On Tuesday, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under the city’s new homegrown national security law known as Article 23. The law was fast-tracked under pressure from Beijing and unanimously passed in March after...
Following Monday’s news of a late-night helicopter crash in heavy fog that killed Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others (including crew members), some Chinese...
Citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan finally reappeared on Tuesday, over a week after she was scheduled...
Chinese netizens have had a lot to say about economist Ma Jiantang’s prescription for adapting to...
On Monday, May 20, Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party was inaugurated the president...
'[W]orking in the best interests of the people and the public' [is] the stock phrase they use when responding to any and all complaints about the arbitrary freezing of your account. It seems to imply that in their eyes, you’re not a person, nor are you a member of 'the public.'”
— From a now-censored Weibo post by a popular food blogger describing her Kafka-esque interactions with the police "fraud-prevention squad" after all of her bank accounts were frozen due to a misidentification.
Following Monday’s news of a late-night helicopter crash in heavy fog that killed Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others (including crew members), some Chinese social media users took note of Raisi’s repressive track record, his past interactions with Chinese leaders and institutions, and even rumored reports of celebrations and fireworks among Raisi’s critics in Tehran. While Chinese state media has been filled with condolences and promises of bolstering ties with Iran, social media platforms have seen some more critical comments and...
Chinese netizens have had a lot to say about economist Ma Jiantang’s prescription for adapting to...
On Monday, May 20, Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party was inaugurated the president...
Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank...
China’s hottest television show, HunanTV’s “Singer 2024,” has inspired nationalist angst after two...
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local communities to impose state-sponsored projects, undermining environmental protection and human rights. The collaborative research network Turquoise Roof published the first report, “Occupying Tibet’s rivers: China’s hydropower ‘battlefield’ in Tibet.” The report details how violent paramilitary reprisals have stifled protests against the construction of the planned Kamtok hydropower dam along the Drichu (Yangtze) river, threatening the displacement of villages and Buddhist monasteries: The...
Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, only...
“Glory to Hong Kong,” a popular protest anthem of the city’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, has...
There are mounting concerns over the well-being and whereabouts of Zhang Zhan, the former...
Government surveillance is a ubiquitous and growing phenomenon in China. New documents issued by...
Transnational repression by Chinese state-affiliated actors has long targeted Tibetans, Uyghurs,...
Citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan finally reappeared on Tuesday, over a week after she was scheduled to be released from prison. Zhang was among the first and most prominent individuals to report from the ground in Wuhan at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her critical reporting led to her arrest in May 2020 and a four-year prison sentence on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Many feared that the absence of any news of her whereabouts last week meant that she was subjected to “non-release release,” a form of nominal freedom and arbitrary detention following formal...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local...
There are mounting concerns over the well-being and whereabouts of Zhang Zhan, the former...
Transnational repression by Chinese state-affiliated actors has long targeted Tibetans, Uyghurs,...
Students from at least 174 colleges and universities across six continents have erected...
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to...
Following Monday’s news of a late-night helicopter crash in heavy fog that killed Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others (including crew members), some Chinese social media users took note of Raisi’s repressive track record, his past interactions with Chinese leaders and institutions, and even rumored reports of celebrations and fireworks among Raisi’s critics in Tehran. While Chinese state media has been filled with condolences and promises of bolstering ties with Iran, social media platforms have seen some more critical comments and...
Chinese netizens have had a lot to say about economist Ma Jiantang’s prescription for adapting to...
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often...
As the Chinese economy continues to recover from the long pandemic (and post-pandemic) slowdown,...
Last week’s collapse of a stretch of the Meizhou-Dabu Expressway in Guangdong province, after a...
Students from at least 174 colleges and universities across six continents have erected...
Following Monday’s news of a late-night helicopter crash in heavy fog that killed Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others (including crew members), some Chinese social media users took note of Raisi’s repressive track record, his past interactions with Chinese leaders and institutions, and even rumored reports of celebrations and fireworks among Raisi’s critics in Tehran. While Chinese state media has been filled with condolences and promises of bolstering ties with Iran, social media platforms have seen some more critical comments and...
