The November 6 release date for the long-delayed COVID-themed film “Angel in White,” starring Andy Lau and Yang Zishan, came and went this weekend. The film itself did not appear, though, and its release date is now...
Last week saw the eruption of what The New York Times described as "one of the more improbable football-related storylines of recent times." French footballer Kylian Mbappé was widely condemned in China over...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
"Lately, I’ve grown used to quiet, uneventful days." Several users have reported...
The exposure of faulty brake-pedal brackets in the Maextro V800, a luxury EV manufactured by...
A subtitle can be changed, but the original line is still etched in millions of people’s minds. That’s what you call a backup. That’s something you can’t erase."
— From an essay by commentator Li Yuchen about changes made to the subtitles for the iconic 1994 film "The Shawshank Redemption" for its 2026 theatrical release in China
The November 6 release date for the long-delayed COVID-themed film “Angel in White,” starring Andy Lau and Yang Zishan, came and went this weekend. The film itself did not appear, though, and its release date is now listed on Douban as "2027 (TBD).". In the absence of formal explanation, some speculate that the film has been quietly pulled in response to the wave of mockery and incredulity on Chinese social media that greeted news of its belated arrival. Some commenters had described it as a glorified, sanitized spin on Wuhan’s 76-day quarantine during the earliest days of the...
Last week saw the eruption of what The New York Times described as "one of the more...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
"Lately, I’ve grown used to quiet, uneventful days." Several users have reported...
The exposure of faulty brake-pedal brackets in the Maextro V800, a luxury EV manufactured by...
Frank Darabont’s iconic 1994 film "The Shawshank Redemption" is no newcomer to...
A statement from the Forum 2000 Foundation and International Coalition for Democratic Renewal (ICDR)—of which CDT founder and editor-in-chief Xiao Qiang is a member—adds to widespread calls for the release of Burmese democracy advocate Min Zin, a U.S. citizen. Min Zin was detained in Kunming on June 3 after traveling to China for a conference; soon after, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that he was being held on suspicion of “engaging in espionage activities that endanger China’s national security.” The U.S. State Department formally designated Min...
Sophia Huang Xueqin, a journalist whose reporting on human rights and sexual abuse helped to...
In yet another blow for book lovers and free thinkers in Hong Kong, national security police...
RightsCon, the world’s largest digital human rights conference, was forced to cancel its 2026...
On Monday, the Hong Kong government gazetted amendments to the implementation rules of the...
On January 15, non-governmental organization Human Rights in China (HRIC) reported that, for the...
Fears are growing for labor-rights advocate and citizen journalist Feng Rui (also known by his pen name 小五, Xiǎo Wǔ), who has reportedly fallen ill due to lengthy interrogations while in detention. Feng was detained in Guangzhou on September 14 for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge widely seen as retaliation for his research and advocacy work on labor issues such as wage arrears, labor-law violations, workplace accidents, worker deaths, strikes and work stoppages, and more. As editor of the independent labor-focused media outlet Chiapas Dongfeng TV (恰帕斯东风电视机,...
Sophia Huang Xueqin, a journalist whose reporting on human rights and sexual abuse helped to...
RightsCon, the world’s largest digital human rights conference, was forced to cancel its 2026...
On Monday, the Hong Kong government gazetted amendments to the implementation rules of the...
During the recently concluded “Two Sessions” annual legislative meetings, the National People’s...
On January 15, non-governmental organization Human Rights in China (HRIC) reported that, for the...
The November 6 release date for the long-delayed COVID-themed film “Angel in White,” starring Andy Lau and Yang Zishan, came and went this weekend. The film itself did not appear, though, and its release date is now listed on Douban as "2027 (TBD).". In the absence of formal explanation, some speculate that the film has been quietly pulled in response to the wave of mockery and incredulity on Chinese social media that greeted news of its belated arrival. Some commenters had described it as a glorified, sanitized spin on Wuhan’s 76-day quarantine during the earliest days of the...
Last week saw the eruption of what The New York Times described as "one of the more...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
The exposure of faulty brake-pedal brackets in the Maextro V800, a luxury EV manufactured by...
Frank Darabont’s iconic 1994 film "The Shawshank Redemption" is no newcomer to...
