As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.”

The censored articles and essays from 2024 compiled below represent only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, either through targeted deletion by platform censors, or via deletion (sometimes under duress) by the individual who posted it. Between January 1 and December 13, 2024, CDT Chinese editors archived and added 357 new posts, essays, articles, and videos to our “404 Deleted Content Archive,” which now contains over 1,888 items in total. Although it is just the tip of the iceberg, CDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive” is an invaluable resource for preserving online Chinese discourse and for identifying topics that the Party-state deems “sensitive” and endeavors to suppress.

For the end user, attempting to click the original links to such censored content can yield different error messages, depending on which platform it was originally posted on. WeChat informs you that “This content cannot be viewed because it violates regulations,” while Weibo displays the error message “This Weibo post/Weibo user does not exist.” Other sites incorporate a bit of humor into their deleted-content messages. The popular Q&A site Zhihu offers this error message: “404: You seem to have arrived in a wasteland devoid of knowledge." Video-sharing platform Bilibili’s message strikes a note of surprise: "Huh? The video’s disappeared?”

In 2024, China Digital Times archived more censored and deleted content than in 2023 (357 vs. 287 items, respectively), covering a wide range of subject matter. The largest proportion of these censored items involved accidents that occurred in China this year, including fires, explosions, landslides, vehicular crashes, expressway collapses, and dam breaches. The second most common category of censored content was indiscriminate “revenge against society” attacks (also called "Xianzhong incidents"), some of which had very high death tolls. In 2024, a string of such vehicular and stabbing attacks at schools, shopping centers, and sports stadiums caused nationwide alarm, resulted in heightened security measures, and led to calls for better social and mental healthcare services. In 2024, there was also a great deal of censored economic content, particularly speeches or articles expressing pessimism about the state of the Chinese economy, skepticism about the government’s ability to manage the economy, or questioning official economic statistics or pronouncements.

CDT editors have compiled a month-by-month summary of the most-censored topics, along with examples of particularly notable or influential censored essays and articles.

January 2024

• “Three Decades of Working Like This,” a video lecture on the subject of elderly migrant workers by migrant-workforce researcher Qiu Fengxian, had been subject to censorship in 2023. It was taken offline completely in early January 2024, and a hashtag of the documentary’s title was blocked on Weibo
• Comments from the director of a Shandong television station, bragging that “we never conduct cross-provincial public opinion supervision” (i.e., we never investigate important news stories in other provinces)
• After a fire at Yingcai School in Fangcheng, Henan province, killed 13 third-grade boys as they slept in their dormitory, a hashtag and posts about the fire and its death toll were deleted from Weibo. “Thirteen lives don’t even merit a hashtag,” complained one Weibo user. Also censored was a Weibo post by Tsinghua University law professor Lao Dongyan, who excoriated Henan’s media outlets for not even republishing the Henan Fire Department’s official notice about the fire, much less conduct interviews or on-site investigations. “This is a step beyond mere censorship,” Lao wrote. “It must be a conscious choice, born of internalized habit”
• News of a January 24 fire in a building in Xinyu city, Jiangxi province, that killed 39 people and injured 9
• A deleted exposé by acclaimed investigative journalist Wang Heyan about the trial of eight police officers who were convicted of the torture and death of Sun Renze, a 30-year-old Chinese man, while in police custody. The article’s censorship attracted a fair amount of attention due to its graphic descriptions of torture methods used by Chinese police, and the fact that it appeared in Caixin, a well-respected mainstream news outlet known for its business and investigative journalism
• An article about “the era of waiting for official announcements” before reporting on stories

A WeChat article by Peng Yuanwen, deleted on January 22, noted the dearth of media coverage about huge news stories—including the mother-of-eight kept chained in captivity in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province; and the lockdown of Shanghai during China’s “zero-COVID” policy—as emblematic of a passive media culture in which Chinese journalists now “wait for the official announcement” to appear before pursuing a story:

Reporters in the past probably couldn’t have imagined how important "waiting for the official announcement" would become to news production today. Put it this way: for any news event that is even slightly “sensitive,” if there is no official announcement, it will not be reported on at all.

[…] Of course, it wasn’t always like this. Even three or four years ago, “waiting for the official announcement” before reporting on a story was an uncommon phenomenon. Of course, it was nice if an official announcement happened to be available, but if it wasn’t, media outlets would simply conduct their own investigations and fact-checking before publishing articles on the story. But in the past two or three years, the practice of waiting for the official announcement has become ubiquitous: it would be fair to describe it as the norm, with very few exceptions.

The reason for this is simple. An official announcement by government authorities serves as both an endorsement and a permission slip. If a media outlet later encounters trouble over a story it has published, it can point to the official announcement as a sort of disclaimer of responsibility.

The surface manifestation of this phenomenon is that a considerable portion of media reports are now cribbed directly from official announcements—sometimes, not even a word has been changed, nor any context added.

