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.”
These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2024:
Bobby, Editor at CDT Chinese
CDT Pick: China Digital Space page: WeChat Public Accounts
Over the past year, CDT Chinese editors have created China Digital Space (CDS) pages for WeChat authors. By exploring CDS author pages, readers can now learn a considerable amount about a number of WeChat authors, including their names, backgrounds, and past articles that have been archived by CDT. These CDS pages reveal the WeChat accounts that CDT pays the most attention to. Our work is still not finished. Due to intense censorship on the Chinese internet, many authors register more than one account. For example, the journalist and commentator Zhang Feng runs three accounts simultaneously: “Chengdu Guest,” “City La-la-land,” and “Zhang Sanfeng’s World.” CDT has traced the connections between authors and the numerous accounts that they run. What’s more, a number of WeChat accounts have been completely erased by censors, forcing their authors to create entirely new accounts (for example, “Venerable Villain” and “Hui Always Has Thoughts”) that render their old accounts “historical memories.”
Alexander Boyd, Senior Editor at CDT English
CDT Pick: Translation: He Jiayan on the "Accelerating Collapse" of the Chinese Internet, by Cindy Carter
He Jiayan’s essay was, to my mind, the most important essay on China’s internet published this year. Rendered in full translation by Little Bluegill, aided by Cindy Carter’s virtuosic editing skills, He writes on the internet’s “lost generation,” those born in the ‘70s and ‘80s, whose digital pasts have been erased by the collapse of China’s pre-mobile internet. By He’s own rough estimates, 99% percent of the content on the pre-mobile internet represented by sites like NetEase, Sohu, Campus BBS, Xici Hutong, Kaidi Maoyan, Tianya Forum, Xiaonei Network (later Renren Network), Sina Weibo, and Baidu Message Boards has been deleted. He attributes this collapse to economics and censorship, which went “from nonexistent to existent, from lenient to strict, and from strict to even stricter.” He writes movingly that an entire generation risks being “left out of history,” to disastrous effect, if what little remains of the essays and arguments of the old internet is not saved. For CDT, where much of what we do is archiving articles on the brink of disappearing, his arguments hit close to home and provide urgency to our mission.
External Pick: Granta 169: China
Feng Li’s flashes of Chengdu. Shang Xuetao’s evocation of a fifth-rate actor in Beijing. Han Zhang on migrant lit in Picun. Translations by Jeremy Tiang. In photography, too, we learn from Daqing. Yu Hua! Mo Yan! Yan Lianke! Granta’s 169th edition is an invitation to a banquet. If my review sounds delirious it is because I am. This issue, a collage of translated fiction, reportage, new and archival photography, interview, and poetry, re-sparked in me the embers of joy that have always burned for China—and I imagine it will spark that joy and longing in you too.
Cindy Carter, Deputy Editor at CDT English
CDT Pick (single post): At Pro-Palestine Encampments, Chinese Students Find Space for Expression and Solidarity, by Arthur Kaufman
This May 2024 post from CDT English Editor Arthur Kaufman, featuring translations by CDT editors Tony Hu and Alexander Boyd, highlighted the personal stories of Chinese students who sought to express their solidarity with the people of Palestine, while braving the political risks of engaging in public activism abroad. At a time when Chinese students are experiencing severely curtailed freedoms at home—the crackdown that followed the 2022 White Paper protests, the cancellation of 2024 Halloween celebrations in Shanghai and other cities, and Zhengzhou university students being confined to their dorms after a youthful craze for “night cycling to Kaifeng” turned sour—it was inspiring to read how some Chinese overseas students have found new meaning by participating in the encampment movement and forging bonds of transnational solidarity.
CDT Pick (series): Translations About the Chinese Press Corps’ Uninspiring Performance at the Paris Olympics (Parts 1, 2, and 3), by Samuel Wade
This series of translations, published in September, provides insight into Chinese social media backlash to the disappointing showing of the large Chinese press corps sent to cover the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. One of the translated articles, later censored on WeChat, pointed out that “strict government controls [at home] are breeding media mediocrities.” Another article, by a former reporter, complained, “Real reporters in China are a rarer breed than pandas. We can’t send them off to clown around at the Olympics—we need them here at home, keeping an eye on the people’s hardships.”
