Independent Hong Kong Media Targeted with Tax Audits

In yet another challenge to press freedom in Hong Kong, government authorities have targeted numerous independent media outlets with simultaneous tax audits. Chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA)...

I lived in a time of war, but I survived it. I’m 90 years old now, and having lived through all that, I fear we’re inching toward another war. That’s what worries me."

— Gao Binghan, in an interview with investigative journalist Chai Jing, described his perilous 14-month journey through civil-war torn China at the age of 13, and expressed his anxiety about current China-Taiwan tensions.

 

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Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 1: “Those Who Forget That History of Suffering Are Destined to Suffer Again”

Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are...

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Book Publishers Continue to Face Commercial and Political Pressure

Government censorship in China has increasingly targeted books, bookstores, and publishers. Last fall, over a dozen bookstores were shuttered or targeted for closure, generating a chilling effect on China’s publishing industry. Last April, an online repository of pirated ebooks closed its WeChat account under mounting pressure from authorities. In October 2023, a book on the last Ming emperor was recalled from shelves and all mention of it banned on social media, allegedly because the cover could be construed as a criticism of Xi Jinping. In the face of such pressure, some bookstores have...

China, Hong Kong Drop in World Press Freedom Ranking

On Friday—right before World Press Freedom Day—Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published its 2025 World Press Freedom Index, which showed a notable drop in the rankings of China (from 172 to 178 out of 180) and Hong Kong (from 135 to 140 out of 180) compared to last year. The results reveal that for the first time in the history of the RSF index, the global average state of press freedom has deteriorated to a “difficult situation”: Although physical attacks against journalists are the most visible violations of press freedom, economic pressure is also a major, more insidious problem. The...

Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 1: “Those Who Forget That History of Suffering Are Destined to Suffer Again”

Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are...

Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 1: “Those Who Forget That History of Suffering Are Destined to Suffer Again”

Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are...

Independent Hong Kong Media Targeted with Tax Audits

In yet another challenge to press freedom in Hong Kong, government authorities have targeted numerous independent media outlets with simultaneous tax audits. Chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) Selina Cheng shared the news in a press conference on Wednesday. The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), which is one of the organizations caught up in the inspection, reported on the wide range of targets, including family members of journalists: Hong Kong’s independent news sector, including companies, staff and family members, are facing simultaneous tax audits and backdated...

Minitrue Plus Five: March 10, 2020 – Tibet Independence, COVID Rent Relief, Whistleblower, Epidemic Transmission and Treatments

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...

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...

Independent Hong Kong Media Targeted with Tax Audits

In yet another challenge to press freedom in Hong Kong, government authorities have targeted numerous independent media outlets with simultaneous tax audits. Chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) Selina Cheng shared the news in a press conference on Wednesday. The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), which is one of the organizations caught up in the inspection, reported on the wide range of targets, including family members of journalists: Hong Kong’s independent news sector, including companies, staff and family members, are facing simultaneous tax audits and backdated...

Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 1: “Those Who Forget That History of Suffering Are Destined to Suffer Again”

Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are...

Henan Develops Its Own Regional Great Firewall, Adding Layers to China’s Censorship

Researchers from the censorship monitoring platform Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) published an investigation last week that “sounds the alarm” about the emergence of regional online censorship in China. They noted that in August 2023, netizens in Henan began reporting an uptick in inaccessible websites that were accessible elsewhere in the country. Their investigation found no evidence of region-specific censorship in the other areas analyzed—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Sichuan—but did find that Henan censored a massive amount of content beyond that blocked by...

Independent Hong Kong Media Targeted with Tax Audits

In yet another challenge to press freedom in Hong Kong, government authorities have targeted numerous independent media outlets with simultaneous tax audits. Chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) Selina Cheng shared the news in a press conference on Wednesday. The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), which is one of the organizations caught up in the inspection, reported on the wide range of targets, including family members of journalists: Hong Kong’s independent news sector, including companies, staff and family members, are facing simultaneous tax audits and backdated...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 20, 2020 – Hospital Attack, Financial Company’s Social Media Banishment, Mercedes in Forbidden City, Coronavirus

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

China, Hong Kong Drop in World Press Freedom Ranking

On Friday—right before World Press Freedom Day—Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published its 2025 World Press Freedom Index, which showed a notable drop in the rankings of China (from 172 to 178 out of 180) and Hong Kong (from 135 to 140 out of 180) compared to last year. The results reveal that for the first time in the history of the RSF index, the global average state of press freedom has deteriorated to a “difficult situation”: Although physical attacks against journalists are the most visible violations of press freedom, economic pressure is also a major, more insidious problem. The...

