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.”
Another year gone by, another heap of terms censored from the Chinese internet. The following themes are not the “most censored” words of 2024, but rather a retrospective of topics, chosen by CDT Chinese editors, that the Party-state deemed too sensitive and thus subject to various forms of censorship. These themes touch on economic anxiety, Xi Jinping’s leadership, the Two Sessions, the proposed national Internet ID system, the i-Soon data leak, and Chinese emigrants’ attempts to flee China for greener pastures abroad. For more censored and popular terms on the Chinese Internet, see our CDT Lexicon: 20th Anniversary edition, published last winter.
Optimism and Pessimism About China’s Economy
Sensitive words: The whole country is filled with an air of optimism (整个国家都洋溢着乐观向上的氛围)
Attempting to reassure the masses about China’s economic vitality, The People’s Daily Online published an article in February titled “The Whole Country Is Filled With an Air of Optimism”—on the same day that China’s stock market took a major tumble. Netizens voiced their frustrations on Weibo using a hashtag by the same title, leading the hashtag to eventually be blocked. Undeterred netizens then flocked to an innocuous post by the U.S. Embassy in China about wild giraffes and left hundreds of thousands of comments criticizing China’s poor financial management. Many of these comments were later censored. While the Chinese government has increased censorship of critical articles and commentary about the economy, many netizens expressed their economic anxiety about living through the “garbage time of history,” a term that was also censored.
Sensitive words: China’s economy + total collapse (中国经济 + 彻底崩溃); China + beset on all sides (中国 + 腹背受敌); economy + beset on all sides (经济 + 腹背受敌); fading prosperity (繁华渐逝); China’s economy + slump + balance sheet (中国经济 + 陷入 + 资产负债表); Third Plenum + no cure for China’s economy (三中全会 + 中国经济无解药)
In June, President Joe Biden stated in an interview with Time Magazine that China’s economy was “on the brink” of collapse. In July, a 30,000-character article titled “Fading Prosperity: The Chinese Economy is Beset on All Sides” was widely circulated on the Chinese internet for two days before being censored. Other notable posts critical of the Chinese economy were censored this year. In late February, a post by Tsinghua University sociologist Sun Liping about reviving the Chinese economy was deleted from WeChat. In March, Weibo censors deleted an essay blaming China’s stagnating economic growth on “a failure of political reform” that also compared the Party-state to gangsters and “underworld bosses.” In December, viral video and transcripts of two unusually critical speeches about the state of the Chinese economy by economists Gao Shanwen and Fu Peng were deleted from multiple platforms.
Sensitive words: Quangang District smashing pots to sell for scrap (泉港区砸锅卖铁); local government + smashing pots to sell for scrap (地方政府 + 砸锅卖铁); Bishan + smashing pots to sell for scrap (璧山 + 砸锅卖铁); Chongqing + smashing pots to sell for scrap (重庆 + 砸锅卖铁); smashing pots to sell for scrap + special working group (砸锅卖铁 + 工作专班); Haidong City, Qinghai + smashing pots to sell for scrap (青海海东市 + 砸锅卖铁)
In August, the term “smashing pots to sell for scrap” began to appear frequently in local government documents. The idiom refers to local governments trying to do everything in their power to reduce debt levels, even if it means selling off state assets or potentially curtailing local public services. A village in Jinan city, Shandong province, for example, reportedly sold off 30-year usage rights to the village’s “low-altitude economy.” Reacting to the news, one netizen lamented that these measures would not improve people’s livelihoods and instead would only serve to further enrich real-estate developers and other corporations.
Xi Jinping’s Leadership Team
Sensitive words: pancreas (胰腺); pancreatic cancer (胰腺癌); Xi Jinping rules China (习近平统治中国); Xi Jinping + the Emperor is pleased (习近平 + 龙颜大悦); Jinping + destined to fail (近平 + 注定失败); freedom of speech + Xi Jinping (言論自由 + 習近平)
In January, as the stock market continued to fall, Xi Jinping gave a speech on financial supervision that only further accelerated the plunge. Days later, an unconfirmed rumor circulated on X (formerly Twitter) that Xi was suffering from pancreatic cancer. Netizens joked that the only way for the Chinese stock market to survive would be for Xi to die. At around the same time, internet celebrity Wang Dajuan revealed that her husband Gao Bo had died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 32, and many netizens “maliciously” forwarded the news to draw parallels with the rumors about Xi. The hashtag “Internet celebrity Wang Dajuan’s husband died of pancreatic cancer” became a hot search topic on Weibo, and was then officially banned. Searching for the term “pancreatic cancer” on Weibo yielded only results from verified users, and on Douyin, only results from medical doctors.
