CDT’s year-end roundups of memorable quotes and censored terms have both highlighted public frustration with the state of the economy and the government’s efforts to enforce positive perceptions of it. The...
The collapse of Serbia’s Novi Sad train station roof last month killed 15 people and severely injured two others, igniting weeks-long, nationwide protests against government corruption that is widely perceived to be at...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
Late last month, a rash of food-stall, restaurant, shop, and factory closures in Chaozhou and...
These political conditions are growing out of poor soil. Before you can grow crops, first you have to plant grass to nourish the soil. As the soil’s fertility improves, you can cultivate better things. This is what Ruan Xiaohuan was doing."
— Statement by Bei Zhenying, wife of legendary blogger "program think" (aka Ruan Xiaohuan), after Shanghai’s High Court reaffirmed Ruan's seven-year prison sentence for "inciting subversion."
CDT’s year-end roundups of memorable quotes and censored terms have both highlighted public frustration with the state of the economy and the government’s efforts to enforce positive perceptions of it. The trend continued this week with a "rollover scene" or "propaganda train wreck" after National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson Fu Linghui announced economic data for November. Fu summed it up in a pithy 15 characters: “Production Up, Demand Up, Employment Stable, Markets Warming, Quality Excellent.” People’s Daily reported: The employment situation was...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
The most important thing isn’t whether or not you resist. These political conditions are...
Late last month, a rash of food-stall, restaurant, shop, and factory closures in Chaozhou and...
Infrastructure projects in Tibet have often drawn controversy for failing to balance development, human rights, and environmental protection. As CDT has covered this year, state-sponsored hydropower projects have forcibly displaced local communities and led to violent reprisals against protesters. A series of recent reports expand on this topic to highlight the social and environmental perils of these projects. Last week, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) published a report titled, “Chinese Hydropower: Damning Tibet’s Culture, Community, and Environment.” The report includes an...
In a sudden breakthrough in the Syrian civil war, rebel groups rolled into Damascus on Sunday and...
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ daily press conference last Thursday saw the BBC...
Romania’s presidential election has taken a dramatic turn. Far-right, pro-Russian ultranationalist...
Viral video and transcripts of two unusually critical speeches about the state of the Chinese...
In a global public opinion climate marked by polarized views of China, one common tactic employed...
Infrastructure projects in Tibet have often drawn controversy for failing to balance development, human rights, and environmental protection. As CDT has covered this year, state-sponsored hydropower projects have forcibly displaced local communities and led to violent reprisals against protesters. A series of recent reports expand on this topic to highlight the social and environmental perils of these projects. Last week, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) published a report titled, “Chinese Hydropower: Damning Tibet’s Culture, Community, and Environment.” The report includes an...
As the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its policy of assimilation for cultural and ethnic...
On Wednesday, German auto manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) announced that it would sell its operations...
Concern is mounting over the health of imprisoned civil society activist and human-rights lawyer...
Two years after Peng Lifa’s courageous one-man protest on Beijing’s Sitong Bridge against Xi...
China’s investments in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are increasingly moving away from...
CDT’s year-end roundups of memorable quotes and censored terms have both highlighted public frustration with the state of the economy and the government’s efforts to enforce positive perceptions of it. The trend continued this week with a "rollover scene" or "propaganda train wreck" after National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson Fu Linghui announced economic data for November. Fu summed it up in a pithy 15 characters: “Production Up, Demand Up, Employment Stable, Markets Warming, Quality Excellent.” People’s Daily reported: The employment situation was...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
Late last month, a rash of food-stall, restaurant, shop, and factory closures in Chaozhou and...
What to do when the law and basic humanity are in opposition? The Chinese internet has an answer:...
CDT’s year-end roundups of memorable quotes and censored terms have both highlighted public frustration with the state of the economy and the government’s efforts to enforce positive perceptions of it. The trend continued this week with a "rollover scene" or "propaganda train wreck" after National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson Fu Linghui announced economic data for November. Fu summed it up in a pithy 15 characters: “Production Up, Demand Up, Employment Stable, Markets Warming, Quality Excellent.” People’s Daily reported: The employment situation was...
