On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government...
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...
Today’s CDT Quote of the Day is a response to the recent tide of online public discussion about...
The latest corruption investigation into a senior Ministry of Justice official has inspired...
Over 26 months have passed since Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine. The current stalemate has...
Over the past years, we have shared knowledge and ideas with hundreds of thousands of Chinese readers. [...] We know from the bottom of our hearts that every click from every user was filled with desire for freedom of knowledge and diverse cultures."
— Part of a farewell message posted to WeChat by Z-Library, a vast online free database of pirated and uncensored books and articles, popular with Chinese readers. Z-Library's WeChat account was deleted soon after the message was posted.
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government authorities to prevent individuals from speaking out, engaging in activism, or pursuing other activities that the authorities do not approve of. In the past, the tactic was mainly used by state security forces against higher-profile activists and dissidents in China, but in recent years, it seems to have filtered down to local public security bureaus, and is being used against people...
In recent weeks, residents of the cities of Chongqing and Chengdu have been posting screenshots of...
Today’s CDT Quote of the Day is a response to the recent tide of online public discussion about...
The latest corruption investigation into a senior Ministry of Justice official has inspired...
Z-Library, an online database with tens of millions of pirated and uncensored books and articles...
56 years after her wrongful execution, the poet-journalist turned dissident Lin Zhao is still...
On April 17, the Solomon Islands held its first general election since Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare signed a controversial security pact with China in 2022. Under his administration, the country switched its diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China in September 2019, leading to periodic protests that boiled over into “anti-China” riots in November 2021. As Kirsty Needham reported for Reuters, after serving as prime minister on four different occasions and after failing to win a majority, Sogavare just announced he would not seek another term: Solomon Islands incumbent Prime Minister...
The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and...
In Peter Hessler’s latest piece for The New Yorker, “How Chinese Students Experience America,” he...
This week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz completed a three-day visit to China. It was his second...
Throughout Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, China has sidestepped the conflict, criticized it from...
Muslims around the world celebrated Eid-al-Fitr this week, marking the end of the holy month of...
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government authorities to prevent individuals from speaking out, engaging in activism, or pursuing other activities that the authorities do not approve of. In the past, the tactic was mainly used by state security forces against higher-profile activists and dissidents in China, but in recent years, it seems to have filtered down to local public security bureaus, and is being used against people...
Two Chinese manufacturers of video surveillance equipment—state-owned Hikvision and publicly...
Muslims around the world celebrated Eid-al-Fitr this week, marking the end of the holy month of...
An incident on Wednesday, in which a representative for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was denied...
Israel’s war in Gaza has elicited increasing attention from the Sinophone world, as five months of...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s legislature unanimously passed a new national security law that grants the...
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government authorities to prevent individuals from speaking out, engaging in activism, or pursuing other activities that the authorities do not approve of. In the past, the tactic was mainly used by state security forces against higher-profile activists and dissidents in China, but in recent years, it seems to have filtered down to local public security bureaus, and is being used against people...
Today’s CDT Quote of the Day is a response to the recent tide of online public discussion about...
On April 14, Sina News Hot Topics published a lengthy article on Weibo under the clickbait...
After a decades-long infrastructure spending spree, many of China’s local governments now find...
On March 16, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the Chinese economy was...
A recent WeChat post from oft-controversial entrepreneur, publicity hound, and philanthropist Chen...
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government authorities to prevent individuals from speaking out, engaging in activism, or pursuing other activities that the authorities do not approve of. In the past, the tactic was mainly used by state security forces against higher-profile activists and dissidents in China, but in recent years, it seems to have filtered down to local public security bureaus, and is being used against people...
The latest corruption investigation into a senior Ministry of Justice official has inspired...
Z-Library, an online database with tens of millions of pirated and uncensored books and articles...
On April 17, the Solomon Islands held its first general election since Prime Minister Manasseh...
56 years after her wrongful execution, the poet-journalist turned dissident Lin Zhao is still...
In Peter Hessler’s latest piece for The New Yorker, “How Chinese Students Experience America,” he...
