The full report can be read in PDF form here. Below is a brief introduction. A pilot study conducted by CDT and Doublethink Lab examines “embedded propaganda” (EP) in African news media. Our study defines EP as the...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on display at the recent Zhuhai Air Show in Guangdong province, has attracted considerable backlash online. After photos and...
On WeChat last weekend, "Fatty Zhao, scholar of Song Dynasty history" reflected on a...
For college students in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, it was a brief moment of freedom: a...
A spate of “revenge against society” attacks that have left dozens dead and more injured over the...
Today, the school issued its latest notice: in order to prevent us from leaving campus on Saturdays and Sundays, classes have been rescheduled to weekends. I have no idea when things will return to normal."
— From an essay from a young college student describing the crackdown that followed the exuberant youthful trend of "night-cycling to Kaifeng" for fun, food, and frivolity
The full report can be read in PDF form here. Below is a brief introduction. A pilot study conducted by CDT and Doublethink Lab examines “embedded propaganda” (EP) in African news media. Our study defines EP as the practice of republishing PRC state-media content under a local masthead. This practice is part of the PRC’s external propaganda localization strategy, often referred to as “borrowing a boat to get out to sea” (借船出海). We sought to track the extent of EP and whether or not it was properly attributed to its source. Focusing on text-based media outlets from Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana...
On WeChat last weekend, "Fatty Zhao, scholar of Song Dynasty history" reflected on a...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on...
For college students in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, it was a brief moment of freedom: a...
Less than a week after a shocking “Xianzhong” car attack that left 35 dead in Zhuhai, a recent...
Despite this year’s disappointing, propagandistic line-up of winners for the 34th China...
At the Associated Press, Fu Ting reports mounting pressure on China’s independent bookstores and other cultural channels and venues: Independent bookstores have become a new battleground in China, swept up in the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on dissent and free expression. The Associated Press found that at least a dozen bookstores in the world’s second-largest economy have been shuttered or targeted for closure in the last few months alone, squeezing the already tight space for press freedom. One bookstore owner was arrested over four months ago. The crackdown has had...
At the end of a landmark national security trial that concluded on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s High Court...
On Saturday, Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden met in Lima, Peru on the sidelines of the...
A veil of silence has fallen around the car ramming attack that killed 35 and injured 43 in...
China is leading the global trend towards cyber sovereignty, a norm based on the use of technology...
Xi Jinping’s latest diplomatic tour began this week in Peru, where he will participate in the...
Concern is mounting over the health of imprisoned civil society activist and human-rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong, who has been on a nearly one-month hunger strike to protest his mistreatment in Shandong’s Lunan Prison. Many human rights groups and supporters have raised the alarm about Xu’s hunger strike, weight loss, and declining health, and have urged Chinese authorities to halt his mistreatment and provide him with medical care. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns have also spoken out on Xu’s behalf. #XuZhiyong on hunger strike, day 26: No update. It's...
Two years after Peng Lifa’s courageous one-man protest on Beijing’s Sitong Bridge against Xi...
China’s investments in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are increasingly moving away from...
Ren Xinyi, the daughter of Ren Zhiqiang—a 73-year-old former real-estate magnate currently serving...
In a two-part podcast interview with The Economist’s Drum Tower, former Canadian diplomat...
New research documents the repressive effects of Hong Kong’s national security laws. This week,...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on display at the recent Zhuhai Air Show in Guangdong province, has attracted considerable backlash online. After photos and descriptions of the promotional display appeared on the Chinese website Douban (a social network for discussions, recommendations, and reviews of books, music, movies, and more), Douban users drew parallels to “1984,” “Thought Police,” and the biometrics-based predictive-policing regime depicted in the dystopian Japanese anime series “Psycho-Pass.” A post from Douban user “Ding...
For college students in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, it was a brief moment of freedom: a...
Less than a week after a shocking “Xianzhong” car attack that left 35 dead in Zhuhai, a recent...
Despite this year’s disappointing, propagandistic line-up of winners for the 34th China...
On the eve of “Journalists’ Day” on November 8, the All-China Journalists Association announced...
A murderous rampage in Zhuhai, Guangdong that left 35 dead and scores wounded was met with a now...
The full report can be read in PDF form here. Below is a brief introduction. A pilot study conducted by CDT and Doublethink Lab examines “embedded propaganda” (EP) in African news media. Our study defines EP as the practice of republishing PRC state-media content under a local masthead. This practice is part of the PRC’s external propaganda localization strategy, often referred to as “borrowing a boat to get out to sea” (借船出海). We sought to track the extent of EP and whether or not it was properly attributed to its source. Focusing on text-based media outlets from Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on...
