One of the subtler ways Chinese internet users voice their displeasure with the status quo is through “pinkfishing” (粉红钓鱼, fěnhóng diàoyú), tricking nationalist “little pinks” into criticizing Party leaders—generally by quoting...
Explaining a meme often takes the wind out of a joke’s sails. Not so in this case. A recent Xi Jinping quote published by Xinhua, China’s official state news agency, has breathed new life into a long-running meme...
The use of the standard Party formulation of Xi Jinping “pointing the way forward” on various policy issues has become so commonplace that the phrase has become an object of satire, a way of mocking Xi’s cult of personality and...
This month, there have been a number of incidents—some major and some minor—that illustrate the “U-lock” mentality, a phrase that is sometimes used as shorthand to describe vitriolic xenophobic (particularly anti-Japanese)...
Reading between the lines of Xi Jinping’s foreign trips is often a subtle art; not so during his latest trip to Vietnam. China Central Television, the Party-state’s premier broadcaster, unwittingly uploaded a video of a...
A fawning Xinhua article on Xi Jinping’s concern for citizens affected by natural disasters has become the latest piece of “low-level red, high-level black” propaganda. Intended to tout Xi’s steadfast leadership, it...
Hangzhou’s Center for the Practice of Whole-Process People’s Democracy has become the butt of online jokes about China’s lack of democracy. Whole-process people’s democracy is Party-speak for the deliberative elements of China’s...
The death of Li Keqiang has dominated discussion on the Chinese internet. Censors have tightly controlled all commentary on his death. One directive, published earlier today, instructed media outlets to “pay particular attention...
A year after his protest against Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party atop Beijing’s Sitong Bridge, netizens continue to ask: where is Peng Lifa? On October 13, 2022, Peng hung two banners from Sitong Bridge that read: “We...
A skit reenacting former Japanese President Shinzo Abe’s assassination—staged during a high school field day in Zaozhuang, Shandong—has reignited online debate over rising anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Abe’s assassination in...
With hundreds of documented (and censored) online sobriquets, Xi Jinping is arguably the most nicknamed leader in recent Chinese history. To stay ahead of the censors, online Chinese have long resorted to using homophones,...
An underpass in Zhengzhou has quietly become a site of contention over artistic freedom. A photograph of the poem “Momma” by the little-known artist Zhang Boyi, graffitied underneath a Zhengzhou bridge in May, went viral on...
The Chinese government has suspended the publication of youth unemployment data, an indication of just how dire the labor market is for 16- to 24-year-olds in urban areas. Youth unemployment hit a record 21.3% in June. Censors...
Sometimes, it’s the censors who imbue a joke with political power. Earlier this week, Weibo user @怪以德服人猫’s account was deleted for violating Weibo policy. Their likely violation? A joke, described by some netizens as “very...
China’s youth employment crisis is at least partly a matter of attitude, according to People’s Daily. In two recent editorials calling for youth to “establish a correct perspective on employment” and “seek out hardships,” the...
A stand-off between residents of a Sichuan city and chengguan, notorious street-level law enforcement officers, over the beating of an egg vendor marks the latest national controversy over the ubiquitous state agents. In recent...
China’s infamous urban management agents, known as chengguan, have a new rural equivalent, the nongguan (“rural management”). Nongguan is the unofficial name for a new corps of agricultural law-enforcement officers, “Rural...
Proposed regulations on the development of generative artificial intelligence models issued by China’s top internet regulator would require “AI-produced content [to] embody core socialist values.” The 12 core socialist values...
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