentence. He later heard that someone in management wanted to fire him, but Yu Minhong disagreed, reasoning that he brought the company tens of millions in free advertising every year. Luo Yonghao's exact words were, "I felt at the time that he was getting pure free profit." He thought the boss kept him because he recognized his teaching. After leaving, Luo Yonghao first founded Niubo Network, then started English training to compete with New Oriental, then Smartisan phones, which collapsed in 2019, and began livestreaming in 2020 to repay debt. During the late 2023 essay incident, he publicly called Yu Minhong "Iron Rooster" for the first time, calling East Buy the most phenomenon-level company that oppresses young people, and "Teacher Iron" was also a nickname he coined. He gave his own explanation: "I've been famous for twenty years. Who have I ever clout-chased?" Yu Minhong never engaged, but Luo Yonghao's opponents kept increasing.
Earlier, late at night on September 12, Huang Bin, co-founder and CEO of Old Luo English Training, posted a long article naming and attacking him. He said Luo Yonghao bragged his whole life until he believed it himself, which was rather pitiful. He also dug up old accounts, saying that when Old Luo English was on the verge of bankruptcy, he took over unexpired classrooms to help the other party cut losses, while Luo Yonghao simultaneously claimed outside that the company was already profitable. Luo Yonghao's response was unexpected. He said this Huang Bin was not the same Huang Bin from Niubo Network back then, just someone with the same name. He then added that he was wrong to curse people like that back then, and now that the other has cursed him a few times, it could be considered heavenly retribution.
Yu Minhong's ignoring of Luo Yonghao's repeated provocations is often used to contrast with Xibei chairman Jia Guolong, who ignites at the slightest touch. On September 19, Weibo influencer @Li Ji revealed that Xibei might go bankrupt within two to three months, and also said Xibei had already sued Luo Yonghao and a court hearing was imminent. Although Xibei customer service said the company was operating normally, layoffs, store closures, and poor financial conditions gave the revelation a plausible side. A year ago, Luo Yonghao's remark that it was almost all pre-made dishes and still so expensive pushed Xibei into its most serious public opinion crisis since its founding. Jia Guolong chose to fight head-on and open the kitchen, but the results were unsatisfactory. Jia Guolong deeply regretted it. Early this year he disclosed that from September 2025 to March 2026, losses exceeded 600 million yuan. By September this year, about 226 stores were operating, a nearly 40% decrease from the 2024 peak.
Interestingly, there is a comparison group. On September 12 this year, Luo Yonghao tried Mr. Savage ice cream at the airport and posted that it was very average, feeling much worse than Zhong Xuegao, adding the line "please do not provoke me." This time the comments section uniformly filled with lines from "The Three-Body Problem": "Do not answer." Mr. Savage also did not engage in direct battle for several days. On September 18, People's Daily published a sharp commentary titled "Criticism Is a Right, Beware of Becoming 'Traffic Power'." The article wrote that when a public figure with tens of millions of followers makes a subjective taste evaluation, it can through dissemination and amplification deliver a huge impact to a brand. A Weibo post using "please do not provoke me" as a disclaimer has an effect beyond consumer evaluation and is closer to a public opinion trial. The article concluded that criticism can be sharp, but traffic power should be used cautiously. Traffic should be a constructive force for market improvement, not a hammer that easily crushes brands.
As of September 28, Be Friends Holdings (1450.HK) closed at HK$0.61 per share, down 10.29%, with a total market value of HK$857 million. East Buy (1797.HK) closed at HK$25.2 per share, down 0.47%, with a total market value of HK$26.558 billion.