A spate of “revenge against society” attacks that have left dozens dead and more injured over the...
At the Associated Press, Fu Ting reports mounting pressure on China’s independent...
At the end of a landmark national security trial that concluded on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s High Court...
On Saturday, Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden met in Lima, Peru on the sidelines of the...
At the end of a landmark national security trial that concluded on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s High Court sentenced 45 pro-democracy figures to up to ten years in prison. Forty-seven democratic politicians, activists, and organizers were arrested and charged in January 2021 with conspiracy to commit subversion under the National Security Law. The charges related to their participation in organizing an unofficial primary election in 2020 ahead of a legislative election. In February 2023, the trial began. In May of this year, the court convicted 14 defendants who contested the accusations and...
The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. The...
New research documents the repressive effects of Hong Kong’s national security laws. This week,...
In the face of growing government repression, many residents of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and various...
The first sentencing under Hong Kong’s new Article 23 national security law (officially called the...
Uyghur villages have been Sinicized in Xinjiang. Local communities have been displaced for...
A recent WeChat post reveals that some Chinese schools and universities are using special software to identify and punish students who “scale the wall”—that is, circumvent China’s Great Firewall (GFW) to access overseas websites and portals. The post begins with a not-very-convincing exchange of WeChat messages between three students—identified as “student A,” “student B,” and “student C,” respectively—discussing their university’s use of the ABT Online Behavior Management System (安博通上网行为管理, Ānbótōng shàngwǎng xíngwéi guǎnlǐ) to identify and punish fellow students who circumvented the GFW to...
In the two weeks since the Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration of China...
A pair of recently surfaced screenshots appear to offer unusual detail about a special month-long...
Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration has issued a series of regulations intended to...
Popular online writer Shen Maohua, who writes under the pen name Wei Zhou, is known for his...
As citizens revolt against never-ending lockdowns and local governments “resolutely struggle...
On September 12, 2003, John Battelle published the first post on chinadigitaltimes.net: Here’s what a Google Search on “china weblog” yields, I’m looking forward to seeing ours at the top soon! China’s online population at the start of that year was nearly 60 million. Ten years later, it was fast approaching 600 million, and now, after 20, it is well over a billion. This new completely revised and hugely expanded update to our ebook series, formerly known as “the Grass Mud Horse Lexicon,” aims to capture something of the enormous explosion of online speech that accompanied this growth, with...
In 2014, Leta Hong Fincher published her first book, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender...
Starting in March 2008, Tibetans across the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai, Gansu, and...
Surveys have shown that Xi Jinping’s hardline foreign policy is increasingly unpopular abroad....
Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of Government at Cornell University, joined CDT to discuss his...
Evidence of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang has...
On Saturday, Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden met in Lima, Peru on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. The meeting was their third in-person, and likely their last as leaders of their respective countries. China-U.S. bilateral relations are expected to enter a much more volatile period following Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election earlier this month. Alluding to Trump’s hawkish economic plans vis-a-vis China, Xi stated that “neither decoupling nor supply chain disruption is a solution,” and he called on APEC members to “tear...
Xi Jinping’s latest diplomatic tour began this week in Peru, where he will participate in the...
Following a hotly contested U.S. election that reverberated across Chinese social media, drawing...
China has extended its dominance at home and abroad over critical minerals that are essential to...
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Brazil-China relations, and a series of high-level...
Caving to online male backlash that included a threatened boycott, Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com...
The full report can be read in PDF form here. Below is a brief introduction. A pilot study conducted by CDT and Doublethink Lab examines “embedded propaganda” (EP) in African news media. Our study defines EP as the practice of republishing PRC state-media content under a local masthead. This practice is part of the PRC’s external propaganda localization strategy, often referred to as “borrowing a boat to get out to sea” (借船出海). We sought to track the extent of EP and whether or not it was properly attributed to its source. Focusing on text-based media outlets from Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana...
On WeChat last weekend, "Fatty Zhao, scholar of Song Dynasty history" reflected on a...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on...
A spate of “revenge against society” attacks that have left dozens dead and more injured over the...
For college students in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, it was a brief moment of freedom: a...
At the Associated Press, Fu Ting reports mounting pressure on China’s independent...
On WeChat last weekend, "Fatty Zhao, scholar of Song Dynasty history" reflected on a recent fire at a Shandong university. The students’ escape route was blocked by facial recognition turnstiles through which they scanned one by one, even as the smoke made that more difficult. Despairing of the students’ compliance in the face of danger, Zhao cites a pair of historical episodes by way of explanation: Recently, I’ve been busy working on a book manuscript, and haven’t had time to post on WeChat or check the news. Only after finishing the first draft yesterday did I have a...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on...