The problem with waiting for an official announcement before reporting on a story is that it renders the media pointless. Setting other issues aside and just focusing on the issue of timeliness, if media reports always appear later than the official announcement, does the media even have any value? [Chinese]

February 2024

• “The Whole Country Is Filled With an Air of Optimism,” a jarringly rose-tinted People’s Daily op-ed
• Argentinian soccer star Lionel Messi’s surprise absence from a Hong Kong exhibition match, and what was seen as his “avoidance” of shaking hands with Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee
• Alexi Navalny’s death in a Russian penal colony
• Indebted local governments using intimidation tactics and local police and prosecutors to “criminalize creditors”
• A homicide case with multiple victims in Zhaike village, Ju county, Shandong province

On February 8, a post about a Guangzhou public opinion poll showing the largest drop in public satisfaction in 30 years was deleted after being published by the WeChat account of He Wenwei, a Guangzhou-based business blogger. Poll respondents expressed dissatisfaction in a number of areas, including the state of the private economy, the outlook for employment, and their current incomes:

Conclusion 1: Public satisfaction with the state of the economy continued to fall after 2022’s sharp decline, dropping to the lowest level since 2015

Highlight: In the 46 polls we have conducted since 1990, never before has there been such a marked decline in 20 out of 26 indicators.

Conclusion 2: Assessments of employment and income continue to decline

1. Employment: Only 36% of residents expressed satisfaction with employment prospects, the lowest figure since 2017. Among respondents who are currently employed, 71% believe that it will be difficult or relatively difficult to find a job in 2023.
2. Income: Only 31% of residents were satisfied with their income, the lowest figure since 2017. For the first time, income dissatisfaction exceeded 20%, with one out of every five respondents expressing dissatisfaction with their income.

Conclusion 3: Young people, people with lower incomes, and people with lower levels of education are highly dissatisfied

1. Among low-income people, the satisfaction rate dropped from 32% to 20%, and dissatisfaction rose from 19% to 28%, which constitutes a qualitative shift from positive to negative.
2. Among people with lower levels of education (junior high school and below), the satisfaction rate was 30% and the dissatisfaction rate was 25%, with one out of every four people expressing dissatisfaction.
3. Among young people (from 26-30 years old), the satisfaction rate dropped from 55% to 36%, and the dissatisfaction rate rose from 9% to 22%, making this the most dissatisfied cohort among all age groups.

[Note that these are three “core target groups” for stability maintenance.]

Conclusion 4: Satisfaction with “Private Enterprise Development” has hit a record low

[…] Conclusion 5: The majority of citizens do not expect their incomes to rise, and private enterprises exhibit little confidence in their economic prospects for 2024

Given that 70% of citizens do not expect their incomes to rise, the transmission effects of monetary and fiscal policies will inevitably be overwhelmed by lack of public confidence. [Source]

March 2024

• A gas-leak explosion in Yanjiao, near Beijing, that killed seven, injured 27, and destroyed a four-story building. Reporters from state-media outlets China Central Television (CCTV) and China Media Group (CMG) who tried to report from the scene were roughed up by uniformed police and guards
• The cancelation of the Chinese premier’s customary post-NPC (National People’s Congress) press conference
• Extreme Chinese nationalists’ attack on bottled water company Nongfu Spring
• Nationalist blogger Mao Xinghuo’s lawsuit against Chinese Nobel Laureate for Literature Mo Yan

Social media interest in the cancellation of the Chinese premier’s long-running post-NPC press conference was intense and highly critical. “The premiership has been utterly marginalized,” proclaimed one social media user. Another wrote: “The NPC raised their hands, the CPPCC applauded, the premier took no questions, and the people were allowed no discussion.” On March 4, a NetEase News special feature titled “Past and Present Incarnations of the Premier’s Press Conference” was deleted, discussions of the topic were censored on Weibo, and a search for the hashtag “There will be no premier’s press conference after the closing ceremony of this year’s legislative session” returned an error message on Weibo. A portion of the deleted NetEase feature—which prominently mentioned the contributions of the foreign press corps over the years—is translated below:

Since 1993, the press conferences held by the premier after the closing of the Two Sessions have become a customary and institutionalized practice. The number of media outlets in attendance at the press conferences has ranged from 600 to 800.

Comparing the various press conferences held by premiers over the years, we found that the number of journalist questions was usually no more than 20, and the duration was generally between 1.5 and 2.5 hours. One notable exception was the press conference held by Premier Wen Jiabao in 2012, which lasted nearly three hours.

[…] Foreign journalists have focused on sensitive issues such as Tibet and human rights

[…] At the annual press conference, the issues that journalists have been most interested in include China’s economic development, the yuan’s exchange rate, Tibet, Taiwan, Sino-American relations, Sino-Japanese relations, human rights, Hong Kong, and the premier’s self-evaluation.

For example, in 2008, before the Beijing Olympic Games, there were many questions about the issue of Tibet. Among the 13 media outlets that were given the opportunity to ask questions, reporters from five outlets, including CNN, mentioned the situation in Tibet. That year, Reuters also posed a question about human rights. In 2012, AFP asked an even more direct question about Tibetan self-immolations. Questions from core state-media outlets have also hit on sensitive issues. In 2013, for example, China Daily asked a question about reforming the re-education-through-labor system.

