Film censorship has long plagued China’s creative arts industry and stifled foreign products seeking domestic Chinese audiences. The shrinking space for artistic expression, along with rising nationalism, has exposed artists and...
Dechen Pemba Starting in March 2008, Tibetans across the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan took to the streets to call for religious freedom and an end to oppressive political and social...
On the surface, neither the film “Barbie” nor a write-up of an academic’s research on migrant laborer poverty would seem to have anything to do with the South China Sea. Yet both are embroiled in censorship controversies related...
Discontented with the ending of “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” during which the titular supervillain Gru and his partner-in-crime Wild Knuckles escape arrest alongside three yellow bean-shaped minions, China’s censors gave it...
Tencent’s streaming service has restored the original ending of “Fight Club”—undoing their own cuts after facing widespread international and domestic ridicule over their edit to the 1999 cult classic. Earlier...
In the 404 Files podcast (404档案馆), CDT Chinese tells multimedia stories of censorship and circumvention in China. The following is a translation of the transcript of Episode 36, released on October 27, a deep dive into why films...
Marvel blockbuster “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” has not yet been released in China, despite starring Hong Kong megastar Tony Leung and featuring extensive Mandarin dialogue. It is unclear why the movie has not...
In recent days, a number of major state and Party media outlets have simultaneously republished a relatively obscure essayist’s screed on sissy-boy celebrities, get-rich-quick capitalists, and lessons that the collapse of the...
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source. Regarding the heavy rain...
Chloé Zhao made history on Sunday as the first woman of color to win an Oscar for best director. Her film “Nomadland” also took the top prize as the 2021 best picture. But in China, the country of Zhao’s birth,...
After making history at the beginning of this month by becoming the first Asian woman to win best director for her movie “Nomadland,” Chloé Zhao was initially showered with praise from Chinese state media. That was...
CDT has recently acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of this year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020,...
CDT has recently acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of this year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020,...
China’s cinemas have begun to recover from an 88%, 30 billion-yuan ticket sales crash triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, reopening began in low-risk areas with mandatory masks and temperature checks, a ban on...
These poems, attributed to 伯罗奔尼撒, or “Peloponnese,” were posted to WeChat by user 1号档案馆, or “Number 1 Archive.” CDT Chinese editors have archived them, and they are translated below with added links for...
The Chinese Film Association has barred mainland actors and directors from participating in the...
At Vanity Fair, May Jeong profiles Chinese movie megastar Fan Bingbing, describing her four-month...
Just following news that a film by Zhang Yimou about the Cultural Revolution was excluded from the...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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