After being postponed for a year due to the 2022 COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown in nearby Shanghai, the 19th Asian Games are finally taking place in China’s eastern seaboard city of Hangzhou. For the Chinese government, the...
A hug between two Chinese athletes after the women’s 100m hurdles finals at the Hangzhou Asian Games has become the second Tiananmen Massacre-related censorship controversy of the Games. At the finals on October 1,...
A Weibo user who works as a computer programmer in Chengde, Hebei province, has reported that he was fined and had three years of income confiscated by the local public security bureau for using a virtual private network (VPN)...
A photo of an American teacher introducing himself to a Chinese university class with a slide presentation proclaiming, “I am not a spy” has gone viral, eliciting much mirth online. It also highlights an increasingly tense...
Starting in March 2008, Tibetans across the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan took to the streets to call for religious freedom and an end to oppressive political and social controls and economic...
Chinese debate over Japan’s release of treated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant has thus far been characterized by disinformation, nationalism, and heavy online censorship. This in turn has fueled fear...
Word(s) of the Week: “It is a bit ridiculous, but you must obey.” (是有点搞笑，但是你要服从, Shì yǒudiǎn gǎoxiào, dànshì nǐ yào fúcóng.) A policeman admitting that a traffic restriction “is a bit ridiculous, but you must obey”...
A Singapore paper’s publication of a blistering opinion piece criticizing Xi Jinping did not escape notice on Weibo, where netizens surreptitiously praised it. Titled “The Economy Is The Problem, Its Root Is Politics,” the...
In only his second trip abroad this year, Xi Jinping attended this week’s BRICS summit in South Africa in the hope of scoring a major political victory. The five-member group—comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South...
The slogans that make up the “12 Core Socialist Values” are a common sight on Chinese streets, as they were—for a tumultuous few hours this weekend—on London’s famous Brick Lane, where a Chinese student at the Royal...
Earlier this week, Apple removed over 100 generative AI and ChatGPT-related apps from its mainland Chinese store in response to new Chinese government regulations on managing generative AI. The regulations were introduced in...
Catastrophic flooding caused by Typhoon Doksuri has killed at least 21 people, left approximately 26 people missing, and led to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands in northern China. Rainfall in Beijing broke a 140-year old...
Having “ulterior motives” (别有用心, bié yǒu yòng xīn), an accusation often lobbed at critics of the Party-state, is sometimes deployed in tandem with the term “foreign hostile forces” (境外势力, jìngwài shìli). Such...
After one month without making a public statement or appearance, Qin Gang was removed from his position as foreign minister on Tuesday. At least for now, he will be replaced by his boss Wang Yi, who leads the CCP’s foreign...
It has now been almost a month since Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang made a public appearance. The lack of information given by the Chinese government has ceded the narrative around his absence to a growing set of rumors....
As an extreme heat wave across Earth’s northern hemisphere fuels record-breaking temperatures in China, Europe, and North America, U.S. special envoy for climate change John Kerry is visiting Beijing this week for high-level...
On the surface, neither the film “Barbie” nor a write-up of an academic’s research on migrant laborer poverty would seem to have anything to do with the South China Sea. Yet both are embroiled in censorship controversies related...
Over the past few weeks, several think tanks have published reports evaluating the expansion and success of China’s external propaganda. Together, they show the wide range of tools, targets, mediums, and regions involved in...
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