The collapse of Serbia’s Novi Sad train station roof last month killed 15 people and severely...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
The most important thing isn’t whether or not you resist. These political conditions are...
As the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its policy of assimilation for cultural and ethnic...
Pro-democracy Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai is currently standing trial for conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious materials. Amid mass protests in the city in 2019, Lai did travel to Washington to win support for the protesters’ cause from U.S. political figures including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and several senior senators. In his defense, Lai has said he stopped any such activities after the enactment of the 2020 security law on which the collusion charges are based. (The sedition charges come under an...
At the end of a landmark national security trial that concluded on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s High Court...
The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. The...
New research documents the repressive effects of Hong Kong’s national security laws. This week,...
In the face of growing government repression, many residents of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and various...
The first sentencing under Hong Kong’s new Article 23 national security law (officially called the...
A recent WeChat post reveals that some Chinese schools and universities are using special software to identify and punish students who “scale the wall”—that is, circumvent China’s Great Firewall (GFW) to access overseas websites and portals. The post begins with a not-very-convincing exchange of WeChat messages between three students—identified as “student A,” “student B,” and “student C,” respectively—discussing their university’s use of the ABT Online Behavior Management System (安博通上网行为管理, Ānbótōng shàngwǎng xíngwéi guǎnlǐ) to identify and punish fellow students who circumvented the GFW to...
In the two weeks since the Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration of China...
A pair of recently surfaced screenshots appear to offer unusual detail about a special month-long...
Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration has issued a series of regulations intended to...
Popular online writer Shen Maohua, who writes under the pen name Wei Zhou, is known for his...
As citizens revolt against never-ending lockdowns and local governments “resolutely struggle...
On September 12, 2003, John Battelle published the first post on chinadigitaltimes.net: Here’s what a Google Search on “china weblog” yields, I’m looking forward to seeing ours at the top soon! China’s online population at the start of that year was nearly 60 million. Ten years later, it was fast approaching 600 million, and now, after 20, it is well over a billion. This new completely revised and hugely expanded update to our ebook series, formerly known as “the Grass Mud Horse Lexicon,” aims to capture something of the enormous explosion of online speech that accompanied this growth, with...
In 2014, Leta Hong Fincher published her first book, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender...
Starting in March 2008, Tibetans across the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai, Gansu, and...
Surveys have shown that Xi Jinping’s hardline foreign policy is increasingly unpopular abroad....
Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of Government at Cornell University, joined CDT to discuss his...
Evidence of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang has...
CDT’s year-end roundups of memorable quotes and censored terms have both highlighted public frustration with the state of the economy and the government’s efforts to enforce positive perceptions of it. The trend continued this week with a "rollover scene" or "propaganda train wreck" after National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson Fu Linghui announced economic data for November. Fu summed it up in a pithy 15 characters: “Production Up, Demand Up, Employment Stable, Markets Warming, Quality Excellent.” People’s Daily reported: The employment situation was...
The collapse of Serbia’s Novi Sad train station roof last month killed 15 people and severely...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
Late last month, a rash of food-stall, restaurant, shop, and factory closures in Chaozhou and...
CDT’s year-end roundups of memorable quotes and censored terms have both highlighted public frustration with the state of the economy and the government’s efforts to enforce positive perceptions of it. The trend continued this week with a "rollover scene" or "propaganda train wreck" after National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson Fu Linghui announced economic data for November. Fu summed it up in a pithy 15 characters: “Production Up, Demand Up, Employment Stable, Markets Warming, Quality Excellent.” People’s Daily reported: The employment situation was...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
The most important thing isn’t whether or not you resist. These political conditions are...
Late last month, a rash of food-stall, restaurant, shop, and factory closures in Chaozhou and...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” Another year gone by, another heap of terms censored from the Chinese internet. The following themes are not the “most censored” words of 2024, but rather a retrospective of topics, chosen by CDT Chinese editors, that the Party-state deemed too sensitive and...