On Monday, May 20, Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party was inaugurated the president...
Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, only...
Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank...
China’s hottest television show, HunanTV’s “Singer 2024,” has inspired nationalist angst after two...
“Glory to Hong Kong,” a popular protest anthem of the city’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, has...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under the city’s new homegrown national security law known as Article 23. The law was fast-tracked under pressure from Beijing and unanimously passed in March after only 11 days of debate. Critics have feared it will be used to further restrict free expression and other civil liberties on top of the existing National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020. Kelly Ho from Hong Kong Free Press reported on six people now arrested for alleged sedition under the new law: Hong Kong rights activist Chow Hang-tung was among six people arrested by...
“Glory to Hong Kong,” a popular protest anthem of the city’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, has...
An incident on Wednesday, in which a representative for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was denied...
In its annual report on the state of media freedom in China last year, the Foreign Correspondents’...
In the wake of the Article 23 legislation passed two weeks ago in Hong Kong, further constricting...
The atmosphere for media freedom in Hong Kong has become increasingly inhospitable since the 2020...
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...
Over the past two weeks, the Biden administration has issued a series of regulations intended to...
Popular online writer Shen Maohua, who writes under the pen name Wei Zhou, is known for his...
As citizens revolt against never-ending lockdowns and local governments “resolutely struggle...
On Thursday, the Canadian government announced that it will ban Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE...
On Monday of last week, Malaysian musician Namewee (Wee Meng Chee, 黃明志) learned that his YouTube...
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...
In 2014, Leta Hong Fincher published her first book, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender...
Starting in March 2008, Tibetans across the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai, Gansu, and...
Surveys have shown that Xi Jinping’s hardline foreign policy is increasingly unpopular abroad....
Jeremy Wallace, associate professor of Government at Cornell University, joined CDT to discuss his...
Evidence of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in Xinjiang has...
Chinese netizens have had a lot to say about economist Ma Jiantang’s prescription for adapting to the “era of longevity” by reclassifying workers between the ages of 60-70 as “the youthful elderly,” those between the ages of 70-80 as “the moderately elderly,” and those over the age of 80 as the “the elderly elderly.” Ma, former Party secretary of the State Council’s Development Research Center (DRC), told the attendees of a May 18 financial forum in Shenzhen that adapting to the “era of longevity” and eliminating age discrimination in the labor market would require...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local...
Last week, Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing, only...
Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank...
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often...
As the Chinese economy continues to recover from the long pandemic (and post-pandemic) slowdown,...
Following Monday’s news of a late-night helicopter crash in heavy fog that killed Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and six others (including crew members), some Chinese social media users took note of Raisi’s repressive track record, his past interactions with Chinese leaders and institutions, and even rumored reports of celebrations and fireworks among Raisi’s critics in Tehran. While Chinese state media has been filled with condolences and promises of bolstering ties with Iran, social media platforms have seen some more critical comments and...
Citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan finally reappeared on Tuesday, over a week after she was scheduled...
Chinese netizens have had a lot to say about economist Ma Jiantang’s prescription for adapting to...
On Monday, May 20, Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party was inaugurated the president...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local...
China’s hottest television show, HunanTV’s “Singer 2024,” has inspired nationalist angst after two...
Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank accounts were frozen due to a local police department’s arbitrary and unprofessional “anti-fraud” case work. Her Kafka-esque account described how her accounts were shut down without any explanation, leaving her forced to “do all of the detective work” herself—only to learn that she was under investigation for fraud under the barest of pretenses. Her account is but the latest example of anti-fraud overreach. In April, CDT published a translation of a man’s account of being threatened by anti-fraud...
Government surveillance is a ubiquitous and growing phenomenon in China. New documents issued by...
This week, as expected, embattled short-video platform TikTok and its Chinese parent Bytedance...
In Peter Hessler’s latest piece for The New Yorker, “How Chinese Students Experience America,” he...
