For more on the alleged dangers of “scaling the wall,” from moral degeneracy to criminal prosecution, see our recent translation of a piece from the National Defense Times which enumerates them in terrifying detail. There is a long history of similar warnings, but some recent signs suggest that pressure on circumvention tools may be escalating.

To all readers:

To safeguard operation of library networks and fortify the defense of readers’ information security, and in response to a recent situation involving rule violations by some readers with regard to the use of the library’s public Wi-Fi leading to potentialsecurity hazards, we are implementing a temporary shutdown and rectification of public Wi-Fi systems. Details are as follows:

1. Explanation of the rule-violating usage situation

Technical monitoring has confirmed that some readers logged on to the library’s public Wi-Fi network and used unauthorized wall-scaling software to visit prohibited overseas websites, causing traffic irregularities and serious cybersecurity hazards. Such activity is suspected of violating relevant provisions of the Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China, and has been recorded by the Cyberspace Administration Department. It has so far been verified that the telephone numbers of those involved include: 155XXXX9172; 197XXXX2090; and 155XXXX7044. In order to thoroughly eliminate security hazards, we are urgently implementing a temporary suspension and rectification of our Wi-Fi network.

2. Suspension and rectification schedule

Rectification will begin on July 22, 2026, and the library’s public Wi-Fi will be unavailable throughout the rectification period. Pending completion of cybersecurity troubleshooting work, system reinforcement, and testing work, we will gradually resume service as circumstances allow, with details of the restoration date to follow separately.

3. Special reminder

Cyberspace is not outside the law. We will step up monitoring of our network environment on an ongoing basis, and maintain a "zero tolerance" policy toward rule violations in readers’ network usage. If such violations are verified, the telephone numbers of those involved will be permanently barred from our network; extreme cases of suspected illegal conduct will be handed over to public security, cyberspace administration or other departments.

We thank all readers for your understanding and cooperation, and request your patience with any inconvenience this may cause.

This concludes the announcement. [Chinese]

CDT Chinese editors collected some unimpressed reactions from users on X:

laoji_here: They think that shutting the front gate will solve all their problems, but they’re really just admitting to everyone how scared they are.

vcjavacgi2: This library "administrator" is awfully keen to show his devotion.

thecitylion: We don’t even have such tight surveillance at my company. Will we end up having to hand over our phones and register our real names to go to the library?

GenkiCare: The CCP prevents people from enlightening themselves in the name of information security. You can’t use a single one of the world’s ten biggest sites or apps without scaling the wall.

okok166: It’s just common sense not to use work unit or school networks to scale the wall because they’re small-scale and easy to trace, and the leaders would take the blame, so they definitely will trace it. If you’re scaling the wall, use your own mobile connection or home broadband, there’s strength in numbers, as long as you don’t publish any content that unsettles the net police they won’t bother with you! Work unit’s a different matter, if the network administrators realize someone’s scaling the wall and the leaders ignore it, they’ll be accused of political disloyalty and punished, so of course they’re going to notice, find out it’s you, and sack you!

rainstoneyun: This regime is afraid of people learning the truth, so afraid. [Chinese]

In the midst of this, last week brought the fifth anniversary of the deadly 2021 floods in Zhengzhou, Henan. A leaked media directive showed the typical playbook: "Regarding the heavy rain striking Henan and other places, shift the focus of reporting toward post-disaster recovery […] do not publish unauthorized images showing dead bodies, take an exaggeratedly sorrowful tone, or hype or draw connections to past events." In early 2022, China’s State Council released the results of an investigation that sharply criticized local authorities, in part for obscuring the death toll, but when the first anniversary arrived months later, censorship and opacity reigned again.

Many of the themes in translated commentary on the 2021 floods have resurfaced this year. As commentator Xiang Dongliang wrote in a previously translated post on the current floods: "All of this ought to be common sense by now. But here we are in 2026, and we’re having to reiterate it yet again, which is truly lamentable."

The two censored posts translated below display a similar longing for accountability and transparency, and reflect upon memory and forgetting in that environment. As writer Huang Zhijie, under the pen name "Youyou Luming," concludes in the first post: "Forgetting often means that an essentially identical man-made disaster occurs again; that an accident investigation report that came close to the truth becomes just a blank piece of paper."

Today is July 20, 2026.

This marks the fifth anniversary of the July 20, 2021 ("720") Zhengzhou floods.

To be honest, I really don’t know what to say.

I had actually forgotten all about it.

The first thing I remembered was that "Raincoat Dad," whose real name is still unknown.

That year on July 27, the seventh day after the deaths, a man sat quietly outside Shakoulu station on Line 5 of the Zhengzhou Metro. He wore a dark blue raincoat, black sunglasses, and a blue facemask with an opening cut at the mouth. Next to him, propped against his parked bicycle, was a piece of cardboard reading: "Niuniu, Daddy still wants to bring you home."

He never spoke.

The father.

[…] According to a subsequent police investigation, the man was a section chief at a Zhengzhou work unit, and was the father of Zhang __yue, one of the people who died on that subway line. The man’s younger sister said that he was wearing that raincoat because he had been wearing it when he said goodbye to his daughter that morning; and the sunglasses, because his daughter had given them to him. His mask had an opening because he didn’t want the condensation to fog up his glasses. He had always used that bicycle to take his daughter home.

"Niuniu" was his special pet name for his daughter. Even though she was already 27 and married with a two-year-old of her own, in her father’s eyes, she would always be his little girl. "My brother always regretted not having taught her to swim, and blamed himself for not finding out about the subway flooding in time. He always wondered whether, if he could turn back time, there might have been something he could have done to change what happened."

