Bookstores Become Sites of Subtle Protest Against Xi Jinping
Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message...
Jun 18, 2024
Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message...
Jun 5, 2024
Despite near absolute censorship of any mention of the Tiananmen Massacre within China, memories of June Fourth still persist. On the 35th anniversary of the 1989 student movement’s suppression, a number of people who...
May 29, 2024
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often four-character, literary expressions that are the kernel of a larger tale. New Era chengyu are references to infamous incidents that...
May 17, 2024
China’s hottest television show, HunanTV’s “Singer 2024,” has inspired nationalist angst after two foreign contestants took first and second place—easily besting a field that included legendary Chinese pop star Na Ying. The show...
May 17, 2024
“Glory to Hong Kong,” a popular protest anthem of the city’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, has become a persistent target of the government’s national-security crackdown. The song contains the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong,...
Apr 30, 2024
Z-Library, an online database with tens of millions of pirated and uncensored books and articles available for free download, is closing its Chinese WeChat account. In a statement posted to WeChat, Z-Library claimed that Chinese...
Apr 24, 2024
Nymphia Wind, a Taiwanese drag queen, has won the 16th season of the American reality TV competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race. Her victory has been cause for quiet celebration in China, where drag is in the ascendant despite...
Apr 17, 2024
Beijing’s half-marathon is under investigation after three runners from Kenya and Ethiopia appeared to allow a Chinese runner to win. The odd ending of the race saw Willy Mnangat and Robert Keter of Kenya and Dejene Hailu of...
Apr 9, 2024
In its annual report on the state of media freedom in China last year, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) described how authorities used COVID prevention measures to “strangle” foreign news bureaus’ China coverage....
Apr 3, 2024
In the wake of the Article 23 legislation passed two weeks ago in Hong Kong, further constricting media and speech freedom, there have been a number of bookstore closures and media departures from the territory. Radio Free Asia...
Apr 2, 2024
Explaining a meme often takes the wind out of a joke’s sails. Not so in this case. A recent Xi Jinping quote published by Xinhua, China’s official state news agency, has breathed new life into a long-running meme...
Apr 2, 2024
Chinese social media has been awash with interest in Netflix’s new series “3 Body Problem,” an adaptation based on the Hugo Award-winning novel by Chinese author Liu Cixin. On the day of its release, there was a huge spike in...
Mar 29, 2024
A middle school literature exam in Chengdu has triggered the latest outburst of anti-Japanese nationalism. Students were asked to analyze an excerpt from “Fallen Azaleas,” an amateurish piece of fiction by the virtually unknown...
Mar 29, 2024
The nationalist blogger who attempted to sue Nobel-Prize winning author Mo Yan for 1.5 billion yuan for allegedly “defaming heroes and martyrs” in his fiction has had his lawsuit rejected by the Beijing Procuratorate, on the...
Mar 28, 2024
Film censorship has long plagued China’s creative arts industry and stifled foreign products seeking domestic Chinese audiences. The shrinking space for artistic expression, along with rising nationalism, has exposed artists and...
Mar 23, 2024
The use of the standard Party formulation of Xi Jinping “pointing the way forward” on various policy issues has become so commonplace that the phrase has become an object of satire, a way of mocking Xi’s cult of personality and...
Mar 23, 2024
Among Xi Jinping’s many Party-bestowed titles and hundreds of banned netizen nicknames is one that points to his penchant for claiming personal leadership over and insight into seemingly everything: “Compass-in-Chief.” The...
Mar 14, 2024
In recent weeks, two very familiar household names in China—Nobel prize-winning novelist Mo Yan and bottled water company Nongfu Spring—have come under fire from extreme Chinese nationalists, who have accused the pair of odd...