External Pick: Bei Zhenying: "Program-think is just an ordinary person; any mythologization or stigmatization of him is a product of this distorted environment," by Mo Fei at the Substack newsletter WOMEN我们
This excellent and wide-ranging Chinese article, published in April, recounts how Bei Zhenying came to terms with the realization that her IT-worker husband, Ruan Xiaohuan, was—unbeknownst to her—a legendary underground blogger who posted trenchant socio-political content and tips for circumventing the Great Firewall under the online name “Program-think.” Following Ruan’s 2021 arrest and 2023 sentencing to seven years in prison for “subversion of state power,” Bei has been his staunch defender, supporting his right to exercise free speech. “These political conditions are growing out of poor soil,” Bei says in the article. “Before you can grow crops, first you have to plant grass to nourish the soil. As the soil’s fertility improves, you can cultivate better things. This is what Ruan Xiaohuan was doing.”
Dong Ge, Executive Editor for CDT Chinese
CDT Pick: Voices of November
The short film “Voices of April,” a 2022 documentary of resistance to the Shanghai lockdown that went massively viral and then was entirely scrubbed from the Chinese internet, has for the most part been forgotten. Yet CDT’s monthly “Voices of…” series—which pays tribute to the original that inspired it—continues to this day, and has become a uniquely valuable method of documenting popular suffering and resistance in China.
2024’s “Voices of November” documented major news events such as Henan university students’ night rides to Kaifeng, the mass-casualty vehicular attack on crowds at a Zhuhai sports stadium, and the attempted vehicular attack at a Hunan elementary school. It also documented some of the day-to-day struggles of the Chinese people, including conflict between chengguan urban enforcers and street vendors, and workers taking collective action to demand the wages they are owed.
External Pick: Where the Malan Blooms, by Yangyang Cheng at ChinaFile
With an intellectual’s conscience and a physicist’s specialist knowledge, Yangyang Cheng exposes the white-washed reality and hidden history of China’s nuclear weapons program, the plunder of indigenous people’s resources and complete disregard for their lives and livelihoods, as well as the ideological changes in the Communist Party and theories of nuclear development. It is well worth a read.
Arthur Kaufman, Editor at CDT English
CDT Pick: Interview with Gen Z Chinese Censor: June 4 is Internet "Folk Festival," by Alexander Boyd
This interview with a young Chinese censor—published by the independent Chinese-language magazine Mang Mang and expertly translated by Alexander Boyd at CDT—is a must-read. Not only does it provide a rare glimpse behind the curtain of online censorship, but it also lays out in detail the moral psychology of those tasked with scrubbing the Internet. The interviewee is candid and unapologetic in justifying their work: “we’re just a group of people struggling to make a living. […F]or people on the bottom rung of society, we really don’t have any other choice.” As for questions of justice: “The problem isn’t the job; it’s the people who created this job.” Whatever one’s moral judgment of the situation, it’s essential to engage with voices like these that are seldom heard.
External Pick: “Are You Okay?” by Norie at the Made in China Journal
One small ray of hope during this depressing year was Chinese students who found opportunities to express their solidarity with Palestine, while braving the political risks of public activism abroad. In this essay for the Made in China Journal, a Chinese student in Middle Eastern studies recounts her transformative experience attending several protests during the Palestine solidarity movement in New York. Initially insecure about her identity and credentials, she ultimately found the courage to lean into her moral convictions while in the company of empathetic peers from various backgrounds, all driven by a shared purpose: “I write, with a broken heart for Palestine and a mended heart of love, and I own my credentials.” We must shed our own inhibitions and follow her example.
Ryan, Editor at CDT Chinese
CDT Pick: 404 Stories of the Year
Collecting censored stories from the Chinese internet is one of China Digital Times’ most crucial missions. Through these deleted stories and the speed at which they are removed, we can observe how sensitive different topics are in the eyes of Chinese authorities, providing an excellent perspective on Chinese public opinion and politics.
In 2024, we archived 357 deleted stories (404ed stories), which represent just the tip of the iceberg of all deleted content – as our collection primarily focuses on news-related and trending topics. Among these 404ed stories, incidents and random acts of violence accounted for the highest proportion, while economic factors were a consistent theme across multiple censored topics.
