Translations: As Tributes Pour In, Chengdu’s You Xing Bookstore Gets a Reprieve From Feared Closure
Following more than a week of speculation that Chengdu’s You Xing Bookstore (有杏书店, Yǒu Xìng...
CDT translation
CDT Quote of the Day: Local Media Excuses Failure to Report on Elementary School Vehicular Attack—“Our Hands Are Tied, Too”
Police and media silence after a car plowed into a large crowd of students and parents near an elementary school in the city of Shiyan, Hubei province, has angered many Chinese netizens. Video shared online showed a white sedan...
Translations on Chikungunya and Mosquito Eradication in Guangdong: “Hand Over Your Keys or We’ll Pick the Locks!”
Public backlash has forced local officials in Pengyuan—a community in the city of Jiangmen, Guangdong province—to rescind an order requiring residents to surrender their keys so that sanitation workers can enter outbuildings to...
Translations: “How Can a Country That Blocks the Nobel Website Hope to Win a Nobel Prize?”
The news that two more Japanese scientists were awarded Nobel Prizes in the natural sciences has been met with considerable consternation on the Chinese internet. Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University and two American scientists,...
Translations: As CAC Tackles “Malicious” Negativity Online, Popular Influencers Zhang Xuefeng, Hu Chenfeng, Lan Zhanfei Hit With Bans
Amid a new two-month “Clear and Bright” campaign by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) to clean up internet content that “maliciously incites” polarization, pessimism, anxiety, and other negative sentiments, a number...
Translations: “Lying Down” Vloggers Banned for Espousing the Simple Life
Some popular social media accounts that depict “lying down”—eschewing the rat race in favor of a more frugal, less ambitious, low-consumption lifestyle—have recently been deplatformed, to the dismay of their many fans. Although...
Translation: International Students in China Complain, “Quark AI Has Forgotten Us!”
Some international students in China have taken to social media platform RedNote (Xiaohongshu) to complain about being excluded from obtaining free educational accounts for Quark AI, an LLM tool widely used by their Chinese...
Minitrue: Chengdu Cybersecurity Corps on “Ideological Risks During Third Quarter 2025”
The following censorship instructions, issued by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. (Black text boxes ██ indicate words that were intentionally blacked out in the leaked images.)...
Translations: Official Report on Tianshui Kindergarten Lead Poisoning Case “Exposes the Failure of an Entire System”
An investigative report into the mass lead poisoning of hundreds of students and staff members at a kindergarten in Gansu province has revealed a host of safety and oversight violations, bribery and corruption, medical...
Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 2: “War Is Always a Tragedy, Something I Cannot Endorse.”
Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the...
Translations: “What We Commemorate When We Commemorate June 4”
This year’s 36th anniversary commemorations of the June 4 crackdown were marked by intense, AI-aided censorship on the Chinese internet, muted memorials and arrests in Hong Kong, and a wide variety of online and offline...
Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 1: “Those Who Forget That History of Suffering Are Destined to Suffer Again”
Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the...
The Chengdu Overpass Protest and Its Antecedents: “The People Do Not Want a Political Party With Unchecked Power”
In the early hours of the morning of April 15, 2025, a lone protester lashed three long white banners with red, hand-painted political slogans to the railings of a pedestrian overpass near a bus station in Chengdu, and unfurled...
Translation: Chai Jing Interviews a Chinese Mercenary Fighting for Russia in Ukraine (Part Two)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected a U.S. peace plan that would freeze territory along the current front lines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, stipulate that Ukraine could never join NATO, and require Ukraine...
Translation: Chai Jing Interviews a Chinese Mercenary Fighting for Russia in Ukraine (Part One)
In recent days, the capture of two Chinese soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine has highlighted the role of foreign fighters in that conflict. In a post to his X account, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy...
Chinese Indie Filmmaker Hit With Harsh “Cross-Provincial” Fine and Equipment Confiscation
Despite troubling jurisdictional issues, the Urumqi Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau in Xinjiang has imposed a fine of 75,000 yuan (US$10,300) on Yunnan-based artist and independent filmmaker Guo Zhenming (郭珍明) for “illegal...
Netizen Voices on Mass Censorship of Beijing’s $6.5 Million Annual Support for Olympian Eileen Gu: “Why Are They So Afraid the Taxpayers Will Find Out?”
Controversy over Beijing municipal government allocating 47 million yuan (nearly $6.5 million U.S.) to fund the training of Eileen Gu, the Chinese-American Olympic freestyle skier, has triggered a wave of cross-platform...
Words of the Week: “Breaking in to Turn on Lights” (撬锁点灯, qiàosuǒ diǎndēng)
Earlier this month, netizens were incensed over a viral video that showed firefighters and other uniformed officers breaking into a shop in Datong, Shanxi province late at night in order to turn on the lights—ostensibly, to...
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