As Chinese local governments struggle with high levels of debt, moribund infrastructure projects, falling tax revenues, shrinking land-use fees, and increased demands for local welfare spending, some local government...
Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message calling for Xi Jinping to step down. Since Xi has risen to power, placing Xi’s works next to other books to make a...
The Swiss peace summit concluded over the weekend with what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky...
The stabbing of four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College in a Jilin park has become the latest...
Journalist and feminist activist Huang Xueqin and labor-rights activist Wang Jianbing were...
A silent protest."
"That day will come."— Two of the Weibo comments beneath a post about the resignation letter of Jiang Zemin’s son Jiang Mianheng, who announced that after “serving two full terms,” he would step down as the president of Shanghai Tech University to make way for "a younger generation of capable leaders.” Some observers read the letter as an oblique critique of Xi Jinping's extended grip on power.
As Chinese local governments struggle with high levels of debt, moribund infrastructure projects, falling tax revenues, shrinking land-use fees, and increased demands for local welfare spending, some local government departments and state-owned enterprises have been exploring creative ways to replenish their depleted coffers. In April, after thousands of public complaints, public utilities in Chongqing and Chengdu, Sichuan province, were investigated and penalized for vastly overcharging residential customers for natural gas after the installation of new “smart” gas meters. That same month,...
Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message...
The stabbing of four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College in a Jilin park has become the latest...
In a letter dated May 31 and posted online on June 6, Jiang Mianheng—son of the late Chinese...
The Douban comment was not inflammatory. In fact, it didn’t even betray an overt opinion. But for...
Today’s quote of the day derives from netizen backlash to the Communist Youth League’s (CYL)...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the coalition led by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged on top in India’s general election earlier this month. Despite coming in first place, the BJP failed to secure an absolute majority and will be forced to share power for the first time in Modi’s tenure. This result defies widespread media predictions and is seen by many as a slight electoral rebuke to Modi’s Hindu nationalist party. As Modi prepares for his third term, one year after Xi Jinping began his own third term, some commentators have analyzed how the new government will affect India’s...
Far-right parties across Europe made major gains in this weekend’s European Parliament elections....
On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, people around the world commemorated with...
Xi Jinping’s hosting of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing two weeks ago has...
On Thursday, judges delivered their verdicts for 16 of the 47 Hong Kong democrats in the city’s...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under the city’s new homegrown national...
Journalist and feminist activist Huang Xueqin and labor-rights activist Wang Jianbing were convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” and sentenced to prison for five years and three and a half years, respectively, by the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court on Friday. The sentencing was widely condemned by international rights groups who decried what they saw as a particularly harsh punishment for exercising freedom of speech and supporting victims of patriarchal and capitalist abuse. Helen Davidson at The Guardian reported on the outcome of Huang and Wang’s trial: On Friday,...
On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, people around the world commemorated with...
For decades on June 4, Hongkongers rallied in their thousands at the city’s Victoria Park to...
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...
There are mounting concerns over the well-being and whereabouts of Zhang Zhan, the former...
As Chinese local governments struggle with high levels of debt, moribund infrastructure projects, falling tax revenues, shrinking land-use fees, and increased demands for local welfare spending, some local government departments and state-owned enterprises have been exploring creative ways to replenish their depleted coffers. In April, after thousands of public complaints, public utilities in Chongqing and Chengdu, Sichuan province, were investigated and penalized for vastly overcharging residential customers for natural gas after the installation of new “smart” gas meters. That same month,...
In a letter dated May 31 and posted online on June 6, Jiang Mianheng—son of the late Chinese...
Today’s quote of the day derives from netizen backlash to the Communist Youth League’s (CYL)...
Following Monday’s news of a late-night helicopter crash in heavy fog that killed Iran’s...
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...
Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message calling for Xi Jinping to step down. Since Xi has risen to power, placing Xi’s works next to other books to make a political point has become a relatively common, low-key mode of political dissent. It’s often unclear whether the juxtapositions are created by bookstore employees or the product of cheeky swaps by politically astute customers—or simply accidental. The latest incident occurred last week. A photograph taken inside a Hangzhou bookshop showed the novel “Changing of the...
