Retrospectively, we understand better why the Chinese government chose to arrest THAT man at that time. The repression of the entire Uyghur population was just about to get started, and no one would have talked about it more vehemently, more precisely than Ilham Tohti ..."

— Scholar Marie Holzman, looking back at the 2014 arrest of prominent Uyghur economist and rights advocate Ilham Tohti. On Sept. 23, the tenth anniversary of Ilham Tohti's being sentenced to life in prison, human rights organizations worldwide called for increased diplomatic pressure to secure his release.

 

CDT Highlights

Latest

Sympathy, Soul-Searching, and Censorship Follow Fatal Stabbing of Japanese Boy in Shenzhen

Amid state-media silence and Chinese Foreign Ministry insistence that two fatal anti-Japanese attacks in Shenzhen and Suzhou were “isolated incidents” that could happen in any country, Chinese bloggers, citizen journalists, and everyday netizens continue to publish soul-searching, thoughtful essays, articles, and comments on topics such as the role of the CCP in promoting anti-Japanese propaganda, the proliferation of xenophobic content online, and the “teaching of hatred” in school classrooms. Over the last ten days, CDT Chinese editors have archived over three dozen such essays and...

  • Recent News
  • Human Rights
  • Translation
  • Politics
  • Hong Kong
  • Information Revolution
  • CDT Bookshelf
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Sci-Tech
  • Law
  • The Great Divide

U.S. Plans to Ban Chinese Tech in Connected and Driverless Vehicles 

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Commerce proposed rules to ban Chinese technology from internet-connected vehicles in the U.S. The plan was unveiled by the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security after a seven-month investigation, and it is intended to be finalized by January of next year. The rules would apply to all vehicles–including cars, trucks, and buses—operating on public roads, with software restrictions coming into effect in 2027 and hardware restrictions in 2030. Edward Helmore from The Guardian described how fears of espionage fueled the U.S. government’s decision: 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...

Sympathy, Soul-Searching, and Censorship Follow Fatal Stabbing of Japanese Boy in Shenzhen

Amid state-media silence and Chinese Foreign Ministry insistence that two fatal anti-Japanese attacks in Shenzhen and Suzhou were “isolated incidents” that could happen in any country, Chinese bloggers, citizen journalists, and everyday netizens continue to publish soul-searching, thoughtful essays, articles, and comments on topics such as the role of the CCP in promoting anti-Japanese propaganda, the proliferation of xenophobic content online, and the “teaching of hatred” in school classrooms. Over the last ten days, CDT Chinese editors have archived over three dozen such essays and...

Sympathy, Soul-Searching, and Censorship Follow Fatal Stabbing of Japanese Boy in Shenzhen

Amid state-media silence and Chinese Foreign Ministry insistence that two fatal anti-Japanese attacks in Shenzhen and Suzhou were “isolated incidents” that could happen in any country, Chinese bloggers, citizen journalists, and everyday netizens continue to publish soul-searching, thoughtful essays, articles, and comments on topics such as the role of the CCP in promoting anti-Japanese propaganda, the proliferation of xenophobic content online, and the “teaching of hatred” in school classrooms. Over the last ten days, CDT Chinese editors have archived over three dozen such essays and...

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...

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...

Sri Lanka’s New President Navigates Relations with China, India

Anura Kumara Dissanayake was sworn in on Monday as the new president of Sri Lanka after the country’s national elections this weekend. The 55-year-old self-described Marxist ran as an outsider from humble origins who promised to tackle corruption among the political elites and give voice to popular discontent over the country’s economic woes. The elections took place two years after Sri Lanka’s economy collapsed under the weight of debt, weak exports, and low taxation, touching off mass protests and forcing the president’s resignation. As Krishan Francis and Krutika Pathi reported for the...