The most important thing isn’t whether or not you resist. These political conditions are...
Romania’s presidential election has taken a dramatic turn. Far-right, pro-Russian ultranationalist...
The U.S. and China intensified their conflict over critical technology this week, accelerating the...
On WeChat last weekend, "Fatty Zhao, scholar of Song Dynasty history" reflected on a...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” CDT’s “Quotes of the Year” are a mirror of China’s national mood in ten comments. The five quotes presented in this post (the first of two) reflect displeasure with coerced rosy perspectives on China’s economy; despair over senseless deaths observed in silence;...
The most important thing isn’t whether or not you resist. These political conditions are...
What to do when the law and basic humanity are in opposition? The Chinese internet has an answer:...
Romania’s presidential election has taken a dramatic turn. Far-right, pro-Russian ultranationalist...
Three American citizens detained in China were returned to the U.S., the White House announced on...
A series of violent “revenge on society” attacks by disgruntled individuals—most recently,...
On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was off to a good start in 2024, with reported 5.3% year-on-year GDP growth in the first quarter of the year. The better-than-expected data was touted by various Chinese state media outlets online, although many of those news posts had comment filtering enabled, perhaps in anticipation of negative or skeptical reactions from social media users. Two items in particular seemed to strike netizens as overly optimistic: the reported “nationwide average per-capita disposable income” figure of 11,539 yuan...
A recent WeChat post from oft-controversial entrepreneur, publicity hound, and philanthropist Chen...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last...
After conducting nucleic acid testing on its 26 million residents this week, Shanghai remains...
Evergrande offices across China have been beset by protesting retail investors and homeowners...
Anyone who has boarded an airplane in the last 20 years knows what stands between arrival at the...
Infrastructure projects in Tibet have often drawn controversy for failing to balance development, human rights, and environmental protection. As CDT has covered this year, state-sponsored hydropower projects have forcibly displaced local communities and led to violent reprisals against protesters. A series of recent reports expand on this topic to highlight the social and environmental perils of these projects. Last week, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) published a report titled, “Chinese Hydropower: Damning Tibet’s Culture, Community, and Environment.” The report includes an...
As the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its policy of assimilation for cultural and ethnic...
On Wednesday, German auto manufacturer Volkswagen (VW) announced that it would sell its operations...
A WeChat essay detailing the day that China’s “zero-COVID” policy ended has become a rare space for public remembrance of the 2022 White Paper Movement. Originally published as part of a 13-part series on the lockdowns, the essay reflects on the arbitrary imposition of lockdowns and their equally arbitrary removal. The brief essay is laden with the peculiar bureaucratic language of the pandemic, all of which, the author asserts now, “feels like a dream”: At 5:00 p.m. on December 7, 2022, China lifted its lockdown. The virus simply “disappeared,” and with it, the “zero-COVID” policy. Now two...
Korea’s political crisis has spurred a host of commentary and reflection in China despite...
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s late-night declaration of martial law—and the immense...
Revelations of serious quality defects in many Chinese brands of sanitary pads have sparked outrage, led to a run on imported menstrual products, and fueled an online campaign that has prompted regulators to vow reforms and forced some major pad manufacturers to apologize to consumers. The defects range from product mislabeling (such as overstating the length of pads, a common offense) to health-threatening contamination due to insect infestations, improper pH levels, or excessive use of plastics, formaldehyde, fluorescents, PFAS, phthalates, and other chemicals in the manufacturing process....
A series of public opinion surveys about China have made headlines recently. This week, the Asia...
Several recent, retrospective pieces describe how various individuals have attempted to navigate...
A banner year for Chinese films and filmmakers at the 61st Taipei Golden Horse Awards has attracted much attention on Chinese social media, despite strict ongoing censorship of any topic connected to the awards. This year’s Golden Horse Award winners, announced on November 23, include Best Narrative Feature and Best Director for Lou Ye’s “An Unfinished Film,” a work of docu-fiction about a film crew caught up in the COVID pandemic lockdown of Wuhan; Best Leading Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and the Audience Choice Award for “Bel Ami,” Geng Jun’s LGBTQ+-themed black comedy; and...