An incident on Wednesday, in which a representative for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was denied permission to enter Hong Kong to observe the national security trial of political and media figure Jimmy Lai, is yet another illustration of the precipitous decline of media freedom in that territory. Another RSF employee was allowed to enter. The episode comes on the heels of national security legislation related to Article 23, which threatens to further curtail civil liberties and press freedoms by criminalizing routine reporting, research, and advocacy work. The legislation was fast-tracked...
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...
Among Xi Jinping’s many Party-bestowed titles and hundreds of banned netizen nicknames is one that...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s legislature unanimously passed a new national security law that grants the...
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...
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...
The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and...
On April 14, Sina News Hot Topics published a lengthy article on Weibo under the clickbait...
After a decades-long infrastructure spending spree, many of China’s local governments now find...
This week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz completed a three-day visit to China. It was his second...
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government authorities to prevent individuals from speaking out, engaging in activism, or pursuing other activities that the authorities do not approve of. In the past, the tactic was mainly used by state security forces against higher-profile activists and dissidents in China, but in recent years, it seems to have filtered down to local public security bureaus, and is being used against people...
In recent weeks, residents of the cities of Chongqing and Chengdu have been posting screenshots of...
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...
56 years after her wrongful execution, the poet-journalist turned dissident Lin Zhao is still...
On April 14, Sina News Hot Topics published a lengthy article on Weibo under the clickbait...
In Peter Hessler’s latest piece for The New Yorker, “How Chinese Students Experience America,” he notes that “COVID, guns, anti-Asian violence, and diplomatic relations have complicated the ambitions of the some three hundred thousand college students who come to the U.S. each year.” One of the first places that some of these hurdles manifest is at the American border, where a growing number of Chinese students and researchers have recently found themselves unexpectedly barred entry to the U.S. on the basis of broad national security concerns. Experts argue that the political inertia behind...
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...
Over a whirlwind two weeks of diplomacy in Beijing, China has sought to strengthen its ties to...
On April 6, a Weibo user from Zhejiang province reported a case of local anti-fraud center...
A Party organization’s flippant invocation of “World War III” using video game terms went viral...
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government authorities to prevent individuals from speaking out, engaging in activism, or pursuing other activities that the authorities do not approve of. In the past, the tactic was mainly used by state security forces against higher-profile activists and dissidents in China, but in recent years, it seems to have filtered down to local public security bureaus, and is being used against people...
Today’s CDT Quote of the Day is a response to the recent tide of online public discussion about...
The latest corruption investigation into a senior Ministry of Justice official has inspired...
The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and...
In Peter Hessler’s latest piece for The New Yorker, “How Chinese Students Experience America,” he...
A German “pro-China” influencer became the latest target of nationalist ire after her writing on...
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...
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government authorities to prevent individuals from speaking out, engaging in activism, or pursuing other activities that the authorities do not approve of. In the past, the tactic was mainly used by state security forces against higher-profile activists and dissidents in China, but in recent years, it seems to have filtered down to local public security bureaus, and is being used against people...
Two Chinese manufacturers of video surveillance equipment—state-owned Hikvision and publicly...
Muslims around the world celebrated Eid-al-Fitr this week, marking the end of the holy month of...
Hu Chenfeng, a Chinese content creator who first rose to fame making videos about poverty, has been suspended from Bilibili and Weibo after a livestream viewer asked him: “Do you think Xi Jinping is a dictator?” CDT a published a video of the incident: After uttering “fuck” under his breath, Hu began denouncing the question-asker by repeatedly exclaiming that the question was a serious violation of streaming guidelines, that the person who asked the question must be insane, and that police would likely be at their doorstep soon. The following day, Hu shared a post to Bilibili announcing...
One of the subtler ways Chinese internet users voice their displeasure with the status quo is...
Last week, the bodies of eight Chinese nationals were discovered off the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico,...
