Late last month, WeChat moderators’ axe fell on "Du Fu of Huanhua Creek," apparently prompted by a post questioning online comments about Sino-Japanese tensions. On their other account, "History...
The catastrophic fire at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week has been widely discussed on mainland social media. Many commenters mourned the dead as their number climbed past 100, then 150. Some...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
Last week’s CDT Chinese 404 Archives podcast highlighted the recent revival of the Silent...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
What Zheng Zhihua wanted was dignity, but many people feel that dignity is non-essential. Some people tacitly accept a lack of dignity in their own lives, and by extension, they don’t feel that others are deserving of dignity."
— Well-known Chinese blind folk singer, songwriter, and poet Zhou Yunpeng, commenting on the vitriolic backlash against Taiwanese singer Zheng Zhihua after Zheng complained about being unable to board a plane with a wheelchair at Shenzhen's airport
Late last month, WeChat moderators’ axe fell on "Du Fu of Huanhua Creek," apparently prompted by a post questioning online comments about Sino-Japanese tensions. On their other account, "History Rhymes," author "Xu Peng1" lamented the loss of the account, the writing posted to it, and the connections it had made. The core of the post is a defense of what the authorities term "negative energy." The great "poet-historian" after whom the account was named famously recorded the suffering of the common people during the An Lushan rebellion...
The catastrophic fire at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week has been...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
Last Saturday, November 8, was China’s National Journalists’ Day—often an occasion for mixed...
The inaugural IndieChina Film Festival (IndieChina电影节, IndieChina Diànyǐngjié), which was set to...
The involvement of Chinese nationals in Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine received widespread media attention earlier this year. This included an extended interview by Chinese journalist Chai Jing with one such combatant, "Macaron," which was was subsequently translated in two parts by CDT. The much smaller number of Chinese fighters on the Ukrainian side has received less notice. One notable exception is Peng Chenliang, who was killed in 2024 and, before joining the war, had reportedly been detained for seven months in China over his anti-Russia, pro-Ukraine posts on X....
We believe: Faith is not a crime. Worship is not a crime. Prayer is not a crime. [Chinese] This...
The death of Jerome Cohen last week at the age of 95 prompted a wave of tributes to the legendary...
Citizen journalist and COVID-whistleblower Zhang Zhan, who spent four years in prison for her...
China’s National Bureau of Statistics published new data on Wednesday showing that urban youth...
On Monday, Reuters reported on the story of a man who tried to flee Gaza by crossing the border...
In the run-up to the Global Women’s Summit slated for October in Beijing, which will mark the 30th anniversary of that city’s influential 1995 U.N. World Conference on Women, some WeChat accounts focused on feminism and women’s empowerment have been blocked or had their content deleted. Earlier this month, feminist blogger Jiang Chan (姜婵, Jiāng Chán) had her official WeChat account blocked. The account now displays a message saying that it has been blocked, and that the content cannot be viewed because it is in violation of Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) regulations. Jiang hasn’t...
Citizen journalist and COVID-whistleblower Zhang Zhan, who spent four years in prison for her...
In 2021, Tibet Action Institute (TAI) published a groundbreaking report exposing the extensive use...
Following rare mass protests that broke out in the city of Jiangyou in Sichuan province earlier...
Recent revelations have ignited widespread outrage over a Telegram group in which tens of...
After Beijing granted authorization in December, construction on what would be the world’s largest...
Late last month, WeChat moderators’ axe fell on "Du Fu of Huanhua Creek," apparently prompted by a post questioning online comments about Sino-Japanese tensions. On their other account, "History Rhymes," author "Xu Peng1" lamented the loss of the account, the writing posted to it, and the connections it had made. The core of the post is a defense of what the authorities term "negative energy." The great "poet-historian" after whom the account was named famously recorded the suffering of the common people during the An Lushan rebellion...
The catastrophic fire at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week has been...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
Following more than a week of speculation that Chengdu’s You Xing Bookstore (有杏书店, Yǒu Xìng...
The image above shows a one-man protest that reportedly took place at the high-end Taikoo Li...
