A Singapore paper’s publication of a blistering opinion piece criticizing Xi Jinping did not escape notice on Weibo, where netizens surreptitiously praised it. Titled “The Economy Is The...
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...
In only his second trip abroad this year, Xi Jinping attended this week’s BRICS summit in South...
China’s housing market woes continue, with recent data showing tumbling residential sales among...
Dechen Pemba Dechen Pemba is the founder and editor of High Peaks Pure Earth, a website that...
When the chives are being cut down faster than they can grow, the chives are in no position to help out, even if they want to."
— WeChat user 红旗下的蛋, commenting on a recent Sanlian Lifeweek feature about how demographic trends toward fewer births will affect China's moribund housing market and the future prosperity of "chives"—in this case, ordinary investors or homebuyers
A Singapore paper’s publication of a blistering opinion piece criticizing Xi Jinping did not escape notice on Weibo, where netizens surreptitiously praised it. Titled “The Economy Is The Problem, Its Root Is Politics,” the piece was authored by Hong Kong businessman and writer Lew Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a once ardently pro-China personality. It laid the blame for China’s current economic malaise squarely at the feet of Xi Jinping, the cult of personality around him, and the Party’s failure to enact political reform—namely...
With hundreds of documented (and censored) online sobriquets, Xi Jinping is arguably the most...
China’s housing market woes continue, with recent data showing tumbling residential sales among...
An underpass in Zhengzhou has quietly become a site of contention over artistic freedom. A...
The Chinese government has suspended the publication of youth unemployment data, an indication of...
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been...
Catastrophic flooding caused by Typhoon Doksuri has killed at least 21 people, left approximately 26 people missing, and led to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands in northern China. Rainfall in Beijing broke a 140-year old record and neighboring Hebei province received more than its average annual rainfall in the deluge. The mass flooding calls to mind the 2021 Henan floods in which nearly 400 people died, and the 2012 Beijing floods which left 79 dead—although many believe that figure is a dramatic undercount. At The New York Times, Chris Buckley reported on the flood response in...
After one month without making a public statement or appearance, Qin Gang was removed from his...
Ten young volleyball players and their coach were killed and four others injured when the roof of...
It has now been almost a month since Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang made a public appearance....
China’s Ministry of Public Security has initiated a new campaign against online rumors following...
A quickly retracted Zhejiang report on provincial cremation statistics has shed new light on...
Dechen Pemba Dechen Pemba is the founder and editor of High Peaks Pure Earth, a website that translates Tibetan social media and blog content into English. Born in the UK, Pemba has worked with the International Campaign for Tibet in Berlin and studied in Beijing for two years. She has a masters degree from SOAS in London, and also writes a personal blog. In an interview conducted by email, Pemba spoke to CDT about her work amplifying Tibetan voices, through both her website and the Tibetan Film Festival, while also offering her recommendations of recent Tibetan films, books, and resources...
On May 18, 2023, blogger and activist Wu Gan was released from prison after serving an eight-year...
Last week, the U.N. Human Rights Council began its 53rd session in Geneva, where country...
Tsering Yangzom Lama was born in Nepal to Tibetan refugee parents, and later moved to Vancouver....
As of June 7, the Twitter account belonging to Bei Zhenying, wife of well-known blogger...
The sight of a lone man standing before a row of tanks in Beijing is perhaps the most enduring...
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, variant characters, intentional typos, and a range of typographical tricks when referring to China’s “core” leader. Over time, as evading online censorship has become more difficult, the nicknames have trended toward the abstruse. When a recent “Soviet-style” joke about a man asking a genie to “make blah-blah-blah blah-blah-blah” went viral, the first string of three...
China’s housing market woes continue, with recent data showing tumbling residential sales among...
An underpass in Zhengzhou has quietly become a site of contention over artistic freedom. A...
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been...
Over the past month, in response to disappointing economic data, various Chinese government...
Sometimes, it’s the censors who imbue a joke with political power. Earlier this week, Weibo user...
A Singapore paper’s publication of a blistering opinion piece criticizing Xi Jinping did not escape notice on Weibo, where netizens surreptitiously praised it. Titled “The Economy Is The Problem, Its Root Is Politics,” the piece was authored by Hong Kong businessman and writer Lew Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a once ardently pro-China personality. It laid the blame for China’s current economic malaise squarely at the feet of Xi Jinping, the cult of personality around him, and the Party’s failure to enact political reform—namely...
