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...
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)...
Last week, Beijing hosted the fourth China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean...
The massive success of Ne Zha 2, boosted by patriotic group-buys and shielded by censors, buoyed a...
Researchers from the censorship monitoring platform Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) published...
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.
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 massive success of Ne Zha 2, boosted by patriotic group-buys and shielded by censors, buoyed a...
The recent “4+4” scandal, which started with the public exposure of one doctor’s extramarital...
In response to reports that India and Pakistan have agreed to a tenuous ceasefire following...
A viral scandal that started out as the tale of one doctor’s extramarital affairs and medical...
A series of state-media reports on the theme of the May 1 International Workers Day provide a...
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...
At Project Sinopsis, Ansel Li examines how many young Chinese are seeking solace in mystical...
Due to the “present complicated geopolitical situation,” the Hong Kong government has decided the...
In response to reports that India and Pakistan have agreed to a tenuous ceasefire following...
The 2025 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders last week highlighted...
As China continues to tighten information flows in and out of the country, how reliable are...
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...
A series of state-media reports on the theme of the May 1 International Workers Day provide a...
In the early hours of the morning of April 15, 2025, a lone protester lashed three long white...
This week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published “China...
Recent reports detail ways in which the Chinese government has instrumentalized digital...
Last week, Chinese state media reported that Wu Yingjie, the former Party chief of the Tibetan...
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 recent “4+4” scandal, which started with the public exposure of one doctor’s extramarital...
In response to reports that India and Pakistan have agreed to a tenuous ceasefire following...
A viral scandal that started out as the tale of one doctor’s extramarital affairs and medical...
A series of state-media reports on the theme of the May 1 International Workers Day provide a...
In the early hours of the morning of April 15, 2025, a lone protester lashed three long white...
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...
Last week, Beijing hosted the fourth China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean...
The massive success of Ne Zha 2, boosted by patriotic group-buys and shielded by censors, buoyed a...
Researchers from the censorship monitoring platform Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) published...
Government censorship in China has increasingly targeted books, bookstores, and publishers. Last...
At Project Sinopsis, Ansel Li examines how many young Chinese are seeking solace in mystical...
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...
Government censorship in China has increasingly targeted books, bookstores, and publishers. Last...
Due to the “present complicated geopolitical situation,” the Hong Kong government has decided the...
On Friday—right before World Press Freedom Day—Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published its 2025...
The latest political development in Hong Kong underscores the extent to which authorities have...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
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...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
A recent WeChat post reveals that some Chinese schools and universities are using special software...
In the two weeks since the Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration of China...
A pair of recently surfaced screenshots appear to offer unusual detail about a special month-long...
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...
In 2014, Leta Hong Fincher published her first book, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender...
Starting in March 2008, Tibetans across the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai, Gansu, and...
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...
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...
Last week, Beijing hosted the fourth China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean...
The massive success of Ne Zha 2, boosted by patriotic group-buys and shielded by censors, buoyed a...
Researchers from the censorship monitoring platform Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) published...
The recent “4+4” scandal, which started with the public exposure of one doctor’s extramarital...
At Project Sinopsis, Ansel Li examines how many young Chinese are seeking solace in mystical...
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 massive success of Ne Zha 2, boosted by patriotic group-buys and shielded by censors, buoyed a...
Government censorship in China has increasingly targeted books, bookstores, and publishers. Last...
The recent “4+4” scandal, which started with the public exposure of one doctor’s extramarital...
At Project Sinopsis, Ansel Li examines how many young Chinese are seeking solace in mystical...
In response to reports that India and Pakistan have agreed to a tenuous ceasefire following...
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...
At Project Sinopsis, Ansel Li examines how many young Chinese are seeking solace in mystical...
A viral scandal that started out as the tale of one doctor’s extramarital affairs and medical...
On Saturday, Beijing hosted the world’s first half-marathon in which humans competed alongside...
More than five years after the Wuhan lockdown and the death of COVID whistleblower Dr. Li...
Recent weeks have seen a mounting chorus of praise from Chinese companies and other organizations...
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...
Due to the “present complicated geopolitical situation,” the Hong Kong government has decided the...
A series of state-media reports on the theme of the May 1 International Workers Day provide a...
In the early hours of the morning of April 15, 2025, a lone protester lashed three long white...
This week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published “China...
Recent reports detail ways in which the Chinese government has instrumentalized digital...
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...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was...
A recent WeChat post from oft-controversial entrepreneur, publicity hound, and philanthropist Chen...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last...
After conducting nucleic acid testing on its 26 million residents this week, Shanghai remains...
