[4] Maoist factions The Wall Street Journal describes Sima as "one of China's most divisive advocates of neo-Maoist ideology",[5] whereas Reuters characterized him as "Communist Party defender".

[5] Online, Chinese netizens consider him an "anti-America warrior", as a typical entry on Sima's microblog reads: "America is the enemy of all the people in the world... It’s like a giant tumor.

[9][10] Known for espousing antisemitic tropes,[11][12] Sima's Weibo channel spread the notion that Jews colluded with the Empire of Japan to establish a Jewish homeland in mainland China during the Second Sino-Japanese War in what has been termed the Fugu Plan.

Sima's attendance of the dinner was mocked by Chinese social media users who accused him of being hypocritical, as the day before the event he had criticized the US proposal to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs during the Russian invasion as "an act against humanity.

"[16] In 2008, Sima waged an Internet war against Chinese commentators and intellectuals he says have hijacked this year's national dramas to undermine CCP rule and patriotic values.

In September 2008, following the Beijing Olympics, Sima was interviewed by the BBC, and defended Chinese censorship regulations and the media firewall on Falun Gong in mainland China.

[17] Sima said that the group disseminates material that is blatantly "anti-China" in nature and that the Chinese public has long grown irritated with "Falun Gong rhetoric."

His biography published in the Skeptical Inquirer states that he was influenced by the book Human Body Science (Chinese: 人体科学) by China's leading physicist Qian Xuesen.

[25] As a result, he became involved in the Chinese Human Body Science Association, through which he had an opportunity to witness demonstrations of the prominent masters of the time, for whom he used to run errands.

Governmental departments set up qigong research and development units and invested large sums of money for that purpose; people of all socioeconomic levels were deceived, in his view.

[25] According to The Wall Street Journal's Ian Johnson, Sima was an obscure debunker of charlatans who shot to stardom following the state's 1999 crackdown on Falun Gong.

In the six weeks since the CCP banned the spiritual practice, Mr. Sima became a hot commodity, "jetting around the country at the behest of party bosses who hope the self-styled cultbuster can root out believers".

[28] Sima referred to ufologists as "romantics", saying that those who alleged to have seen UFOs or have had extraterrestrial encounters, all lack hard evidence to prove their claims via objective and scientific methods.