Politics

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Netizen Voices: “If We’re Winning This Much After Losing the U.S. Market, Imagine How Much We’d Win if We Lost All of Them.”

Amid signs that U.S. tariffs are starting to bite into China’s exports, the country’s foreign ministry issued a defiant vow not to "kneel" on Wednesday, declaring: "Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst. […] For China, for the world, we must rise and fight on." Some commentators in the West argue that China has the upper hand; naturally, many official voices in China agree. But some views expressed online are darker. A recent “Quote of the Day” chosen by CDT Chinese editors bleakly contrasted America’s economic, military, and technological...

Society

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As Marriage Registrations Drop, Local Officials Text Women: “How Has Your Period Been Recently?”

The ever-growing list of government pro-natalist initiatives at local and national levels has so far failed to slow China’s demographic changes. For many men and women, marriage and child bearing remain too costly, despite new financial incentives. As a result, reported Luna Sun at the South China Morning Post, marriage registrations dropped eight percent this year: As marriage registrations in China continued to decline in the first quarter of the year, local governments have dangled cash rewards as high as 40,000 yuan (US$5,487) in front of young couples in a bid to rekindle the will to...

China & the World

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Sinopsis: China’s Dual-Use Infrastructure in the Pacific

CDT noted last month that recent Chinese naval exercises around Australia had sparked a spike in comments on Chinese social media advocating the conquest of Australia. While some may have been a joke, others appeared serious, and were taken seriously by commentators such as current affairs and science blogger Xiang Dongliang, who wrote: “Popular sentiment really has shifted. My heartfelt prayer, as a humble science blogger: May Buddha bless and protect us.” While the occupation of a three-million-square-mile island nearly two thousand miles from China might charitably be described as...

Law

Latest

Independent Hong Kong Media Targeted with Tax Audits

In yet another challenge to press freedom in Hong Kong, government authorities have targeted numerous independent media outlets with simultaneous tax audits. Chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) Selina Cheng shared the news in a press conference on Wednesday. The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), which is one of the organizations caught up in the inspection, reported on the wide range of targets, including family members of journalists: Hong Kong’s independent news sector, including companies, staff and family members, are facing simultaneous tax audits and backdated...

Information Revolution

Latest

New U.S. Export Controls Aim to Curtail China’s Access to Advanced Semiconductor Technology

Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration has issued a series of regulations intended to halt China’s development of advanced technologies. The measures restrict the export of advanced chips, design software, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment that are crucial to China’s military, AI, and supercomputing initiatives. While the impact of these regulations remains to be seen, this “major watershed” demonstrates a significant U.S. policy shift towards a more aggressive approach to China, and risks accelerating technological and economic decoupling between the two countries across...

Culture & the Arts

Latest

Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 1: “Those Who Forget That History of Suffering Are Destined to Suffer Again”

Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are...

The Great Divide

Latest

Minitrue Plus Five: January 20, 2020 – Hospital Attack, Financial Company’s Social Media Banishment, Mercedes in Forbidden City, Coronavirus

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

Henan Develops Its Own Regional Great Firewall, Adding Layers to China’s Censorship

Researchers from the censorship monitoring platform Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) published an investigation last week that “sounds the alarm” about the emergence of regional online censorship in China. They noted that in August 2023, netizens in Henan began reporting an uptick in inaccessible websites that were accessible elsewhere in the country. Their investigation found no evidence of region-specific censorship in the other areas analyzed—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Sichuan—but did find that Henan censored a massive amount of content beyond that blocked by...

Environment

Latest

Censored Statistics, Deleted Data Muddy the Waters

As China continues to tighten information flows in and out of the country, how reliable are statistics from official Chinese sources? Recent media pieces have highlighted the deepening lack of government transparency and accuracy when it comes to important data, and its implications for research related to China. The latest example is from Rebecca Feng and Jason Douglas at The Wall Street Journal, who wrote this week about how “Beijing has stopped publishing hundreds of statistics, making it harder to know what’s going on in the country”: Land sales measures, foreign investment data and...

Hong Kong

Latest

Independent Hong Kong Media Targeted with Tax Audits

In yet another challenge to press freedom in Hong Kong, government authorities have targeted numerous independent media outlets with simultaneous tax audits. Chairperson of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) Selina Cheng shared the news in a press conference on Wednesday. The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), which is one of the organizations caught up in the inspection, reported on the wide range of targets, including family members of journalists: Hong Kong’s independent news sector, including companies, staff and family members, are facing simultaneous tax audits and backdated...

Taiwan

Latest

Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 1: “Those Who Forget That History of Suffering Are Destined to Suffer Again”

Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are...

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