Song Binbin, perhaps the most infamous “Red Guard” of the Cultural Revolution, died at the age of 77 on Monday, September 16. Song, the daughter of one of the Party’s powerful “Eight Immortals,” was the leader of a Red Guard...
The Chinese government’s recent detentions of two outspoken critics—visual artist Gao Zhen and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan—highlight the continuing suppression of free speech and the shrinking space for artistic expression and...
56 years after her wrongful execution, the poet-journalist turned dissident Lin Zhao is still mourned in China. Lin, a Peking University student persecuted during the anti-Rightist Campaign, was executed at the height of the...
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...
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...
Margaret Hillenbrand, professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford, joined CDT to discuss her two latest books: “On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China” (2023) and “Negative Exposures: Knowing...
Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017) is a monumental figure in modern Chinese history. The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate died in custody in a Shenyang hospital in 2017 while being treated for liver cancer. A prolific writer, Liu first rose...
A recent question posted to the Q&A site Zhihu may have been intended to elicit praise about China’s state of political affairs, but has instead become the latest telling example of the pessimistic political mood in...
Retired gynecologist and public health advocate Dr. Gao Yaojie (高耀洁, Gāo Yàojié), who exposed the role of government-approved blood-selling schemes in fueling China’s rural AIDS epidemic, died of natural causes in New York on...
An underpass in Zhengzhou has quietly become a site of contention over artistic freedom. A photograph of the poem “Momma” by the little-known artist Zhang Boyi, graffitied underneath a Zhengzhou bridge in May, went viral on...
China’s youth employment crisis is at least partly a matter of attitude, according to People’s Daily. In two recent editorials calling for youth to “establish a correct perspective on employment” and “seek out hardships,” the...
The partial demolition of a historic mosque in rural Yunnan this past weekend ignited conflict between local Hui Muslim residents and armed police. The clashes in Najiaying, a village in Yuxi, China, began when residents...
The following article addresses “central government policymakers” and poses ten direct questions about China’s long-running “zero-COVID” policy, which was in effect until a sudden policy shift on December 7, 2022. Its form and...
Censors have deleted an illustrated WeChat essay in which author “里尔李” (“Lierli,” a pen name), channeled the dark humor of Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” to grapple with her tortured relationship with PCR testing. “How I Learned To...
A Party-controlled Weibo account’s attempt to shame a young woman for violating pandemic restrictions backfired this week after one netizen flipped the prompt on its head by blaming Xi Jinping for instituting the restrictions in...
A solitary protestor hung two banners calling for Xi Jinping to be removed from office and exhorting the populace to “Be citizens, not slaves,” an extremely rare act of overt political defiance on the eve of the 20th Party...
An essay tracing the evolution of Shanghai lockdown memes from giddy jests about Shanghai culture to gallows humor and gloomy meditations on the state of society was censored last week after going viral on Weibo. The essay,...
A major Chinese Communist Party conclave on history has consecrated Xi’s place next to Mao in the pantheon of Party leadership. The Sixth Plenum of the 19th Party Congress ended on Thursday, November 11, with the passage of a...
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