In this annual 404ed stories review, our editors selected 12 stories covering the most noteworthy news topics from January through December. This curated "Reader’s Digest" of Chinese 404ed stories is definitely worth reading. [Part 1 of the post’s counterpart on CDT English is online now.]
External Pick: Interview with Su Xiaokang, by Chai Jing
Su Xiaokang was one of the chief writers of the documentary "River Elegy" (Heshang, 河殇). When it aired on CCTV in 1988, nearly 300 million Chinese watched it, triggering a massive political storm that directly impacted the fate of CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. The documentary harshly criticized Chinese traditional agricultural civilization and cultural icons like the Great Wall and the dragon, while expressing admiration for maritime civilization as a symbol of freedom and democracy. After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, "River Elegy" was banned for allegedly promoting "bourgeois liberalization" and "nihilism," and was labeled a "blueprint for counter-revolutionary rebellion." Su Xiaokang was branded the "behind-the-scenes instigator of unrest" and subsequently fled to the United States, where he remains today.
This is one of the most moving interviews I’ve heard this year. Su not only revealed the high-level political struggles triggered by "River Elegy" and its connection to Zhao Ziyang but also deeply reflected on his youthful attention-seeking behavior through the documentary. Such self-reflection is rare among Chinese intellectuals. The interview concluded with Su discussing how suffering is fundamental to human existence, accompanied by "River Elegy’s" theme song "The Yellow River’s Ninety-Nine Bends" (天下黄河九十九道弯) creating a deeply stirring moment.
Samuel Wade, Executive Editor for CDT English
CDT Pick: Translation: “Confessions of a Collegiate ‘Zhengzhou-to-Kaifeng Night-Cyclist,’” by Cindy Carter
One of the more uplifting stories this year was the viral phenomenon of students —sometimes more than 100,000 at once—cycling 30 miles from Zhengzhou to Kaifeng at night in search of soup dumplings. Cindy Carter translated one participant’s account of the adventure and its aftermath, which saw students confined to campus at weekends and kept occupied with patriotic war movies. Photos of the chaos left in the night-riders’ wake show that some response was needed, but it’s a shame it took this form.
External Pick: Tone Deaf, by Rachel Cheung at The Wire China
This is an in-depth chronicle of the gradual constriction of the once widely celebrated English-language state media news site Sixth Tone. Cheung describes in depressing detail how its early promise was eroded with restrictions on environmental and LGBTQ+ content as early as 2017, and finally crushed under the weight of political sensitivities surrounding the pandemic. The piece includes an excellent array of insider voices and expert commentary, and sheds light more broadly on the workings of censorship in China and the growing difficulties of reporting on the country.
I didn’t deliberately pick a matching pair, but both of these stories illustrate how counterproductively hyperactive the PRC’s political immune system has become. Xi’s China can’t resist stifling the old Sixth Tone, or treating youthful exuberance like a viral outbreak. A China that could embrace these things, or tolerate them, or at least handle them with a lighter touch, would be stronger and healthier.
Xiao Qiang, Founder and Editor-in-Chief
CDT Pick: 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 a particular focus on efforts by authorities to tame it, and by others to push back. It contains 104 of the terms that have resonated most strongly in this arena, from official slogans and their irreverent appropriations to protest cries and nationalist accusations. [Source]
Yakexi, Editor at CDT Chinese
CDT Pick: Interview with Gen Z Chinese Censor: June 4 is Internet “Folk Festival,” by Alexander Boyd
CDT translates a revealing interview by digital magazine Mang Mang with a young Chinese censor. In the interview, the censor talks about their experiences working for one of China’s biggest search engines, including the arbitrary nature of censorship, the intense pressure and guilt associated with their role. This interview offers a rare, insider perspective on the mechanisms and personal toll of China’s censorship regime. It is also elegantly translated.
External Pick: Interview with Perry Link on his June 4th Story, by Peking Hotel
In this episode, renowned China expert Perry Link discusses his friendship with Chinese intellectual and physicist Fang Lizhi, and how he helped Fang seek refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Peking Hotel is an oral history project that interviews journalists, academics and policymakers about their experiences in China from decades past. Their stories serve as a reminder of “what China used to be and what it is capable of becoming.” If you are interested in hearing about how some of the most influential people see China and the intimate details of their experiences there, Peking Hotel is worth a read (and listen).
See also previous editors’ picks from 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