With hundreds of documented (and censored) online sobriquets, Xi Jinping is arguably the most...
In only his second trip abroad this year, Xi Jinping attended this week’s BRICS summit in South...
An underpass in Zhengzhou has quietly become a site of contention over artistic freedom. A...
Sometimes, it’s the censors who imbue a joke with political power. Earlier this week, Weibo user...
The slogans that make up the “12 Core Socialist Values” are a common sight on Chinese...
A new draft patriotic education law submitted last week to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee is spurring spirited online debate. Broad in scope, the draft law includes provisions for the role of Chinese media outlets and online platforms in promoting patriotic education; punishments for various behaviors deemed insulting or unpatriotic; and guidelines for expanding patriotic education in Hong Kong, Macao, self-governing Taiwan, and even overseas Chinese communities further afield. While the draft law emphasizes “promoting the spirit of patriotism,” the broader...
In the latest example of shrinking space for free expression in Hong Kong, authorities there have...
Sunday marked the 34th anniversary of the 1989 June 4th crackdown. In Hong Kong, in a stark sign...
Local media outlets in Hong Kong report that hundreds of books on political topics including the...
World Press Freedom Day, on May 3, has rarely been a time for celebration in China, where...
This week, a long-expected national security trial of 47 Hong Kong pro-democracy figures began....
A pair of recently surfaced screenshots appear to offer unusual detail about a special month-long operation, held in Beijing and involving over 40 Ministry of Public Security computer specialists from around the country, to combat “overseas cyber forces” in the battle for public opinion. The apparently leaked internal instructions from the Ministry of Public Security are likely to be the result of an email breach. They include the names and locations of many of the computer-specialist officers, as well as the name and contact information of the individual in charge of the operation. At some...
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 Thursday, the Canadian government announced that it will ban Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE...
On Monday of last week, Malaysian musician Namewee (Wee Meng Chee, 黃明志) learned that his YouTube...
Tsering Yangzom Lama was born in Nepal to Tibetan refugee parents, and later moved to Vancouver. She received her B.A. from the University of British Columbia and a MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Her debut novel, We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, tells a multigenerational story of a Tibetan family over the course of 50 years. Opening with the invasion of Tibet by Chinese forces in 1950, the story then follows two sisters as they flee their country with their family, establishing a new home in Nepal and later Canada. It is a rich, lyrical story that touches on issues of...
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...
China’s soft power initiatives are often derided by Western observers as ineffective or...
This is the full transcript, edited lightly for grammar and clarity, of an interview with Jeremy...
A Singapore paper’s publication of a blistering opinion piece criticizing Xi Jinping did not escape notice on Weibo, where netizens surreptitiously praised it. Titled “The Economy Is The Problem, Its Root Is Politics,” the piece was authored by Hong Kong businessman and writer Lew Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a once ardently pro-China personality. It laid the blame for China’s current economic malaise squarely at the feet of Xi Jinping, the cult of personality around him, and the Party’s failure to enact political reform—namely...
In only his second trip abroad this year, Xi Jinping attended this week’s BRICS summit in South...
China’s housing market woes continue, with recent data showing tumbling residential sales among...
The Chinese government has suspended the publication of youth unemployment data, an indication of...
Over the past month, in response to disappointing economic data, various Chinese government...
China’s Ministry of Public Security has initiated a new campaign against online rumors following...
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, variant characters, intentional typos, and a range of typographical tricks when referring to China’s “core” leader. Over time, as evading online censorship has become more difficult, the nicknames have trended toward the abstruse. When a recent “Soviet-style” joke about a man asking a genie to “make blah-blah-blah blah-blah-blah” went viral, the first string of three...
China’s housing market woes continue, with recent data showing tumbling residential sales among...
Dechen Pemba Dechen Pemba is the founder and editor of High Peaks Pure Earth, a website that...
An underpass in Zhengzhou has quietly become a site of contention over artistic freedom. A...
The Chinese government has suspended the publication of youth unemployment data, an indication of...
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been...
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, variant characters, intentional typos, and a range of typographical tricks when referring to China’s “core” leader. Over time, as evading online censorship has become more difficult, the nicknames have trended toward the abstruse. When a recent “Soviet-style” joke about a man asking a genie to “make blah-blah-blah blah-blah-blah” went viral, the first string of three...
Earlier this week, Apple removed over 100 generative AI and ChatGPT-related apps from its mainland...