Sensitive words: Xi Jinping + Minjiang New Army [a rumored political faction] (习近平 + 闽江新军); disaster + Xi Jin (災難 + 習近); Xi Jinping + personal centralization of power (习近平 + 个人集权); press conference (記者會/记者会); journalists’ questions (記者問/记者问); government work report (政府工作報告/政府工作报告); speech + thematic education (讲话 + 主题教育); premier + driving in reverse (总理 + 倒车; 总理 + 倒退)
During the Two Sessions annual meeting in early March, authorities stepped up censorship of terms related to Xi Jinping, his re-appointment as China’s leader, freedom of speech, and China’s economic downturn. Official reports during the Two Sessions mentioned varieties of “Xi Jinping Thought” and the phrase “with Xi Jinping as the core” many more times than in previous years. Also during the Two Sessions, a spokesperson for the National People’s Congress (NPC) announced that Premier Li Qiang would not hold a press conference, thereby ending a 30-year NPC tradition of the premier taking questions from the press. Many observers interpreted the move as another sign of China’s receding transparency and its leadership “driving in reverse.” After the announcement, a NetEase news feature on the history of the premier’s post-NPC press conference was deleted, and several official accounts that had shared the news on Weibo also hid a large number of netizen comments.
Growing Online Surveillance
Sensitive words: Internet IDs, credentials coming soon (网号网证要来了); Internet IDs coming soon (网络身份证要来了); national Internet ID system (国家网络身份认证); national internet ID system signals increased online standardization (推行网证是互联网走向规范重要标志)
Over the summer, various government agencies drafted new regulations for a national Internet ID system and solicited feedback from the public. During the consultation period, at least 67 apps had already rolled out beta tests of the system, and tests by CDT found that censors had restricted online discussion of the system to contain the public backlash. Weibo hashtags about the system were blocked, and the comment function was disabled under nearly all posts by verified accounts that wrote about the topic. At least eight articles published on social media by Chinese academics, legal experts, and commentators expressing serious concern about the proposed system were censored.
Sensitive words: i-Soon + hacker (ISoon + 黑客); i-Soon + leak (ISoon + 泄露); Anxun + hacker (安洵 + 黑客); Anxun + leak (泄密 + 安洵); cybersecurity + Anxun (網絡安全 + 安洵)
In February, a major data leak of internal documents from Chinese cybersecurity firm i-Soon, also known as Anxun, spotlighted the secretive world of Chinese state-backed hackers for hire. The documents referenced operations targeting a range of actors in over 20 countries. They also included promotional materials about technology that could ostensibly monitor public sentiment on social media inside China and hack accounts on X (formerly Twitter), as well as data that could pinpoint mobile phone users’ locations in real time. Targets included Uyghur, Tibetan, and Hong Kong rights groups in exile; a British think tank; a French university; Amnesty International; and NATO. The documents also shed light on China’s messy ecosystem of “patriotic” hackers who at times work for low pay, get caught up in financial disputes with other cybersecurity firms, and hustle to win contracts with state security agencies.
Zouxian: Walking to the U.S.
Sensitive words: zouxian (走线); zouxian guide (走线攻略); zouxian + U.S. (走线 + 美国); zouxian + Ecuador (厄瓜多尔 + 走线); China + illegal emigration (中国 + 偷渡); Ecuador + U.S. (厄瓜多尔 + 美国); zouxian + run to the U.S. (走线 + 润美)
In early February, American broadcaster CBS produced a special program on “60 Minutes” about Chinese migrants crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. The rise of Chinese migrants emigrating through Latin America to the southern border of the U.S., largely for political or economic reasons, has been referred to as zouxian, or the “walking route.” Some migrants interviewed by CBS said they learned about the route from the video-sharing platform Douyin. After the program aired, searches for “zouxian” and “zouxian guide” on Douyin yielded results unrelated to immigration, and searches for those terms on TikTok were banned for “violating community rules.”
In June, Ecuador suspended its visa-free entry policy for Chinese citizens, citing a worrying increase in Chinese illegal immigration to other countries. As one of only two countries in Latin America that offered visa-free entry for Chinese citizens, Ecuador was a popular starting point for those attempting to ultimately reach the U.S. Tens of thousands of Chinese migrants have embarked on perilous months-long journeys through jungles and gang-controlled territories in search of better opportunities abroad. Other Chinese migrants seeking to escape China, or run, have tried to enter the E.U. and use the Balkans as a runxue waypoint after more popular routes were cut off. The Chinese government has also increasingly forced certain citizens to hand in their passports to prevent this sort of emigration. And an October poll by the Pew Research Center found that 75 percent of Chinese immigrants cited the absence of state censorship as a benefit of life in the U.S. versus China.
Cindy Carter contributed to this post
