A society that protects victims’ rights would never require them to display their scars to the public. Weibo’s transformation into the only place where victims can seek help illustrates the dysfunction of our social system.”

— From a now-censored WeChat essay by Ai Daxun, commenting on a viral video in which Renmin University Ph.D. candidate Wang Di accused her doctoral supervisor Wang Guiyuan (no relation) of sexual harassment and assault. Wang Guiyuan was promptly fired from the university and expelled from the CCP.

 

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Nike-wearing Nationalist Assaults Kimono-wearing Cosplayer While Yelling About “Cultural Invasion”

The latest outburst of anti-Japanese violence to shock China happened this week in Jiuquan, Gansu province, where a cosplayer at a mall comic-con was assaulted by a man yelling about “cultural invasion.” Ironically, the attacker was wearing Nike sneakers. Videos of the incident, which went viral on social media, showed the man punching a young female cosplayer while yelling, “You’re wearing goddamn devil clothes. Look at what you’re wearing. Did you grow up eating shit? All of you are wearing Japanese clothing.” The disturbing incident might have escaped widespread attention if not for a...

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Renmin University Professor Fired, Expelled from Party After Sexual Harassment Accusation

On Sunday, Renmin University Ph.D. candidate Wang Di publicly accused her doctoral supervisor Wang Guiyuan (no relation) of sexual harassment and assault in a video that went viral on Chinese social media. Her supervisor was previously the Party secretary and vice dean of Renmin University’s School of Liberal Arts. Displaying her university ID card and using her real name, Wang Di presented detailed evidence, including audio recordings and screenshots of messages, to describe the harassment and appeal for support. Kanis Leung from the Associated Press provided more information about Wang’s...

Translations: Rampant Abuse, Unexplained Deaths Fuel Calls to Abolish RSDL Detention

The suspicious death of a Beijing tech company manager in Inner Mongolia and recent reporting about the many other deaths of people held in RSDL (“residential surveillance at a designated location”) pending trial has revived public debate about abolishing the reviled RSDL system once and for all. Criminal defense lawyers, legal experts, and other commentators have weighed in, arguing that the system is rife with exploitation and abuse, and citing examples of suspects who were tortured or even killed while under this form of detention. A 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders noted that the...

Translations: Rampant Abuse, Unexplained Deaths Fuel Calls to Abolish RSDL Detention

The suspicious death of a Beijing tech company manager in Inner Mongolia and recent reporting about the many other deaths of people held in RSDL (“residential surveillance at a designated location”) pending trial has revived public debate about abolishing the reviled RSDL system once and for all. Criminal defense lawyers, legal experts, and other commentators have weighed in, arguing that the system is rife with exploitation and abuse, and citing examples of suspects who were tortured or even killed while under this form of detention. A 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders noted that the...

Translations: Rampant Abuse, Unexplained Deaths Fuel Calls to Abolish RSDL Detention

The suspicious death of a Beijing tech company manager in Inner Mongolia and recent reporting about the many other deaths of people held in RSDL (“residential surveillance at a designated location”) pending trial has revived public debate about abolishing the reviled RSDL system once and for all. Criminal defense lawyers, legal experts, and other commentators have weighed in, arguing that the system is rife with exploitation and abuse, and citing examples of suspects who were tortured or even killed while under this form of detention. A 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders noted that the...

Ukraine Seeks China’s Help in Peace Negotiations and Sanctions Enforcement

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this week in Guangzhou. Kuleba is the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to travel to China since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. As Western support for Ukraine wanes and Chinese supplies to Russia’s war machine grow, Ukraine has sought to enlist Beijing in playing a greater role to bring about peace. Ken Moritsugu and Samya Kullab from the Associated Press described the Ukrainian and Chinese positions by the end their meeting:  “I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests,...

Translation: Special One-Month Reconnaissance Operation Against “Overseas Cyber Forces”

A pair of recently surfaced screenshots appear to offer unusual detail about a special month-long operation, held in Beijing and involving over 40 Ministry of Public Security computer specialists from around the country, to combat “overseas cyber forces” in the battle for public opinion. The apparently leaked internal instructions from the Ministry of Public Security are likely to be the result of an email breach. They include the names and locations of many of the computer-specialist officers, as well as the name and contact information of the individual in charge of the operation. At some...

New eBook: 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...