China’s Ministry of Public Security has initiated a new campaign against online rumors following...
A quickly retracted Zhejiang report on provincial cremation statistics has shed new light on...
On July 7, the Chinese Quora-like Q&A site Zhihu announced that users will no longer be able...
The accounts of Health Insights (@八点健闻), a health and science-oriented digital news outlet, have...
Earlier this week, Apple removed over 100 generative AI and ChatGPT-related apps from its mainland Chinese store in response to new Chinese government regulations on managing generative AI. The regulations were introduced in draft form in April by seven government regulatory bodies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, and are scheduled to go into effect on August 15. They require software developers to promote healthy content that “adheres to core socialist values” and to avoid offering products that generate false information or content that endangers national security. The...
Mourning continues for eleven people—a coach and ten members of a girls’ volleyball team in...
China’s Ministry of Public Security has initiated a new campaign against online rumors following...
A CCTV report posted to Bilibili celebrating construction workers laboring in extreme heat came...
On July 7, the Chinese Quora-like Q&A site Zhihu announced that users will no longer be able...
“Bridge builder” is normally a high compliment. For one family in Jilin province, however,...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last year, there were signs of a surge in Omicron cases nationwide. Since then, China has experienced a tsunami of infections—first in larger cities, and then in the countryside—amid concerns about shortages of needed medications, the increasing risk of medical debt, and unreliable official data on the numbers of infections and deaths. Despite the recent Lunar New Year celebration in which hundreds of millions of residents went traveling and returned to their hometowns, there are signs that the wave of...
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...
This spring, while nationalist fervor to “support Xinjiang cotton” swelled online,...
In early December, President Xi Jinping declared that China had eliminated absolute poverty. His...
Dechen Pemba Dechen Pemba is the founder and editor of High Peaks Pure Earth, a website that translates Tibetan social media and blog content into English. Born in the UK, Pemba has worked with the International Campaign for Tibet in Berlin and studied in Beijing for two years. She has a masters degree from SOAS in London, and also writes a personal blog. In an interview conducted by email, Pemba spoke to CDT about her work amplifying Tibetan voices, through both her website and the Tibetan Film Festival, while also offering her recommendations of recent Tibetan films, books, and resources...
On May 18, 2023, blogger and activist Wu Gan was released from prison after serving an eight-year...
Last week, the U.N. Human Rights Council began its 53rd session in Geneva, where country...
Having “ulterior motives” (别有用心, bié yǒu yòng xīn), an accusation often lobbed at critics of the Party-state, is sometimes deployed in tandem with the term “foreign hostile forces” (境外势力, jìngwài shìli). Such accusations are used to discredit legitimate criticism of the government, and to imply that dissent is somehow inorganic or nefarious. The Party-state’s list of those who allegedly hold “ulterior motives” (or are “unwitting dupes” of those who do) is lengthy and ever-expanding, including: lawyers caught up in the 2015 “Black Friday” sweep, mourners commemorating...
In mainland China, August 1 is known as PLA Day or Army Day, and commemorates the establishment of...
As an extreme heat wave across Earth’s northern hemisphere fuels record-breaking temperatures in...
“Four Won’t Youth” (四不青年, sì bù qīngnián) is the latest appellation for discontented youth, who in this case “won’t date, won’t marry, won’t buy a home, and won’t have kids.” Four Won’t Youth, like other similar terms (lying flat, involution, Kong Yiji), make the Party-state nervous. A document floating around the internet and purported to be from the Guangzhou branch of the Communist Youth League claims that of 15,501 surveyed youth, 1,215 could be classified as Four Won’t Youth. The document calls for an effort to transform these young people into “Four Will Youth,” who are willing...
An incident earlier this year in which two schoolteachers in Guizhou Province were swept away and...
China’s youth employment crisis is at least partly a matter of attitude, according to People’s...
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 to the nine-dash line, a feature of Chinese maps that makes sweeping territorial claims to waters abutted by Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan. “Barbie,” a Hollywood blockbuster inspired by the popular Mattel doll, was banned in Vietnam after authorities there alleged the film displayed a map that included the nine-dash...
Over the past few weeks, several think tanks have published reports evaluating the expansion and...
An antiquated Chinese political phrase enjoyed a brief revival when it was dusted off and used by...