Beijing’s half-marathon is under investigation after three runners from Kenya and Ethiopia appeared to allow a Chinese runner to win. The odd ending of the race saw Willy Mnangat and Robert Keter of Kenya and Dejene Hailu of Ethiopia wave Hu Jie of China past them in the final stretch as they noticeably slowed down. Videos of the finish went viral both in China and abroad. The Beijing International Running Festival, the events organizer, and the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau have both opened investigations into the incident. On X, formerly Twitter, @whyyoutouzhele shared video of the...
In the days following former premier Li Keqiang’s death in late October of 2023, mourners left...
Efforts by the Chinese state and its state-affiliated actors to engage with global media can be...
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...
Nymphia Wind, a Taiwanese drag queen, has won the 16th season of the American reality TV...
Recent public opinion polls from countries in the Global South point to a slight shift in...
On Chinese social media, the phrase “weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi) is often used metaphorically to refer to family members—particularly children—used as leverage by public security, state security, or government authorities to prevent individuals from speaking out, engaging in activism, or pursuing other activities that the authorities do not approve of. In the past, the tactic was mainly used by state security forces against higher-profile activists and dissidents in China, but in recent years, it seems to have filtered down to local public security bureaus, and is being used against people...
Today’s CDT Quote of the Day is a response to the recent tide of online public discussion about...
The latest corruption investigation into a senior Ministry of Justice official has inspired...
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...
Z-Library, an online database with tens of millions of pirated and uncensored books and articles available for free download, is closing its Chinese WeChat account. In a statement posted to WeChat, Z-Library claimed that Chinese legal authorities had “attacked” its volunteer staff and intimated that they had refused to comply with censorship demands. The statement also seemed to encourage Chinese users to download virtual private networks (VPNs) (or other “scientific” means) in order to access the website despite “internet surveillance-and-control” policies: In our informatized,...
Nymphia Wind, a Taiwanese drag queen, has won the 16th season of the American reality TV...
Beijing’s half-marathon is under investigation after three runners from Kenya and Ethiopia...
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...
In Peter Hessler’s latest piece for The New Yorker, “How Chinese Students Experience America,” he notes that “COVID, guns, anti-Asian violence, and diplomatic relations have complicated the ambitions of the some three hundred thousand college students who come to the U.S. each year.” One of the first places that some of these hurdles manifest is at the American border, where a growing number of Chinese students and researchers have recently found themselves unexpectedly barred entry to the U.S. on the basis of broad national security concerns. Experts argue that the political inertia behind...
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...
At a recent summit in Ethiopia, the African Union (AU) decided to approve a 15-year continent-wide ban on the slaughter of donkeys for their hides. Donkey hides are a key component of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) ingredient known as ejiao (“donkey-hide gelatin”), whose demand in China has boomed over the past decade and decimated donkey populations in Africa. The Donkey Sanctuary, one of the world’s largest equine charity organizations, celebrated the announcement and described its significance This historic decision taken by the African Union recognises, at the highest level of...
This week in Dubai, after two weeks of negotiations among representatives from almost 200...
As the U.N. COP28 Climate Summit is underway in the United Arab Emirates, bringing together...
An incident on Wednesday, in which a representative for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was denied permission to enter Hong Kong to observe the national security trial of political and media figure Jimmy Lai, is yet another illustration of the precipitous decline of media freedom in that territory. Another RSF employee was allowed to enter. The episode comes on the heels of national security legislation related to Article 23, which threatens to further curtail civil liberties and press freedoms by criminalizing routine reporting, research, and advocacy work. The legislation was fast-tracked...
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...
Over a whirlwind two weeks of diplomacy in Beijing, China has sought to strengthen its ties to both the United States and Russia—a difficult balancing act. Xi Jinping took a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden last week which was followed with a four-day trip through China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The day after Yellen’s departure, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with Xi Jinping in Beijing in preparation for “upcoming contacts at the highest level,” a sign that Russian leader Vladimir Putin may be planning a Beijing trip this calendar year. Soon after, China’s...
Among Xi Jinping’s many Party-bestowed titles and hundreds of banned netizen nicknames is one that...
Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its legislative majority in the country’s...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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