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...
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...
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...
The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and...
I thought only soccer matches were fixed in China. I never imagined marathons could be, too."
— Weibo user @飞天猪Jason (fēitiān zhū Jason, "flying pig Jason"), reacting to viral footage that appeared to show three runners from Kenya and Ethiopia slowing down in the final stretch of the April 14 Beijing half-marathon to allow Chinese runner Hu Jie to win the race. The controversy, ironically, emerged soon after China’s sports regulator announced it would stiffen punishments for throwing matches, fixing competitions, and sports-related misconduct.
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,...
56 years after her wrongful execution, the poet-journalist turned dissident Lin Zhao is still...
Nymphia Wind, a Taiwanese drag queen, has won the 16th season of the American reality TV...
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...
Hu Chenfeng, a Chinese content creator who first rose to fame making videos about poverty, has...
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...
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...
Over a whirlwind two weeks of diplomacy in Beijing, China has sought to strengthen its ties to...
In its annual report on the state of media freedom in China last year, the Foreign Correspondents’...
Two Chinese manufacturers of video surveillance equipment—state-owned Hikvision and publicly traded company Dahua Technology—have joined the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in an attempt to burnish their reputations, which have been severely undermined by evidence that the companies have contributed to human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Both companies have been subject to restrictions by the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada for facilitating the oppression of Uyghurs by providing “highly invasive” surveillance equipment to the Chinese Party-state, underpinning their complicity...
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...
Many entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens welcomed the news that provincial prosecutors in Guizhou...
On April 14, Sina News Hot Topics published a lengthy article on Weibo under the clickbait headline “The First Batch of DINKs, Exposed: Where Are They Now, and Do They All Regret Not Having Kids?” The four-part article focused on ostensible profiles of DINK (“double income, no kids”) couples, most of whom were portrayed as either lonely, estranged, divorced, bitter, or regretful that they had never had children. Some of those profiled said that they had changed their minds and decided to have kids after all. Although the article purported to present both sides of the issue, both the language...
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...
At an April 8 press conference to unveil IM Motors’ new L6 electric sedan, company CEO Liu Tao...
On April 6, a Weibo user from Zhejiang province reported a case of local anti-fraud center...
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,...
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...
After a decades-long infrastructure spending spree, many of China’s local governments now find...
Hu Chenfeng, a Chinese content creator who first rose to fame making videos about poverty, has...
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...
The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and export of goods made using forced labor. While the ban does not explicitly target any single country, it is widely seen as responding to numerous reports of forced labor in China, particularly in Xinjiang, where the U.N. has concluded that the Uyghur population may be subject to crimes against humanity and enslavement. The E.U.’s ban follows related measures by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to strengthen its protections against forced labor as a result of similar concerns about supply...
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 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...
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,...
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...
Hu Chenfeng, a Chinese content creator who first rose to fame making videos about poverty, has...
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...
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...
The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and export of goods made using forced labor. While the ban does not explicitly target any single country, it is widely seen as responding to numerous reports of forced labor in China, particularly in Xinjiang, where the U.N. has concluded that the Uyghur population may be subject to crimes against humanity and enslavement. The E.U.’s ban follows related measures by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to strengthen its protections against forced labor as a result of similar concerns about supply...
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...
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...
Muslims around the world celebrated Eid-al-Fitr this week, marking the end of the holy month of...
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...
Two Chinese manufacturers of video surveillance equipment—state-owned Hikvision and publicly traded company Dahua Technology—have joined the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in an attempt to burnish their reputations, which have been severely undermined by evidence that the companies have contributed to human rights abuses of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Both companies have been subject to restrictions by the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada for facilitating the oppression of Uyghurs by providing “highly invasive” surveillance equipment to the Chinese Party-state, underpinning their complicity...
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...
One of the subtler ways Chinese internet users voice their displeasure with the status quo is through “pinkfishing” (粉红钓鱼, fěnhóng diàoyú), tricking nationalist “little pinks” into criticizing Party leaders—generally by quoting those leaders without attribution. A classic example from 2021 saw online nationalists berate a Weibo user as a “race traitor,” “Japanese devil,” and general lunatic for writing, “We should not despise a nation because a small cadre of militarists in their midst instigated an invasion …” while quoting a People’s Daily post memorializing the Nanjing Massacre. The call...
Last week, the bodies of eight Chinese nationals were discovered off the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico,...
In the days following former premier Li Keqiang’s death in late October of 2023, mourners left...
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...
Efforts by the Chinese state and its state-affiliated actors to engage with global media can be...
A recent donation from a medical non-governmental organization (NGO) to the Beijing municipal and...
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...
Recent public opinion polls from countries in the Global South point to a slight shift in...
Chinese social media has been awash with interest in Netflix’s new series “3 Body Problem,” an...
The European Parliament voted this week in favor of regulations to ban the sale, import, and export of goods made using forced labor. While the ban does not explicitly target any single country, it is widely seen as responding to numerous reports of forced labor in China, particularly in Xinjiang, where the U.N. has concluded that the Uyghur population may be subject to crimes against humanity and enslavement. The E.U.’s ban follows related measures by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to strengthen its protections against forced labor as a result of similar concerns about supply...
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...
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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