Earlier this week, Apple removed over 100 generative AI and ChatGPT-related apps from its mainland Chinese store in response to new Chinese government regulations on managing generative AI. The regulations were introduced in draft form in April by seven government regulatory bodies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, and are scheduled to go into effect on August 15. They require software developers to promote healthy content that “adheres to core socialist values” and to avoid offering products that generate false information or content that endangers national security. The...
Mourning continues for eleven people—a coach and ten members of a girls’ volleyball team in...
China’s Ministry of Public Security has initiated a new campaign against online rumors following...
A group of students under the impression they had discovered a WeChat “bug” that hides the phrase “200 jin of dumplings” (roughly 220 pounds) had in fact stumbled upon an obscure insult for Xi Jinping that triggers automatic censorship. In the course of daily conversation, the students found that messages preceded by the term “200 jin of dumplings” (200斤饺子) were not received by their counterparts. Juvenile hilarity ensued. They sent each other curses and confessions: “200 jin of dumplings, you’re a stupid c***,” “200 jin of dumplings, you’re an idiot,” “200 jin of dumplings, piggy,” and...
This week saw the proliferation of COVID conspiracy theories on Chinese social media, the...
While the official position from Beijing is that China remains a neutral observer of the...
Dechen Pemba Dechen Pemba is the founder and editor of High Peaks Pure Earth, a website that translates Tibetan social media and blog content into English. Born in the UK, Pemba has worked with the International Campaign for Tibet in Berlin and studied in Beijing for two years. She has a masters degree from SOAS in London, and also writes a personal blog. In an interview conducted by email, Pemba spoke to CDT about her work amplifying Tibetan voices, through both her website and the Tibetan Film Festival, while also offering her recommendations of recent Tibetan films, books, and resources...
An underpass in Zhengzhou has quietly become a site of contention over artistic freedom. A...
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last year, there were signs of a surge in Omicron cases nationwide. Since then, China has experienced a tsunami of infections—first in larger cities, and then in the countryside—amid concerns about shortages of needed medications, the increasing risk of medical debt, and unreliable official data on the numbers of infections and deaths. Despite the recent Lunar New Year celebration in which hundreds of millions of residents went traveling and returned to their hometowns, there are signs that the wave of...
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...
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, variant characters, intentional typos, and a range of typographical tricks when referring to China’s “core” leader. Over time, as evading online censorship has become more difficult, the nicknames have trended toward the abstruse. When a recent “Soviet-style” joke about a man asking a genie to “make blah-blah-blah blah-blah-blah” went viral, the first string of three...
Earlier this week, Apple removed over 100 generative AI and ChatGPT-related apps from its mainland...
China’s Ministry of Public Security has initiated a new campaign against online rumors following...
As an extreme heat wave across Earth’s northern hemisphere fuels record-breaking temperatures in China, Europe, and North America, U.S. special envoy for climate change John Kerry is visiting Beijing this week for high-level discussions on climate-change issues. The resumption of dialogue that had stalled due to geopolitical tensions between the world’s two largest greenhouse-gas emitters is a positive sign, but substantive policy agreements are urgently needed to meet global climate goals and avoid existential catastrophe. At Sixth Tone, Ding Rui summarized the record-breaking heat wave...
At the halfway point of the COP27 international climate-change summit, there are encouraging signs...
A massive, months-long heat wave has scorched regions in central China. Intense droughts and...
A new draft patriotic education law submitted last week to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee is spurring spirited online debate. Broad in scope, the draft law includes provisions for the role of Chinese media outlets and online platforms in promoting patriotic education; punishments for various behaviors deemed insulting or unpatriotic; and guidelines for expanding patriotic education in Hong Kong, Macao, self-governing Taiwan, and even overseas Chinese communities further afield. While the draft law emphasizes “promoting the spirit of patriotism,” the broader...
In the latest example of shrinking space for free expression in Hong Kong, authorities there have...
Sunday marked the 34th anniversary of the 1989 June 4th crackdown. In Hong Kong, in a stark sign...
A new draft patriotic education law submitted last week to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee is spurring spirited online debate. Broad in scope, the draft law includes provisions for the role of Chinese media outlets and online platforms in promoting patriotic education; punishments for various behaviors deemed insulting or unpatriotic; and guidelines for expanding patriotic education in Hong Kong, Macao, self-governing Taiwan, and even overseas Chinese communities further afield. While the draft law emphasizes “promoting the spirit of patriotism,” the broader...
U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping met on Monday in Bali for their...
Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration has issued a series of regulations intended to...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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