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If a phrase as trivial as 'It’s snowing in Xi’an' crosses a legal red line, then any jests or inadvertent remarks made by ordinary Internet users could easily become 'legal pitfalls.'”

— WeChat blogger Songqingren, commenting on a recent case in which authorities in Xi'an arrested a woman for "rumor-mongering" just because she posted a video incorrectly claiming that it was snowing in Xi'an

 

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Online Reactions to Fatal Stabbings at Shanghai Walmart, Zurich Daycare Center

Chinese netizens and bloggers have responded to two recent fatal stabbings—one at home and one abroad—with shock, online detective work, and comparisons to two other previous stabbings that targeted Japanese residents in Shenzhen and Suzhou. The first recent attack occurred at a Shanghai Walmart on the evening of Monday, September 30, when a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin stabbed 18 people, leaving three dead and 15 injured. The attack occurred on the eve of China’s October 1 National Day, which this year marked the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)....

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French Museums Waver Between “Tibet” and “Xizang” Amid Uproar Over Chinese Influence

Whether in Hong Kong or Europe, museums that showcase exhibitions related to China sometimes succumb to Xi Jinping’s warning for the arts to foster “correct” viewpoints of history and culture. The latest example of these tensions took place in Paris, France, where two museums employed the CCP’s new Sinicized terminology for describing the region of Tibet: “Xizang.” The Tibetan Review reported that one of the museums, the Quai Branly, backtracked last week after various Tibetan groups signed an open letter and protested the museum’s years-long use of “Xizang” over “Tibet”: The...

Human Rights Watch Report Shows Decline of Academic Freedom in Hong Kong

New research documents the repressive effects of Hong Kong’s national security laws. This week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report titled “We Can’t Write the Truth Anymore,” detailing the decline in academic freedom and the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly in Hong Kong. The 80-page report is based on interviews, conducted between October 2022 and June 2024, with 25 academics and eight students from all eight publicly funded Hong Kong universities. Here is a summary of some of the main findings: University officials have harassed the once...

Online Reactions to Fatal Stabbings at Shanghai Walmart, Zurich Daycare Center

Chinese netizens and bloggers have responded to two recent fatal stabbings—one at home and one abroad—with shock, online detective work, and comparisons to two other previous stabbings that targeted Japanese residents in Shenzhen and Suzhou. The first recent attack occurred at a Shanghai Walmart on the evening of Monday, September 30, when a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin stabbed 18 people, leaving three dead and 15 injured. The attack occurred on the eve of China’s October 1 National Day, which this year marked the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)....

China Evacuates Citizens From Lebanon as Israel’s War Engulfs Region

This week, Israel invaded southern Lebanon and continued airstrikes on Beirut, while Iran launched direct missile strikes against Israel. Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 1,100 people over the past two weeks and displaced over 1.2 million residents, prompting the Chinese government to evacuate over 200 Chinese citizens and their family members from Lebanon, including three Hongkongers. Zhao Ziwen from the South China Morning Post provided more details: “On [Tuesday], 146 Chinese citizens in Lebanon and five of their foreign family members arrived safely in Beijing,” the...

As PRC Outlasts Soviet Union, Xi Jinping Warns of “Stormy Waves”

The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. The anniversary is both political spectacle and the advent of a week-long holiday marked by decidedly apolitical leisure travel. On the eve of the anniversary, Xi Jinping delivered a speech in front of 3,000 guests, both foreign and domestic, in the Great Hall of the People. At The Guardian, Helen Davidson wrote about the relatively muted political celebrations in Beijing:  “The road ahead will not be smooth, there will definitely be difficulties and obstacles, and we may encounter major tests such as...

Translation: Chinese Universities Install Software to Identify and Punish Students Who Circumvent the Great Firewall

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...

New eBook: China Digital Times Lexicon, 20th Anniversary Edition

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...

