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.”

This is Part Two of CDT’s compilation of the most notable censored articles and essays from 2025, chosen by CDT Chinese editors from among the 425 new pieces of content added this year to our public, searchable, Chinese-language “404 Deleted Content Archive.” (Part One covers content added from January to July; Part Two, content from August to December.) Censored by various Chinese websites and platforms, these articles and essays represent only a fraction of the content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, but they offer invaluable insight into online public discourse in China, and topics that the Chinese government, Chinese Communist Party, and censors deem “too sensitive” not to suppress.

In an introductory essay, translated in full in Part One, our editors highlighted some of the key censorship trends they observed in 2025. An excerpt from the essay:

Just a few years ago, Chinese netizens might have been able to discern which topics, positions, or viewpoints were most likely to cross red lines, and to fine-tune their online strategies accordingly in order to walk the “tightrope” of censorship. Today, however, this accumulated wisdom has become much less effective, because censorship is no longer targeted solely at "dissenting voices," but has broadened to include any and all content that might lead to uncontrolled, or uncontrollable, online discourse.

[…Online censorship] has evolved into a proactive, content-blocking juggernaut capable of anticipating what type of information might "spin out of control." Under such a mechanism, any form of expression may be viewed as a potential threat, because even analysis and explanation poses an inherent risk, and heated online discussion is perceived as a loss of control. Thus does the censorship apparatus mold an online public-opinion environment that appears spontaneous, but is in fact highly selective and intensely filtered.

[…] When the censorship apparatus is able to operate indiscriminately, […] the concomitant self-censorship and enforced silence quickly drain what little online space and vitality remains, thus sucking the life out of societal discourse. [Chinese]

Below is a month-by-month summary of the main archived topics this year, along with examples of particularly notable or influential censored essays and articles.

August 2025

  • A school bullying incident in Jiangyou, Sichuan province sparked mass protests in support of a bullied schoolgirl and her family, and anger at local officials’ dismissive treatment of the family.
  • A Mercedes-driving woman in Fangchenggang, Guangxi province, flashed borrowed official credentials to try to intimidate another driver into yielding to her in traffic, birthing the meme "Credential-Flashing Sister" and inspiring a wider societal debate about official privilege.
  • Yang Lanlan, a wealthy young Chinese woman living in Sydney, was charged with four criminal offenses for crashing her custom Rolls-Royce Cullinan SUV into another vehicle in July, seriously injuring the other driver. There was intense speculation on Chinese social media about Yang’s wealth and possible family connections.
  • Hong Kong writer and commentator Leung Man-tao’s podcast “Eight and a Half Minutes” (八分半, Bā fēn bàn) was yanked from Chinese streaming platforms after he discussed media mogul Jimmy Lai, currently facing national security charges in Hong Kong. (Leung’s podcast remains available on Apple Podcasts.)

“In Recent Years, There’s Been an Unmistakable Force Dragging Nearly Everyone Down,” by Lao Dongyan, from Lao Dongyan’s Weibo account
August 19, 2025

In August, a short essay by Tsinghua University law professor Lao Dongyan about an unnamed but “unmistakable force dragging nearly everyone down” attracted intense online interest before it was deleted from her Weibo account. Lao’s writings and speeches have been a frequent target for censorship in the past, and she has been an outspoken critic of the national internet ID system and the indiscriminate use of facial recognition technology. Her essay, which seemed to resonate with many Chinese netizens, touched on themes of anomie and “political depression” (政治性抑郁, zhèngzhìxìng yìyù), the latter a topic that rose to popularity in 2022. A portion of Lao’s essay is translated below:

In recent years, there’s been an unmistakable societal force relentlessly dragging nearly everyone down, and this force has grown increasingly powerful. Many fine and beautiful things have been ruthlessly shattered and destroyed. Brazen displays of vulgarity and crudeness are now considered “authentic” forms of expression, and they continue to gain momentum, permeating and polluting every corner of the internet. In this environment, those who attempt to cling to their principles and avoid being dragged down into the muck are vilified.

As such, it’s normal for a person of sound reason and the capacity for empathy to be overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness, and the feelings of distress and anxiety that brings. Many people I know, myself included, have experienced such emotions to varying degrees.