[…] A total of 398 people died during the “720 incident.” Of these deaths, 139 were concealed at the township, county, or city levels. According to the State Council’s later investigation, many of the flooding deaths should never have happened, particularly the incident on Line 5 of the Zhengzhou Metro (in which 953 people were trapped, and 14 died) and in the northern tunnel of Zhengzhou’s Jingguang expressway (in which 247 vehicles were submerged, and six people died).

Raincoat Dad’s daughter was among those who died.

The investigation report said that the disaster was "generally natural, with specific human failings," and that there were six major issues with the relevant departments:

1. Response deployment was neither timely nor sufficient;
2. Emergency response lagged badly;
3. Emergency measures were imprecise and ineffective;
4. Unified command was lacking at key moments;
5. Organization and mobilization were insufficient;
6. Reported numbers of those dead and missing were delayed and concealed.

At one point afterwards, chrysanthemums left by Zhengzhou residents or sent from netizens from all over the country blanketed the ground far around the subway entrance, and the messages on the cards among them were even more moving. Despite efforts by some to obstruct this, the urge to commemorate the victims was irrepressible.

[…] One card read: "You passed through this world. We remember your bravery!"

A drone photo of yellow bouquets spread out in front of the subway station. Reporters from Caixin and Southern Metropolis Daily were arrested for taking drone images of the impromptu memorial.

Why is it that people are willing to persist, to brave the consequences, in order to express their grief and commemorate the ordinary victims of disaster?

I think it’s because those ordinary office workers, those ordinary daughters, are so much like ourselves. Their fates struck without warning, as could happen to any ordinary person.

People who had been trapped on the subway recalled their fellow passengers, after many hours of confinement, beginning to show signs of oxygen deprivation—shaking, gasping for breath, and retching—while others fainted or suffocated.

Some people online said that just reading these accounts and watching the videos was enough to give them shortness of breath, headaches, or insomnia. For some, it evoked the anxieties of the pandemic years.

When people see the minutiae of these ordinary victims’ lives, both before and after their passing, their great sorrow becomes a form of memory.

I’m conflicted.

On one hand, my general habit is to dig into every detail of a major disaster as exhaustively as possible, trying to remember. On the other, I also tend to forget it all as completely as possible.

Because as far as I’m concerned, this kind of sorrowful memory is an enormous burden. I have to constantly purge it if I’m to return to a normal emotional state.

If the “post-disaster reconstruction” is this hard for me, an outsider, how must it feel for people from Zhengzhou?

As an old media veteran, I seem to know a lot—much more than ordinary people. But I also seem to know very little, to the extent that some great events I witnessed firsthand seem to have left little trace in my memory.

Sometimes forgetting is as terrible as the disaster itself.

Forgetting often means that an essentially identical man-made disaster occurs again; that an accident investigation report that came close to the truth becomes just a blank piece of paper; that the bicycle that carried a child, a father’s raincoat, the sunglasses his daughter gave him … it means that all these details will come into our view once more.

May we who have lived through disaster avoid further disaster; and, having grasped the human causes of catastrophe, may we avoid man-made catastrophe in future.

Youyou Luming, July 20, 2026 [Chinese]

The second post is by Henan-born, Chengdu-based writer Zhang Feng, the owner of a celebrated independent bookstore that narrowly escaped closure last year. Zhang noted that most of the commemorative posts he had seen made no demands for accountability, but were deleted anyway.

In the bookstore today, I heard a pair of young women sighing: "I can’t believe it’s been five years since the Zhengzhou floods."

I was amazed—I hadn’t expected that young folks in Chengdu would still remember it. "What do you remember of it?" I asked them.

"There was a father waiting for his daughter at the subway station, just waiting, for days and days."

I paid close attention to the Zhengzhou floods at the time, and wrote two pieces about them, thinking that if the police in my hometown wanted to come and arrest me for it, then let them. But I don’t even remember that detail.

Those two young women probably got their information through different channels, building their own image of the "Zhengzhou floods."

I’ve seen a lot of videos and articles commemorating the Zhengzhou floods in the last couple of days. There were a lot of comments relating details of that time, mostly expressions of gratitude or calls to remember the city’s suffering. I saw almost no abuse, or demands for accountability.

Sadly, most of those videos and posts were deleted. As someone from Henan, I’m sorry to see this.

Zhengzhou is a large city that’s developed a lot over the past 20 years. I remember that when I left for university in 1997, Zhengzhou hardly merited a mention among China’s cities, but now, in the age of high-speed rail and mobile internet, it’s seen as a hub.

But it’s not a city whose spirit will stir your soul.

I know there’s a pretty good song about it, "Memory About Zhengzhou," a nice tune [embedded below; by banned folk singer Li Zhi]. Chengdu seized on the Zhao Lei song that’s named for it; when I was in Flushing, New York, and heard someone singing "Chengdu" in the street, I couldn’t help but get misty-eyed.

But I’ve seen no sign of Zhengzhou trying to capitalize on its own song that way.

It’s a similar story with commemoration of the floods. Merciless floodwaters brought disaster, but part of it was man-made, or revealed shortcomings in the city’s construction, and these caused further misfortune. But if a city were to establish a "Flood Memorial Hall" to tell the story of the disaster and remind visitors of its lessons, that would be entirely to its credit.

I even have an idea for such a memorial hall. It could be located in a subway station, and use advanced equipment to create a kind of "drowning experience." The names of the victims could be listed, so we would never forget them. Commemorative items could be displayed; the deeds of "heroic citizens" could be recorded.

In any case, a city ultimately belongs to its people. Becoming its "citizen" is not just a matter of buying a house or possessing a household registration; it also involves learning the city’s traditions and culture, and the hardships she has suffered. The people of a place have shared feelings and shared sorrows, which can become ingrained as a sort of "local dialect."