E.U. Votes to Impose Tariffs on Chinese Electric Vehicles 

The European Union is the latest actor to impose punitive tariffs against Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), following a vote by its members on Friday. Western governments—including Canada and the U.S., which previously imposed 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs—are concerned about China’s dominance in the global EV industry and what that means for their domestic markets. The European Commission stated that China’s spare production capacity of three million EVs each year, which need to be exported, is twice the size of the E.U. market and, in the absence of intervention, seems likely to reach...

Online Reactions to Fatal Stabbings at Shanghai Walmart, Zurich Daycare Center

Chinese netizens and bloggers have responded to two recent fatal stabbings—one at home and one abroad—with shock, online detective work, and comparisons to two other previous stabbings that targeted Japanese residents in Shenzhen and Suzhou. The first recent attack occurred at a Shanghai Walmart on the evening of Monday, September 30, when a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin stabbed 18 people, leaving three dead and 15 injured. The attack occurred on the eve of China’s October 1 National Day, which this year marked the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)....

Marie Holzman: Thoughts on Ilham Tohti’s Arrest in 2014

To mark the tenth anniversary on Monday of his sentencing to life in prison, Marie Holzman writes at the online human-rights journal Diyin on Ilham Tohti’s case and its enduring significance. The essay, which is also available in Chinese and is reproduced here in full with the author’s permission, includes a selection of Ilham Tohti’s writings that starkly illustrates the gulf between his own words and the charges against him. Ilham Tohti is the most renowned Uyghur public intellectual in the People’s Republic of China. For over two decades he has worked tirelessly to...

Online Reactions to Fatal Stabbings at Shanghai Walmart, Zurich Daycare Center

Chinese netizens and bloggers have responded to two recent fatal stabbings—one at home and one abroad—with shock, online detective work, and comparisons to two other previous stabbings that targeted Japanese residents in Shenzhen and Suzhou. The first recent attack occurred at a Shanghai Walmart on the evening of Monday, September 30, when a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin stabbed 18 people, leaving three dead and 15 injured. The attack occurred on the eve of China’s October 1 National Day, which this year marked the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)....

Quote of the Day: Official Disposable Income Figures Derided as “Today’s Daily Dose of Humor”

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...

Human Rights

Latest

Human Rights Watch Report Shows Decline of Academic Freedom in Hong Kong

New research documents the repressive effects of Hong Kong’s national security laws. This week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report titled “We Can’t Write the Truth Anymore,” detailing the decline in academic freedom and the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly in Hong Kong. The 80-page report is based on interviews, conducted between October 2022 and June 2024, with 25 academics and eight students from all eight publicly funded Hong Kong universities. Here is a summary of some of the main findings: University officials have harassed the once...

Politics

Latest

Fatal Stabbing of Japanese 10-Year-Old in Shenzhen Sparks Outcry Over Xenophobic Violence

A 10-year-old Japanese boy was stabbed on his way to school in Shenzhen on Wednesday, September 18. He died the following day. The attack occurred on the anniversary of the 1931 Mukden Incident, which precipitated Japan’s invasion of China. It was the second deadly stabbing attack on a Japanese school in the past four months: in June, a Chinese school bus attendant, Hu Youping, was murdered while protecting Japanese students from an attacker in Suzhou. Chinese authorities have called both cases isolated instances without offering any detail on the attackers’ motives and little on their...

Society

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Translations: Olympics Showed How “Strict Government Controls Are Breeding Media Mediocrities” (2)

While China’s athletes won glory in Paris at this year’s Olympics and Paralympics, there was widespread agreement on Chinese social media that the country’s reporters did not. Bloggers and athletes alike rolled their eyes at the inanity of the Chinese press corps’ questions to competitors. One particular flashpoint was a comment by Nanfang Daily’s Zhu Xiaolong, who questioned 17-year-old diving gold-medalist Quan Hongchan’s educational level and emotional maturity during a livestream. But the storm over Zhu’s comments was a microcosm of broader discussion about the...

