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.”
CDT Chinese publishes a column called CDT Reports, which collects external reports from think tanks, academic journals, NGOs, the media, and other sources on topics related to various human rights issues in China. This year, CDT Chinese published 150 of these report columns, covering freedom of speech, freedom of the press, public opinion polls, transnational repression, Uyghur human rights, Tibetan human rights, religious freedom, digital authoritarianism, labor rights, China’s economy, the rights of women and LGBTQ+ groups, and U.S.-China relations. The list below is a sample of the most notable reports of 2024, as chosen by CDT Chinese editors.
1. V-Dem, “Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot”
This flagship report by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden measured the receding ground of democracies around the world. It noted that autocratization is ongoing in 42 countries, home to 35 percent of the world’s population, and that “[a]lmost all components of democracy are getting worse in more countries than they are getting better, compared to ten years ago.” China is ranked 171 out of 179 countries on the report’s Liberal Democracy Index, and it falls similarly close to the bottom in the four related categories. The report also labels the BRICS+, which is largely led by China, a “Club of Autocracies.” (CDT Reports column)
2. Human Rights Watch, “‘Educate the Masses to Change Their Minds’: China’s Forced Relocation of Rural Tibetans”
This report shows that Chinese media coverage in many cases contradicts official claims that rural Tibetans gave their consent to relocate to urban areas. Drawing on over one thousand official Chinese media articles as well as government publications and academic field studies, the report indicates that participation in “whole-village relocation” programs in Tibet is compulsory and enforced by coercion. Between 2000 and 2025, the Chinese authorities will have relocated over 930,000 rural Tibetans, according to official statistics. (CDT Reports column; CDT English coverage.)
3. Amnesty International, “‘On my campus, I am afraid’: China’s targeting of overseas students stifles rights”
Using in-depth interviews with 32 Chinese students, including 12 from Hong Kong, studying at universities in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S., the report highlights the climate of fear on university campuses, along with responses from university administrations. Among the various findings, the report details how the Chinese government’s transnational repression has frightened some Chinese students to such an extent that it causes isolation and severe health problems. (CDT Reports column; CDT English coverage)
4. Exovera’s Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “Censorship Practices of the People’s Republic of China”
This report outlines the nature and reach of China’s censorship apparatus, the methods and technologies that underpin it, the international activities it conducts, and the implications for the U.S. It states that under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Party-state has streamlined control over online content, improved censors’ technical skills, and made legal reforms to broaden state supervision over media. The outcome is what the Commission calls “the world’s most elaborate and pervasive censorship apparatus.” (CDT Reports column; CDT English coverage)
5. Amnesty International and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, “‘I yearn to see you’ – Valentine’s letters to activists detained in mainland China and Hong Kong”
Ahead of Valentine’s Day, the partners of three detained Chinese human rights activists wrote letters to express their love and highlight the severe treatment of their partners. The group included Geng He and her husband Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer who was forcibly disappeared; activist Ye Du under police surveillance in Guangzhou and her partner Chow Hang-tung, a lawyer detained for organizing a vigil for the Tiananmen crackdown; and Luo Shengchun, the wife of human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for subversion of state power. (CDT Reports column)
6. Google Threat Intelligence Group, “Seeing Through a GLASSBRIDGE: Understanding the Digital Marketing Ecosystem Spreading Pro-PRC Influence Operations”
Google researchers documented an umbrella group of four different private companies operating hundreds of fake websites that posed as news sites and newswire services from dozens of countries. These sites demonstrated an ability to tailor their content to specific regional audiences and to appear as legitimate news. The examples in this report suggest that the companies took instructions from a shared customer that was organizing a coordinated influence campaign aligned with PRC political agendas.
(CDT Reports column)
7. The China Quarterly, “Do Chinese Citizens Conceal Opposition to the CCP in Surveys? Evidence from Two Experiments”
Erin Baggott Carter, Brett L. Carter, and Stephen Schick at the University of Southern California published findings from two public opinion surveys that challenged common understandings of how Chinese people feel about the CCP. In addition to asking directly for Chinese citizens’ views of the CCP, which elicits extremely high degrees of support, the researchers also asked in the form of list experiments that provide a greater sense of anonymity. The result of this second method was the CCP receiving support among only 50 to 70 percent of respondents. The Chinese leadership may therefore not be as popular as previously thought. (CDT Reports column)