It’s like Chengdu in 2008. If you were here [during the Wenchuan earthquake] in 2008; if you saw or heard about family and friends who died; if you grieved and were heartbroken, but also reached out your hands to others, then how could you not love her?

In that sense, I’m proud of Zhengzhou. The simple fact that so many people have not forgotten gives you a little more confidence. [Chinese]

广场鸽子, by Costi (CC BY-SA 2.0)

At South China Morning Post, Xinlu Liang reported on an inter-agency meeting to discuss disaster-preparedness ahead of Typhoon Noul, which is expected to make landfall in Guangdong province this weekend. Chinese officials described the storm as presenting a “complex and severe” challenge:

China’s top flood control and drought relief body held an emergency inter-agency meeting on Wednesday to coordinate disaster prevention ahead of the expected 12th named storm of the season.

Meanwhile, rainfall remains widespread and intense nationwide, including regions still recovering from recent storms. Rivers and lakes are still swollen in some areas and the soil fully saturated – sharply increasing the risk of flash floods, mountain torrents and landslides.

[…] Authorities in Guangdong and neighbouring Guangxi province have been told to prepare for the “most unfavourable scenario” of a direct landfall.

The NMC [National Meteorological Centre] order also calls for routine inspections of critical infrastructure – such as highways, railways, utilities and underground spaces – and for rescue teams and emergency supplies to be put on standby. [Source]

Throughout the month, CDT Chinese editors observed censorship of social-media content about the Liulan dam breach and the Guangxi flooding, particularly articles pointing out snafus in disaster-prevention and disaster-relief efforts, or complaining of biased or inadequate reporting about the human toll of the storms. Most notable were the back-to-back deletions of two long-form investigative reports from the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly (南方周末, Nánfāng Zhōumò).

The first censored piece, deleted across multiple platforms but archived at CDT, features an in-depth interview with Liulan Reservoir station chief Xie Zhijie discussing the 24 hours leading up to a massive breach in the reservoir, which inundated nearby Hengzhou and killed at least 26 people. Xie recounts the many failures of governance that made the breach possible: a past "reinforcement" project that never passed inspection, failed automated monitoring that forced staff to gauge water levels by eye, sluice gates that malfunctioned, and an auxiliary dam that failed to collapse as it was designed to. Perhaps most damning is the decision-making paralysis Xie describes—the 11 unanswered calls he made to Hengzhou’s mayor, who was also the flood-control commander; the township governments that missed vital flood warnings because their email inboxes were full; and a chain of command that left Xie and his colleagues unable to open all of the sluice gates without instructions from higher authorities. “Looking back now,” Xie says regretfully, “I should have thrown open the gates first, and reported it to my superiors later.”

The focus of the second archived piece is the record-breaking rainfall and flooding brought by the tail end of Typhoon Bavi to Shenyang, a city of nine million in the far northeastern province of Liaoning. The article describes whole districts submerged, residents trapped in high-rises without water or power for over 30 hours, and a possible drowning victim given CPR by passersby. It then examines how this could have happened in a metropolis that has been touted as a “sponge city” (海绵城市, hǎimián chéngshì) demonstration site. The author enumerates some of the failings that likely contributed to the flooding: drainage built to the regulatory “three-year storm” minimum; poorly maintained, aging pipes with unclear ownership; and “ecological riverbanks” that, having been paved with concrete, no longer function to absorb excess rainfall. The article was likely censored due to its timing—just days after the other deleted Southern Weekly piece, and amid suppression of online discussion about the flooding in the south—and because it directly contradicts government narratives about the efficacy of “sponge cities” in preventing weather-related disasters. (In 2021, after hundreds died in floods in Zhengzhou, Henan province, there was likewise online criticism of Zhengzhou’s much-vaunted “sponge city” status.)

There has also been some spirited online discussion about the responsibilities of the media when reporting on weather-related natural disasters in China. On his Constructive Suggestions WeChat account, blogger Xiang Dongliang posed the question: “After a Natural Disaster Such as a Tornado, Is Media Coverage Helpful or Disruptive?” Xiang’s article is translated in full below:

Recently, Chinese netizens have finally turned their attention away from Europe’s climate-induced misery and back to the storms buffeting us here at home. Under the threat of extreme weather events, truly, none of us can remain unconcerned bystanders.

Yesterday, an article titled "Please Spare Some Attention for Flood-Stricken Guangxi" was all over WeChat Moments. Shocked by the disaster footage they were seeing in news reports, and worried that the flooding might get ignored or covered up, people made a conscious effort to share the piece widely.

News Bro, a WeChat account affiliated with Tencent, published a piece titled “Please Spare Some Attention for Flood-Stricken Guangxi,” accompanied by images of the devastating flooding there. The article drew over 100,000 views and 13,000 likes.

Indeed, one marked characteristic of our society is the worry that disasters will be covered up or downplayed, a legitimate concern that has been borne out by countless incidents. Just today, a reader left a comment asking me to pay attention to the devastation wrought by a tornado in Huanggang, Hubei. As a local of that area, the reader said they had the impression that news of the disaster was being heavily suppressed.

Of course, there’s probably also a sense of unfairness at work here. It’s only natural that people in Hubei who just survived a tornado are going to feel like, "Hey, those floods in Guangxi are getting way more coverage than the tornado here.”

In recent years, whenever a major natural disaster strikes, there are always some online commenters who blame media coverage for exacerbating the situation, while others complain that the coverage is inadequate. These seemingly opposing camps are really two sides of the same coin when it comes to public-opinion control in the wake of natural disasters. Local governments, in the name of preserving “social order and stability,” will obstruct news reporting and suppress social-media discussion of the disaster. The result is a disconnect between the firsthand experiences of disaster victims and the news coverage they see, and a disconnect between the severity of the disaster and the level of public attention it receives.

