CDT Editors’ Picks: The Best of 2024

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,...

2024’s Most Notable Censored Articles and Essays (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,...

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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CDT Editors’ Picks: The Best of 2024

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.” These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2024: Bobby, Editor at CDT Chinese CDT Pick: China Digital Space page: WeChat Public Accounts Over the past year, CDT Chinese editors have created...

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Chinese Firms at the Center of Serbia’s Political Crisis

The collapse of Serbia’s Novi Sad train station roof last month killed 15 people and severely injured two others, igniting weeks-long, nationwide protests against government corruption that is widely perceived to be at the root of the tragedy. In the middle of the fray are two Chinese companies that were involved in recent renovations at the train station, which is a key stop along the Chinese-built Budapest-Belgrade Railway. Given the Serbian government’s enthusiastic embrace of Chinese investment under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the general lack of transparency surrounding...

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...

2024’s Most Notable Censored Articles and Essays (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.” The censored articles and essays from 2024 compiled below represent only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, either through targeted deletion by platform censors, or via deletion (sometimes under duress) by...

CDT Editors’ Picks: The Best of 2024

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.” These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2024: Bobby, Editor at CDT Chinese CDT Pick: China Digital Space page: WeChat Public Accounts Over the past year, CDT Chinese editors have created...

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...

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...

CDT Editors’ Picks: The Best of 2024

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.” These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2024: Bobby, Editor at CDT Chinese CDT Pick: China Digital Space page: WeChat Public Accounts Over the past year, CDT Chinese editors have created...

CDT Editors’ Picks: The Best of 2024

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.” These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2024: Bobby, Editor at CDT Chinese CDT Pick: China Digital Space page: WeChat Public Accounts Over the past year, CDT Chinese editors have created...

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...

2024’s Most Notable Censored Articles and Essays (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.” The censored articles and essays from 2024 compiled below represent only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, either through targeted deletion by platform censors, or via deletion (sometimes under duress) by...

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

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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...

Politics

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Words of the Week: “Aim the Rifle an Inch Higher” (枪口抬高一厘米, qiāngkǒu táigāo yī límǐ)

What to do when the law and basic humanity are in opposition? The Chinese internet has an answer: “Aim the rifle an inch higher” (枪口抬高一厘米, qiāngkǒu táigāo yī límǐ). The phrase is shorthand for subverting orders that violate one’s conscience. “Aim the rifle an inch higher” has its origin in historical fact. In 1992, two former East German border guards were convicted of fatally shooting Chris Gueffroy as he fled across the no man’s land that divided East and West Berlin. While rendering the guilty verdict, the presiding judge of the trial stated: “At the end of the 20th century, no one has...

Society

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Translations: Signs of Displeasure Herald Business Closures in Chaozhou, Shantou

Late last month, a rash of food-stall, restaurant, shop, and factory closures in Chaozhou and Shantou, two prefectural-level cities in China’s southern Guangdong province, went viral online. Many Chinese social media users shared screenshots of rows of shuttered shops, some plastered with amusing closure signs: “Temporarily closed because our fish drowned,” read one, while another explained, “Closed today because the boss is in a bad mood.” A pair of signs on neighboring shops declared: “Closed ‘cause I’m scared of ghosts,” and “Closed because neighbor’s scared of ghosts, and now I am, too.”...

China & the World

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Global Public Opinion Polls Show Polarized Views of China

A series of public opinion surveys about China have made headlines recently. This week, the Asia Society Policy Institute published the Global Public Opinion on China interactive database, which aggregates worldwide polling data from over 2,500 surveys from 160 countries to show how global views on China have changed over time. It also includes short analyses of COVID-19’s impact on China’s image, public opinion on China in the Global South, and overall global opinion on China. Here is a sample from the section on views from the Global South, which showed great variation and challenged the...

Law

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2024’s Most Notable Censored Articles and Essays (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.” The censored articles and essays from 2024 compiled below represent only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, either through targeted deletion by platform censors, or via deletion (sometimes under duress) by...

Information Revolution

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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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CDT Editors’ Picks: The Best of 2024

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.” These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2024: Bobby, Editor at CDT Chinese CDT Pick: China Digital Space page: WeChat Public Accounts Over the past year, CDT Chinese editors have created...

The Great Divide

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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

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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

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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...

Taiwan

Latest

Independent Bookstores Under Pressure; Taiwanese Books Shut Out

At the Associated Press, Fu Ting reports mounting pressure on China’s independent bookstores and other cultural channels and venues: Independent bookstores have become a new battleground in China, swept up in the ruling Communist Party’s crackdown on dissent and free expression. The Associated Press found that at least a dozen bookstores in the world’s second-largest economy have been shuttered or targeted for closure in the last few months alone, squeezing the already tight space for press freedom. One bookstore owner was arrested over four months ago. The crackdown has had...

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