The Swiss peace summit concluded over the weekend with what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the coalition led by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged on...
In a letter dated May 31 and posted online on June 6, Jiang Mianheng—son of the late Chinese...
The Douban comment was not inflammatory. In fact, it didn’t even betray an overt opinion. But for...
In China, the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was met with all-out digital censorship...
In China, the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was met with all-out digital censorship that quashed overt online mourning. In Hong Kong, efforts to publicly commemorate “June Fourth” were ruthlessly suppressed by police. Globally, across 18 cities spanning four continents, thousands gathered in remembrance. Those within China seeking to share their memories of the spring and summer of 1989 were forced to publish their recollections in foreign outlets, a selection of which CDT archived and translated. The dominant theme on the mainland, however, was censorship. CDT Chinese has...
For decades on June 4, Hongkongers rallied in their thousands at the city’s Victoria Park to...
On Thursday, judges delivered their verdicts for 16 of the 47 Hong Kong democrats in the city’s...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under the city’s new homegrown national...
“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...
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...
As Chinese local governments struggle with high levels of debt, moribund infrastructure projects, falling tax revenues, shrinking land-use fees, and increased demands for local welfare spending, some local government departments and state-owned enterprises have been exploring creative ways to replenish their depleted coffers. In April, after thousands of public complaints, public utilities in Chongqing and Chengdu, Sichuan province, were investigated and penalized for vastly overcharging residential customers for natural gas after the installation of new “smart” gas meters. That same month,...
Today’s quote of the day derives from netizen backlash to the Communist Youth League’s (CYL)...
While touring Shandong last week, Xi Jinping hosted a symposium on the economy. The gathering has...
Chinese netizens have had a lot to say about economist Ma Jiantang’s prescription for adapting to...
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...
As Chinese local governments struggle with high levels of debt, moribund infrastructure projects, falling tax revenues, shrinking land-use fees, and increased demands for local welfare spending, some local government departments and state-owned enterprises have been exploring creative ways to replenish their depleted coffers. In April, after thousands of public complaints, public utilities in Chongqing and Chengdu, Sichuan province, were investigated and penalized for vastly overcharging residential customers for natural gas after the installation of new “smart” gas meters. That same month,...
Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message...
The stabbing of four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College in a Jilin park has become the latest...
In a letter dated May 31 and posted online on June 6, Jiang Mianheng—son of the late Chinese...
The Douban comment was not inflammatory. In fact, it didn’t even betray an overt opinion. But for...
Today’s quote of the day derives from netizen backlash to the Communist Youth League’s (CYL)...
In a letter dated May 31 and posted online on June 6, Jiang Mianheng—son of the late Chinese President, CCP General Secretary, and Central Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin—announced that at the age of 73, after “serving two full terms” as founding president of Shanghai Tech University (STU), he was stepping down to make way for “a younger generation of capable leaders.” The letter goes on to introduce Jiang’s successor, physicist and Stanford graduate Feng Donglai; lists some of the achievements of the university over the past 11 years; and thanks faculty, staff, students, and...
Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank...
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...
As Chinese local governments struggle with high levels of debt, moribund infrastructure projects, falling tax revenues, shrinking land-use fees, and increased demands for local welfare spending, some local government departments and state-owned enterprises have been exploring creative ways to replenish their depleted coffers. In April, after thousands of public complaints, public utilities in Chongqing and Chengdu, Sichuan province, were investigated and penalized for vastly overcharging residential customers for natural gas after the installation of new “smart” gas meters. That same month,...
Journalist and feminist activist Huang Xueqin and labor-rights activist Wang Jianbing were...
Despite near absolute censorship of any mention of the Tiananmen Massacre within China, memories...
On Thursday, judges delivered their verdicts for 16 of the 47 Hong Kong democrats in the city’s...
On Tuesday, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under the city’s new homegrown national...
Citizen-journalist Zhang Zhan finally reappeared on Tuesday, over a week after she was scheduled...
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...