The most dystopian part is that much of the criticism of “disruptive” media reports comes from those actually living in the disaster-stricken areas. I’m not blaming the victims here, I’m just pointing out that they’ve been victimized twice over: first by the natural disaster, and second by the entrenched, extremist notion that "stability overrides everything else."

In reality, disaster reporting by the news media and attention from the online public play an invaluable and irreplaceable role in both disaster relief and disaster prevention.

First, news coverage helps to attract more resources for disaster relief. In theory, government disaster relief is allocated fairly, based on the severity and urgency of the disaster. But in reality, the level of public attention has a significant influence on the allocation of disaster-relief resources. Disasters that receive more public attention and have greater social impact not only receive a greater share of resources from local governments, but also attract higher-level, even national-level government support. And for the victims of natural disasters, this may well spell the difference between life and death.

Aside from government disaster relief, societal disaster relief is even more dependent on the level of public interest and concern. When it comes to attracting donations or assembling volunteers for relief efforts, copious news reports and online attention help with mobilization and amplification. Without news coverage, these resources would still exist, but in much smaller amounts.

From what I’ve observed in this round of reporting on the Guangxi floods, the coverage by bloggers and independent online media has been more timely and more in-depth than coverage by official media. In the comment sections, we can see many locals thanking bloggers and independent media for speaking up about their plight. While those in the midst of a disaster zone may not immediately recognize the "cash value" of this public attention, the simple act of “being seen” naturally gives them a sense of security.

Second, public opinion improves accountability in disaster-relief efforts. In an ideal world, local governments would of course spare no effort in providing disaster relief, but the reality is that such efforts always involve some push and pull over manpower and funding.

Local budgets have to contend with more than just the disaster at hand. There are also the long-planned infrastructure projects and the daily outlays on education, pensions for retired cadres, salaries for government employees, interest on local-government debt, and so on … If they squander all their funding on disaster relief, what are local cadres supposed to eat and drink?

Then there is the human factor. Of course the local government has a duty to provide disaster relief, but there are a host of decisions that can make all the difference: Are local leaders out on the front lines, directing and coordinating relief efforts? Are grassroots cadres willing to risk their lives going door to door, warning people to evacuate? When personnel are out there distributing relief supplies, how much is going into their own pockets, and how much is actually reaching those who need it?

This is exactly where news reporting and attention from online and independent media can make a difference: the deeper and more comprehensive the reporting, the more intense and sustained the public attention, the better we can hold local officials accountable for the quality of their disaster-relief efforts.

We should never take any group’s sense of duty, service, or self-discipline as an article of faith. The only way to steer people toward altruism is via transparent oversight. This is an immutable law of human society.

Third, public oversight helps to expose the “man-made” disasters lurking behind natural disasters, thereby lessening the toll of future natural disasters. In the case of a purely natural disaster, local governments would surely want as much news coverage as possible, since more coverage means more resources for disaster relief. But sometimes a natural disaster will overlap with a man-made disaster, or the aftermath of a natural disaster will be exacerbated by human error. That is when local governments have a powerful incentive to try to curb news coverage and suppress online public opinion.

The reverse usually holds as well: when a local government is hostile to news coverage following a natural disaster, and attempts to pull strings to get posts about the disaster deleted, the odds are that there’s some human error involved, and that someone fears being exposed and held accountable.

Media reporting and public scrutiny can often bring to light the man-made problems lurking behind natural disasters. Given the inevitability of future natural disasters, unearthing and promptly correcting these man-made problems is of vital importance for the lives and safety of the general public.

As for those who loudly protest that media coverage undermines social stability, what they really fear is that public scrutiny will undermine the stability of their own cushy official posts.

All of this ought to be common sense by now. But here we are in 2026, and we’re having to reiterate it yet again, which is truly lamentable. [Chinese]

Another deleted post, by popular online writer Wei Zhou, examined hostility to foreign reporting on disasters amid numerous official and nationalist warnings about "hostile foreign forces." Although there is widespread triumphalism on display in, for example, online cheering for the deployment of a new rescue "mecha platform" (a boat), Wei Zhou suggests that this masks a deep sense of powerlessness to address or even acknowledge the politically sensitive role of human culpability.

After the dam breach at Liulan Reservoir in Guangxi, nearby villages were submerged in the flood. To be honest, it’s difficult to watch a lot of the videos, and hard to imagine how people can keep fighting for survival in the face of such sudden catastrophe. But now there’s a still greater danger for the locals to guard against, on top of the flood rescue: "preventing foreigners from smearing China."

Numerous screenshots being circulated online from Hengzhou city, Shitang town, and other places in the vicinity of the reservoir prove that volunteers are being instructed to "warn the public, immediately report to the village committee, and tell the masses not to give any interviews" if they notice foreign reporters.

Of course, this is not surprising, and Guangxi is not alone in this. After flooding in Henan in 2021, Deutsche Welle’s Beijing-based correspondent Mathias Bölinger was mobbed in Zhengzhou and told to "get the hell out of China," because people had mistaken him for BBC reporter Robin Brant, who had [allegedly] "deliberately smeared China."

Global Times said back then that public anger at Western media smears was "not without reason," though they also "strongly advised against" locals encircling Western reporters at the scene, much less forcibly obstructing them from filming.

There is indeed a reason for this, but it’s not necessarily about malicious foreign "smears." The point isn’t anything they’ve actually done or said, but who they are. For Chinese people accustomed to "not washing one’s dirty linen in public," just being seen in dire straits by foreigners is enough to evoke shame, and is something to be avoided at all costs. We can’t help this response—we don’t want to be seen by you, but you still insist on looking. This in itself is perceived as a deep affront.

