Puma Shen

Puma Shen (born June 7, 1982 in Taipei, Taiwan), also named Shen Pao-yang, is a Taiwanese scholar, lawyer, and educator, affiliated with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as a political figure. He assumed the position of Legislator on 1 February 2024. His areas of focus include human rights, criminal policy, youth issues, and information warfare.

Early life and career
Puma Shen was born on June 7, 1982 in Taipei, Taiwan, named Shen Pao-yang (沈伯洋). He graduated from Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School and obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree from National Taiwan University (NTU).

After completing his undergraduate studies, Shen entered the Graduate Institute of Law at NTU. During this time, he was greatly influenced by his thesis advisor, Professor Mau-Sheng Lee (李茂生). Lee frequently took his students to visit juvenile prisons and correctional institutions, providing post-guidance counseling for troubled youth. Concurrently, Shen began working part-time at a cram school, where he taught criminal law to students preparing for the civil service exams, using the alias "Puma" (transliterated as 撲馬, Pūmǎ in Chinese).

After several years of teaching at the cram school, Shen suspended his studies in Taiwan and pursued higher education in the United States, earning a Master of Laws degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Subsequently, he enrolled at the University of California, Irvine, focusing on social ecology, including urban design, social psychology, and criminology. His doctoral dissertation concentrated on the comparative analysis of white-collar crime in the United States and China, earning him a PhD in "Crime, Law, and Society."

After returning to Taiwan, Shen served as a faculty member at the Institute of Criminology, National Taipei University (NTPU). He initiated research on China's information warfare and cognitive operations towards Taiwan. He held various positions, including a member of the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee (2018–2020),  director of Taiwan's official media Central News Agency, vice chairman of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, co-founder of the civil defense education institution Kuma Academy, and the DoublethinkLab (台灣民主實驗室).

To facilitate Taiwan's collaboration with countries worldwide to defend against unfavorable actions from China, Shen developed the China Index, a metric illustrating the depth of influence exerted by the Beijing government on a particular country or region. In 2023, he was elected as a member of the World Movement for Democracy Committee.

Legislative career
In November 2023, Shen was nominated by the Democratic Progressive Party as a candidate on the list of legislators for nationwide and overseas, ranking second. He successfully won the election on January 13, 2024. He has expressed the necessity of legislative responses to various aspects of China's influence on Taiwan, including international law, propaganda warfare, and the need to address threats from Chinese agents and gray zone activities through legislation and national defense reforms. In May 2024, Shen was hospitalized after figuring in a brawl with Kuomintang legislators inside the Legislative Yuan.

Personal life and trivia
Shen's wife, Tseng Hsin-hui, is a lawyer who also teaches civil law at a cram school, using the pseudonym Chihiro (千尋). The couple has not had biological children but adopted a girl nicknamed "Mochi" (麻糬, Môa-chî).

In media literacy materials published by Taiwanese government agencies, the lecturer specifically mentioned Shen's preference for wearing shorts.

After Shen was elected as a legislator in 2024, unaware of where the Legislative Yuan would use the photos they requested, he submitted a low-quality and awkwardly posed photo taken casually near a Carrefour supermarket. This less-than-ideal photo stood out amidst a group of professional portraits of parliament members, becoming a subject of meme in Taiwan.