Journalist and feminist activist Huang Xueqin and labor-rights activist Wang Jianbing were convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” and sentenced to prison for five years and three and a half years, respectively, by the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court on Friday. The sentencing was widely condemned by international rights groups who decried what they saw as a particularly harsh punishment for exercising freedom of speech and supporting victims of patriarchal and capitalist abuse. Helen Davidson at The Guardian reported on the outcome of Huang and Wang’s trial: On Friday,...
On the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, people around the world commemorated with...
For decades on June 4, Hongkongers rallied in their thousands at the city’s Victoria Park to...
While the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was massively censored within mainland China and Hong Kong, people elsewhere around the world made tributes in order to highlight the incident and reflect on its significance in the present era. The Hongkonger compiled an inexhaustive list of commemorative events that took place in 18 cities across four continents. The Hong Kong Free Press reported on commemorations in Canada and the U.K., among other countries: On June 4, over 300 people joined an assembly in front of the Chinese Embassy in Britain to share and hear memories of the...
On June 4 people across the globe, including within China, commemorated the 35th anniversary of...
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often...
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...
China’s hottest television show, HunanTV’s “Singer 2024,” has inspired nationalist angst after two...
Transnational repression by Chinese state-affiliated actors has long targeted Tibetans, Uyghurs,...
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...
Students from at least 174 colleges and universities across six continents have erected...
As Chinese local governments struggle with high levels of debt, moribund infrastructure projects, falling tax revenues, shrinking land-use fees, and increased demands for local welfare spending, some local government departments and state-owned enterprises have been exploring creative ways to replenish their depleted coffers. In April, after thousands of public complaints, public utilities in Chongqing and Chengdu, Sichuan province, were investigated and penalized for vastly overcharging residential customers for natural gas after the installation of new “smart” gas meters. That same month,...
Journalist and feminist activist Huang Xueqin and labor-rights activist Wang Jianbing were...
Despite near absolute censorship of any mention of the Tiananmen Massacre within China, memories...
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...
Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message calling for Xi Jinping to step down. Since Xi has risen to power, placing Xi’s works next to other books to make a political point has become a relatively common, low-key mode of political dissent. It’s often unclear whether the juxtapositions are created by bookstore employees or the product of cheeky swaps by politically astute customers—or simply accidental. The latest incident occurred last week. A photograph taken inside a Hangzhou bookshop showed the novel “Changing of the...
Despite near absolute censorship of any mention of the Tiananmen Massacre within China, memories...
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often...
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 a letter dated May 31 and posted online on June 6, Jiang Mianheng—son of the late Chinese President, CCP General Secretary, and Central Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin—announced that at the age of 73, after “serving two full terms” as founding president of Shanghai Tech University (STU), he was stepping down to make way for “a younger generation of capable leaders.” The letter goes on to introduce Jiang’s successor, physicist and Stanford graduate Feng Donglai; lists some of the achievements of the university over the past 11 years; and thanks faculty, staff, students, and...
Last week, Weibo censors took down a post by a popular food blogger describing how all her bank...
Government surveillance is a ubiquitous and growing phenomenon in China. New documents issued by...
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...
In China, the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was met with all-out digital censorship that quashed overt online mourning. In Hong Kong, efforts to publicly commemorate “June Fourth” were ruthlessly suppressed by police. Globally, across 18 cities spanning four continents, thousands gathered in remembrance. Those within China seeking to share their memories of the spring and summer of 1989 were forced to publish their recollections in foreign outlets, a selection of which CDT archived and translated. The dominant theme on the mainland, however, was censorship. CDT Chinese has...
For decades on June 4, Hongkongers rallied in their thousands at the city’s Victoria Park to...
On Thursday, judges delivered their verdicts for 16 of the 47 Hong Kong democrats in the city’s...
While the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre was massively censored within mainland China and Hong Kong, people elsewhere around the world made tributes in order to highlight the incident and reflect on its significance in the present era. The Hongkonger compiled an inexhaustive list of commemorative events that took place in 18 cities across four continents. The Hong Kong Free Press reported on commemorations in Canada and the U.K., among other countries: On June 4, over 300 people joined an assembly in front of the Chinese Embassy in Britain to share and hear memories of the...
On Monday, May 20, Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party was inaugurated the president...
Over a whirlwind two weeks of diplomacy in Beijing, China has sought to strengthen its ties to...
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