Sometimes, this can also be a matter of projecting one’s own feelings onto others. For those of our countrymen who gloat over disasters abroad, it must be hard not to think that when we’re the ones suffering misfortune, foreigners will have the same response. What’s really sad, though, is placing so much weight on others’ reactions when few people in the West pay much attention to what’s happening in other corners of the world. And if they do pay attention, so what? Americans didn’t care when we were debating "America’s kill line" [background] over here.

For many people, defending their honor in front of outsiders is almost a reflex. I’ve come across too many people who complain about their alma mater or hometown, but regard this criticism as their own special privilege. If outsiders start to pass judgment, their hackles immediately go up, and they shift to a defensive stance.

From this, we can discern a kind of mentality by which one’s individual self-respect is bound up with external perceptions of one’s group. So even if there are contradictions within, there must be an outward show of unity—as the saying goes, "brothers may quarrel at home, but will unite when attacked." It’s not individual interest that counts, but rather the glorious facade of the "family," for which the individual must be sacrificed.

This is the scene we see again and again in the wake of every disaster: apart from a persistent few who interrogate the causes of the tragedy, most people are moved by the heroically arduous rescue efforts, or take pride in new rescue technologies. The bad is transformed to good, the funeral becomes a celebration, and joy is wrung from hardship.

Red Star News had a report: "6,000 Students in Guangxi’s Guigang Trapped for Three Days by Flooding … mecha platforms enter campus to cheers … self-propelled, rapidly transforming, can transport 500 people at once … dubbed ‘aquatic rescue carriers.’" [See coverage from South China Morning Post.] The focus here is on the "mecha platform," not on why so many students were trapped for so long. The top-ranked comments below were all like this:

"China is the only country with this level of rescue capability, and Chinese people are the only ones who can unite in the face of disaster."

"Witness our country’s level of rescue capability together!"

"China is mighty! Rise up, classmates!"

"A memory that will live on forever."

Of course, it’s very hard for dissenting voices to make themselves heard, but there are deeper reasons for so many of our compatriots getting so caught up in this sentiment.

Questioning the causes of a tragedy requires not only a capacity for rational introspection, but also, and more importantly, the belief that someone should be held responsible for it. This is actually a notion that has only gradually developed in modern society, but not everyone is inclined to see it this way.

For millennia, people’s normal response to the disasters that befell them has been a kind of fatalism. During the 1866 Bengal Famine, policy failures by the British colonial authorities undoubtedly bore much of the blame, but at the time, more than a million rural people slowly starved to death without a word of complaint, still less anger or revolt. [The Orissa Famine did have longer-term effects by highlighting the extractive nature of British rule.]

Even when an accident is clearly man-made, people with a traditional mindset see it differently. If someone is in a traffic accident, our first reaction nowadays is of course to look into which driver is responsible, but for some people it’s all a matter of fate: Why did this have to happen to my loved one, and not someone else?

At first glance, fatalism looks like powerlessness, but it can bestow a strange kind of inner calm: there’s no need to expend mental energy asking why, no need to agonize over it for long, if you just write the whole thing off as an "act of God."

The problem is this: you’ll only take action to pursue truth and demand justice if you believe you have the power to do so. If not, you essentially have no motive. Often, people who do so are even mocked for their repeated failure: "We told you already, it’s pointless."

In these circumstances, people without power of their own put their hopes in a deified form of collective power. That way, they believe, "divine intervention" will deliver them from their predicament. All they can do themselves is give up their own rights, wait patiently, be sensible and uncomplaining, and then be moved and grateful once rescue has come.

No wonder some people exclaim, "We have the best people." If you look around the world, there are very few people as docile as the Chinese who, whatever negligence may occur, will quietly spare their leaders embarrassment, and take it upon themselves to defend the group’s honor. When rescue comes, those "heartwarming moments" are what’s often remembered.

But think about it: is being moved so much really what ordinary people need? I think rather than being moved to tears [by the rescue], disaster victims would prefer uneventful normality, with the whole thing never having happened at all. Real happiness doesn’t need drama, but rather successful, routine maintenance and prevention while nobody’s paying attention, ensuring that the tragedy never occurs. [Chinese]

With additional translation by Samuel Wade.

At the Associated Press, Kanis Leung reported on this latest salvo in Hong Kong’s long-running crackdown on independent booksellers:

Videos and photos from multiple media outlets showed officers wearing vests marked with “Police” seizing boxes from the building housing Have A Nice Stay, a bookshop founded by former journalists. A bookseller was seen being taken away.

A few streets away a similar scene played out, with boxes taken from the building housing Greenfield Book Store, according to a video by online news outlet The Collective.

Police later said they raided two stores in Mong Kok district, without identifying them. They arrested two men and three women on suspicion of breaching the 2024 national security law, according to their statement.

This is the third round of arrests linked to independent bookstores after similar operations in March and June that were widely seen as stifling dissent in the Asian financial hub. [Source]

The following day, Hong Kong Secretary for Security Chris Tang spoke about the arrests, claiming that “the law is clear” and that booksellers are legally obligated to vet the titles they sell to weed out potentially seditious or harmful works. Just like “merchants selling food have to make sure their food won’t make people sick, that they are not selling poison [or] breaking the law,” Tang told reporters in Cantonese, “I believe booksellers have the same responsibility.” At the same time, the security chief declined to provide a list of banned books, raising concerns over what books would be considered seditious and exactly where the red lines lie. In 2022, Hong Kong authorities cited security reasons for their refusal to answer a legislator’s question about which books had been removed from public libraries under the National Security Law.

