[O]ver the past year, there have been so many incidents of note [....] The heartbreaking thing is that when these incidents occurred, the major media outlets were suddenly nowhere to be seen. [...I]nstead the media, who have not even learned how to speak out on major news events, issued a slew of self-congratulatory New Year’s tributes."

— From a WeChat article by Xi Huajun, noting that "New Year's tribute" pieces by most major Chinese new outlets failed to mention the most notable and newsworthy events of 2024

 

CDT Highlights

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Censorship Creeps Up on “TikTok Refugees” Fleeing to Chinese App Xiaohongshu

Pending a Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. government’s crackdown on TikTok might end the app’s availability in U.S. app stores this weekend. The looming ban has prompted American users to seek a new home in another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. Nearly three million “TikTok refugees” downloaded RedNote in just one day, pushing it to the top of the list of most downloaded apps in the U.S. Duolingo also reported a 216 percent spike in U.S. users learning Mandarin Chinese. Part of the “refugees’” motivations for joining RedNote include protesting the U.S. government’s attempts...

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After Fleeing Abroad, Uyghurs Continue to Face Deportations to China

One significant dimension of the Chinese government’s transnational repression against Uyghurs is deportations. Recent longform pieces have detailed the journeys of Uyghurs who managed to escape Xinjiang and flee abroad, only to find their new host countries’ governments willing to hand them over to Chinese authorities—despite the well-documented evidence of Uyghurs facing torture in China. This phenomenon highlights the Chinese government’s strong influence over international legal practices, and the vulnerable positions of Uyghurs in exile. The most recent example comes from Thailand,...

Netizens Call for Attention to Prisoners in Southeast Asia Scam Operations

The high-profile kidnapping and rescue of 31-year-old actor Wang Xing from a telecom-scam compound on the border of Myanmar and Thailand has incited heated discussion on the Chinese internet. Wang was found last week, just two days after his girlfriend chose to go public and plead for help online. The Global Times lionized the Chinese government’s role in the rescue, writing that Wang “has returned to the embrace of his motherland, which makes him feel warm, secure, and free. While in a foreign country, it was the strength of his motherland that gave him courage and hope.” But many netizens...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 16, 2020 – U.S. Trade Deal, Sun Wenbin Trial, Japanese Communist Party, etc.

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 16, 2020 – U.S. Trade Deal, Sun Wenbin Trial, Japanese Communist Party, etc.

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 15, 2020 – K-drama “Psychopath Diary,” Trade Deal, Downed Airliner, Hong Kong Speech

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Translation: Chinese Universities Install Software to Identify and Punish Students Who Circumvent the Great Firewall

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...

New eBook: China Digital Times Lexicon, 20th Anniversary Edition

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...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 16, 2020 – U.S. Trade Deal, Sun Wenbin Trial, Japanese Communist Party, etc.

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 16, 2020 – U.S. Trade Deal, Sun Wenbin Trial, Japanese Communist Party, etc.

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Censorship Creeps Up on “TikTok Refugees” Fleeing to Chinese App Xiaohongshu

Pending a Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. government’s crackdown on TikTok might end the app’s availability in U.S. app stores this weekend. The looming ban has prompted American users to seek a new home in another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. Nearly three million “TikTok refugees” downloaded RedNote in just one day, pushing it to the top of the list of most downloaded apps in the U.S. Duolingo also reported a 216 percent spike in U.S. users learning Mandarin Chinese. Part of the “refugees’” motivations for joining RedNote include protesting the U.S. government’s attempts...

Netizens Call for Attention to Prisoners in Southeast Asia Scam Operations

The high-profile kidnapping and rescue of 31-year-old actor Wang Xing from a telecom-scam compound on the border of Myanmar and Thailand has incited heated discussion on the Chinese internet. Wang was found last week, just two days after his girlfriend chose to go public and plead for help online. The Global Times lionized the Chinese government’s role in the rescue, writing that Wang “has returned to the embrace of his motherland, which makes him feel warm, secure, and free. While in a foreign country, it was the strength of his motherland that gave him courage and hope.” But many netizens...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 10 2020 – GDP Revisions, Girls’ Education Charity Scandal, Trade Deal, Economic Census

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Human Rights

Latest

Netizens Call for Attention to Prisoners in Southeast Asia Scam Operations

The high-profile kidnapping and rescue of 31-year-old actor Wang Xing from a telecom-scam compound on the border of Myanmar and Thailand has incited heated discussion on the Chinese internet. Wang was found last week, just two days after his girlfriend chose to go public and plead for help online. The Global Times lionized the Chinese government’s role in the rescue, writing that Wang “has returned to the embrace of his motherland, which makes him feel warm, secure, and free. While in a foreign country, it was the strength of his motherland that gave him courage and hope.” But many netizens...

