The following translations are from a series of posts on WeChat public account 育知录 Yuzhilu—a reference to a quotation from the Great Learning, one of Confucianism’s "Four Books": 育人先育己，知世先知人 Yù rén xiān yù jǐ,...
Recent articles have highlighted the ways in which various Chinese groups attempt to circumvent censorship in the liminal spaces of its enforcement. Across different domains, shifts in censorship capacity and communication...
Knowing when and what to critique is a delicate matter for Chinese journalists. Party censorship constrains journalistic zeal, forcing journalists and media outlets to navigate red lines at their own peril. Many try to find...
June 4, the date of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, is among the most sensitive dates on the Chinese political calendar. Any attempts to draw attention to the event are routinely censored on the Chinese internet. This year, as...
Researchers from the censorship monitoring platform Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) published an investigation last week that “sounds the alarm” about the emergence of regional online censorship in China. They noted that in...
As the U.S. Supreme Court voted to uphold a law forcing either the sale or ban of ByteDance-owned TikTok, “TikTok refugees” continued flocking to the Chinese-language app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. The influx of new...
Pending a Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. government’s crackdown on TikTok might end the app’s availability in U.S. app stores this weekend. The looming ban has prompted American users to seek a new home in another Chinese app,...
A banner year for Chinese films and filmmakers at the 61st Taipei Golden Horse Awards has attracted much attention on Chinese social media, despite strict ongoing censorship of any topic connected to the awards. This year’s...
Chinese internet users are taking issue with a recent announcement that the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and Ministry of Education are trying to standardize online speech by cracking down on the use of “irregular and...
Z-Library, an online database with tens of millions of pirated and uncensored books and articles available for free download, is closing its Chinese WeChat account. In a statement posted to WeChat, Z-Library claimed that Chinese...
Reports on privacy vulnerabilities in Apple’s AirDrop file-sharing function and new obstacles to tracking content trends on TikTok highlight the ways in which tech firms with strong China ties attempt to navigate political...
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,...
Today, June 15, is Xi Jinping’s 70th birthday. The birthday itself is a taboo topic on Weibo. Commentary has been restricted to state-affiliated accounts, all of which relay identical pablum about well-wishes from friendly heads...
The sight of a lone man standing before a row of tanks in Beijing is perhaps the most enduring image to emerge from the Tiananmen Protests of 1989. Photographs taken on June 5 of that year—one day after PLA troops crushed the...
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 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...
The extraordinary Sitong Bridge protest on October 13 sparked displays of solidarity and protest across China. Some of those moved by the protest have used Apple’s “AirDrop” function to share information about the solitary...
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...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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