While "positive energy" prevails in China’s domestic news reporting, this is far...
The November 6 release date for the long-delayed COVID-themed film “Angel in White,” starring Andy Lau and Yang Zishan, came and went this weekend. The film itself did not appear, though, and its release date is now listed on Douban as "2027 (TBD).". In the absence of formal explanation, some speculate that the film has been quietly pulled in response to the wave of mockery and incredulity on Chinese social media that greeted news of its belated arrival. Some commenters had described it as a glorified, sanitized spin on Wuhan’s 76-day quarantine during the earliest days of the...
Last week saw the eruption of what The New York Times described as "one of the more...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
"Lately, I’ve grown used to quiet, uneventful days." Several users have reported...
Frank Darabont’s iconic 1994 film "The Shawshank Redemption" is no newcomer to...
While "positive energy" prevails in China’s domestic news reporting, this is far...
In yet another blow for book lovers and free thinkers in Hong Kong, national security police raided two independent bookstores (Have a Nice Stay and Greenfield, respectively) and arrested five individuals on suspicion of selling allegedly seditious publications, an offence punishable with up to seven years in prison under Hong Kong’s homegrown national security law (NSL). Three of those arrested have since been released on bail, while the status of the other two remains unclear. The raids and arrests took place on Wednesday, against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s annual international book...
CDT recently published a large set of leaked internal instructions for online content management...
Apple announced long-anticipated AI upgrades to its Siri voice assistant this week at its annual...
Ahead of the 37th anniversary of the June Fourth crackdown, CDT Chinese editors compiled a number...
Chinese social media and financial news apps are abuzz over new policies restricting the use of...
At The Wall Street Journal last week, departing China correspondent Yoko Kubota described her...
In June, ChinaFile published a new report, "The Locknet: How China Controls Its Internet and Why It Matters"—the product of 18 months’ work by Jessica Batke, ChinaFile’s senior editor for investigations, and Laura Edelson, assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University. The report gives a concise but thorough overview of China’s online censorship system, including the motivations behind it and the mechanisms by which it is implemented. It expands on the familiar image of the "Great Firewall" as a perimeter barrier, adopting a broader...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
A recent WeChat post reveals that some Chinese schools and universities are using special software...
In the two weeks since the Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration of China...
You Must Take Part in Revolution is a graphic novel by Badiucao, political cartoonist and former CDT contributor, and Melissa Chan, a journalist who in 2012 became the first reporter to be expelled from China in more than a decade. The book was conceived in the wake of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, and follows the divergent paths of three friends in Hong Kong and Taiwan from their involvement in the protests through to 2035. CDT: I’m sure anyone reading CDT is familiar with each of you separately. How did the two of you come to join forces? Melissa Chan: I’d interviewed Badiucao for a...
On September 12, 2003, John Battelle published the first post on chinadigitaltimes.net: Here’s...
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...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese market), Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Bilibili, Zhihu, Douban, and others. Although this content archived by CDT Chinese editors represents only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, it provides valuable insight into which topics are...
The exposure of faulty brake-pedal brackets in the Maextro V800, a luxury EV manufactured by...
While "positive energy" prevails in China’s domestic news reporting, this is far...
Fears are growing for labor-rights advocate and citizen journalist Feng Rui (also known by his pen...
The post translated below, from WeChat account 守一手记 (Shǒuyī Shǒujì, “Shouyi’s Notes”), examines...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
The November 6 release date for the long-delayed COVID-themed film “Angel in White,” starring Andy Lau and Yang Zishan, came and went this weekend. The film itself did not appear, though, and its release date is now listed on Douban as "2027 (TBD).". In the absence of formal explanation, some speculate that the film has been quietly pulled in response to the wave of mockery and incredulity on Chinese social media that greeted news of its belated arrival. Some commenters had described it as a glorified, sanitized spin on Wuhan’s 76-day quarantine during the earliest days of the...
Last week saw the eruption of what The New York Times described as "one of the more...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
"Lately, I’ve grown used to quiet, uneventful days." Several users have reported...
The exposure of faulty brake-pedal brackets in the Maextro V800, a luxury EV manufactured by...
