As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and...
In a remarkable interview, a censor for one of China’s biggest search engines described what gets deleted from the Chinese internet and how—as well as their perspective on the morality of their work. The interview was...
The reported theft and illegal sale of thousands of human corpses for use as raw material in bone graft procedures has shocked the Chinese public and sparked a breathtaking wave of censorship online. Last Thursday, a Beijing...
In China, the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was met with all-out digital censorship that quashed overt online mourning. In Hong Kong, efforts to publicly commemorate “June Fourth” were ruthlessly suppressed by...
The Two Sessions, the annual gatherings of China’s rubber-stamp National People’s Congress and advisory Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, are often accompanied by the censorship of discussion of the goings-on...
The following themes, and the six covered in part two, are not the “most censored” words of 2023 but rather a retrospective of topics that the Party-state deemed unfit for Chinese eyes, selected by our Chinese team. While some...
A brief, fiery essay excoriating totalitarianism has been censored on WeChat, and appears to have precipitated the closure of a Jiangxi-based current- and legal-affairs blog. First posted on the public WeChat account 法制江西 (Fǎzhì...
On October 16, it was reported online that a recent reprint of the historical biography “The Chongzhen Emperor: Diligent Ruler of a Failed Dynasty” (《崇祯：勤政的亡国君》Chóngzhēn: Qínzhèng de Wángguó Jūn, ISBN 9787549640775)...
Toys riffing on China’s hottest online idiom, “calling a rat a duck,” were yanked from online shelves this past week, a sign of the idiom’s continued political sensitivity. The tongue-in-cheek saying “calling a rat a duck”...
An antiquated Chinese political phrase enjoyed a brief revival when it was dusted off and used by some online commentators to describe the series of events known variously as the “Wagner Group...
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...
Today, Weibo censors deleted a photograph of a flowchart demonstrating how security software giant Qihoo 360 censors its generative artificial intelligence (AI) product. During a June 13 launch event for Qihoo 360’s latest large...
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 following instructions have been leaked and distributed online. For June 3rd, 4th, 5th: all official accounts are forbidden from posting content, and all key opinion leaders are banned from posting brand-related advertising...
At times, parsing propaganda for deeper meaning is difficult. At others, the (unintentional) message is hidden in plain sight. In October 2018, one bus passenger in Guizhou’s Nayong County realized that a roadside billboard...
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...
On Thursday, a deadly fire broke out in a predominantly-Uyghur residential building under COVID-19 lockdown in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, and kicked off a series of nationwide protests calling for an end to China’s restrictive...
On Saturday, October 22, Xi Jinping’s predecessor Hu Jintao was unceremoniously escorted out of the closing of the 20th Party Congress in front of the domestic and international press. Hu’s highly unusual exit, a major departure...
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