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...
With hundreds of documented (and censored) online sobriquets, Xi Jinping is arguably the most nicknamed leader in recent Chinese history. To stay ahead of the censors, online Chinese have long resorted to using homophones,...
Sometimes, it’s the censors who imbue a joke with political power. Earlier this week, Weibo user @怪以德服人猫’s account was deleted for violating Weibo policy. Their likely violation? A joke, described by some netizens as “very...
May 10, 2023 marked the second anniversary of the detention of program-think (Biānchéng suíxiǎng, 编程随想), an incisive and influential blogger who for twelve years managed to maintain his anonymity while maintaining a prolific...
The suppression of news about a Beijing hospital fire that killed 29 last week has inspired vigorous discussion of censorship on the Chinese internet. Just after noon on Tuesday, April 18, a fire broke out in southwestern...
On March 10, China’s National People’s Congress, a rubber-stamp body that meets in full session once annually, re-elected Xi Jinping to a third five-year term as President. (His third term as General Secretary was already...
The “White-haired Movement” (白发运动, Báifà Yùndòng) refers to protests led by elderly and retired workers in Wuhan and Dalian in February 2023, and in Guangzhou in January 2023. The protesters were objecting to medical insurance...
In a rare instance of a legal challenge to restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights, two Tsinghua University students filed a lawsuit last week against the Chinese Ministry of Education for refusing to consider their appeal against...
On February 15, just weeks before the opening of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) legislative session in Beijing, thousands of Chinese retirees in the cities of Wuhan and Dalian held large demonstrations against...
The new word “humineral” (人矿 rén kuàng) has taken the Chinese internet by storm and is now a sensitive word subject to censorship. First introduced in a now-censored Zhihu post on January 2, 2023, “humineral”—a portmanteau of 人...
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...
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...
The recent abrupt end to China’s “zero-COVID” policy has left many citizens feeling confused and dismayed, unsure how to best protect themselves and their families. There have been reports of Omicron outbreaks in many Chinese...
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...
A leaked internal document from Xiaohongshu reveals how the Instagram-like social media and...
CDT Chinese has recently archived and republished four essays, censored in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that reveal the topics that Chinese authorities perceive to be sensitive. Two of the essays deal with the...
The United States-led “Summit for Democracy”, which kicked off on December 8, is designed to reverse the trend of global democratic “backsliding.” It touched a nerve in China, triggering a wave of state- and Party-directed...
“20021” may look like a random string of numbers or a mangled date, but many Weibo users know it as a sign that they are being blocked from posting “sensitive” content. Telegram user @cybergraveyardcn (简中赛博坟场)...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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