Frank Darabont’s iconic 1994 film "The Shawshank Redemption" is no newcomer to...
The November 6 release date for the long-delayed COVID-themed film “Angel in White,” starring Andy Lau and Yang Zishan, came and went this weekend. The film itself did not appear, though, and its release date is now listed on Douban as "2027 (TBD).". In the absence of formal explanation, some speculate that the film has been quietly pulled in response to the wave of mockery and incredulity on Chinese social media that greeted news of its belated arrival. Some commenters had described it as a glorified, sanitized spin on Wuhan’s 76-day quarantine during the earliest days of the...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
"Lately, I’ve grown used to quiet, uneventful days." Several users have reported...
The exposure of faulty brake-pedal brackets in the Maextro V800, a luxury EV manufactured by...
Twenty students at Harbin Engineering University (HEU) were given disciplinary warnings for using...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese market), Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Bilibili, Zhihu, Douban, and others. Although this content archived by CDT Chinese editors represents only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, it provides valuable insight into which topics are...
A statement from the Forum 2000 Foundation and International Coalition for Democratic Renewal...
Fears are growing for labor-rights advocate and citizen journalist Feng Rui (also known by his pen...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
The post below, from WeChat account 白桦视界 Báihuà Shìjiè, or “White Birch Vision,” is a censored...
In mid-September, a man was arrested for stabbing and wounding an unknown number of women outside...
In late May, China’s State Council announced new guidelines on providing basic services in the place of people’s actual residence, rather than formal registration. Such a shift could substantially alleviate the hardships imposed by the current hukou household registration system, which has effectively kept many tens of millions of migrant workers apart from their parents and children for long periods. This is not the first time changes to the system have been promised. In 2023, one Chinese expert told Reuters that "Hukou reform is a hard bone to chew, […] it’s not something you...
Despite huge leaps in recent decades, rural living standards remain an issue of widespread popular...
Despite huge leaps in recent decades, rural living standards remain an issue of widespread popular...
Responses on Chinese social media to state broadcaster CCTV’s annual Spring Festival Gala...
At The New York Times on Monday, columnist Li Yuan describes how, as "wages stagnate and jobs...
In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central...
Fears are growing for labor-rights advocate and citizen journalist Feng Rui (also known by his pen name 小五, Xiǎo Wǔ), who has reportedly fallen ill due to lengthy interrogations while in detention. Feng was detained in Guangzhou on September 14 for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge widely seen as retaliation for his research and advocacy work on labor issues such as wage arrears, labor-law violations, workplace accidents, worker deaths, strikes and work stoppages, and more. As editor of the independent labor-focused media outlet Chiapas Dongfeng TV (恰帕斯东风电视机,...
Sophia Huang Xueqin, a journalist whose reporting on human rights and sexual abuse helped to...
RightsCon, the world’s largest digital human rights conference, was forced to cancel its 2026...
The following is an introduction to and contextualization of some of the specific entries and broader categories included in CDT’s archived “ByteDance Lexicon of Sensitive Terms.” The lexicon, which contains some 5,241 “sensitive” words and phrases subject to review by ByteDance internal content moderators, derives from a larger tranche of internal content-review documents that date from the first half of 2020 and were leaked by a former ByteDance employee (or employees). CDT editors have reviewed and analyzed the documents, and made them publicly available at China Digital Space. This post...
Like their counterparts elsewhere, Chinese news media face mounting challenges such as commercial...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
On Monday, the Wuhan Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism announced the conclusion of its investigation into an operatic performance by comedian Guo Degang back in July, and said that it would levy hefty fines on the organizers and theatrical venue involved. The investigation purportedly stemmed from a complaint by an unknown member of the public who alleged that Guo, one of China’s most famous comedians, had “distorted and vulgarized” a revolutionary classic by slightly altering the lyrics to a song that had once appeared in the 1956 revolutionary film “Railway Guerrilla.” The case has...
At The New York Times, Li Yuan writes that Beijing’s efforts to cultivate an air of uniform...
Chinese cyberspace authorities announced that ten people from Tibet and several other provinces...