At an April 8 press conference to unveil IM Motors’ new L6 electric sedan, company CEO Liu Tao...
Two Chinese manufacturers of video surveillance equipment—state-owned Hikvision and publicly...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under the city’s new homegrown national security law known as Article 23. The law was fast-tracked under pressure from Beijing and unanimously passed in March after only 11 days of debate. Critics have feared it will be used to further restrict free expression and other civil liberties on top of the existing National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020. Kelly Ho from Hong Kong Free Press reported on six people now arrested for alleged sedition under the new law: Hong Kong rights activist Chow Hang-tung was among six people arrested by...
Citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan finally reappeared on Tuesday, over a week after she was scheduled...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local...
Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank...
“Glory to Hong Kong,” a popular protest anthem of the city’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, has...
There are mounting concerns over the well-being and whereabouts of Zhang Zhan, the former...
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...
A recent WeChat post from oft-controversial entrepreneur, publicity hound, and philanthropist Chen...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last...
After conducting nucleic acid testing on its 26 million residents this week, Shanghai remains...
Evergrande offices across China have been beset by protesting retail investors and homeowners...
Anyone who has boarded an airplane in the last 20 years knows what stands between arrival at the...
Citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan finally reappeared on Tuesday, over a week after she was scheduled to be released from prison. Zhang was among the first and most prominent individuals to report from the ground in Wuhan at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her critical reporting led to her arrest in May 2020 and a four-year prison sentence on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Many feared that the absence of any news of her whereabouts last week meant that she was subjected to “non-release release,” a form of nominal freedom and arbitrary detention following formal...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local...
There are mounting concerns over the well-being and whereabouts of Zhang Zhan, the former...
Following his trip to France earlier this week, Xi Jinping finished his European tour in Serbia and Hungary, where he received a warm, red-carpet welcome. The French leg of Xi’s tour was meant to soothe the E.U.’s souring attitudes towards China on trade and security and peel off Europe from the U.S. by targeting one of the E.U.’s most influential proponents of strategic autonomy. The Eastern European legs of Xi’s tour, on the other hand, were meant to flaunt the benefits of pursuing close, non-confrontational ties with China, by targeting two countries most at odds with E.U. policy towards...
This week, Xi Jinping made his first visit to Europe in five years. The first stop on his...
The latest corruption investigation into a senior Ministry of Justice official has inspired...
In recent weeks, residents of the cities of Chongqing and Chengdu have been posting screenshots of their natural gas bills online and complaining of mysterious gas consumption spikes since the installation of new “smart” gas meters. Some consumers reported that their gas bills were hundreds or even thousands of yuan higher than during the same period last year—and the differences appeared to be due to purported usage increases, not per-unit price rises. One elderly woman living alone in Chengdu received a bill for the staggering sum of 15,000 yuan (approximately $2070 U.S. dollars) for just...
Today’s CDT Quote of the Day is a response to the recent tide of online public discussion about...
Z-Library, an online database with tens of millions of pirated and uncensored books and articles...
Over 26 months have passed since Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine. The current stalemate has given way to gradual advances by Russia, as political support for arming Ukraine waned in Western capitals, at least until a breakthrough U.S. funding bill last week. To counteract this inertia, Western leaders have increased pressure on one of Russia’s main backers: China. A growing number of officials have publicly called out Chinese support for Russia’s war machine and threatened punishment as deterrence. However, it is unclear whether Chinese actors will ultimately change course. The E.U. has...
On April 17, the Solomon Islands held its first general election since Prime Minister Manasseh...
The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under the city’s new homegrown national security law known as Article 23. The law was fast-tracked under pressure from Beijing and unanimously passed in March after only 11 days of debate. Critics have feared it will be used to further restrict free expression and other civil liberties on top of the existing National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020. Kelly Ho from Hong Kong Free Press reported on six people now arrested for alleged sedition under the new law: Hong Kong rights activist Chow Hang-tung was among six people arrested by...
Citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan finally reappeared on Tuesday, over a week after she was scheduled...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local...