Many journalists and publishers have strenuously objected to Hong Kong authorities’ vague definition of “seditious” content and consistent refusal to specify which titles are actually banned. CDT Chinese editors recently archived “How Chris Tang Shattered Xi Jinping’s Dream,” a satirical article by former Apple Daily columnist Fung Hei-kin. Fung discusses how the Hong Kong bookstore raids reverberated in Taiwan, where the book “Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China,” by National Public Radio journalist Emily Feng, shot to the top of the bestseller lists after being identified by Hong Kong authorities as one of the allegedly seditious works. The author jocularly suggests that Security Chief Tang’s targeting of the booksellers has only served to fuel anti-China sentiment in Taiwan, thus “shattering Xi Jinping’s dream” of unifying Taiwan and the PRC.

The recent raids and arrests were condemned by a number of international journalism, publishing, and rights organizations. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued a statement the following day calling “on Hong Kong authorities to immediately release freelance journalists and booksellers Sum Wan-wah and Mandy Lau [the pair have since been released] and end their escalating crackdown on independent publishing in the city, following the second such incident in less than a month.” More detail from the CPJ statement:

Have A Nice Stay’s owners include former reporters from the now-shuttered news outlet Stand News, according to Pulse HK News. One of the bookstore’s missions, its website says, is to promote journalism and literary reportage. In 2023, the bookstore also launched the online magazine Leave Blank to “reclaim the identity of being journalists.”

“Using national security legislation to go after another bookstore run by journalists is an attack on press freedom and independent publishing in the city,” said CPJ Asia-Pacific Director Beh Lih Yi. “Hong Kong authorities must release journalists Sum Wan-wah and Mandy Lau and stop persecuting independent publishers.”

Police have accused the five of selling and displaying publications that incited hatred against the Hong Kong government, the judiciary, and law enforcement agencies. […] Among the seized books was “Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China,” by National Public Radio journalist Emily Feng, according to news reports. [Source]

The targeting of the five booksellers and their wares coincided with Hong Kong’s annual Book Fair, which has come under increased political and censorship pressure in recent years, particularly since the introduction of the National Security Law. Hong Kong Free Press reported on the book fair, the recent raids, and the targeting of two other bookstores just last month:

The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) event took place in the backdrop of national security raids and arrests at two independent bookstores, while two others were reportedly banned from taking part in the fair.

On Wednesday, the first day of the fair, police searched Have a Nice Stay and Greenfield and arrested five operators […] for alleged sedition.

Last month, local media reported that bookstores Elmbook and Luck Win were disqualified by the fair’s organisers despite obtaining prior approval to participate.

The two long-running bookshops had been frequent exhibitors at the book fair. […] Elmbook later announced the decision to shut down its 29-year-old physical store in Mong Kok and is holding a clearance sale. [Source]

Only one day before its premises were raided by police, Have a Nice Stay had already announced it would be closing by the end of the summer due to financial constraints and the difficulty of navigating constantly shifting “red lines.” Alexandra Stevenson at The New York Times provided more background about the impending closure:

Have A Nice Stay was founded and run by local journalists, some of whom previously worked for Stand News, an independent online publication that was shut down in 2021 after the police raided it. Earlier this week, Have a Nice Stay announced it would cease operations on Aug. 30, citing a number of factors including financial issues and “social climate.”

“Looking at the overall economic situation in Hong Kong, we can only take a pessimistic view: it is becoming increasingly difficult to carry on,” read a notice posted on Instagram.

“Our capacity is limited,” the note said, adding that employees could not possibly read and review every book, “let alone determine which ones might be deemed ‘problematic’.” [Source]

In a recent post at the WeChat public account "Better to Lose Slowly," Peng Yuanwen, a journalist and respected commentator on rural affairs, argued that the central government should not just point the way, but pay for it. Peng raises and dismisses various common objections, and puts forward both moral and practical arguments for swift intervention. The piece enters some sensitive territory, such as criticism of former family-planning policies and commentary on China’s falling birth rates, on which even positive content can trigger censorship. Peng takes pains, though, to present his argument in politically palatable form, citing official statistics and planning documents, quoting Deng Xiaoping, and deploying the patriotically-infused expression "destroying our own Great Wall" to condemn continuation of the status quo. The post currently remains online. For more from Peng, see our recent translation of his conversation with rural public-benefit activist Zhou Jian, titled “Why Do Urban Chinese Have So Many Misconceptions About the Countryside?”

Some things, you don’t regret until it’s already too late. Like the One Child Policy: now you want people to have children, but will they still be willing to? If you look at the One Child Policy and left-behind and migrant children, you’ll notice a lot of similarities. Both policies were irrational from the start, but were the product of historical low points and "special periods"; so urbanization in China took an extremely idiosyncratic path of labor migration without family migration (see my earlier post). The result was 66.93 million left-behind children and 71.09 million migrant children (according to the 2020 National Census), and 130 million rural workers entering the cities (according to the National Bureau of Statistics’ "Migrant Worker Monitoring Survey Report for 2025"). Left-behind and migrant children came to account for almost half the children in the country. There are many problems in Chinese society, but I don’t think any of them is bigger than this one.

I. Do the arguments for maintaining the status quo stand up?

Compare again with the One Child Policy, and you’ll see the justifications expounded over and over, backed with enough documents to make an ox sweat to pull them and fill a house to the roof. But if you transplant them to a normal society, they don’t stand up to scrutiny, and even seem absurd. Enough said about the One Child Policy—history’s already been the judge of that. Similarly, there’s no valid justification to the obstacles set up between this country’s children and their education. Some say that our public services couldn’t bear the weight, but we’re already the world’s second biggest economy—how can our children’s basic education be unaffordable? Some say it would be financially unsustainable at the local level, but the central government already transfers more than 10 trillion yuan a year to the localities—would adjusting financial subsidies on the basis of actual expenditure be too difficult? Some say the infrastructure isn’t there, but if migrant workers can put up as many high-rises as there are now, can building schools for their own children be beyond them?