[…] When confronted by that force constantly threatening to drag us down, we must deliberately exert a countervailing force, lest we be overcome by that downward momentum. It’s like being caught in the rapids: if we simply stand there, sooner or later we will be swept away. Therefore, we must first learn to stand firm amid the torrent, maintain a stable core, and from there, remember to seek out like-minded people with whom we can work to stem the tide, to build a dam of sorts, not by brute force, but by utilizing strategic wisdom. Persistence is important—the steady drip of water that can wear through stone—but strategy and tactics matter, too. Don’t give in to anger, or lower yourself to the level of your opponents, or succumb to defeatism if at first you don’t succeed. After all, what matters to us is not the outcome of a single battle, but winning the entire war. [Chinese]

September 2025

  • Amid a Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) campaign to tackle “malicious negativity” online, influencer Hu Chenfeng was hit with a multi-platform ban. Hu amassed a huge online following by focusing on socio-economic topics such as the cost of living, poverty among pensioners, the best cities for young urban professionals, and more. His controversial “Apple vs. Android theory” equates Apple with quality, modernity, and cosmopolitanism, and Android with inferior quality, backwardness, and insularity.
  • Education guru Zhang Xuefeng was also banned from a number of platforms, although his ban turned out to be temporary. Zhang became massively popular for offering practical entrance exam, college curriculum, and career advice for the masses, but he also generated controversy for allegedly profiting from the anxieties of prospective college students and their parents.
  • There was heavy censorship of content related to Nepal’s Gen Z protest movement, which began in response to widespread corruption and an unpopular government ban on 26 social media platforms, and resulted in a victory for the protesters: the social-media ban was lifted, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned, the House of Representatives was dissolved, and new elections were set for March 2026.
  • Legal experts engaged in robust debate over the right to attend criminal trials, after citizen journalist Wu Yunpeng was detained for five days for allegedly publishing "inaccurate" content and "impersonating" a family member to attend a legal hearing at the Guancheng District Court in Zhengzhou, Henan province. An article from WeChat account Criminal Defense World argued that public trials should allow any citizen to observe and take notes on the proceedings, and that court-imposed limits on observers violate China’s constitutional principle of open trials.

"TV Station Reports Rice Yields of Ten Thousand Jin Per Mu? This Is in 2025…" by Xiang Dongliang, WeChat account Constructive Opinions
September 25, 2025

An article satirizing a CCTV interview with a farmer in Jilin who claimed that his 50-mu (3.3 hectare) rice field would yield 750,000 jin (over 82,000 pounds)—a ten-fold increase over the insanely inflated rice yields touted by government propagandists during the Great Leap Forward. Xiang, as a former agricultural reporter, understood that the farmer likely got nervous on camera and misspoke, having meant to say “75,000 jin.” After Chinese social media users noticed the mistake, CCTV quietly edited out that portion of the online interview. In Xiang’s opinion, the fact that the mistake was allowed to air reflects an overall decline in TV news quality due to budget cuts, staff reductions, and the prioritization of propagandistic content over accurate reporting. As for the future of TV news, Xiang wrote, “I doubt it will be able to survive much longer.

October 2025

  • Public outcry over a pyrotechnic display in a fragile ecosystem in Gyantse county, Tibet—designed by artist Cai Guo-Qiang, sponsored by the outdoor apparel brand Arc’teryx, and approved by local authorities—resulted in the sacking of Gyantse county’s Communist Party secretary, public security chief, and two senior members of city and county environmental agencies.
  • News that two more Japanese scientists were awarded Nobel Prizes in the natural sciences was met with dismissiveness and defensiveness by Chinese official media, and amusement among Chinese social media users, given that China has long blocked the Nobel’s official website. “How can a country that blocks the Nobel website hope to win a Nobel Prize?” quipped one Chinese netizen.
  • There was frustration over media silence after a Xiaomi SUV plowed into a crowd of students and parents near an elementary school in Shiyan, Hubei province, killing one person and injuring at least four. When local outlet Shiyan Evening News sought to absolve itself by pleading on Douban, “Our hands are tied, too,” one commenter countered, “Then what’s the point of you?”
  • Concerns about excessive pandemic controls during an outbreak of the mosquito-borne Chikungunya virus in Guangdong province forced officials to rescind an order requiring residents to surrender their keys so that sanitation workers could enter properties to fumigate and carry out abatement efforts. China’s three years of COVID-related lockdowns and privacy violations have made citizens extremely wary of potential “pandemic-prevention overreach” by local officials.
  • Henan farmers suffered devastating losses due to torrential autumn rains that caused their corn crops to become moldy. Many small-scale farmers also complained about being turned away from government-subsidized “grain-drying stations.”
  • Chengdu’s beloved independent Youxing Bookstore received an outpouring of online tributes after founder Zhang Feng announced it would close soon due to official pressure. Fortunately the bookstore received a reprieve and will remain open and continue to host its popular events and discussions.

