China Newsbase
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319 articles matching the search query.
The present battle to shape China’s future by controlling its past: Q&A with Ian Johnson
Ian Johnson’s journalism gives voice to ordinary Chinese people from all walks of life — the outcasts, the faithful, and, in the case of his latest book, the public intellectuals and storytellers recording the history that Beijing’s official censors are trying to erase.
In a retro mood: The ethical dilemmas of cutting a deal with Xi Jinping’s China
How can scholars, journalists, and others engage with China ethically? The eminent Sinologist Geremie Barmé offers 10 watchwords.
‘Pocket crime’ — Phrase of the Week
A new draft law in China may dole out punishments for “harming the feelings of the Chinese people.” It has sparked criticism in China.
My Chinese classroom celebrated 9/11. The shame came later.
Liuyu Ivy Chen weaves together Marxism, Sharon Olds, James Baldwin, and Chinese Communist Party lore in this poetic and unflinchingly honest essay about how she, as a child in an anonymous Chinese city, viewed the 9/11 attacks. And how she, as an adult now living in New York, views her younger self.
Editor’s note for June 2, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
‘Treating trivial things as matters of principle’ — Phrase of the Week
A joke that went wrong.
Editor’s note for May 18, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Editor’s note for May 17, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
China makes first ChatGPT-related arrest for fake news
A man from Gansu has been arrested after allegedly using ChatGPT to generate and spread a fake news story about a fatal train crash. The incident comes just weeks after Chinese lawmakers proposed a new legislation on generative AI with a focus on content regulation.
‘Everybody should be worried’ — Q&A with Lingling Wei
China is becoming a black box to investors, business people, and journalists, as the government makes it increasingly difficult to access economic and corporate information. Lingling Wei of the Wall Street Journal knows all about it.
After TikTok, scrutiny of these Chinese tech companies could be next
TikTok is in the news nearly every day as it faces more and more local and federal restrictions. But there are several other Chinese apps that could be in trouble.
A guide to TikTok bans around the world
Montana has just passed a TikTok ban, following a number of American federal and state restrictions on the short-video app. This is what you need to know about the new Montana law and other restrictions on the app around the world.
This is the story behind Taiwan’s Freedom of Expression Day, which falls today
On April 7, 1989, pro-democracy activist Nylon Cheng a.k.a. Cheng Nan-jung self-immolated to protest anti-sedition laws that were used to silence dissent. A temporary exhibit in Taipei looks back on his sacrifice.
How good is Ernie, China’s answer to ChatGPT?
On March 16, search giant Baidu launched Ernie Bot — an artificial intelligence platform like ChatGPT. Ernie is China’s chat bot market leader, and we now have a sense of how well it works.
From Prince Harry to Harry Potter in China — Q&A with publishing veteran Jo Lusby
Jo Lusby manages intellectual property for foreign books, games, and other creative products in China and is a keen observer of what people in China want to read, listen to, watch, and play.
Chinese conspiracy theory about Thai human trafficking fuels tourism concern
Unsubstantiated rumors about Thai human traffickers targeting Chinese women have become so popular on social media that the Thai Embassy in China had to officially debunk the claim and reassure Chinese tourists about safety in the country.
Can Chinese animation go global?
China’s new animation studios are capable and ambitious, but can they overcome censorship and cultural differences to break into the export market?
This week on TikTok: How pink hair led to tragedy and the self deprecating humor of Chinese youth
Want more like this? Subscribe to The China Project’s official TikTok channel, ChinaVibe, where Susan St.Denis explains complex topics about China clearly and simply in TikTok’s fast evolving visual and verbal language.
This week on TikTok: Elderly people protest and a new StarCraft champion rises
Want more like this? Subscribe to The China Project’s official TikTok channel, ChinaVibe, where Susan St.Denis explains complex topics about China clearly and simply in TikTok’s fast evolving visual and verbal language.
This week on TikTok: A missing person case turned tragic, Hollywood’s new rules, and China’s AI obsession
Want more like this? Subscribe to The China Project’s official TikTok channel, ChinaVibe, where Susan St.Denis explains complex topics about China clearly and simply in TikTok’s fast evolving visual and verbal language.
Hong Kong Journalists Association's press freedom award suspended - Hong Kong Free Press HKFP
A Hong Kong journalist group has postponed its press freedom award due to “the COVID pandemic and sociopolitical involvement in recent months,” Hong Kong Journalists Association chair Ronson Chan said on Tuesday.
Earlier this week, another journalist group in the city, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC), suspended its annual Human Rights Press Awards so as not to “unintentionally” violate any laws. Hong Kong Free Press published the names of the winners anyway: In full: Winners of the axed FCC Human Rights Press Awards — revealed. In The Atlantic, Timothy McLaughlin writes: “Hong Kong’s main press club has given up in the face of a new, repressive regime.”
How China’s Response to COVID-19 Set the Stage for a Worldwide Wave of Censorship
China’s COVID censors are setting “a playbook for information repression” where authoritarian governments in 80 nations have now placed new curbs on free speech and political expression that were “falsely described as public-health measures,” the New Yorker reports.
China censors gay storyline in new Fantastic Beasts franchise movie
China has nixed another gay movie storyline, this time from the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Warner Bros caved to demands from the Chinese government to censor references to a queer relationship from dialogue.