Some say there aren’t enough teachers, but with so many unemployed university graduates and countless people competing for public-sector roles, how can recruitment fall short? Some say the problem is distribution of educational resources for high school and university entrance examinations, but what principle of justice allows sacrificing the fundamental rights of the disadvantaged to preserve the advantages enjoyed by the privileged? … Not one of these arguments stands up. To put it another way: around the world, 99% of countries are able to ensure that their children can attend school without facing residence-based discrimination. Others can manage this regardless of their national situations, so why can’t we? Is China so special that it’s a complete global outlier? That point alone refutes all the excuses.

II. What’s changed today?

Even if there was once some "rationale" for sacrificing the interests of rural people and their children, like lack of educational resources or the need to focus on economic development and infrastructure (which isn’t actually the case), then there’s nothing left of this "rationale" now. Now we have too much infrastructure, and even if there are local or temporary shortages of other resources, it’s perfectly possible to resolve them with dynamic adjustments. More importantly, the landscape today is completely different than it was in the past, in at least three ways:

1. China’s demographic dividend began in the 1980s. The "migrant labor drought" in the Pearl River Delta in 2010 signaled a turning point. By 2012, when the National Bureau of Statistics first confirmed that China’s working-age population had begun to decline, the demographic dividend was over.
2. China’s enormous appetite for low-skilled labor began in the 1990s. This also changed around 2012. Today, with AI, smart manufacturing, and automation replacing traditional low-end manufacturing jobs at an exponential rate, the marginal value of low-skilled labor is rapidly approaching zero.
3. Births in China peaked at 25.08 million in 1987, and has declined steadily ever since, apart from a brief rebound after the introduction of the two-child policy. Over the past few years it’s dropped below 10 million, less than 40% of the level in 1987, and is generally expected to decline further in future.

The only possible conclusion from these three points is that in terms of the quantity and quality of the labor force, we must [in Deng Xiaoping’s words] "maintain a firm grasp on both." That is, safeguarding left-behind and migrant children’s right to education is more important now than ever.

This would answer each of the above three points:

1. It could encourage people to have children, and do it much more effectively than a 300-yuan monthly handout. If there’s no way to guarantee a child’s right to education, who would dare have one? The migrant laborer community is often the one most keen on having children: if even they balk now, whose fault is that?
2. In education today, it’s no longer enough to simply ensure you’ve covered the basics—high quality is a must. Whether it’s educational standards in schools or individual physical and mental health, it’s all fundamental to cultivating high-caliber talent. Setting up obstacles to school enrollment of migrant children so they are forced to return to their hometowns when they reach middle school isn’t education, it’s evisceration.
3. When it’s hard to increase the number of people having children, this makes the existing population even more important. "Instead of wearing ourselves out vainly urging people to have children, why not focus on educating the children who’ve already been born?" Is this complicated? Not at all. Even if there was some justification for sacrificing their rights in the past, continuing to do that would be like destroying our own Great Wall.

III. How should we move forward?

I can think of at least two things:

1. Legally enshrine the primacy of minors’ right to education

Even if the hukou system isn’t abolished outright, it should be downgraded to become simply a system of registration. The law should clearly state that any minor actually residing in a place has the unconditional right to receive education there, with an absolute ban on any preconditions for enrollment such as parents’ past social-insurance contributions, property deeds, residence-permit points, etc.

It’s worth noting that in the 14th Five Year Plan and Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035, the fifth plenum of the 19th Central Committee proposed that "equalization of basic public services shall be achieved" by 2035. This applies nationwide, naturally including the megacities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. So "demolishing the walls" around these megacities must be put on the agenda, and the sooner the better because, as explained above, solving this issue is vitally urgent.

2. Effectively implement reform of educational funding transfers so that "money follows people"

The funding issue must be resolved. At present, central "urban and rural compulsory education subsidy funds" only cover a small fraction of the actual cost of education. Major costs such as teacher salaries, school facilities, and expansion of capacity still fall on local governments. This is irrational.

We need to change this outmoded logic whereby "central government covers the foundation, localities cover development." The central government has money, and the economic resources and responsibilities of the central versus local governments are mismatched. It’s only right for the central government to bear most of the responsibility for the cost of educating migrant children. As I mentioned earlier, the central government transfers more than ten trillion yuan to the localities each year. This would be better spent on social insurance and education than squandered on severely wasteful projects. The former is a basic responsibility of any modern government.

Experts have more specific recommendations on this, so I won’t say more.

In summary, the argument is very simple. Compare us with the rest of the world, and return to common sense. It’s an easy judgment.

Whether from a moral standpoint (ending the tragic separation of 100 million people from their parents or children) or a practical one (demographic crisis and technological upheaval), there is no room for further delay on this.

This isn’t a matter of "Après moi, le déluge." The flood is almost upon us! Wake up! [Chinese]

The growing challenges of reporting even well outside traditionally sensitive areas are a persistent theme of the report:

Indeed, the list of subjects that trigger difficulties is getting broader and broader. One correspondent mentioned difficulties reporting about an unfinished skyscraper, artificial diamonds, or rare earths in Jiangxi province. Another said he faced difficulties on virtually every subject. Be it artificial intelligence, tech or feminism, rare earths or demography, many things can now be deemed problematic. But many journalists see that the economy in particular, which used to be an easier story when it was booming, has become a specifically sensitive topic now that growth has slowed, with stories on youth unemployment, real estate issues becoming more complicated. [Source]

And:

[… R]espondents also noted that authorities increasingly treated issues beyond the traditional political red lines as sensitive, such as the economy and broader confidence in economic conditions, the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, as well as issues like rare earths and semiconductors.

