As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.”
These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2025:
Samuel Wade, Executive Editor at CDT English
CDT Pick: I was very happy that CDT was able to translate and publish Chai Jing’s interview with “Macaron,” a Chinese mercenary fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Like Chai’s subsequent interview with Chinese Civil War survivor Gao Binghan, also brilliantly translated by my colleague Cindy Carter, the text offers a humane counterpoint to aggressive nationalist drumbeats. It also adds depth to perceptions of Chinese fighters who are often portrayed as blank geopolitical datapoints. One thing I found striking was the resonance between the bleakly resigned tone of Macaron’s account and various interviews we’ve seen with Chinese censorship workers over the years.
External Pick: I knew I’d be picking Jessica Batke and Laura Edelson’s report “The Locknet: How China Controls Its Internet and Why It Matters” even before I’d finished reading it. It’s concise, but covers a lot of ground thoroughly, and it’s impressively approachable for newcomers. Those more familiar with the topic will also find it valuable because of the authors’ careful fusion of their complementary expertise in China studies and computer science, respectively, which I discussed with them in an interview for CDT. There’s a whole syllabus of further reading in the references. It’s really an exceptional resource.
Bobby, Editor at CDT Chinese
In the past year, three video creators—Hu Chenfeng, Brother Feng (real name Zhou Lifeng), and Dai Meng—have occupied a conspicuous position within China’s online public sphere. Despite their divergent narrative styles and performative strategies, their productions converge around a shared thematic focus: the structural predicament of lower-class men in contemporary China. This predicament encompasses labor insecurity, the intensification of everyday economic pressure, exclusion and frustration in the domain of marriage and intimate relations, and the experience of expanding systemic constraints under conditions of decelerating economic growth.
Through a process of collective interpretation and abstraction, online audiences summarized the central claims associated with each creator into what came to be labeled the “Three Grand Theories”: Hu Chenfeng’s "Apple vs. Android Theory"; Brother Feng’s "Theory of Sexual Repression"; and Dai Meng’s “Theory of the Manual-Laborer Mentality." While these formulations do not constitute “theories” in the strict academic sense, they function as vernacular conceptual frameworks—heuristic devices through which dispersed social experiences are named, simplified, and rendered communicable within a networked environment.
The analytical significance of the “Three Grand Theories” lies not in their internal rigor, but in their discursive effects. By translating diffuse structural pressures into accessible explanatory schemas, they contributed to a popular rearticulation of social reality, one that implicitly challenged officially sanctioned narratives of stability, mobility, and individual responsibility. It was precisely this capacity to reframe lived experience—rather than any formal theoretical ambition—that led authorities to regard these discourses as possessing a destabilizing, deconstructive potential.
Consequently, the three creators were successively removed from major platforms, and public discussion of their respective theories rapidly receded. Prior to this erasure, CDT Chinese had already documented the circulation and reception of these ideas, providing detailed expository accounts of each “theory.” These records now constitute an important archive of ephemeral popular theorization, capturing how non-elite actors briefly articulated systemic anxieties in the digital public sphere before such articulation was rendered unspeakable.
External Pick: China Digital Times: We Are Today’s "Resistance Media," from the podcast 西郊打边炉 (Xījiāo dǎ biānlú, "Hotpot conclave in the western suburbs")
This episode of the podcast 西郊打边炉, part of the series "What are our ‘foreign forces’ up to?" about Chinese diaspora media, features an interview with CDT Founder and Editor-in-Chief Xiao Qiang. (It was also republished by CDT with a complete Chinese transcript.) The discussion focuses on the origins and development of China Digital Times, the evolution of China’s internet censorship system, and long-term changes in the simplified Chinese-language media ecosystem. It also addresses the role of digital surveillance, artificial intelligence, and platform governance in shaping contemporary information control related to China.
Dong Ge, Executive Editor at CDT Chinese
CDT Pick: 2025 Year-End Podcast: “Relaying the Baton” in the Endless Race to Outpace Censorship
In this year-end podcast episode, editors from various sections of CDT Chinese reflect on their work over the past year, and explore the ways in which Chinese public and societal discourse was constrained in 2025, how official censorship operates, what avenues remain for ordinary people wishing to speak out, and why expression still matters, even in an increasingly constricted space.
A Chinese mercenary known as “Macaron” was interviewed by Chai Jing via video link from Macaron’s location, an underground bunker on the front lines of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This interview offers viewers a first-hand look at the bloodshed, brutality, manipulation, and deception perpetrated by certain nations and national alliances. Not only does war destroy our humanity, it also breeds all manner of other evils. (With Chai Jing’s permission, her interview with Macaron was republished by CDT Chinese with a complete Chinese transcript, and translated by CDT English in parts one and two.)
Frank, Editor at CDT Chinese
For a long time, the story of General Xu Qinxian’s refusal to deploy troops in 1989 existed in the public memory primarily as text-based rumors or fragmented oral histories. This court footage, published by CDT with a full Chinese transcript, is invaluable not merely as archival evidence filling a crucial gap, but for its visceral quality. It pulls a figure often treated as a historical symbol back into a concrete, human reality. Watching it, I was struck less by the legal arguments than by Xu’s demeanor, like a quiet, stubborn dignity maintained in the face of the state machinery. It transforms our understanding of that spring from simply “knowing” the facts to witnessing the heavy, personal price of conscience.