China & the World

Latest

Sinopsis: How Pro-Russian Narratives Spread in Malaysian Chinese-language Facebook Circles

Prague-based Sinopsis has published a new investigation by Kuek Ser Kuang Keng, Chan Wei See, and Wong Kai Hui into the propagation of pro-Russian narratives about the invasion of Ukraine through Chinese state media and other official channels and into Chinese-language Malaysian communities on Facebook: Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, we have observed a flurry of pro-Russia disinformation presented in Chinese language circulating among the online communities of Chinese-speaking Malaysians. This disinformation aims to shape the audience’s views towards the...

Law

Latest

Online Reactions to Fatal Stabbings at Shanghai Walmart, Zurich Daycare Center

Chinese netizens and bloggers have responded to two recent fatal stabbings—one at home and one abroad—with shock, online detective work, and comparisons to two other previous stabbings that targeted Japanese residents in Shenzhen and Suzhou. The first recent attack occurred at a Shanghai Walmart on the evening of Monday, September 30, when a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin stabbed 18 people, leaving three dead and 15 injured. The attack occurred on the eve of China’s October 1 National Day, which this year marked the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)....

Information Revolution

Latest

Canada Kicks Out Huawei, U.S. Weighs Further Sanctions on Hikvision, China Invests in Undermining Sanctions

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...

Culture & the Arts

Latest

As PRC Outlasts Soviet Union, Xi Jinping Warns of “Stormy Waves”

The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. The anniversary is both political spectacle and the advent of a week-long holiday marked by decidedly apolitical leisure travel. On the eve of the anniversary, Xi Jinping delivered a speech in front of 3,000 guests, both foreign and domestic, in the Great Hall of the People. At The Guardian, Helen Davidson wrote about the relatively muted political celebrations in Beijing:  “The road ahead will not be smooth, there will definitely be difficulties and obstacles, and we may encounter major tests such as...

The Great Divide

Latest

Quote of the Day: Official Disposable Income Figures Derided as “Today’s Daily Dose of Humor”

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...

Sci-Tech

Latest

Marie Holzman: Thoughts on Ilham Tohti’s Arrest in 2014

To mark the tenth anniversary on Monday of his sentencing to life in prison, Marie Holzman writes at the online human-rights journal Diyin on Ilham Tohti’s case and its enduring significance. The essay, which is also available in Chinese and is reproduced here in full with the author’s permission, includes a selection of Ilham Tohti’s writings that starkly illustrates the gulf between his own words and the charges against him. Ilham Tohti is the most renowned Uyghur public intellectual in the People’s Republic of China. For over two decades he has worked tirelessly to...

Environment

Latest

Reports Detail Forced Displacement and Violent Reprisals Against Protest in Tibet

Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local communities to impose state-sponsored projects, undermining environmental protection and human rights. The collaborative research network Turquoise Roof published the first report, “Occupying Tibet’s rivers: China’s hydropower ‘battlefield’ in Tibet.” The report details how violent paramilitary reprisals have stifled protests against the construction of the planned Kamtok hydropower dam along the Drichu (Yangtze) river, threatening the displacement of villages and Buddhist monasteries: The...

Hong Kong

Latest

As PRC Outlasts Soviet Union, Xi Jinping Warns of “Stormy Waves”

The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. The anniversary is both political spectacle and the advent of a week-long holiday marked by decidedly apolitical leisure travel. On the eve of the anniversary, Xi Jinping delivered a speech in front of 3,000 guests, both foreign and domestic, in the Great Hall of the People. At The Guardian, Helen Davidson wrote about the relatively muted political celebrations in Beijing:  “The road ahead will not be smooth, there will definitely be difficulties and obstacles, and we may encounter major tests such as...

Taiwan

Latest

35th Tiananmen Anniversary Commemorated Around the World

While the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was massively censored within mainland China and Hong Kong, people elsewhere around the world made tributes in order to highlight the incident and reflect on its significance in the present era. The Hongkonger compiled an inexhaustive list of commemorative events that took place in 18 cities across four continents. The Hong Kong Free Press reported on commemorations in Canada and the U.K., among other countries: On June 4, over 300 people joined an assembly in front of the Chinese Embassy in Britain to share and hear memories of the...

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