As Chinese local governments struggle with high levels of debt, moribund infrastructure projects, falling tax revenues, shrinking land-use fees, and increased demands for local welfare spending, some local government departments...
After a decades-long infrastructure spending spree, many of China’s local governments now find themselves saddled with unsustainable levels of debt and a surplus of vastly ambitious but often underutilized infrastructure...
According to reports on Hunan TV, Global Times, and related WeChat public accounts, the spouses of 140 high-ranking cadres in Hunan province recently attended an “anti-corruption” educational activity sponsored by the provincial...
A recent altercation captured on video shows an off-duty, uniformed toll-booth employee in Yulin, Shaanxi province, berating a truck driver at a restaurant and trying to force him to eat food from a garbage can. The disturbing...
After an explosion caused by a gas leak destroyed a four-story building, killing seven and injuring 27 in Yanjiao, a commuter town located about 20 miles east of Beijing, reporters from state-media outlets China Central...
At least seven people died and 27 were injured Wednesday when an explosion caused by a gas leak ripped through a four-story building in Yanjiao, a town in Sanhe city, Hebei province. Yanjiao, located approximately 20 miles east...
A tea company is in hot water after Shenzhen officials deemed its latest marketing campaign to be “borderline” illegal. Hey Tea (喜茶, xǐ chá), a popular national beverage chain, recently partnered with the Jingdezhen China...
In a recent essay, Lu Dewen (吕德文, Lǚ Déwén)—a sometimes controversial Wuhan University sociologist whose research focuses on rural governance—argues that bureaucratic formalism, meaningless busywork, and technological hegemony...
A Weibo user who works as a computer programmer in Chengde, Hebei province, has reported that he was fined and had three years of income confiscated by the local public security bureau for using a virtual private network (VPN)...
Mourning continues for eleven people—a coach and ten members of a girls’ volleyball team in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang province—who perished when the roof of their junior high school gymnasium caved in on Sunday. Recent photos,...
An incident earlier this year in which two schoolteachers in Guizhou Province were swept away and drowned while collecting pebbles—reportedly at the behest of their superiors, who hoped to spruce up the campus in advance of an...
If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 in the United States, or find local resources in the International Suicide Prevention Wiki. The discovery of...
Surveillance in Chinese cities is ubiquitous, with highly visible security cameras trained on most every intersection, public space, and building, but over the past decade, it has been seeping into the countryside as well. In an...
This week, a long-expected national security trial of 47 Hong Kong pro-democracy figures began. The group was arrested en masse in January 2021 and charged with subversion a month later for holding an unofficial primary in July...
Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of Government at Cornell University, joined CDT to discuss his new book, Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China. In a wide-ranging conversation,...
On Wednesday, China’s National Health Commission announced ten new pandemic-related guidelines, signaling an easing of the nation’s long-running “zero-COVID” policy (also referred to euphemistically as “dynamic clearance”). The...
Despite hints of a modest easing of pandemic controls—including a shortened quarantine period for inbound travelers, and attempts to “optimize” and adjust a “one-size-fits-all” approach—it remains to be seen whether China’s...
A Sichuan city’s adoption of Yuan Dynasty-style community policing has inspired fears of a return to the despotism of yore. Zigong is the latest municipality to launch a trial of the shihuzhang, or “ten-household captain...
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