Late last month, WeChat moderators’ axe fell on "Du Fu of Huanhua Creek," apparently prompted by a post questioning online comments about Sino-Japanese tensions. On their other account, "History Rhymes," author "Xu Peng1" lamented the loss of the account, the writing posted to it, and the connections it had made. The core of the post is a defense of what the authorities term "negative energy." The great "poet-historian" after whom the account was named famously recorded the suffering of the common people during the An Lushan rebellion...
The catastrophic fire at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week has been...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
Last week’s CDT Chinese 404 Archives podcast highlighted the recent revival of the Silent...
Last Saturday, November 8, was China’s National Journalists’ Day—often an occasion for mixed...
The inaugural IndieChina Film Festival (IndieChina电影节, IndieChina Diànyǐngjié), which was set to...
The catastrophic fire at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week has been widely discussed on mainland social media. Many commenters mourned the dead as their number climbed past 100, then 150. Some of these messages appeared on the "Wailing Wall" that still survives in the replies to COVID whistleblower Li Wenliang’s final Weibo post. Others praised the relative openness they perceived in Hong Kong’s response to the disaster, in comparison with the typically heavy-handed management of such "sudden incidents" elsewhere in China. Others yet...
“After six years of reporting in Hong Kong, and at eight months pregnant, I’m very sad to be...
You Must Take Part in Revolution is a graphic novel by Badiucao, political cartoonist and former...
June 30 marked the fifth anniversary of Beijing’s imposition of a heavy-handed national security...
This year’s 36th anniversary commemorations of the June 4 crackdown were marked by intense,...
28-year-old activist Joshua Wong faces new charges under Hong Kong’s national security law that...
In June, ChinaFile published a new report, "The Locknet: How China Controls Its Internet and Why It Matters"—the product of 18 months’ work by Jessica Batke, ChinaFile’s senior editor for investigations, and Laura Edelson, assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University. The report gives a concise but thorough overview of China’s online censorship system, including the motivations behind it and the mechanisms by which it is implemented. It expands on the familiar image of the "Great Firewall" as a perimeter barrier, adopting a broader...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
A recent WeChat post reveals that some Chinese schools and universities are using special software...
In the two weeks since the Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration of China...
You Must Take Part in Revolution is a graphic novel by Badiucao, political cartoonist and former CDT contributor, and Melissa Chan, a journalist who in 2012 became the first reporter to be expelled from China in more than a decade. The book was conceived in the wake of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and follows the divergent paths of three friends in Hong Kong and Taiwan from their involvement in the protests through to 2035. CDT: I’m sure anyone reading CDT is familiar with each of you separately. How did the two of you come to join forces? Melissa Chan: I’d interviewed Badiucao for a...
On September 12, 2003, John Battelle published the first post on chinadigitaltimes.net: Here’s...
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...
The catastrophic fire at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week has been widely discussed on mainland social media. Many commenters mourned the dead as their number climbed past 100, then 150. Some of these messages appeared on the "Wailing Wall" that still survives in the replies to COVID whistleblower Li Wenliang’s final Weibo post. Others praised the relative openness they perceived in Hong Kong’s response to the disaster, in comparison with the typically heavy-handed management of such "sudden incidents" elsewhere in China. Others yet...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
Last Saturday, November 8, was China’s National Journalists’ Day—often an occasion for mixed...
State media hailed the mass travel over this month’s "Super Golden Week" holiday...
CDT presents a new monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted...
Late last month, WeChat moderators’ axe fell on "Du Fu of Huanhua Creek," apparently prompted by a post questioning online comments about Sino-Japanese tensions. On their other account, "History Rhymes," author "Xu Peng1" lamented the loss of the account, the writing posted to it, and the connections it had made. The core of the post is a defense of what the authorities term "negative energy." The great "poet-historian" after whom the account was named famously recorded the suffering of the common people during the An Lushan rebellion...
The catastrophic fire at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week has been...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
Last week’s CDT Chinese 404 Archives podcast highlighted the recent revival of the Silent...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
Last Saturday, November 8, was China’s National Journalists’ Day—often an occasion for mixed...
