The collapse of Serbia’s Novi Sad train station roof last month killed 15 people and severely injured two others, igniting weeks-long, nationwide protests against government corruption that is widely perceived to be at the root...
Romania’s presidential election has taken a dramatic turn. Far-right, pro-Russian ultranationalist candidate Calin Georgescu won the first round of voting on November 24, but President Klaus Iohannis (whose party’s center-right...
Despite this year’s disappointing, propagandistic line-up of winners for the 34th China Journalism Award, some Chinese investigative journalists continue to ply their trade with dogged reporting, commitment to keeping the...
Domestic critics of the Chinese Communist Party sometimes compare it to a mafia; that was literally the case recently in Harbin, the capital of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. A public request for tips on a criminal...
Ren Xinyi, the daughter of Ren Zhiqiang—a 73-year-old former real-estate magnate currently serving an 18-year prison sentence for corruption and other offenses—recently published an open letter to Xi Jinping, urging that her...
Despite a laudable performance in other sports at this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games, China continues to flail in its footballing ambitions. Last Thursday, the men’s national team lost 7-0 to rival Japan in the third...
The Chinese public has been transfixed and outraged by news of a decade-long scheme involving the theft and illegal sale of thousands of corpses for use as bone-graft raw material in dental procedures. A document leaked last...
It is well known that many Chinese local governments are cash-strapped, burdened by excessive debt, and searching for ways to replenish their depleted coffers. Reports abound of local governments, utilities, and even police...
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. The following New Era chengyu are all references to infamous...
The latest corruption investigation into a senior Ministry of Justice official has inspired schadenfreude among lawyers in China. The investigation into Liu Zhiqiang, a former Vice-Minister of Justice, follows closely after...
A fire in Xinyu, Jiangxi Province killed 39 people and injured nine more on Wednesday, January 24. It was the second deadly blaze to claim student lives in a single week: a fire in an elementary school in Henan killed 13...
Saturday’s general election in Taiwan, in which the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its parliamentary majority but saw its presidential candidate Lai Ching-te elected with 40% of the vote, was closely watched in...
In part two of our retrospective on the most sensitive topics of 2023, as selected by our Chinese team, we focus on dissent and disasters. In part one we covered long-standing taboos on discussions about Xi Jiping and the...
At the close of 2023, CDT Chinese has compiled a series of year-end articles on various special topics, from sensitive words and censored articles to a human rights report and a “person of the year.” This post introduces the...
After 200 days, the long-running “Arctic Catfish” scandal has reached a conclusion, dissatisfying and anticlimactic as it may be. It began after social media user “Arctic Catfish” (北极鲶鱼, Běijí Niányú), a young Chinese woman...
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...
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency executive indicted on charges of fraud in 2022, has now been charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Business Practices Act for bribing one or more unnamed Chinese officials. An...
In 2013, Xi Jinping introduced the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and called on state media to “tell China’s story well.” Almost ten years later, the CCP’s external propaganda apparatus is struggling to present a positive image...
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