The specter of arrest has made Halloween extra spooky this year. In Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan, Halloween revelry has been marred by strict police curfews, the detention of costume-clad partygoers, and bans on organized...
Caving to online male backlash that included a threatened boycott, Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com announced that it would scrap its November 11 “Singles Day” shopping festival collaboration with comedian Yang Li (杨笠, Yáng Lì)....
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...
Microblogging platform Weibo is cracking down on speech about crackdowns on speech. In a weekly “safety” digest published to an official Weibo administrators’ account, the platform announced that it had...
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...
Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message...
Today’s quote of the day derives from netizen backlash to the Communist Youth League’s (CYL) recent video broadside against “lying down”—referring to the much-discussed phenomenon of people slacking off, quietly giving up, or...
Chinese netizens have had a lot to say about economist Ma Jiantang’s prescription for adapting to the “era of longevity” by reclassifying workers between the ages of 60-70 as “the youthful elderly,” those between the ages of...
In recent weeks, two very familiar household names in China—Nobel prize-winning novelist Mo Yan and bottled water company Nongfu Spring—have come under fire from extreme Chinese nationalists, who have accused the pair of odd...
In recent weeks, both the Nobel prize-winning novelist Mo Yan and the Chinese bottled water company Nongfu Spring have come under fire from extreme Chinese nationalists, who have accused them of being insufficiently patriotic....
Popular science and current events blogger Xiang Dongliang’s musing on the Chinese Lunar New Year 2024 is CDT’s Quote of the Day: What struck me most about CCTV’s “Year of the Dragon” Spring Festival Gala? So many adverts. How...
Amid a market rout that brought Chinese stocks to a five-year low, a state media that continues to push blindly optimistic economic bromides, and a constricted online environment in which the Ministry of State Security has...
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...
To round out 2023, CDT Chinese compiled a series of year-end articles on a number of special topics, including sensitive words (part one and part two), censored articles, “rollover scenes,” and notable reports. This post...
A recent trio of pronouncements by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) warning against expressions of pessimism about the Chinese economy have sparked worries among businesspeople, economists, and analysts who fear that...
Some recent restrictions placed on historical books, museum exhibits, and academic discourse have brought renewed attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to rewrite history, control the historical narrative, and...
A popular periodical featuring essays and nonfiction writing announced that it is suspending operations after 35 years. The announcement followed online chatter that the December cover was an oblique criticism of Xi Jinping. Xi...
Current affairs blogger Xiang Dongliang has had his Weibo account banned for reporting Hu Xijin, a nationalist blogger and retired editor-in-chief of the Global Times, for using a VPN to circumvent the Great Firewall of China...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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