The U.N. climate summit known as COP29 concluded over the weekend in Baku, capital of the oil-rich...
The full report can be read in PDF form here. Below is a brief introduction. A pilot study...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” CDT’s “Quotes of the Year” are a mirror of China’s national mood in ten comments. The five quotes presented in this post (the first of two) reflect displeasure with coerced rosy perspectives on China’s economy; despair over senseless deaths observed in silence;...
The most important thing isn’t whether or not you resist. These political conditions are...
What to do when the law and basic humanity are in opposition? The Chinese internet has an answer:...
On Thursday, the Canadian government announced that it will ban Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE from its 5G networks. The move comes as the Biden administration debates imposing further sanctions on Hikvision, a Chinese surveillance camera company, for supplying and operating equipment in Xinjiang mass detention camps. Both of these developments bring renewed attention to the role of Chinese technology companies in problematic surveillance activities and the role of sanctions in combating their alleged abuses. Catharine Tunney and Richard Raycraft from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation...
On Monday of last week, Malaysian musician Namewee (Wee Meng Chee, 黃明志) learned that his YouTube...
A group of students under the impression they had discovered a WeChat “bug” that hides the phrase...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” CDT’s “Quotes of the Year” are a mirror of China’s national mood in ten comments. The five quotes selected in Part One reflected displeasure with coerced rosy perspectives on China’s economy; despair over senseless deaths observed in silence; the enduring...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese)...
As the Chinese Communist Party has intensified its policy of assimilation for cultural and ethnic...
On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was off to a good start in 2024, with reported 5.3% year-on-year GDP growth in the first quarter of the year. The better-than-expected data was touted by various Chinese state media outlets online, although many of those news posts had comment filtering enabled, perhaps in anticipation of negative or skeptical reactions from social media users. Two items in particular seemed to strike netizens as overly optimistic: the reported “nationwide average per-capita disposable income” figure of 11,539 yuan...
A recent WeChat post from oft-controversial entrepreneur, publicity hound, and philanthropist Chen...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last...
As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” Another year gone by, another heap of terms censored from the Chinese internet. The following themes are not the “most censored” words of 2024, but rather a retrospective of topics, chosen by CDT Chinese editors, that the Party-state deemed too sensitive and...
The most important thing isn’t whether or not you resist. These political conditions are...
Romania’s presidential election has taken a dramatic turn. Far-right, pro-Russian ultranationalist...
Infrastructure projects in Tibet have often drawn controversy for failing to balance development, human rights, and environmental protection. As CDT has covered this year, state-sponsored hydropower projects have forcibly displaced local communities and led to violent reprisals against protesters. A series of recent reports expand on this topic to highlight the social and environmental perils of these projects. Last week, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) published a report titled, “Chinese Hydropower: Damning Tibet’s Culture, Community, and Environment.” The report includes an...
The U.N. climate summit known as COP29 concluded over the weekend in Baku, capital of the oil-rich...
China’s “distant-water fishing” (DWF) activities are both figurative and literal. Figuratively,...
Pro-democracy Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai is currently standing trial for conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious materials. Amid mass protests in the city in 2019, Lai did travel to Washington to win support for the protesters’ cause from U.S. political figures including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, and several senior senators. In his defense, Lai has said he stopped any such activities after the enactment of the 2020 security law on which the collusion charges are based. (The sedition charges come under an...
At the end of a landmark national security trial that concluded on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s High Court...
The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. The...
At the Associated Press, Fu Ting reports mounting pressure on China’s independent bookstores and other cultural channels and venues: Independent bookstores have become a new battleground in China, swept up in the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on dissent and free expression. The Associated Press found that at least a dozen bookstores in the world’s second-largest economy have been shuttered or targeted for closure in the last few months alone, squeezing the already tight space for press freedom. One bookstore owner was arrested over four months ago. The crackdown has had...
Following a hotly contested U.S. election that reverberated across Chinese social media, drawing...
While the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was massively censored within mainland China...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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