Late last month, WeChat moderators’ axe fell on "Du Fu of Huanhua Creek," apparently prompted by a post questioning online comments about Sino-Japanese tensions. On their other account, "History Rhymes," author "Xu Peng1" lamented the loss of the account, the writing posted to it, and the connections it had made. The core of the post is a defense of what the authorities term "negative energy." The great "poet-historian" after whom the account was named famously recorded the suffering of the common people during the An Lushan rebellion...
Last week’s CDT Chinese 404 Archives podcast highlighted the recent revival of the Silent...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
This week, a report at IT Home described recent corporate initiatives in the fight to promote...
The following translations are from a series of posts on WeChat public account 育知录 Yuzhilu—a...
The news that two more Japanese scientists were awarded Nobel Prizes in the natural sciences has...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Bilibili, Zhihu, Douban, and others. Although this content archived by CDT Chinese editors represents only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, it provides valuable insight into which topics are considered “sensitive” over time by the...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
The image above shows a one-man protest that reportedly took place at the high-end Taikoo Li...
Police and media silence after a car plowed into a large crowd of students and parents near an...
Public backlash has forced local officials in Pengyuan—a community in the city of Jiangmen,...
CDT presents a new monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted...
At The New York Times on Monday, columnist Li Yuan describes how, as "wages stagnate and jobs disappear, the promise of upward social mobility is eroding, especially for those from modest backgrounds. For many […], the Chinese Dream no longer feels achievable." Similar themes have featured prominently on CDT in recent months, from uproar over the "4+4" fast-track for medical qualifications to commentary on the decline of former "golden ticket" degrees like computer science and the resurgent appeal of official careers. Other examples include gallows humor...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was...
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...
In the run-up to the Global Women’s Summit slated for October in Beijing, which will mark the 30th anniversary of that city’s influential 1995 U.N. World Conference on Women, some WeChat accounts focused on feminism and women’s empowerment have been blocked or had their content deleted. Earlier this month, feminist blogger Jiang Chan (姜婵, Jiāng Chán) had her official WeChat account blocked. The account now displays a message saying that it has been blocked, and that the content cannot be viewed because it is in violation of Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) regulations. Jiang hasn’t...
Citizen journalist and COVID-whistleblower Zhang Zhan, who spent four years in prison for her...
In 2021, Tibet Action Institute (TAI) published a groundbreaking report exposing the extensive use...
Two posts from nationalist pundit and former Global Times Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin criticizing what he describes as a “collective silence” on Chinese social media have sparked intense discussion on Chinese and overseas websites. The posts, published earlier this month by Hu on his personal WeChat account and his Weibo account, respectively, lament this lack of robust societal debate, and place the blame, variously, on bureaucratic formalism, self-censorship, employer-driven censorship, online trolls, and society in general. At The East is Read, Yirui Li and Yuxuan Jia offered a full...
This is the full transcript, lightly edited for grammar and clarity, of an interview with Jessica...
The critically acclaimed U.S.-Australian body-horror movie “Together” launched in China on...
Taiwanese singer Zheng Zhihua’s complaint about a difficult experience boarding a flight at Shenzhen’s main airport has spurred heated online debate about barrier-free access for disabled people in China. Both Zheng and the airport offered apologies and Zheng, after being attacked online for the way he worded his complaint, has reportedly deleted his Weibo account. The 63-year-old singer, who performs frequently in both China and Taiwan, is well-known on both sides of the strait for such hit songs as "Sailor," "Star Lighting," "The Great Citizen," and “33...
Amid a new two-month “Clear and Bright” campaign by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC)...
Some popular social media accounts that depict “lying down”—eschewing the rat race in favor of a...
Several public opinion surveys published over the last few months paint a picture of China’s role in the world from the perspective of both Chinese and international respondents. These build on previous surveys from the past year that show how despite polarized views, global attitudes towards China have improved at the expense of the U.S., especially in the Global South. (Meanwhile, polls showing dissatisfaction within China have been censored online.) One notable survey published this month by Dina Smeltz, Craig Kafura, Yawei Liu, Nick Zeller, and Sam Dong at the Chicago Council on Global...