James Millward 米華健 on Twitter
Reports of political interference at the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) conference: James Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University and a renowned scholar of Xinjiang and Central Asia, tweeted yesterday that some “PRC-based scholars were blocked from participating by their government” in the conference held this past weekend, and the “extent of this is not yet clear, but broad.” Today, AAS said that it is “currently investigating and will post an update as soon as possible.”
Prominent rights attorney Xie Yang arrested for subversion in China's Hunan
Authorities in Hunan have arrested rights lawyer Xiè Yáng 谢阳 for subversion, after he supported a primary teacher forced into psychiatric “treatment” for her outspoken comments on social media.
The shadowy messengers delivering threats to Hong Kong civil society - Hong Kong Free Press HKFP
Hong Kong civil groups received veiled threats prior to being shut down, with many staffers warned through phone calls and messages from so-called “middlemen” that revealed private information about them, according to interviews from the Agence France-Presse.
China video site Bilibili to add 1,000 censors after worker dies
Bilibili plans to hire 1,000 content censors in a continued effort to deny accusations that the company was responsible for overworking a 25-year-old member to death last week, per Nikkei Asia. The young worker’s death sparked another round of criticism over China’s grueling work culture in the tech industry.
Yesterday on SupChina: Tech workers angered as Bilibili censors posts after employee’s death.
China's Tencent restores Fight Club ending after backlash
A rare instance of reversed censorship: Tencent restored the original ending to Fight Club after the abridged version of the movie triggered social media backlash over cinematic censorship, per Bloomberg. Tencent’s version had replaced the explosive ending with a silent line of text declaring that authorities brought the criminals to justice, the BBC reports.
Fight Club Ending in China Changed Back After Weibo Social Backlash
A rare instance of reversed censorship: Tencent restored the original ending to Fight Club after the abridged version of the movie triggered social media backlash over cinematic censorship, per Bloomberg. Tencent’s version had replaced the explosive ending with a silent line of text declaring that authorities brought the criminals to justice, the BBC reports.
Gay dating app Grindr disappears from multiple app stores in China
Popular gay dating app Grindr has been removed from app stores in China, the latest victim of internet regulators’ purge of all content that does not sing the Party tune.
Human Rights Watch, the New York–based NGO, released its 32nd annual report on human rights conditions worldwide. Here is what it had to say on a few key China topics:
On the internet: “The once-cacophonous internet is now dominated by pro-government voices that report to the authorities on people whose views they deem insufficiently nationalistic.” On Hong Kong: “Authorities devastated human rights protections and civil liberties in Hong Kong, recasting much of the peaceful behavior that had undergirded Hong Kong life, such as publishing news, as acts of subversion.” On Xinjiang: “The Chinese authorities are committing crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.”
China harvests masses of data on Western targets, documents show
Chinese data surveillance and harassment of critics on foreign social media: The Washington Post and the New York Times both have new investigations into how Chinese security authorities are more closely monitoring Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms that are censored in China. “China is turning a major part of its internal Internet-data surveillance network outward, mining Western social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign targets,” the Washington Post says. “With growing frequency, the authorities are harassing critics both inside and outside China, as well as threatening relatives, in an effort to get them to delete content deemed criminal,” the NYT reports.
Zuo Fang, Chinese Journalist Who Challenged the Powerful, Dies at 86
One of the founders of the Southern Weekly newspaper, Zuǒ Fāng 左方, has died at the age of 86. A New York Times obituary notes that the newspaper he worked at for decades, also known in English as Southern Weekend, had “laid the groundwork for a golden era of Chinese journalism in the 1990s and 2000s” — an era very different from the current one for Chinese media.
Chinese Journalist Who Reported From Wuhan Is Gravely Ill After Prison Hunger Strike
Imprisoned citizen journalist Zhāng Zhǎn 张展 is “gravely ill after going on a hunger strike, according to her family and attorney,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Zhang was initially detained in May 2020, and later convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” in December 2020 for her reporting from Wuhan in the early days of COVID-19 and criticism of the government’s response. The U.S. State Department and Human Rights Watch have called for her immediate release, per the New York Times.
Hong Kong independence activist with ‘clear conscience’ admits secession
Hong Kong under the National Security Law: Activist Tony Chung (鍾翰林 Zhōng Hànlín), 20, became the “youngest person convicted under national security law [but told the] judge he has no regrets for continuing his independence campaign,” while Hong Kong filmmakers see their future being censored.
Shutting Down Historical Debate, China Makes It a Crime to Mock Heroes
“Officials have defended the law as a necessary tool to fight what one director with the Cyberspace Administration of China, Wen Youhua, called ‘historical nihilism,’ which officials often use to describe deviant views.”
China accused of blocking media access to Winter Olympics
Foreign media say authorities have blocked requests for access and harassed reporters
Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 Organizers Block Foreign Media Coverage
China’s foreign press corps urged the International Olympic Committee for greater access to the Beijing Winter Games, complaining that organizers have “continuously stymied” them from covering preparations for the event.
China blamed for cancellation of events for German book on Xi Jinping
Publisher says situation is a ‘disquieting signal’ after presentations pulled at short notice
‘We are so divided now’: how China controls thought and speech beyond its borders
The long read: The arrest of a Tibetan New York city cop on spying charges plays into the community’s long-held suspicions that the People’s Republic is watching them