A group of students under the impression they had discovered a WeChat “bug” that hides the phrase “200 jin of dumplings” (roughly 220 pounds) had in fact stumbled upon an obscure insult for Xi Jinping that triggers automatic censorship. In the course of daily conversation, the students found that messages preceded by the term “200 jin of dumplings” (200斤饺子) were not received by their counterparts. Juvenile hilarity ensued. They sent each other curses and confessions: “200 jin of dumplings, you’re a stupid c***,” “200 jin of dumplings, you’re an idiot,” “200 jin of dumplings, piggy,” and...
This week saw the proliferation of COVID conspiracy theories on Chinese social media, the...
While the official position from Beijing is that China remains a neutral observer of the...
China’s hottest television show, HunanTV’s “Singer 2024,” has inspired nationalist angst after two foreign contestants took first and second place—easily besting a field that included legendary Chinese pop star Na Ying. The show is wildly popular in part because it requires live singing without autotune or post-production touch-ups, common features of most Chinese variety television. The victory of relative unknowns Chanté Moore, an American, and Faouzia, a Moroccan-Canadian, has been called a “wakeup call for China’s music industry” by state-media tabloid Global Times. After the foreigners’...
“Glory to Hong Kong,” a popular protest anthem of the city’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, has...
Z-Library, an online database with tens of millions of pirated and uncensored books and articles...
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...
A recent WeChat post from oft-controversial entrepreneur, publicity hound, and philanthropist Chen...
Even before the lifting of China’s long-standing “zero-COVID” policy in early December of last...
Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank accounts were frozen due to a local police department’s arbitrary and unprofessional “anti-fraud” case work. Her Kafka-esque account described how her accounts were shut down without any explanation, leaving her forced to “do all of the detective work” herself—only to learn that she was under investigation for fraud under the barest of pretenses. Her account is but the latest example of anti-fraud overreach. In April, CDT published a translation of a man’s account of being threatened by anti-fraud...
Government surveillance is a ubiquitous and growing phenomenon in China. New documents issued by...
This week, as expected, embattled short-video platform TikTok and its Chinese parent Bytedance...
Two research reports published this week underscore how authorities in Tibet have displaced local communities to impose state-sponsored projects, undermining environmental protection and human rights. The collaborative research network Turquoise Roof published the first report, “Occupying Tibet’s rivers: China’s hydropower ‘battlefield’ in Tibet.” The report details how violent paramilitary reprisals have stifled protests against the construction of the planned Kamtok hydropower dam along the Drichu (Yangtze) river, threatening the displacement of villages and Buddhist monasteries: The...
At a recent summit in Ethiopia, the African Union (AU) decided to approve a 15-year continent-wide...
This week in Dubai, after two weeks of negotiations among representatives from almost 200...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under the city’s new homegrown national security law known as Article 23. The law was fast-tracked under pressure from Beijing and unanimously passed in March after only 11 days of debate. Critics have feared it will be used to further restrict free expression and other civil liberties on top of the existing National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020. Kelly Ho from Hong Kong Free Press reported on six people now arrested for alleged sedition under the new law: Hong Kong rights activist Chow Hang-tung was among six people arrested by...
“Glory to Hong Kong,” a popular protest anthem of the city’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, has...
An incident on Wednesday, in which a representative for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was denied...
On Monday, May 20, Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party was inaugurated the president of Taiwan. Lai’s election in January was met with dismay by the Chinese government, which views Lai and the DPP as separatist elements. The PRC spent at least tens of millions of dollars attempting to sway Taiwan’s election away from the DPP, and then claimed that the general election was unrepresentative of “mainstream public opinion on the island,” a claim widely mocked on the Chinese internet. The PRC also heavily censored discussion of the election and its outcome on social media, blocking...
Over a whirlwind two weeks of diplomacy in Beijing, China has sought to strengthen its ties to...
Among Xi Jinping’s many Party-bestowed titles and hundreds of banned netizen nicknames is one that...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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