Proposed Rise of Retirement Age Draws Weibo Complaints

News of plans to raise China’s retirement age, found in documents issued after the recently concluded Third Plenum, have ignited a social media firestorm. The text of the plenum’s “resolution,” published to Xinhua, held: “In line with the principle of voluntary participation with appropriate flexibility, we will advance reform to gradually raise the statutory retirement age in a prudent and orderly manner.” China’s current retirement age for urban workers is 60 years for men and 55 for women (or 50, for those working blue-collar jobs). Hashtags related to rumors that the retirement age...

Nike-wearing Nationalist Assaults Kimono-wearing Cosplayer While Yelling About “Cultural Invasion”

The latest outburst of anti-Japanese violence to shock China happened this week in Jiuquan, Gansu province, where a cosplayer at a mall comic-con was assaulted by a man yelling about “cultural invasion.” Ironically, the attacker was wearing Nike sneakers. Videos of the incident, which went viral on social media, showed the man punching a young female cosplayer while yelling, “You’re wearing goddamn devil clothes. Look at what you’re wearing. Did you grow up eating shit? All of you are wearing Japanese clothing.” The disturbing incident might have escaped widespread attention if not for a...

Report: CCP-Linked Professional Associations in France Facilitate Tech Transfer, Political Influence

At the Prague-based Sinopsis, René Bigey has published a new report on the CCP’s use of professional associations to pursue technology transfer and political influence in France: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has developed a sophisticated strategy to transfer knowledge and technologies from abroad. Its implementation includes recruiting scholars and entrepreneurs for short-term or permanent positions in China or from abroad. As has been documented elsewhere, talent recruitment programs are often associated with misconduct and intellectual property theft. This study — the first...

Ukraine Seeks China’s Help in Peace Negotiations and Sanctions Enforcement

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this week in Guangzhou. Kuleba is the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to travel to China since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. As Western support for Ukraine wanes and Chinese supplies to Russia’s war machine grow, Ukraine has sought to enlist Beijing in playing a greater role to bring about peace. Ken Moritsugu and Samya Kullab from the Associated Press described the Ukrainian and Chinese positions by the end their meeting:  “I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests,...

Quote of the Day: Official Disposable Income Figures Derided as “Today’s Daily Dose of Humor”

On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was off to a good start in 2024, with reported 5.3% year-on-year GDP growth in the first quarter of the year. The better-than-expected data was touted by various Chinese state media outlets online, although many of those news posts had comment filtering enabled, perhaps in anticipation of negative or skeptical reactions from social media users. Two items in particular seemed to strike netizens as overly optimistic: the reported “nationwide average per-capita disposable income” figure of 11,539 yuan...

Human Rights

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Translations: Rampant Abuse, Unexplained Deaths Fuel Calls to Abolish RSDL Detention

The suspicious death of a Beijing tech company manager in Inner Mongolia and recent reporting about the many other deaths of people held in RSDL (“residential surveillance at a designated location”) pending trial has revived public debate about abolishing the reviled RSDL system once and for all. Criminal defense lawyers, legal experts, and other commentators have weighed in, arguing that the system is rife with exploitation and abuse, and citing examples of suspects who were tortured or even killed while under this form of detention. A 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders noted that the...

Politics

Latest

Chinese Authorities, Social Media, and Commentators React to Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has dominated Chinese headlines and social media through the weekend. While speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania this Saturday, former President Trump was grazed on the ear by a would-be-assassin’s bullet. One spectator was killed, and two others critically wounded. The shooter was fatally shot by the Secret Service.  The official Chinese response has been cautiously muted. State-media news agency Xinhua was the first Chinese outlet to report the attack. At 6:38, 27 minutes after the shots were fired in Pennsylvania, a Xinhua account...

Society

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Online and Offline Tributes Paid to Suzhou’s School-Bus Attendant Heroine Hu Youping

Online and offline tributes continue to pour in for Hu Youping, the Chinese school bus attendant who was fatally stabbed when she tried to prevent a knife-wielding man from attacking Japanese schoolchildren and parents at a bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu province last week. A Japanese preschooler and his mother also sustained non-fatal stab wounds, and police promptly arrested the attacker, an unemployed man in his 50s surnamed Zhou. The attack followed June’s non-fatal stabbings of four American teachers in a park in Jilin province, and a knife attack in May at a hospital in Yunnan province...

China & the World

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Netizens Reflect on Anti-Japanese Propaganda After Stabbing at School Bus Stop

A stabbing at a school bus stop in Eastern China that left two Japanese nationals and a Chinese national injured is the latest instance of anti-foreigner violence to rock China in the last month. Two weeks ago, four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College were stabbed in a park in northern China. Details of this latest attack are sparse: a Japanese mother and her child were stabbed while waiting for a school bus to Suzhou’s Japanese School, a school for Japanese children that follows a Japanese curriculum. Both sustained minor injuries. A Chinese bystander who attempted to prevent the...