Old Friends Become Opponents
Luo Yonghao and Zheng Gang, now locked in fierce online conflict, were originally close business partners. Zheng Gang and the Zihui Venture Capital he founded were early investors on Luo Yonghao's entrepreneurial path, and Zihui Venture Capital bet on Smartisan Technology back then. Zheng Gang originally defended Luo Yonghao extremely strongly, even offending Alibaba for him, which for someone in the investment circle carried a cost that could not be measured in money. The root of their falling out was the equity repurchase agreement that dragged on for years after Smartisan Technology's collapse. The subject matter of this dispute involves about 300 million yuan for Zihui Venture Capital, and the Chenghua District Court in Chengdu has ordered Smartisan Technology to make its books public. From dreaming together to meeting in court, this line took a full seven years.
The real-name report on the evening of September 27 was the flashpoint of the conflict. In the original report, Zheng Gang named four keywords: Jinwei, Li Jun, Luo Yongxiu, and Huang He. These people happen to connect the core circle of the Be Friends system. Li Jun is chairman of the board of Be Friends Holdings, holding about 23.03%. Li Jun was also the early second-largest shareholder of Chengdu Xingkong Yewang and is someone Luo Yonghao has repeatedly called his boss in public. Huang He is an early co-founder of Be Friends. Luo Yongxiu is Luo Yonghao's biological brother and once indirectly held equity in Chengdu Xingkong Yewang through a nominee structure. Jinwei points to Hangzhou Jinwei Supply Chain, the only designated supply chain of Be Friends Holdings and the largest service provider in the Douyin ecosystem, whose legal representative and actual controller is Li Jun. Zheng Gang spoke of dozens of shell companies and dozens of limited partnership enterprises, and previewed that he would list them one by one on September 28. That morning, "Luo Yonghao reported for tax evasion under real name" made Weibo trending topics, but as of publication, the promised complete list had still not been made public.
Zheng Gang's current situation is equally delicate. According to information disclosed by Luo Yonghao, he has 13 court consumption restriction orders, plus one judgment defaulter listing, and is also restricted from leaving the country. These provide partial basis for Luo Yonghao's questioning, but the exit route remains at the level of mutual accusations with no official conclusion yet.
Luo Yonghao also revealed that he was preparing to report the other party to relevant South Korean authorities for suspected illegal exit and refuted an excuse circulating online that Zheng Gang might have traveled on a friend's private plane and therefore was not bound by the court's consumption restriction order. His response was, "This is a completely legally illiterate statement. Do you treat court restriction orders as child's play?"
A real-name report never equals a factual finding. To judge the authenticity and weight of this report, one must bypass personal grudges and first find evidence.
What Is the Truth About Tax Evasion?
Be Friends Holdings is a Hong Kong-listed company, formerly Century Ruike, listed in July 2023. Under the Hong Kong Listing Rules' connected transaction framework, supply chain transactions between a listed company and an enterprise controlled by its chairman are inherently subject to disclosure and even independent shareholder approval, and corresponding sections should appear in the annual report. But Zheng Gang's report did not take the line of undisclosed connected transactions or non-fair pricing transferring benefits. His wording was shell companies running accounts to evade taxes, pointing to tax violations rather than disclosure violations. In other words, even if Be Friends and Hangzhou Jinwei have deep business ties, the reporting party has not provided any substantive evidence proving unfair transaction pricing or funds ultimately flowing back to specific individuals, such as abnormal middleman markups, account-running contracts with no physical transfer, or corresponding bank statements.
Financial reports show that Be Friends Holdings achieved consolidated total revenue of about 1.548 billion yuan in 2025, net profit of about 88 million yuan, and net operating cash inflow of 358 million yuan. The audit report did not include any qualified items prompted by tax issues. Tianyancha shows that more than 30 enterprises are associated with Luo Yonghao, of which more than 20 have been deregistered, and his equity holdings exceeding 100 million yuan have been frozen.