On the morning of August 26, a glacial collapse caused catastrophic flooding and mudslides on the China-Nepal border, destroying a port and border crossing in Gyirong County in Shigatse, Tibet, and inundating communities on both sides of the border. Nepalese authorities have confirmed 1,050 deaths, with nearly 4,000 people still missing. Chinese state media reported as of September 2 that 16 people were killed in Tibet, with over 546 still missing, approximately half of them foreign nationals. Search and rescue efforts are ongoing. In addition to highlighting the increasing risks of climate...
This post from WeChat account 百里曾游 Bǎilǐ Céngyóu ("100 Li Once Traveled"), deleted at...
The announcement that two Chinese mathematicians have won the Fields Medal, awarded every four...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese market), Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Bilibili, Zhihu, Douban, and others. Although this content archived by CDT Chinese editors represents only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, it provides valuable insight into which topics are...
A statement from the Forum 2000 Foundation and International Coalition for Democratic Renewal...
Fears are growing for labor-rights advocate and citizen journalist Feng Rui (also known by his pen...
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...
The November 6 release date for the long-delayed COVID-themed film “Angel in White,” starring Andy Lau and Yang Zishan, came and went this weekend. The film itself did not appear, though, and its release date is now listed on Douban as "2027 (TBD).". In the absence of formal explanation, some speculate that the film has been quietly pulled in response to the wave of mockery and incredulity on Chinese social media that greeted news of its belated arrival. Some commenters had described it as a glorified, sanitized spin on Wuhan’s 76-day quarantine during the earliest days of the...
Last week saw the eruption of what The New York Times described as "one of the more...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
In late May, China’s State Council announced new guidelines on providing basic services in the place of people’s actual residence, rather than formal registration. Such a shift could substantially alleviate the hardships imposed by the current hukou household registration system, which has effectively kept many tens of millions of migrant workers apart from their parents and children for long periods. This is not the first time changes to the system have been promised. In 2023, one Chinese expert told Reuters that "Hukou reform is a hard bone to chew, […] it’s not something you...
Despite huge leaps in recent decades, rural living standards remain an issue of widespread popular...
Despite huge leaps in recent decades, rural living standards remain an issue of widespread popular...
The November 6 release date for the long-delayed COVID-themed film “Angel in White,” starring Andy Lau and Yang Zishan, came and went this weekend. The film itself did not appear, though, and its release date is now listed on Douban as "2027 (TBD).". In the absence of formal explanation, some speculate that the film has been quietly pulled in response to the wave of mockery and incredulity on Chinese social media that greeted news of its belated arrival. Some commenters had described it as a glorified, sanitized spin on Wuhan’s 76-day quarantine during the earliest days of the...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content...
"Lately, I’ve grown used to quiet, uneventful days." Several users have reported...
Chinese cyberspace authorities announced that ten people from Tibet and several other provinces have been hit with unspecified administrative punishments (likely fines) for “spreading rumors” online about the death toll and scale of the massive debris-flow that destroyed the Gyirong checkpoint on the China-Nepal border late last month. Nearly two weeks after an upstream glacial collapse destroyed the border crossing and inundated many villages in its path, Nepalese authorities have confirmed a death toll of at least 1,342, with 4,886 people still missing and search and rescue efforts...
On the morning of August 26, a glacial collapse caused catastrophic flooding and mudslides on the...
Disaster preparedness and disaster-relief efforts are hot topics on Chinese social media as the...
In yet another blow for book lovers and free thinkers in Hong Kong, national security police raided two independent bookstores (Have a Nice Stay and Greenfield, respectively) and arrested five individuals on suspicion of selling allegedly seditious publications, an offence punishable with up to seven years in prison under Hong Kong’s homegrown national security law (NSL). Three of those arrested have since been released on bail, while the status of the other two remains unclear. The raids and arrests took place on Wednesday, against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s annual international book...
CDT recently published a large set of leaked internal instructions for online content management...
Apple announced long-anticipated AI upgrades to its Siri voice assistant this week at its annual...
CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese market), Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Bilibili, Zhihu, Douban, and others. Although this content archived by CDT Chinese editors represents only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, it provides valuable insight into which topics are...
During the recent back-to-back Sino-American and Sino-Russian summits, there was a fair amount of...
RightsCon, the world’s largest digital human rights conference, was forced to cancel its 2026...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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