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...
A quickly retracted Zhejiang report on provincial cremation statistics has shed new light on China’s coronavirus death toll. The chaotic end of China’s zero-COVID policy in late 2022 led to a surge in infections and deaths...
The accounts of Health Insights (@八点健闻), a health and science-oriented digital news outlet, have been suspended across all Chinese social media platforms, notably WeChat and Weibo. Since coming online in 2019, the outlet had...
“Zero-COVID nail houses” (防疫钉子户, fángyì dīngzihù) are people who still adhere to strict virus prevention measures despite the end of the national zero-COVID policy. It is often used self-deprecatingly by “nail houses” themselves...
In a remarkable violation of Party discipline, an organization partially under the auspices of the Beijing Communist Youth League’s house organ posted a requiem for the 2022 “White Paper Movement” to WeChat. The name was...
The Foreign Correspondent Club of China’s 2022 media freedoms report, an annual assessment of the country’s reporting climate over the previous year, found that COVID prevention measures had “strangled” already diminished...
A news article lauding the police work behind the arrest of a 64-year-old construction worker in Shanghai’s Pudong district instead drew attention to the financial insecurity experienced by China’s elderly workers. The...
After reporting fewer than fifty coronavirus deaths since the end of the zero-COVID policy, Chinese health officials revised the death toll to 59,938 virus-related deaths in hospitals between December 8 and January 12. Experts...
China’s recent COVID-19 wave has left patients and their families struggling with medical debt. A Peking University study estimated that as of January 11, 900 million people in China had been infected with COVID-19, and China’s...
The ten censored essays collected below are a first draft of an unauthorized history of the extraordinary year 2022, compiled by CDT Chinese editors. Toward the end of the year, discontent over the zero-COVID policy burgeoned...
China will drop quarantine requirements for international travelers starting January 8, 2023. The government also announced a host of other travel-easing measures. The changes effectively end China’s three-year period of...
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source. November 28, 2022 Today’s China...
Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of Government at Cornell University, joined CDT to discuss his new book, Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China. In a wide-ranging conversation,...
Beijing’s COVID outbreak seems to have widened after the abandonment of China’s long-held zero-COVID policy. Daily reported new cases have dropped dramatically due to the end of mass testing but accounts and videos out of the...
China’s zero-COVID policy is, seemingly, over. Guidelines, referred to colloquially as “The New 10 Points,” issued Wednesday by the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council drastically curtailed restrictions...
Chinese protesters shot down insinuations that their demonstrations this past week were controlled by shadowy “foreign forces,” a tactic often used by the state and its defenders to strip dissent of its legitimacy. Dozens of...
The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Cyberspace Administration of China 6:11 P.M., November 29, 2022 Notification: Thorough Clean-up and...
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