Popular health-focused outlet DXY is the latest popular science outlet to run afoul of China’s censors and online nationalists. Five DXY Weibo accounts, with a combined total of more than 30 million followers, were...
Popular online writer Shen Maohua, who writes under the pen name Wei Zhou, is known for his trenchant and often humorous essays, lively social media comments sections, and occasional brushes with platform censors. In this...
Dandong has been under intermittent lockdown (“static management” in the municipal government’s preferred euphemism) since April 25 of this year. The northeast city bordering North Korea is but the latest frontier town to bear...
A list of ten “forbidden” behaviors posted to (and then deleted from) the public WeChat account of China Foreign Affairs University (CFAU) in Beijing seemed to reveal discontent with strict pandemic controls among the country’s...
Journalist Lian Qingchuan’s reflection on Tuesday’s relaxation of COVID control restrictions in Shanghai was originally posted on WeChat, but deleted for “violating relevant laws and regulations.” Lian subsequently reposted it...
A Shanghai resident’s defiant response to a local police officer’s warning that non-compliance with the city’s COVID policy would have a deleterious impact on the man’s future offspring went viral across Chinese social...
An essay tracing the evolution of Shanghai lockdown memes from giddy jests about Shanghai culture to gallows humor and gloomy meditations on the state of society was censored last week after going viral on Weibo. The essay,...
On Monday of last week, Malaysian musician Namewee (Wee Meng Chee, 黃明志) learned that his YouTube account had been hacked and all of its content deleted. His account, created in 2006, had 3.27 million subscribers and over 1,000...
A group of students under the impression they had discovered a WeChat “bug” that hides the phrase “200 jin of dumplings” (roughly 220 pounds) had in fact stumbled upon an obscure insult for Xi Jinping that triggers automatic...
This week saw the proliferation of COVID conspiracy theories on Chinese social media, the suppression of a popular hashtag about the Xuzhou trafficking and abuse case, and a Global Times broadside aimed at discrediting the...
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...
“A healthy society shouldn’t have only one voice.” — Dr. Li Wenliang February 7 marked the second anniversary of the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, the courageous young ophthalmologist at the Central Hospital of Wuhan who was one of...
As the Australian public discovered earlier this week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison no longer has access to his WeChat account. Morrison had opened his account in 2019 to court Chinese-Australian voters before the federal...
Beijing’s glaring wealth inequality became the talk of the nation after a chart comparing two coronavirus patients’ daily itineraries went viral last week. One patient lived a life of sheer luxury, while the other worked over 30...
CDT Editor’s Note: As we enter 2022, CDT has compiled a special series of features for our readers, offering a look back at the people, events, controversies, memes and sensitive words that defined the past year. Some of this...
Huang Zhijie, the executive editor of Watching Media and a popular self-media blogger, has resurfaced after disappearing from social media for six months when one of his posts curried enough anonymous threats to himself and his...
Leaked documents revealed last weekend that Shanghai University has ordered its colleges to collect lists of LGBTQ+ students and report on their personal lives. Citing unspecified “relevant requirements,” the university of...
“Reading and writing is what keeps me alive,” wrote prolific essayist Shen Maohua in his first piece back from a 15-day WeChat suspension. Shen, who writes under the pen name Wei Zhou, was temporarily booted from the platform...
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