These are CDT editors’ selections of their favorite posts from CDT and elsewhere around the web over the course of 2023:<\/p>\n
CDT Pick: <\/strong>Translation: The Women of \u201cSalt Town,\u201d<\/strong><\/a> by Cindy Carter<\/strong><\/p>\n I found this translation of interviews with journalist Yi Xiaohe about her book Salt Town powerful because it highlights the voices of two groups who are too often silenced in China: women living in the country\u2019s poor rural regions, and the journalists who take risks to report their stories. For Salt Town, former sports journalist Yi spent a year interviewing women ages 17 to 90 in a small town in Sichuan. As Carter writes, Yi illuminates \u201cthe many pressures circumscribing the lives of the townswomen: poverty, limited economic and educational opportunities, marriage and child-rearing responsibilities, grinding physical work, rampant gender discrimination, and the ever-present specter of domestic violence.\u201d Their stories are heartbreaking but Yi treats them with the respect and dignity they deserve.<\/span><\/p>\n External Pick: <\/strong>Erasing Tibet: Chinese Boarding Schools and the Indoctrination of a Generation<\/strong><\/a> by Tenzin Dorjee and Gyal Lo, Foreign Affairs<\/strong><\/p>\n This article convincingly and clearly outlines the real damage that is being done to Tibetan children, their families, and their broader community through the use of colonial boarding schools, where children are forcibly separated from their families, their culture, their religion, and their language. This article, together with the groundbreaking <\/span>Tibet Action Institute report<\/span><\/a> on the schools, and other <\/span>important work by Dr. Gyal Lo<\/span><\/a>, has helped expose Beijing\u2019s efforts to eradicate Tibetan culture and identity through a policy of forced assimilation and Sinicization that has affected all ethnic minorities in the country.<\/span><\/p>\n CDT Pick: <\/strong>CDT Chinese YouTube Channel<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n In 2023, <\/span>CDT’s Chinese-language YouTube channel<\/span><\/a> produced 529 videos, garnering a total of 2,214,602 views, and nearly 50,000 regular subscribers. Our channel’s featured content includes “Voices of [the month],” the “404” Deleted Content Archive, the CDT Encyclopedia, and the CDT Weekly Report, as well as many videos featuring text and image content compiled from the CDT Chinese website.\u00a0 We also produce <\/span>videos about the vast amount of censored content that CDT has archived<\/span><\/a>\u2014content that has been censored or blocked by the CCP and\/or platform censors. In late 2023, CDT Chinese produced videos for <\/span>seven special year-end features<\/span><\/a> (<\/span>Voices of 2023<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>2023 Sensitive Words<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>2023 People of the Year<\/span><\/a>, and many more), as well as a <\/span>series of videos<\/span><\/a> for the <\/span>Chinese-language version of the China Digital Times Lexicon, 20th Anniversary Edition<\/span><\/a>. In 2024, the CDT Chinese YouTube channel will be experimenting with new video formats to better archive content and information that is being censored on the Chinese internet, and to more thoroughly document the efforts of Chinese netizens to combat such censorship.<\/span><\/p>\n External Pick: <\/strong>Toronto Fang Lian\u2019s YouTube channel (@Torontobigface)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Toronto Fang Lian (@Torontobigface), an overseas Chinese YouTuber producing Chinese-language content, saw his popularity surge in 2023. By analyzing news and developments in China’s political, economic, and social spheres in a clear and concise manner, he has created a unique model of current-affairs analysis. Popular with many young readers and viewers, he has been dubbed an “enlightenment rebel.” Toronto Fang Lian is also relatively optimistic about the possibility of democratization in China, which occasionally causes some controversy, but he is skilled at applying various political theories, economic data, and scholarly insights to help explain his position. He is also fond of posing challenging questions to his viewers, such as \u201cWhat is the fundamental reason why the Chinese dream cannot be realized?\u201d and \u201cWhy is this generation of young people said to be \u2018the generation of lost opportunities?\u2019\u201d His persuasive and factually well-grounded answers to these hot-button issues are one of the key reasons that his channel is so popular.<\/span><\/p>\nBobby\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
Alexander Boyd<\/span><\/h2>\n