Some international students in China have taken to social media platform RedNote (Xiaohongshu) to...
The “Gen Z” protest movement that toppled Nepal’s government last week has sent shockwaves around...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Bilibili, Zhihu, Douban, and others. Although this content archived by CDT Chinese editors represents only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, it provides valuable insight into which topics are considered “sensitive” over time by the...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
The image above shows a one-man protest that reportedly took place at the high-end Taikoo Li...
A pair of recently surfaced screenshots appear to offer unusual detail about a special month-long operation, held in Beijing and involving over 40 Ministry of Public Security computer specialists from around the country, to combat “overseas cyber forces” in the battle for public opinion. The apparently leaked internal instructions from the Ministry of Public Security are likely to be the result of an email breach. They include the names and locations of many of the computer-specialist officers, as well as the name and contact information of the individual in charge of the operation. At some...
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...
Late last month, WeChat moderators’ axe fell on "Du Fu of Huanhua Creek," apparently prompted by a post questioning online comments about Sino-Japanese tensions. On their other account, "History Rhymes," author "Xu Peng1" lamented the loss of the account, the writing posted to it, and the connections it had made. The core of the post is a defense of what the authorities term "negative energy." The great "poet-historian" after whom the account was named famously recorded the suffering of the common people during the An Lushan rebellion...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
Last week’s CDT Chinese 404 Archives podcast highlighted the recent revival of the Silent...
At The New York Times on Monday, columnist Li Yuan describes how, as "wages stagnate and jobs disappear, the promise of upward social mobility is eroding, especially for those from modest backgrounds. For many […], the Chinese Dream no longer feels achievable." Similar themes have featured prominently on CDT in recent months, from uproar over the "4+4" fast-track for medical qualifications to commentary on the decline of former "golden ticket" degrees like computer science and the resurgent appeal of official careers. Other examples include gallows humor...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
Late last month, WeChat moderators’ axe fell on "Du Fu of Huanhua Creek," apparently prompted by a post questioning online comments about Sino-Japanese tensions. On their other account, "History Rhymes," author "Xu Peng1" lamented the loss of the account, the writing posted to it, and the connections it had made. The core of the post is a defense of what the authorities term "negative energy." The great "poet-historian" after whom the account was named famously recorded the suffering of the common people during the An Lushan rebellion...
Last week’s CDT Chinese 404 Archives podcast highlighted the recent revival of the Silent...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Bilibili, Zhihu, Douban, and others. Although this content archived by CDT Chinese editors represents only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, it provides valuable insight into which topics are considered “sensitive” over time by the...
After Beijing granted authorization in December, construction on what would be the world’s largest...
As China continues to tighten information flows in and out of the country, how reliable are...
The catastrophic fire at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week has been widely discussed on mainland social media. Many commenters mourned the dead as their number climbed past 100, then 150. Some of these messages appeared on the "Wailing Wall" that still survives in the replies to COVID whistleblower Li Wenliang’s final Weibo post. Others praised the relative openness they perceived in Hong Kong’s response to the disaster, in comparison with the typically heavy-handed management of such "sudden incidents" elsewhere in China. Others yet...
“After six years of reporting in Hong Kong, and at eight months pregnant, I’m very sad to be...
You Must Take Part in Revolution is a graphic novel by Badiucao, political cartoonist and former...
Taiwanese singer Zheng Zhihua’s complaint about a difficult experience boarding a flight at Shenzhen’s main airport has spurred heated online debate about barrier-free access for disabled people in China. Both Zheng and the airport offered apologies and Zheng, after being attacked online for the way he worded his complaint, has reportedly deleted his Weibo account. The 63-year-old singer, who performs frequently in both China and Taiwan, is well-known on both sides of the strait for such hit songs as "Sailor," "Star Lighting," "The Great Citizen," and “33...
This week, a report at IT Home described recent corporate initiatives in the fight to promote...
China is scheduled to host a large-scale “Victory Day” military parade on September 3 to mark the...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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