[…] In addition to economic issues, major events that have occurred at home and abroad over the past 20 years have always been part of the premier’s press conference. These include the Asian financial crisis, China’s accession to the WTO, SARS, the Olympics, and much more. [Chinese]

April 2024

• Germany’s legalization of recreational cannabis use
• “Russia’s filial sons,” a derogatory term for Chinese netizens who exhibit fawning admiration for Russia and Putin
• Natural-gas fee spikes in Chongqing and Chengdu, Sichuan province
• “Yunhao blocks the plow”: a viral video of village deputy Party secretary Ji Yunhao and other cadres blocking local farmers from doing spring plowing unless the farmers agreed to pay extortionate fees

May 2024

• Collapse of a stretch of the Meizhou-Dabu Expressway in Guangdong province that killed 48 motorists and injured 30. Media coverage was muted, and many posts and comments were deleted from social media
• Online backlash to Baidu vice-president Qu Jing’s video comments glorifying overwork
• Controversy over a Chinese travel company’s package tour to see a Russian military parade commemorating the annexation of Vladivostok (formerly Chinese territory)
• Lou Ye’s latest work “An Unfinished Film,” set during Wuhan’s COVID lockdown
• A wave of suicides off a bridge in Taiyuan, Shanxi

A WeChat article titled “The Chinese Internet Is Rapidly Collapsing” attracted tens of thousands of views and spurred an enthusiastic response before it was eventually censored on May 22. Written by He Jiayan, a blogger who frequently writes about notable businesspeople and entrepreneurs, the article explored the massive and accelerating deletion of content from the Chinese-language internet, particularly from the pre-mobile internet era:

After experimenting with a number of different search engines to search for the names of various people during various time periods, I discovered a shocking phenomenon:

The content from nearly all popular Chinese-language websites of that era has completely disappeared. This includes content from NetEase, Sohu, Campus BBS, Xici Hutong, Kaidi Maoyan, Tianya Forum, Xiaonei Network (later Renren Network), Sina Weibo, and Baidu Message Boards, as well as content from a vast number of personal websites. The only exception is Sina.com, where some information from a decade or so ago can still be found, but 99.9999% of the old content has vanished.

There is a grave problem of which most people are unaware: the Chinese-language internet is rapidly collapsing, and online content from the pre-mobile era has almost entirely disappeared.

We thought that the internet would never forget, but as it turns out, the internet has the memory of a goldfish.

I’ve noticed the problem because I frequently use the web to research biographical information on fascinating people for my He Jiayan public WeChat account.

Over the past two years, I’ve noticed a marked and rapid drop-off in the amount of original, primary-source content on the internet. I used to be able to locate original news articles about the people I write about, but that content has gradually disappeared. I used to be able to find the original versions of speeches made by those individuals, or articles that they wrote, but those, too, have gradually disappeared. Many original videos of interesting interviews or conversations with those individuals have likewise disappeared.

It’s like there’s a webpage-devouring monster, chomping its way through the timeline of our history. It started by taking small bites, then bigger and bigger mouthfuls, until it progressed to devouring five- and ten-year chunks of content from the Chinese internet.

By the time we come to our senses, we will discover that everything on the Chinese internet prior to the mobile-internet era has disappeared, including portal sites, the websites of institutions and organizations, personal web pages, campus BBS, public forums, Sina Weibo, and Baidu Message Boards, as well as all manner of documents, photos, music, and videos.

Over a decade ago, while in the process of setting up a new computer, I compressed a bunch of photos and documents into a ZIP file and saved it on a certain BBS server. But a few years later, I discovered that the entire BBS was gone. I used to have a Hotmail account containing many precious emails, but that has disappeared as well. And all of the content I posted on Renren and MySpace has disappeared.

We used to think the internet would be able to archive everything, but as it turns out, it archives nothing. [Source]

June 2024

• June 24 stabbings of two Japanese nationals and a Chinese school bus attendant near a Japanese school bus-stop in Suzhou. School bus attendant Hu Youping was killed while bravely trying to protect the students in her care
• The non-fatal stabbings of four American teachers in Beishan Park, Jilin, Shandong province
• Anecdotal reports of retrospective corporate tax audits stretching back three decades (China’s State Administration of Taxation has denied this)
• An “institutional strength index” designed to assess the financial health of local governments, proposed by a WeChat finance blogger named Liu Xiaobo

The Suzhou stabbings, in particular, caused some online commentators to reflect on whether the attack was linked to a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment in China and the proliferation of anti-Japanese content on Chinese social media. A now-deleted post from WeChat account 麟阁经略 (@língéjīnglüè) wrote that the stabbing was not an isolated incident, and blamed the condoning of past anti-Japanese and xenophobic incidents:

Some people in this world harbor a hatred they learned in unknown quarters. They vent their dissatisfaction with life on innocent people who cross their path. What’s more, they think they’re righteous and courageous in doing so.

But what if this wasn’t just an isolated, random incident, but rather was incited by a long-term climate of fear and hatred? Beatings of people wearing kimonos, threats on Weibo to blow up the German embassy, false allegations that illustrations of the sun are references to the Japanese imperial flag, the harassment of readers of foreign poetry as “slaves to all things western” … there has been too much condoning of incidents like these. [Source]