Sympathy, Soul-Searching, and Censorship Follow Fatal Stabbing of Japanese Boy in Shenzhen

Amid state-media silence and Chinese Foreign Ministry insistence that two fatal anti-Japanese attacks in Shenzhen and Suzhou were “isolated incidents” that could happen in any country, Chinese bloggers, citizen journalists, and everyday netizens continue to publish soul-searching, thoughtful essays, articles, and comments on topics such as the role of the CCP in promoting anti-Japanese propaganda, the proliferation of xenophobic content online, and the “teaching of hatred” in school classrooms. Over the last ten days, CDT Chinese editors have archived over three dozen such essays and...

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...

Citizen Journalist Zhang Zhan Re-detained, Her Mother and Attorney Harassed by Authorities

Chinese human rights website Weiquanwang has reported that lawyer-turned-citizen journalist Zhang Zhan has been detained again and is being held by authorities in Shanghai, just months after her release upon completing a four-year prison sentence. Following Zhang’s re-detention and transportation to Shanghai, Zhang’s attorney Fan Biaowen was also held and questioned by police for eight hours, and Zhang’s mother is currently incommunicado and thought to be under the control of police in Shanghai. Targeted for her hard-hitting video reporting from Wuhan documenting the early days of the COVID...

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

Translations: China’s Olympic Reporters Fail to Win Medals (1)

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 made during a livestream by Nanfang Daily’s Zhu Xiaolong, who questioned 17-year-old diving gold-medalist Quan Hongchan’s educational level and emotional maturity. But the storm over Zhu’s comment was a microcosm of broader discussion about the news media, their role...

Society

Latest

Netizen Voices: Chinese Football Again In Turmoil Over Corruption and “Humiliating” Defeats

Despite a laudable performance in other sports at this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games, China continues to flail in its footballing ambitions. Last Thursday, the men’s national team lost 7-0 to rival Japan in the third round of the World Cup Qualifiers group stage. The result became China’s worst ever defeat to Japan and its worst to any team since the all-time low of an 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. On Tuesday, the team then lost 2-1 at home to ten-man Saudi Arabia. Capping off the dreadful week, dozens of players were banned following a corruption investigation. There was no hiding how...

China & the World

Latest

China Frees American Pastor After Nearly 20 Years of Detention

In a rare event on Monday, the Chinese government has freed an American citizen who it had detained for nearly 20 years. The citizen, David Lin, was a pastor who was born in China and then lived in California, where he has now safely returned. He is one of three Americans that the U.S. government considers “wrongfully detained” in China. His release signals a potential improvement in the deteriorating bilateral relations between the two countries. Eric Tucker and Didi Tang from the Associated Press provided more background on Lin’s detention: David Lin, 68, was detained after he entered...

Law

Latest

Citizen Journalist Zhang Zhan Re-detained, Her Mother and Attorney Harassed by Authorities

Chinese human rights website Weiquanwang has reported that lawyer-turned-citizen journalist Zhang Zhan has been detained again and is being held by authorities in Shanghai, just months after her release upon completing a four-year prison sentence. Following Zhang’s re-detention and transportation to Shanghai, Zhang’s attorney Fan Biaowen was also held and questioned by police for eight hours, and Zhang’s mother is currently incommunicado and thought to be under the control of police in Shanghai. Targeted for her hard-hitting video reporting from Wuhan documenting the early days of the COVID...

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

Translations: “Real Reporters Are Rarer Than Pandas. We Can’t Send Them Off to Clown Around at the Olympics” (3)

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...

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

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...

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...

CDT EBOOKS

Subscribe to CDT

SUPPORT CDT

Browsers Unbounded by Lantern

Now, you can combat internet censorship in a new way: by toggling the switch below while browsing China Digital Times, you can provide a secure "bridge" for people who want to freely access information. This open-source project is powered by Lantern, know more about this project.

Google Ads 1

Giving Assistant

Google Ads 2

Anti-censorship Tools

Life Without Walls

Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention

Open popup
X

Welcome back!

CDT is a non-profit media site, and we need your support. Your contribution will help us provide more translations, breaking news, and other content you love.