More than three years after the military’s coup d’état, Myanmar remains engulfed in instability and civil war. China has more leverage in Myanmar than any other foreign power, and the ongoing crisis along the China-Myanmar...
There are mounting concerns over the well-being and whereabouts of Zhang Zhan, the former lawyer-turned-citizen-journalist whose reporting from Wuhan in early 2020 was essential to lifting the lid on the emerging COVID pandemic....
Xi Jinping’s New Era has inspired the creation of a host of “new chengyu”: idiomatic, often four-character, literary expressions that are the kernel of a larger tale. The following New Era chengyu are all references to infamous...
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...
On April 6, a Weibo user from Zhejiang province reported a case of local anti-fraud center overreach that resulted in his bank cards and Alipay account being frozen after he made a work-related call to a Singaporean bank. In a...
Many entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens welcomed the news that provincial prosecutors in Guizhou are investigating a local government for arresting businesswoman Ma Yijiayi and her lawyers and accusing them of “picking...
Chinese authorities have reportedly arrested more than 100 Tibetan Buddhist monks and other residents of largely Tibetan Dege County in Sichuan Province, following protests against a vast dam project that would destroy six...
A tea company is in hot water after Shenzhen officials deemed its latest marketing campaign to be “borderline” illegal. Hey Tea (喜茶, xǐ chá), a popular national beverage chain, recently partnered with the Jingdezhen China...
After being postponed for a year due to the 2022 COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown in nearby Shanghai, the 19th Asian Games are finally taking place in China’s eastern seaboard city of Hangzhou. For the Chinese government, the...
A Weibo user who works as a computer programmer in Chengde, Hebei province, has reported that he was fined and had three years of income confiscated by the local public security bureau for using a virtual private network (VPN)...
Word(s) of the Week: “It is a bit ridiculous, but you must obey.” (是有点搞笑，但是你要服从, Shì yǒudiǎn gǎoxiào, dànshì nǐ yào fúcóng.) A policeman admitting that a traffic restriction “is a bit ridiculous, but you must obey”...
China’s not-so-new culture cops, now colloquially referred to as wenguan, have gone viral on Weibo amidst concerns over the perceived expansion of China’s police state. Earlier this year, the nationwide establishment of...
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...
China’s infamous urban management agents, known as chengguan, have a new rural equivalent, the nongguan (“rural management”). Nongguan is the unofficial name for a new corps of agricultural law-enforcement officers, “Rural...
If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 in the United States, or find local resources in the International Suicide Prevention Wiki. The discovery of...
The wife of a prominent former Chinese bookseller is being prevented from leaving China until her husband returns to the country to answer questions about his alleged political writings. Yu Miao ran Shanghai’s famed liberal...
Two months after the spontaneous nationwide protests that broke out in response to a deadly fire in Urumqi and draconian pandemic controls, an unknown number of peaceful protesters remain in detention on charges of “picking...
“Voices of Protest” is a special edition of CDT’s monthly “Voices of…” video series. This 15-minute video is a compilation of video footage, images, and audio from the large, spontaneous public protests that broke out in a...
Click on the image to download Firefly for circumvention
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