Neither set of figures can directly correspond to the targets named in the report. Most of the more than 20 deregistered enterprises under Luo Yonghao's name belong to the Smartisan Technology system and are not the same as the limited partnership enterprises in Be Friends' livestreaming business. As for the dozens of deregistered partnership enterprises Zheng Gang mentioned, there is still no public list to verify against. There are indeed several verifiable companies. Hangzhou Xixi Information Technology Co., Ltd., once 30% held by Xingkong Yewang, was established in February 2019 and has now been deregistered. Beijing Be Friends Digital Technology, once called the operating entity of Be Friends, was not deregistered. It was sold as a whole to the listed company in May 2023, and its legal representative changed from Huang He to Zhao Huili, which was a change of asset ownership rather than elimination of the entity.
What is truly worth noting is the status of Xingkong Yewang itself. This company is still surviving, with registered capital of only 1,877,631 yuan. Its shareholder column now shows Huang He holding 68.171%, plus three limited partnerships including Tianjin Meiwei Technology Partnership and Chengdu Yizhi Innovation Enterprise Management Partnership. On July 21, 2023, it was included in the business abnormality list by the Chenghua District Market Supervision Administration of Chengdu because it could not be contacted through its registered address or business premises. Its 2024 annual report showed zero people enrolled in social insurance. But the social insurance participation caliber and operating status cannot be directly equated. As for how many companies were deregistered and how much money flowed through accounts, that still awaits verification by relevant authorities, not just a sentence from Zheng Gang, who is already in a life-and-death struggle with the other party.
Zheng Gang's original real-name report also mentioned shell money laundering companies and money laundering partnerships. But under Article 191 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, the predicate offenses for money laundering are explicitly limited to seven categories: drug crimes, organized crimes of a mafia nature, terrorist activity crimes, smuggling crimes, embezzlement and bribery crimes, crimes disrupting financial management order, and financial fraud crimes. Tax evasion is not among them. But in the present, paying taxes according to law is clearly an obligation, and whether companies under Luo Yonghao's name can withstand external scrutiny remains to be seen.
Lawyer Tang Lei of Jiangsu Aixin Law Firm told media that if an enterprise has already been deregistered, tax authorities can still recover taxes, late fees, and fines from liquidation obligors, actual controllers, shareholders, and other responsible parties. He also cited Article 65 of the Tax Collection and Administration Law, which states that if a taxpayer owing taxes adopts means of transferring or concealing property to obstruct tax authorities from recovering the unpaid taxes, tax authorities shall recover the unpaid taxes and late fees and impose a fine of 50% to five times the unpaid amount, and if it constitutes a crime, criminal liability shall be pursued according to law. He pointed out that tax evasion is a unit crime subject to dual punishment, with the unit fined and directly responsible managers and other directly responsible personnel also bearing criminal liability. If the relevant company is found to have evaded taxes, Luo Yonghao as actual controller may likewise face prosecution.
On the side of an untrue report, Tang Lei cited Article 243, Paragraph 3 of the Criminal Law, which states that if it is not intentional false accusation but mistaken accusation or inaccurate reporting, the preceding paragraph shall not apply. He explained that if Zheng Gang reported based on reasonable suspicion or partial leads, even if it is ultimately verified that no tax evasion occurred, it would still be a mistaken accusation and generally not constitute the crime of false accusation and framing. But if facts are fabricated and publicly spread causing relatively large impact, leading to a decline in the other party's social evaluation, it may constitute infringement of reputation rights.
The bullet of this real-name report is still flying, and Luo Yonghao has not stopped to wait for it to land. He also set fire to his boss from twenty years ago, Yu Minhong, but Yu Minhong still chose to remain untouched. From September 12 to September 28, sixteen days, five battles. Mr. Savage, Huang Bin, Li Ji, Yu Minhong, Zheng Gang. Opponents shifted from brands to former partners, then to former bosses and former investors. A person who has won traffic for twenty years with his mouth finds it hardest to deal with precisely those close to him who understand him. The lethality of people close to him is far more intense than enemies from the internet. And what other ammunition does Zheng Gang have? The outside world is also waiting. How do you view Luo Yonghao making enemies everywhere? Feel free to discuss in the comments.