External Pick: A Wall Behind A Wall: Emerging Regional Censorship in China
GFW Report by Mingshi Wu, Ali Zohaib, Zakir Durumeric, Amir Houmansadr, and Eric Wustrow
I have a particular appreciation for research that disrupts established narratives with rigorous methodology. This paper does exactly that by challenging the monolithic image of the Great Firewall. The authors uncover a trend of “censorship federalization,” where regional ISPs implement blocking mechanisms that are distinct from, and sometimes more aggressive than the central infrastructure. It is a chilling read that maps how digital authoritarianism is evolving from a centralized gatekeeper into something more pervasive, filtering down from the network’s main arteries into its very capillaries.
Elijah, Editor at CDT Chinese
In 2025, the CCP’s censorship has entered a state of comprehensive expansion—its boundaries increasingly blurred and its logic unpredictable. The targets of censorship are no longer limited to “dissenting voices,” but extend to any content that might spark discussion beyond the authorities’ control.
Against this backdrop, China Digital Times’ long-running “404 Deleted Content Archive” offers a systematic record of the CCP’s ever-tightening censorship. The 2025 annual collection of 404’d articles is not only a compilation of high-profile pieces removed from the Chinese internet over the past year, but also a retrospective on the events and trends that the authorities have deemed sensitive or threatening during that time.
External Pick: Confessions of "Political Depression," by Ji Suyan, from WHYNOT (歪脑, Wāinǎo) and Voice the Voiceless (低音, Dīyīn)
This reportage feature draws on the firsthand accounts of several young Chinese individuals to depict the growing anxiety, exhaustion, and sense of powerlessness that accumulate as they continue to follow public affairs and attempt to engage with or respond to political realities. The “political depression” described in the piece is not confined to the high-pressure environment of mainland China; it also extends to many overseas Chinese, especially younger generations, who maintain dissenting positions in relatively safer spaces yet continue to bear long-term emotional strain, moral pressure, and fractured identities, caught in a constant tension between attention, expression, and self-protection.
Ryan, Editor at CDT Chinese
CDT Pick: Memorial Wall for Victims of Indiscriminate Attacks in China
Against the backdrop of China’s post-pandemic economic slump, a wave of violent crimes has swept across the country. In many instances, the relentless censorship apparatus has suppressed the flow of information, turning the public’s fundamental right to know into a luxury. Even when domestic media cover these events, public anger, confusion, and the search for truth are inevitably stonewalled by brief, boilerplate "blue-and-white" official police bulletins.
What follows is a familiar pattern: reports are scrubbed, witnesses and grieving families are silenced, and the perpetrators’ backgrounds and motives remain unverifiable. Individual victims are rendered faceless, and in many cases, even the act of mourning is forbidden.
In 2025, China Digital Times established this Memorial Wall for Victims of Indiscriminate Attacks to provide a lasting record of these incidents nationwide and to honor and mourn the lives lost.
External Pick: ICIJ: China Targets
“China Targets,” a cross-border investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and 42 media partners, exposes the sprawling reach of Beijing’s transnational repression campaign against overseas critics. The 10-month inquiry reveals how the regime has weaponized international institutions—including the U.N. and Interpol—to track and neutralize dissidents and minority groups globally.
Drawing on leaked internal documents and interviews with 105 victims across 23 countries, the report uncovers a systematic playbook of intimidation used under Xi Jinping. Tactics range from coercing family members back in China to physical assaults and digital surveillance abroad, marking a terrifying expansion of Beijing’s authoritarian control beyond its borders.
Cindy Carter, Deputy Editor at CDT English
CDT Pick: In 2025, CDT English translated a number of posts by prolific WeChat bloggers describing their experiences with deleted posts, banned accounts, and "reincarnated" accounts; some of these bloggers also offered advice to readers about how to circumvent increasingly trigger-happy platform censorship. I particularly enjoyed my colleague Samuel Wade’s deft and amusing translation of the illustrated Q&A series "What Should I Do if I’ve Accidentally Used a Sensitive Word in My WeChat Post?" by WeChat blogger 育知录 (Yuzhilu). Yuzhilu’s frank advice covers what types of "sensitive words" are likely to trigger censorship; how intentionally vague platform guidelines force users to self-censor; and how best to remain sane during multiple rounds of editing by trial and error. In worst-case scenarios, writes Yuzhilu, sometimes you have no choice but to "reign in your grief and accept fate. […] The dead won’t come back, and neither will those WeChat posts."
External Pick: Over the past year, freelance journalism collective Aquarius Era (水瓶纪元, Shuǐpíng jìyuán, literally “water-bottle era”) has published many invaluable investigative reports about current events in China, on both their WeChat and Substack accounts. I highly recommend Aquarius Era’s two-part series (also archived at CDT) looking back at important stories from 2025, as told by the journalists who covered them: "Reporters’ Dispatches: A Year in Which We Sought to Document the Stories Beyond Blue-Backgrounded White Text (Part One) and (Part Two). The title refers to investigative reporting that goes beyond official statements, which generally appear as white text on a blue background. Stories discussed include pollution and environmental activism; illegal brick kilns; the Gen Z protests in Nepal; a five-year retrospective of the early days of the COVID pandemic in Wuhan; a mass lead-poisoning of kindergarteners in Tianshui, Gansu province; a spate of cross-provincial arrests of danmei erotica authors; an under-reported vehicle crash near a school in Shiyan, Hubei province; a worker sacked for speaking out against sexual harassment at a Foxconn factory; and many more.
