CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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,...

2025 Year-End Roundup: CDT Editors’ Picks

As 2025 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,...

When confronted by that force constantly threatening to drag us down, we must deliberately exert a countervailing force, lest we be overcome by that downward momentum. [...] Don’t give in to anger, or lower yourself to the level of your opponents, or succumb to defeatism if at first you don’t succeed."

— Legal scholar Lao Dongyan, in one of 2025's most notable Chinese essays, offering advice for combatting "political depression"

 

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CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

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The Guardian Interviews Chinese Fighters for Ukraine

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....

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: Notable Reports

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year, CDT Chinese editors covered 121 reports drawn from a wide variety of sources such as news outlets, think tanks, academic journals, governmental and non-governmental organizations, rights defense groups, citizen journalism collectives, and others. Key...

2025 Year-End Roundup: CDT Editors’ Picks

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2025: Samuel Wade, Executive Editor at CDT English CDT Pick: I was very happy that CDT was able to translate and publish Chai Jing’s interview with...

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

Interview: Jessica Batke and Laura Edelson on China’s “Locknet”

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...

Interview: Badiucao and Melissa Chan on Their Graphic Novel, You Must Take Part in Revolution

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...

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

Translation: Plunging Prices, Sprouting Weeds, and Broken Dreams

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...

Human Rights

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CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: Notable Reports

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year, CDT Chinese editors covered 121 reports drawn from a wide variety of sources such as news outlets, think tanks, academic journals, governmental and non-governmental organizations, rights defense groups, citizen journalism collectives, and others. Key...

Politics

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Netizen Voices: Sardonic Comments on “How to Get Back at Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi” Offer Socio-Political Commentary on China

Ongoing Sino-Japanese diplomatic tensions—touched off last month by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments on Japan’s willingness to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack—continue to result in cancellations of flights, tours, concerts, and people-to-people exchanges between the two nations. The most recent casualty is Japan-bound tourism during the upcoming New Year’s holiday, with Chinese carriers reportedly cancelling flights on 46 routes, affecting 38 airports in both China and Japan. Chinese government and state-media criticism of Takaichi has drawn a variety of...

Society

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Translations: Enthusiasts Fear Tightening Grip on Crosstalk Stage Comedy

Two recent WeChat posts express concern about mounting official interference in 相声 xiàngsheng, the traditional northern-Chinese form of fast-paced stage comedy known in English as crosstalk. These anxieties are acute, but not new. David Moser wrote in 2009, for example, that, "The Chinese government has systematically stifled crosstalk by bowdlerizing its tradition, restricting its natural growth and evolution, and reducing the form to a sycophantic, unsatisfying — and unfunny — shadow of its former self." This process, he wrote, began as soon as the CCP took power, with sexual...

China & the World

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CDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive” Summary for October 2025, Part Two

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...

Law

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CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

Information Revolution

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Translation: Special One-Month Reconnaissance Operation Against “Overseas Cyber Forces”

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...

Culture & the Arts

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CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

The Great Divide

Latest

Translation: Plunging Prices, Sprouting Weeds, and Broken Dreams

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...

Sci-Tech

Latest

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

Environment

Latest

CDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive” Summary for November 2025, Part One

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 (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese market), 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...

Hong Kong

Latest

CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet. The 2025 year-end feature draws on content...

Taiwan

Latest

2025 Year-End Roundup: CDT Editors’ Picks

As 2025 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 “2025 Editors’ Picks.” These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2025: Samuel Wade, Executive Editor at CDT English CDT Pick: I was very happy that CDT was able to translate and publish Chai Jing’s interview with...

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