China and Russia Stride Hand-in-Hand Into the New Year

Xi Jinping exchanged New Year greetings with Vladimir Putin last week, saying that both countries have always moved forward “hand in hand” on the right path. China Daily said both leaders vowed to “foster cooperation,...

These political conditions are growing out of poor soil. Before you can grow crops, first you have to plant grass to nourish the soil. As the soil’s fertility improves, you can cultivate better things. This is what Ruan Xiaohuan was doing."

— Statement by Bei Zhenying, wife of legendary blogger "program think" (aka Ruan Xiaohuan), after Shanghai’s High Court reaffirmed Ruan's seven-year prison sentence for "inciting subversion."

 

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Minitrue Plus Five: January 6, 2020 – Taiwan Election, Mystery Pneumonia, U.S. Trade Deal

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

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Bounties and Sanctions Mark Holiday Season for Overseas Activists

On Christmas Eve, Hong Kong’s national security police announced arrest warrants and bounties of HK$1 million (US$129,000) for information leading to the arrest of six exiled activists. The activists are accused of a range of national security offences, such as subversion, inciting secession, and colluding with foreign forces. These latest measures underscore the government’s expansive efforts at transnational repression against its critics. James Lee at the Hong Kong Free Press provided more detail about the six activists, their backgrounds, and why they were arrested: [Tony Chung, t]he...

Brazil Scrutinizes BYD Labor-Rights Violations, Straining Ties with China

One of Brazil’s most high-profile Chinese investors has become embroiled in a scandal that threatens to upend its presence in the country. Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer BYD was building a factory in Brazil’s northeast state of Bahia—which would be BYD’s biggest EV plant outside Asia, with a production capacity of 150,000 vehicles per year—when government authorities ordered a halt to construction over serious labor-rights violations. As Kalyeena Makortoff at The Guardian reported, authorities found that over a hundred workers were being held in “slavery-like conditions”: The...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 6, 2020 – Taiwan Election, Mystery Pneumonia, U.S. Trade Deal

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

China and Russia Stride Hand-in-Hand Into the New Year

Xi Jinping exchanged New Year greetings with Vladimir Putin last week, saying that both countries have always moved forward “hand in hand” on the right path. China Daily said both leaders vowed to “foster cooperation, deepen ties.” Recently, Igor Morgulov, the Russian ambassador to China, said that Xi will visit Russia in 2025 and that both countries will put up a “double resistance” to pressure from the U.S.-led West. For Western observers anxious about the extent of Sino-Russian collaboration at their expense, the turn of the year offered an opportunity to reflect on the state of China and...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 4, 2020 – Mystery Pneumonia, Murdered Doctor’s Funeral, HK Official’s Replacement

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

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...

China and Russia Stride Hand-in-Hand Into the New Year

Xi Jinping exchanged New Year greetings with Vladimir Putin last week, saying that both countries have always moved forward “hand in hand” on the right path. China Daily said both leaders vowed to “foster cooperation, deepen ties.” Recently, Igor Morgulov, the Russian ambassador to China, said that Xi will visit Russia in 2025 and that both countries will put up a “double resistance” to pressure from the U.S.-led West. For Western observers anxious about the extent of Sino-Russian collaboration at their expense, the turn of the year offered an opportunity to reflect on the state of China and...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 6, 2020 – Taiwan Election, Mystery Pneumonia, U.S. Trade Deal

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

CDT 2024 Year-End Roundup: Reports of the Year

As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” CDT Chinese publishes a column called CDT Reports, which collects external reports from think tanks, academic journals, NGOs, the media, and other sources on topics related to various human rights issues in China. This year, CDT Chinese published 150 of these...

Minitrue Plus Five: January 4, 2020 – Mystery Pneumonia, Murdered Doctor’s Funeral, HK Official’s Replacement

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

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

Brazil Scrutinizes BYD Labor-Rights Violations, Straining Ties with China

One of Brazil’s most high-profile Chinese investors has become embroiled in a scandal that threatens to upend its presence in the country. Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer BYD was building a factory in Brazil’s northeast state of Bahia—which would be BYD’s biggest EV plant outside Asia, with a production capacity of 150,000 vehicles per year—when government authorities ordered a halt to construction over serious labor-rights violations. As Kalyeena Makortoff at The Guardian reported, authorities found that over a hundred workers were being held in “slavery-like conditions”: The...

Politics

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CDT 2024 Year-End Roundup: Quotes of the Year (Part 1)

As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” CDT’s “Quotes of the Year” are a mirror of China’s national mood in ten comments. The five quotes presented in this post (the first of two) reflect displeasure with coerced rosy perspectives on China’s economy; despair over senseless deaths observed in silence;...

Society

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CDT 2024 Year-End Roundup: Quotes of the Year (Part 2)

As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” CDT’s “Quotes of the Year” are a mirror of China’s national mood in ten comments. The five quotes selected in Part One reflected displeasure with coerced rosy perspectives on China’s economy; despair over senseless deaths observed in silence; the enduring...

China & the World

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Chinese Government Leverages Inbound Tourism to Boost External Propaganda

In a global public opinion climate marked by polarized views of China, one common tactic employed by the Party-state apparatus to dispel potential criticism is encouraging foreigners to come see China in person. Numerous articles and events over the past month have exhibited these external propaganda efforts in the realm of professional, tourist, and academic visits, along with people-to-people exchanges. In the professional domain, one classic example is junkets to Xinjiang for foreign journalists, aimed at producing flattering accounts of the state of human rights in the region that can...

Law

Latest

Minitrue Plus Five: January 4, 2020 – Mystery Pneumonia, Murdered Doctor’s Funeral, HK Official’s Replacement

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

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

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2024’s Most Notable Censored Articles and Essays (Part 2)

As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” In this Part 2 post about 2024’s most notable censored articles and essays from CDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive,” some of the topics include a food-safety scandal about oil tanker-trucks transporting cooking oil, a proposed national Internet ID system, 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

CDT 2024 Year-End Roundup: Reports of the Year

As 2024 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2024 Editors’ Picks.” CDT Chinese publishes a column called CDT Reports, which collects external reports from think tanks, academic journals, NGOs, the media, and other sources on topics related to various human rights issues in China. This year, CDT Chinese published 150 of these...

Environment

Latest

Dam Construction in Tibet Threatens Local Communities and Environment

Infrastructure projects in Tibet have often drawn controversy for failing to balance development, human rights, and environmental protection. As CDT has covered this year, state-sponsored hydropower projects have forcibly displaced local communities and led to violent reprisals against protesters. A series of recent reports expand on this topic to highlight the social and environmental perils of these projects. Last week, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) published a report titled, “Chinese Hydropower: Damning Tibet’s Culture, Community, and Environment.” The report includes an...

Hong Kong

Latest

Minitrue Plus Five: January 4, 2020 – Mystery Pneumonia, Murdered Doctor’s Funeral, HK Official’s Replacement

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

Taiwan

Latest

Minitrue Plus Five: January 6, 2020 – Taiwan Election, Mystery Pneumonia, U.S. Trade Deal

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak. They were originally published between September and December, 2020 as the Minitrue Diary series, after the censorship and propaganda organs’ Orwellian online nickname 真理部 Zhēnlǐ bù, or "Ministry of...

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