Politics

Latest

Minitrue Plus Five: January 6, 2020 – Taiwan Election, Mystery Pneumonia, U.S. Trade Deal

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Society

Latest

Translations: Shanxi Woman’s 13-Year Ordeal Evokes Disturbing Parallels With Xiaohuamei Trafficking Case

Chinese social media has been filled with discussion of Bu Xiaohua, a woman in Shanxi province who was recently reunited with her father and other relatives 13 years after she went missing. Ms. Bu, who earned a Master’s degree in engineering in her youth, went missing from her hometown of Jinzhong in Shanxi in 2011, not long after undergoing in-patient treatment for schizophrenia. During the intervening years, she apparently lived with a man named Zhang Ruijun in a village about 100 miles distant from her hometown, and gave birth to a number of children. It is unclear, under China’s mental...

China & the World

Latest

Chinese Firms at the Center of Serbia’s Political Crisis

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 the root of the tragedy. In the middle of the fray are two Chinese companies that were involved in recent renovations at the train station, which is a key stop along the Chinese-built Budapest-Belgrade Railway. Given the Serbian government’s enthusiastic embrace of Chinese investment under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the general lack of transparency surrounding...

Law

Latest

Netizens Call for Attention to Prisoners in Southeast Asia Scam Operations

The high-profile kidnapping and rescue of 31-year-old actor Wang Xing from a telecom-scam compound on the border of Myanmar and Thailand has incited heated discussion on the Chinese internet. Wang was found last week, just two days after his girlfriend chose to go public and plead for help online. The Global Times lionized the Chinese government’s role in the rescue, writing that Wang “has returned to the embrace of his motherland, which makes him feel warm, secure, and free. While in a foreign country, it was the strength of his motherland that gave him courage and hope.” But many netizens...

Information Revolution

Latest

Canada Kicks Out Huawei, U.S. Weighs Further Sanctions on Hikvision, China Invests in Undermining Sanctions

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...

Culture & the Arts

Latest

Censorship Creeps Up on “TikTok Refugees” Fleeing to Chinese App Xiaohongshu

Pending a Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. government’s crackdown on TikTok might end the app’s availability in U.S. app stores this weekend. The looming ban has prompted American users to seek a new home in another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. Nearly three million “TikTok refugees” downloaded RedNote in just one day, pushing it to the top of the list of most downloaded apps in the U.S. Duolingo also reported a 216 percent spike in U.S. users learning Mandarin Chinese. Part of the “refugees’” motivations for joining RedNote include protesting the U.S. government’s attempts...

The Great Divide

Latest

Minitrue Plus Five: January 10 2020 – GDP Revisions, Girls’ Education Charity Scandal, Trade Deal, Economic Census

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Sci-Tech

Latest

Censorship Creeps Up on “TikTok Refugees” Fleeing to Chinese App Xiaohongshu

Pending a Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. government’s crackdown on TikTok might end the app’s availability in U.S. app stores this weekend. The looming ban has prompted American users to seek a new home in another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. Nearly three million “TikTok refugees” downloaded RedNote in just one day, pushing it to the top of the list of most downloaded apps in the U.S. Duolingo also reported a 216 percent spike in U.S. users learning Mandarin Chinese. Part of the “refugees’” motivations for joining RedNote include protesting the U.S. government’s attempts...

Environment

Latest

Massive Earthquake Shakes Tibet, Reveals Danger of Proposed Hydropower Dam

On Tuesday morning, a county in Tibet experienced one of its strongest earthquakes in years. According to official figures, at least 126 people were killed and 188 others injured, and rescue efforts are ongoing amidst freezing temperatures. China’s earthquake center recorded a magnitude of 6.8 (the U.S. Geological Survey measured a magnitude of 7.1) at the epicenter in Dingri County, about 80 kilometers north of Mount Everest. Since then, a series of other earthquakes have struck the region, including a magnitude 5.5 quake in Qinghai Province and a magnitude 3.1 tremblor in Sichuan. These...

Hong Kong

Latest

Minitrue Plus Five: January 15, 2020 – K-drama “Psychopath Diary,” Trade Deal, Downed Airliner, Hong Kong Speech

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Taiwan

Latest

Minitrue Plus Five: January 12-13, 2020 – Taiwan Elections, New Destroyer, Liu He in Washington, Shared Future With Myanmar

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

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