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...
A series of state-media reports on the theme of the May 1 International Workers Day provide a...
In the early hours of the morning of April 15, 2025, a lone protester lashed three long white...
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...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected a U.S. peace plan that would freeze territory...
Global tributes poured in following the death of Pope Francis on Monday, as world leaders and...
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...
The first reaction by China’s state-media apparatus following the escalating U.S.-China trade war...
Hu Dehua, the third son of former General Secretary Hu Yaobang, died in Beijing on March 30. The...
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...
The Trump administration’s recent tariff measures triggered a geopolitical earthquake that has...
In recent days, the capture of two Chinese soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine...
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...
Due to the “present complicated geopolitical situation,” the Hong Kong government has decided the...
A series of state-media reports on the theme of the May 1 International Workers Day provide a...
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...
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...
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 massive success of Ne Zha 2, boosted by patriotic group-buys and shielded by censors, buoyed a...
Government censorship in China has increasingly targeted books, bookstores, and publishers. Last...
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...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was...
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...
At Project Sinopsis, Ansel Li examines how many young Chinese are seeking solace in mystical...
A viral scandal that started out as the tale of one doctor’s extramarital affairs and medical...
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...
An acidic waste spill by a Chinese company in Zambia has created a massive environmental crisis...
On Tuesday morning, a county in Tibet experienced one of its strongest earthquakes in years....
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...
Government censorship in China has increasingly targeted books, bookstores, and publishers. Last...
Due to the “present complicated geopolitical situation,” the Hong Kong government has decided the...
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...
Global tributes poured in following the death of Pope Francis on Monday, as world leaders and...
Following China’s unannounced naval exercises off the coast of Australia late last month, there...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
CDT is a non-profit media site, and we need your support. Your contribution will help us provide more translations, breaking news, and other content you love.
![Photo: Family [Yuyuan Shopping Center / Shanghai], by d’n’c](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Family-Yuyuan-Shopping-Center-Shanghai-by-dnc-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Night piece of Guiyang, Guizhou Province [HiRes+], by QuantFoto](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Night-piece-of-Guiyang-Guizhou-Province-by-QuantFoto-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Harbin [St. Sophia Cathedral], by Xiquinho Silva](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Harbin-by-Xiquinho-Silva-e1672460089395-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Zhangye Danxia Landform [Gansu Province], by vil.sandi](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Zhangye-Danxia-Landform-by-vil.sandi_-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: 兰州 [Lanzhou], by hongliang ren](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/兰州-by-hongliang-ren-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Shenzhen [Lihu Lake], by Tony](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Shenzhen-Lihu-Lake-by-Tony-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: 希拉穆仁草原 [Xilamuren Grassland, Inner Mongolia], by Frank Wang](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/希拉穆仁草原-Xilamuren-Grassland-Inner-Mongolia-by-Frank-Wang-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Untitled [Dujiangyan, Sichuan], by Jason](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Untitled-Jason-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Photo [Sunset at the Great Wall], by Bruno Abreu](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Photo-Sunset-at-the-Great-Wall-by-Bruno-Abreu-01182022-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: The summit [Changbaishan / 长白山天池], by Caitriana Nicholson](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/The-Summit-Changbaishan-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Photo [a street in the Muslim quarter of Xi’an], by Bruno Abreu](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Photo-a-street-in-the-Muslim-quarter-of-Xian-by-Bruno-Abreu-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: DSC01164 [New Century Global Center, Chengdu], by Felix Filnkoessl](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/DSC01164-New-Century-Global-Center-Chengdu-by-Felix-Filnkoessl-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: DSC_3584 [Ili, Xinjiang, China], by Felix Guan](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Felix-Guan-Ili-DSC_3584-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Skating [Shichahai, Beijing], by b cheng](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Skating-Shichahai-Beijing-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Dongfeng 153 [Taxkorgan, Kashgar, Xinjiang Region, China], by hans-johnson](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Dongfeng-153-by-hans-johnson-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: 瑞丽莫里瀑布 [Moli Waterfall, Ruili, Yunnan Province], by llee_wu](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/瑞丽莫里瀑布-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: 九华山 [Mount Jiuhua, Anhui Province], by Thomas_Yung](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/九华山-Mount-Jiuhua-Anhui-Province-by-Thomas_Yung-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: DSC_8623.06.莆田.步行街 [Putian Walking Street], by Michael Wong](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/14473421951_ae37ed70e2_k-440x264.jpg)
![Photo: Basketball [Hong Kong], by Robert Anders](https://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/33466895688_bf74abd0f4_c-440x264.jpg)
