Beijing Banner Protester: “Establish a New China That is Free, Humane, and Governed by Rule of Law”
by Samuel Wade | Nov 4, 2025
The image above shows a one-man protest that reportedly took place at the high-end Taikoo Li Sanlitun mall (formerly Sanlitun Village) in Beijing on October 25, shortly after the end of the Party’s Fourth Plenum. Another...
Read MoreTaiwanese Singer Zheng Zhihua’s Boarding Difficulties at Shenzhen Airport Spur Debate About Disability Access in China
by Cindy Carter | Nov 4, 2025
Taiwanese singer Zheng Zhihua’s complaint about a difficult experience boarding a flight at Shenzhen’s main airport has spurred heated online debate about barrier-free access for disabled people in China. Both Zheng and the...
Read MoreNetizen Voices: Tencent’s Positive Energy Algorithm Task Force and the Perils of “Information Cocoons”
by Samuel Wade | Oct 31, 2025
This week, a report at IT Home described recent corporate initiatives in the fight to promote "positive energy" and suppress "malicious" negativity online. (As China Media Project explains,...
Read MoreTranslation: Q&A – What Should I Do if I’ve Accidentally Used a Sensitive Word in My WeChat Post?
by Samuel Wade | Oct 29, 2025
The following translations are from a series of posts on WeChat public account 育知录 Yuzhilu—a reference to a quotation from the Great Learning, one of Confucianism’s "Four Books": 育人先育己,知世先知人 Yù rén xiān yù jǐ,...
Read MoreCDT Quote of the Day: Local Media Excuses Failure to Report on Elementary School Vehicular Attack—“Our Hands Are Tied, Too”
by Cindy Carter | Oct 28, 2025
Police and media silence after a car plowed into a large crowd of students and parents near an elementary school in the city of Shiyan, Hubei province, has angered many Chinese netizens. Video shared online showed a white sedan...
Read MoreNetizen Voices: “Stop Complaining, Hu Xijin. You Played a Part in This.”
by Cindy Carter | Oct 24, 2025
Two posts from nationalist pundit and former Global Times Editor-in-Chief Hu Xijin criticizing what he describes as a “collective silence” on Chinese social media have sparked intense discussion on Chinese and overseas websites....
Read MoreTranslations on Chikungunya and Mosquito Eradication in Guangdong: “Hand Over Your Keys or We’ll Pick the Locks!”
by Cindy Carter | Oct 22, 2025
Public backlash has forced local officials in Pengyuan—a community in the city of Jiangmen, Guangdong province—to rescind an order requiring residents to surrender their keys so that sanitation workers can enter outbuildings to...
Read MoreThe Guardian Interviews Chinese Fighters for Ukraine
by Samuel Wade | Oct 22, 2025
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...
Read MoreTranslations: “How Can a Country That Blocks the Nobel Website Hope to Win a Nobel Prize?”
by Cindy Carter | Oct 20, 2025
The news that two more Japanese scientists were awarded Nobel Prizes in the natural sciences has been met with considerable consternation on the Chinese internet. Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University and two American scientists,...
Read More“We Believe Faith Is Not a Crime”—Zion Church on Detention of Dozens of Members
by Samuel Wade | Oct 17, 2025
We believe: Faith is not a crime. Worship is not a crime. Prayer is not a crime. [Chinese] This quote highlighted by CDT Chinese this week is drawn from a statement by the Zion (锡安 Xī’ān) Church following the arrest of...
Read MoreNetizen Voices: Backlash Against Supposed Beauty of Golden Week Traffic Jams
by Samuel Wade | Oct 15, 2025
State media hailed the mass travel over this month’s "Super Golden Week" holiday as a sign of profound economic vigor. Xinhua, for example, reported that the "travel boom […] demonstrated the country’s...
Read MoreCDT’s “404 Deleted Content Archive” Summary for September 2025
by Cindy Carter | Oct 14, 2025
CDT presents a new monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we will publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not...
Read MoreCDT EBOOKS
Unbounded by Lantern
CDT in the News
- FP China Brief – A Bad Week for Washington’s China Hawks
- CNN – China’s censorship and surveillance were already intense. AI is turbocharging those systems
- NED – China Digital Times: 2025 Democracy Award Honoree
- China Brief – Beijing’s War on ‘Negative Energy’
- China Media Project – Hubei Hit-and-Run Escapes the Headlines
- More...



