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...
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...
Having “ulterior motives” (别有用心, bié yǒu yòng xīn), an accusation often lobbed at...
In mainland China, August 1 is known as PLA Day or Army Day, and commemorates the establishment of...
Mourning continues for eleven people—a coach and ten members of a girls’ volleyball team in...
Some people will tell you that stand-up comedians weren’t allowed to talk about anything. Actually, for a law-abiding comic, only two topics were off-limits: this and that."
— From a humorous essay by journalist and current affairs commentator Chang Ping, imagining how a stand-up comedian in 2049 might view the current constraints on comedy in mainland China
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...
Having “ulterior motives” (别有用心, bié yǒu yòng xīn), an accusation often lobbed at...
In mainland China, August 1 is known as PLA Day or Army Day, and commemorates the establishment of...
Mourning continues for eleven people—a coach and ten members of a girls’ volleyball team in...
Ten young volleyball players and their coach were killed and four others injured when the roof of...
“Four Won’t Youth” (四不青年, sì bù qīngnián) is the latest appellation for discontented youth, who in...
After one month without making a public statement or appearance, Qin Gang was removed from his position as foreign minister on Tuesday. At least for now, he will be replaced by his boss Wang Yi, who leads the CCP’s foreign policy apparatus and previously served as foreign minister. Government spokespersons had initially attributed Qin’s absence to health reasons, without elaborating further, and the state-media announcements of his removal on Tuesday gave no further explanation. It remains to be seen whether there are political factors that caused his removal. Shi Jiangtao from the South...
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...
Over the past few weeks, several think tanks have published reports evaluating the expansion and...
On May 18, 2023, blogger and activist Wu Gan was released from prison after serving an eight-year sentence for “subversion of state power.” Active in rights defense cases since 2009, Wu Gan (whose screen name was “Super Vulgar Butcher”) combined humor, performance art, and online and real-world advocacy to bring attention to cases of injustice and official malfeasance. His detention in May 2015 presaged the “Black Friday” crackdown on civil rights lawyers and activists that began on July 9 of that year. During his detention, Wu Gan was repeatedly tortured, mistreated, denied access to legal...
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...
Sunday marked the 34th anniversary of the 1989 June 4th crackdown. In Hong Kong, in a stark sign...
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...
In mainland China, August 1 is known as PLA Day or Army Day, and commemorates the establishment of...
Mourning continues for eleven people—a coach and ten members of a girls’ volleyball team in...
Ten young volleyball players and their coach were killed and four others injured when the roof of...
“Four Won’t Youth” (四不青年, sì bù qīngnián) is the latest appellation for discontented youth, who in...
An incident earlier this year in which two schoolteachers in Guizhou Province were swept away and...
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...
Having “ulterior motives” (别有用心, bié yǒu yòng xīn), an accusation often lobbed at...
In mainland China, August 1 is known as PLA Day or Army Day, and commemorates the establishment of...
Mourning continues for eleven people—a coach and ten members of a girls’ volleyball team in...
After one month without making a public statement or appearance, Qin Gang was removed from his...
It has now been almost a month since Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang made a public appearance....
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...
China’s Ministry of Public Security has initiated a new campaign against online rumors following Xi Jinping’s call for a “security barrier” around the Chinese internet. At The South China Morning Post, Kawala Xie reported on the crackdown: This year the public security ministry already ran a 100-day crackdown targeting online rumors and said it had achieved “remarkable results”. The ministry said that during the crackdown, which started in April, its officers investigated more than 1,600 cases of online rumors and shut down more than 10,000 social media accounts for spreading rumors....
A CCTV report posted to Bilibili celebrating construction workers laboring in extreme heat came...
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...
While much of the Western developed world was glued to the mutiny in Russia over the weekend, much...
This week, a striking series of infographics meant to highlight social issues such as poverty,...
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...
Having “ulterior motives” (别有用心, bié yǒu yòng xīn), an accusation often lobbed at...
In mainland China, August 1 is known as PLA Day or Army Day, and commemorates the establishment of...
Mourning continues for eleven people—a coach and ten members of a girls’ volleyball team in...
Ten young volleyball players and their coach were killed and four others injured when the roof of...
“Four Won’t Youth” (四不青年, sì bù qīngnián) is the latest appellation for discontented youth, who in...
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...
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...
Today, Weibo censors deleted a photograph of a flowchart demonstrating how security software giant...
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...
On May 18, 2023, blogger and activist Wu Gan was released from prison after serving an eight-year sentence for “subversion of state power.” Active in rights defense cases since 2009, Wu Gan (whose screen name was “Super Vulgar Butcher”) combined humor, performance art, and online and real-world advocacy to bring attention to cases of injustice and official malfeasance. His detention in May 2015 presaged the “Black Friday” crackdown on civil rights lawyers and activists that began on July 9 of that year. During his detention, Wu Gan was repeatedly tortured, mistreated, denied access to legal...
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 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...
Toys riffing on China’s hottest online idiom, “calling a rat a duck,” were yanked from online...
An antiquated Chinese political phrase enjoyed a brief revival when it was dusted off and used by...
Less than a month after the conclusion of China’s hypercompetitive annual university entrance examination (“gaokao”), a satirical meme about an imaginary university has been banned on Weibo. The meme and its censorship reveal larger truths about the fair allocation of educational resources and the overall state of academic competition in China today. Competition for university admission is fiercer than ever, with this year’s gaokao cohort numbering 12.9 million aspiring students. Test-takers from some populous provinces are required to earn extremely high scores on the exam in order to gain...
“I don’t raise pigs” (我不养猪 wǒ bù yǎng zhū), a Hunan police station’s nonsensical comment on the...
A stand-off between residents of a Sichuan city and chengguan, notorious street-level law...
There has been much discussion and dissection of the optics of the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to Beijing, during which he met with Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Office Wang Yi, and more briefly, with Xi Jinping himself. Analysts and casual observers alike noted that Blinken’s reception seemed pointedly chilly and devoid of fanfare, perhaps signaling the Chinese leadership’s displeasure with Blinken in general.On the Chinese internet and social media, there was scrutiny—and some mockery—of seating arrangements and other...
At long last, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese leaders...
This week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas traveled to Beijing for a three-day visit with top...
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...
In mainland China, August 1 is known as PLA Day or Army Day, and commemorates the establishment of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1927. This year, the celebration of the PLA’s 96th anniversary coincided with a major (and possibly corruption-related) shake-up in the PLA’s Rocket Force; some Central Military Commission guidelines for enhancing “Party-building” in the military; and a Ministry of State Security exhortation to mobilize the masses to assist with counter-espionage work. The PLA, somewhat counterintuitively, has also become associated with a crackdown on...
“Four Won’t Youth” (四不青年, sì bù qīngnián) is the latest appellation for discontented youth, who in...
On July 7, the Chinese Quora-like Q&A site Zhihu announced that users will no longer be able...
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...
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...
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...
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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