Law

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Ukraine Seeks China’s Help in Peace Negotiations and Sanctions Enforcement

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this week in Guangzhou. Kuleba is the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to travel to China since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. As Western support for Ukraine wanes and Chinese supplies to Russia’s war machine grow, Ukraine has sought to enlist Beijing in playing a greater role to bring about peace. Ken Moritsugu and Samya Kullab from the Associated Press described the Ukrainian and Chinese positions by the end their meeting:  “I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests,...

Information Revolution

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WeChat “Bug” Turns Out To Be Obscure Insult for Xi Jinping

A group of students under the impression they had discovered a WeChat “bug” that hides the phrase “200 jin of dumplings” (roughly 220 pounds) had in fact stumbled upon an obscure insult for Xi Jinping that triggers automatic censorship.  In the course of daily conversation, the students found that messages preceded by the term “200 jin of dumplings” (200斤饺子) were not received by their counterparts. Juvenile hilarity ensued. They sent each other curses and confessions: “200 jin of dumplings, you’re a stupid c***,” “200 jin of dumplings, you’re an idiot,” “200 jin of dumplings, piggy,” and...

Culture & the Arts

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Weibo Reacts To the Paris Olympics with a Shrug

On the Chinese internet, wall-to-wall state media coverage of the Chinese Olympic delegation’s departure for the 2024 Paris Games has been met with a shrug. With 405 Chinese athletes slated to compete across 236 events, China is expected to challenge the United States in the national gold medal count. Despite such rosy prognostications, and the Chinese public’s enthusiasm for the 2022 Winter Games held in Beijing (which were partially overshadowed by tennis star Peng Shuai’s #MeToo accusation against a former top Party official), there has been little online fanfare about this...

The Great Divide

Latest

Quote of the Day: Official Disposable Income Figures Derided as “Today’s Daily Dose of Humor”

On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was off to a good start in 2024, with reported 5.3% year-on-year GDP growth in the first quarter of the year. The better-than-expected data was touted by various Chinese state media outlets online, although many of those news posts had comment filtering enabled, perhaps in anticipation of negative or skeptical reactions from social media users. Two items in particular seemed to strike netizens as overly optimistic: the reported “nationwide average per-capita disposable income” figure of 11,539 yuan...

Sci-Tech

Latest

Report: CCP-Linked Professional Associations in France Facilitate Tech Transfer, Political Influence

At the Prague-based Sinopsis, René Bigey has published a new report on the CCP’s use of professional associations to pursue technology transfer and political influence in France: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has developed a sophisticated strategy to transfer knowledge and technologies from abroad. Its implementation includes recruiting scholars and entrepreneurs for short-term or permanent positions in China or from abroad. As has been documented elsewhere, talent recruitment programs are often associated with misconduct and intellectual property theft. This study — the first...

Environment

Latest

Reports Detail Forced Displacement and Violent Reprisals Against Protest in Tibet

Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local communities to impose state-sponsored projects, undermining environmental protection and human rights. The collaborative research network Turquoise Roof published the first report, “Occupying Tibet’s rivers: China’s hydropower ‘battlefield’ in Tibet.” The report details how violent paramilitary reprisals have stifled protests against the construction of the planned Kamtok hydropower dam along the Drichu (Yangtze) river, threatening the displacement of villages and Buddhist monasteries: The...

Hong Kong

Latest

Ukraine Seeks China’s Help in Peace Negotiations and Sanctions Enforcement

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this week in Guangzhou. Kuleba is the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to travel to China since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. As Western support for Ukraine wanes and Chinese supplies to Russia’s war machine grow, Ukraine has sought to enlist Beijing in playing a greater role to bring about peace. Ken Moritsugu and Samya Kullab from the Associated Press described the Ukrainian and Chinese positions by the end their meeting:  “I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests,...

Taiwan

Latest

35th Tiananmen Anniversary Commemorated Around the World

While the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was massively censored within mainland China and Hong Kong, people elsewhere around the world made tributes in order to highlight the incident and reflect on its significance in the present era. The Hongkonger compiled an inexhaustive list of commemorative events that took place in 18 cities across four continents. The Hong Kong Free Press reported on commemorations in Canada and the U.K., among other countries: On June 4, over 300 people joined an assembly in front of the Chinese Embassy in Britain to share and hear memories of the...

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