China is leading the global trend towards cyber sovereignty, a norm based on the use of technology...
Following a hotly contested U.S. election that reverberated across Chinese social media, drawing...
The Municipal Bureau of Justice in Karamay, Xinjiang posted—and later deleted—a skit to Douyin...
China Media Project has published a translation of an extended article by Qin Shi at the Mang Mang...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on display at the recent Zhuhai Air Show in Guangdong province, has attracted considerable backlash online. After photos and descriptions of the promotional display appeared on the Chinese website Douban (a social network for discussions, recommendations, and reviews of books, music, movies, and more), Douban users drew parallels to “1984,” “Thought Police,” and the biometrics-based predictive-policing regime depicted in the dystopian Japanese anime series “Psycho-Pass.” A post from Douban user “Ding...
Less than a week after a shocking “Xianzhong” car attack that left 35 dead in Zhuhai, a recent...
At the end of a landmark national security trial that concluded on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s High Court...
A veil of silence has fallen around the car ramming attack that killed 35 and injured 43 in...
The Municipal Bureau of Justice in Karamay, Xinjiang posted—and later deleted—a skit to Douyin...
Concern is mounting over the health of imprisoned civil society activist and human-rights lawyer...
On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was off to a good start in 2024, with reported 5.3% year-on-year GDP growth in the first quarter of the year. The better-than-expected data was touted by various Chinese state media outlets online, although many of those news posts had comment filtering enabled, perhaps in anticipation of negative or skeptical reactions from social media users. Two items in particular seemed to strike netizens as overly optimistic: the reported “nationwide average per-capita disposable income” figure of 11,539 yuan...
A recent WeChat post from oft-controversial entrepreneur, publicity hound, and philanthropist Chen...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last...
After conducting nucleic acid testing on its 26 million residents this week, Shanghai remains...
Evergrande offices across China have been beset by protesting retail investors and homeowners...
Anyone who has boarded an airplane in the last 20 years knows what stands between arrival at the...
Concern is mounting over the health of imprisoned civil society activist and human-rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong, who has been on a nearly one-month hunger strike to protest his mistreatment in Shandong’s Lunan Prison. Many human rights groups and supporters have raised the alarm about Xu’s hunger strike, weight loss, and declining health, and have urged Chinese authorities to halt his mistreatment and provide him with medical care. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns have also spoken out on Xu’s behalf. #XuZhiyong on hunger strike, day 26: No update. It's...
Two years after Peng Lifa’s courageous one-man protest on Beijing’s Sitong Bridge against Xi...
China’s investments in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are increasingly moving away from...
Posting about politics on Weibo can sometimes look like a game of Russian Roulette: without knowing where the pitfalls lie, at some point one is bound to run into trouble. Hot takes can lead to quick suspensions. Asking for explanations can even lead to longer suspensions. So too can criticizing suspensions. Average netizens might circumvent bans through “reincarnation,” but celebrity commentators less able to fly under the radar can lose access to millions of followers. This is the fate of prominent ultranationalist firebrand Sima Nan, who was banned from his social media accounts last week...
On Tuesday, Donald Trump was elected the next president of the United States. The election had...
Given the potential global consequences of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, it has naturally...
China’s State Council unveiled new policies last week intended to promote parenthood and foster a more “reproduction-friendly society,” which were met with muted skepticism. Along with other media pieces on the subject, subsequent news underlined just how far away Chinese citizens are from supporting the government’s goal. For example, the Ministry of Civil Affairs recently released data showing that marriage registrations for the first nine months of 2024 dropped to a record low since 1980. Nectar Gan at CNN provided more context on the figures and their relation to falling birthrates: Some...
Last week, the Jamestown Foundation published the second installment of a two-part investigation...
The specter of arrest has made Halloween extra spooky this year. In Shanghai, Guangzhou, and...
The Shenzhou-19 spaceship carrying three of China’s youngest taikonauts successfully launched and docked with China’s Tiangong space station this week. The mission follows the return of China’s sample-bearing lunar probe from the far side of the moon in June. Both missions have highlighted the momentum of China’s space program, which has instilled pride among the Chinese public, but has generated some expressions of anxiety in the U.S. Brian Spegele and Clarence Leong at The Wall Street Journal described how the Shenzhou mission showcased China’s pride and confidence in its space ambitions:...
China’s “distant-water fishing” (DWF) activities are both figurative and literal. Figuratively,...
The Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) published its fifth election report (PDF) on...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on display at the recent Zhuhai Air Show in Guangdong province, has attracted considerable backlash online. After photos and descriptions of the promotional display appeared on the Chinese website Douban (a social network for discussions, recommendations, and reviews of books, music, movies, and more), Douban users drew parallels to “1984,” “Thought Police,” and the biometrics-based predictive-policing regime depicted in the dystopian Japanese anime series “Psycho-Pass.” A post from Douban user “Ding...
Less than a week after a shocking “Xianzhong” car attack that left 35 dead in Zhuhai, a recent...
At the end of a landmark national security trial that concluded on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s High Court...
On Thursday, the Canadian government announced that it will ban Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE from its 5G networks. The move comes as the Biden administration debates imposing further sanctions on Hikvision, a Chinese surveillance camera company, for supplying and operating equipment in Xinjiang mass detention camps. Both of these developments bring renewed attention to the role of Chinese technology companies in problematic surveillance activities and the role of sanctions in combating their alleged abuses. Catharine Tunney and Richard Raycraft from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation...
On Monday of last week, Malaysian musician Namewee (Wee Meng Chee, 黃明志) learned that his YouTube...
A group of students under the impression they had discovered a WeChat “bug” that hides the phrase...
On WeChat last weekend, "Fatty Zhao, scholar of Song Dynasty history" reflected on a recent fire at a Shandong university. The students’ escape route was blocked by facial recognition turnstiles through which they scanned one by one, even as the smoke made that more difficult. Despairing of the students’ compliance in the face of danger, Zhao cites a pair of historical episodes by way of explanation: Recently, I’ve been busy working on a book manuscript, and haven’t had time to post on WeChat or check the news. Only after finishing the first draft yesterday did I have a...
A spate of “revenge against society” attacks that have left dozens dead and more injured over the...
For college students in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, it was a brief moment of freedom: a...
On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was off to a good start in 2024, with reported 5.3% year-on-year GDP growth in the first quarter of the year. The better-than-expected data was touted by various Chinese state media outlets online, although many of those news posts had comment filtering enabled, perhaps in anticipation of negative or skeptical reactions from social media users. Two items in particular seemed to strike netizens as overly optimistic: the reported “nationwide average per-capita disposable income” figure of 11,539 yuan...
A recent WeChat post from oft-controversial entrepreneur, publicity hound, and philanthropist Chen...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last...
On WeChat last weekend, "Fatty Zhao, scholar of Song Dynasty history" reflected on a recent fire at a Shandong university. The students’ escape route was blocked by facial recognition turnstiles through which they scanned one by one, even as the smoke made that more difficult. Despairing of the students’ compliance in the face of danger, Zhao cites a pair of historical episodes by way of explanation: Recently, I’ve been busy working on a book manuscript, and haven’t had time to post on WeChat or check the news. Only after finishing the first draft yesterday did I have a...
A predictive policing tool described as a “Crowd Mood Monitoring and Early Warning System,” on...
China is leading the global trend towards cyber sovereignty, a norm based on the use of technology...
China’s “distant-water fishing” (DWF) activities are both figurative and literal. Figuratively, the term “fishing the high seas” (远洋捕捞, yuǎnyáng bǔlāo) describes the phenomenon of cash-strapped local authorities replenishing their coffers by arresting private business owners in other localities and seizing their assets. But in a literal sense, it refers to the thousands of Chinese fishing vessels that have sprawled across the globe to plunder fish stocks, often by anchoring in international waters and launching incursions into other countries’ maritime zones to expand their catch. This...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local...
At a recent summit in Ethiopia, the African Union (AU) decided to approve a 15-year continent-wide...
At the end of a landmark national security trial that concluded on Tuesday, Hong Kong’s High Court sentenced 45 pro-democracy figures to up to ten years in prison. Forty-seven democratic politicians, activists, and organizers were arrested and charged in January 2021 with conspiracy to commit subversion under the National Security Law. The charges related to their participation in organizing an unofficial primary election in 2020 ahead of a legislative election. In February 2023, the trial began. In May of this year, the court convicted 14 defendants who contested the accusations and...
The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. The...
New research documents the repressive effects of Hong Kong’s national security laws. This week,...
At the Associated Press, Fu Ting reports mounting pressure on China’s independent bookstores and other cultural channels and venues: Independent bookstores have become a new battleground in China, swept up in the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on dissent and free expression. The Associated Press found that at least a dozen bookstores in the world’s second-largest economy have been shuttered or targeted for closure in the last few months alone, squeezing the already tight space for press freedom. One bookstore owner was arrested over four months ago. The crackdown has had...
Following a hotly contested U.S. election that reverberated across Chinese social media, drawing...
While the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was massively censored within mainland China...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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