“How Many People Are on China’s Government Payroll? How Many Is Reasonable, and How Many Is Too Many?” WeChat account Da He Rises (大何崛起, Dà Hé Juéqǐ)
October 15, 2025

Drawing heavily from research by three Fudan University scholars (Zhang Jun, Ma Xinrong, and Liu Zhikuo) whose work was published in the July 2025 issue of the China Economic Quarterly, this lengthy article examines the data on China’s civil service and government employee payroll, and asks whether it constitutes a drag on China’s economy. The author notes the increase in government employees over time and the burden of paying pensions to tens of millions of retired public employees, and estimates that roughly five percent of China’s population are technically “on the government’s payroll.” The piece concludes with an argument that the government doesn’t create wealth but only distributes it, and that bureaucrats are analogous to a car’s air-conditioning or brakes, rather than its engine—necessary components, but not what makes the vehicle run.

“Domestic Electric Vehicle Crashes Into Shiyan’s Chongqing Road Elementary School, Many Students and Parents Killed or Injured,” by Li Guifang, WeChat account Aquarius Era
October 25, 2025

On October 22, a car plowed into a large crowd of students and parents near an elementary school in the city of Shiyan, Hubei province, resulting in at least one fatality, four serious injuries, and numerous other minor injuries. Three days of silence from media outlets and local police and authorities left many Chinese netizens frustrated and angry. One effort to break the silence came from freelance journalism collective Aquarius Era, which published this extensive (now deleted) report featuring eyewitness accounts, photos, and a diagram of the scene of the collision. One of the parents interviewed describes seeing six or seven children lying on the ground, security guards performing CPR on unresponsive victims, and at least nine ambulances and many traffic police vehicles at the scene. The article also documents online and offline censorship following the collision: police shooing people away from the scene of the crash; families of hospitalized victims being assigned local cadres as “minders” and having their cellphones confiscated (a pattern of ensuring or enforcing relatives’ "emotional stability" often seen in official handling of "sudden incidents"); muting of parent-teacher group chats; search censorship for “Shiyan” and other related terms on at least four social media platforms; and content about the incident being deleted from WeChat, Douyin, QQ, and RedNote. One person reported that, after posting a video of the crash on Douyin, they received a warning call from local police.

November 2025

“If I Meet Your Gaze, I Lose: The Qing Dynasty’s ‘Scowling Diplomacy,’” by Xiaoyuan Benyuan, WeChat account Xiao Yuan Reads Ming Dynasty History
November 20, 2025

An historical analysis of the Qing Dynasty’s peculiar approach to foreign policy, dubbed “scowling diplomacy,” which prioritized symbolic acts of disdain over substantive negotiation. The author writes that Qing officials often avoided eye contact, kept their hands hidden, and maintained solemn expressions, believing that maintaining a superior posture would demonstrate the Celestial Empire’s dignity and superiority. This led the Qing to make profound strategic blunders, such as the missed opportunity to understand British power during the 1793 Macartney Mission, the first British diplomatic mission to China. By remaining blind to global power shifts, the Qing Court sowed the seeds of its later military and political failures.

“Comparing the Hong Kong Fire to the 2010 Shanghai Jiaozhou Road Fire: Excessive Subcontracting, Misappropriation of Funds, Compensation Schemes, and Housing Price Aftereffects,” by Uncle Da, WeChat account Uncle Da’s Theory of Evolution
November 28, 2025

WeChat blogger Uncle Da discusses some of the parallels between the Hong Kong Wang Fuk fire and the 2010 Shanghai Jiaozhou Road fire, claiming that both were preventable high-rise disasters plagued by poor project management and the use of outdated, flammable construction materials. The author writes that the Shanghai fire involved extensive subcontracting that pushed risk onto low-level workers, while the Hong Kong fire involved alleged misappropriation of renovation funds. The piece concludes by noting that even 15 years later, many victims of the Shanghai fire are still awaiting financial compensation.

December 2025