“I feel like everything is sensitive and/or people think that it might be sensitive and therefore block you” – Foreign correspondent

“When getting my press card they told me that there are two ‘no-go’. The first was to join the FCCC as it is deemed an illegal organization, the second was direct criticism of Xi Jinping” – Beijing-based foreign correspondent

“I feel pressure is increasing on the topic of Xi Jinping and politics but also on the economy. There’s also a stronger push to forbid us to publish about Taiwan” – Newspaper correspondent [Source]

While 53% of respondents said they had not observed new red lines over the past year, this partly reflects the fact "that a wide range of subjects was already sensitive to begin with."

The perception of increasingly pervasive sensitivity by many foreign correspondents resonates with the online sentiment seen in much of CDT’s recent Chinese and translated content. For example, WeChat users have expressed bewilderment at the deletion of even upbeat posts about last winter’s rural heating crisis in Hebei or the country’s demographic prospects. In the latter case, the blogger concluded that "it’s clear what’s going on: the platform’s so afraid of negative influences stirring up anxiety and panic, they’re just cutting everything down indiscriminately." One marked trend has been for users to turn to AI chatbots for help in navigating the invisible red lines in the absence of other sources of clarity.

Another WeChat blogger, expressing frustration with the automated deletion of user comments on her posts, wrote:

I thought so-called rule violations were restricted to the platform’s few clear-cut categories: vulgarity, pornography, abuse and trolling, gambling and fraud, malicious marketing, privacy violations, dangerous links, sensitive political speech, etc. I didn’t expect that so many flagged violations would rest on that final "etc." Within that "etc.," the scope of potential violations could become so infinite and unpredictable that by the end, you’d have no way of knowing what you’re even allowed to write. […] What makes me emo is this sense of powerlessness to know what breaks the rules. [Source]

CDT Chinese editors have archived a number of censored articles critical of flood prevention and response efforts, as well as the overly cautious and euphemistic reporting on the weather disasters. One now-deleted piece, from WeChat account Family Heritage Researcher, discusses the paucity of information being reported about the recent dam collapse, and reflects on the pernicious history of past dam disasters that went unreported and were only revealed decades after the fact.

Another censored article, from WeChat account Cognition Determines Your Horizons, poses five frank questions about the Liulan Reservoir breach, including why the reservoir failed just a year after a massive and expensive safety upgrade; whether the economic interests of fish-farmers overshadowed flood control; why a local resident’s 2025 video documenting the dam’s subsidence and cracking was ignored; what became of a 2009 promise to shore up the dam so that it could resist a “hundred-year flood”; and whether shoddy workmanship or poor maintenance was to blame for the dam’s collapse.

CDT has also archived two WeChat articles—from bloggers Cicero by the Sea and Mu Qi Says, respectively—criticizing Chinese social-media platforms for muting flood and dam-breach news and video content while continuing to boost Schadenfreude-tinged content about European heat-wave deaths.

A still-visible article from WeChat account Mr. Nameless, “The Emergency at Liulan Reservoir in Guangxi Has Added a New Phrase to the Public Vocabulary,” discusses the use of innocuous-sounding euphemisms in official statements and state-media reporting about the massive and deadly breach of the reservoir, which occurred only a year after the conclusion of an expensive project to shore up the structure:

This is a wonderful era, in that information technology is so advanced, we can quickly get a handle on events occurring in every corner of the globe.

This is a terrible era, in that nearly all of the news we see comes from what others want us to see.

The flooding in Guangxi continues. At first, everyone assumed it was just the usual torrential rainfall, but it soon became clear that the land had become waterlogged and that water levels, rather than receding as expected, were rising.

[…] Eventually the reservoir could no longer withstand the pressure. It continued to overflow, until it burst with a deafening crash, releasing a torrent that engulfed everything in its path …

Only when a steady stream of Guangxi residents began posting pleas for help online did the public gain an inkling of their suffering and helplessness.

[…] On the afternoon of July 6, "Liulan Reservoir, Hengzhou City, Nanning" began appearing on the trending-topics lists of all the major [social media] platforms. Some said the reservoir burst, others said it collapsed, and still others described it as a dam breach.

But though the wording varied, on-scene footage being shared online left no doubt that the situation at Liulan Reservoir was critical.

[…] By midday on the 6th, [Chinese] media outlets gradually began reporting on the Liulan Reservoir emergency, but they were extremely circumspect in their coverage, using phrases like "suspected collapse." That characterization was quickly denied by the local emergency management bureau, which stated unequivocally that it was “not a reservoir collapse.”

[…] It wasn’t until the afternoon of the 6th that major state-media outlets began covering the reservoir emergency. Xinhua reported that "a seriously dangerous situation occurred at Liulan Reservoir on the morning of the 6th," finally confirming the online rumors.

But here’s the truly baffling part: Liulan Reservoir hadn’t “burst” (崩了, bēng le), or “collapsed” (崩塌, bēngtā), nor “been breached” (决堤, juédī). Rather, “a gap appeared” (出现缺口, chūxiàn quēkǒu). [Some English-language state-media reports used the phrase “a breach appeared,” but the Chinese versions use the rather innocuous-sounding phrase “a gap appeared.”]

"A gap appeared" isn’t my personal phrasing; it’s the term used by every [Chinese] media outlet in all subsequent reporting.

I consider myself reasonably well-read, with decent reading comprehension, but this turn of phrase threw me for a loop.

[…] Judging from the on-site videos, could that swath of damage and destruction around the reservoir truly have been caused by something as simple as the appearance of "a gap?”

Admittedly, the written language truly has its charms—one of which is the boundless space it offers in which to stretch one’s imagination.

As such, the collapse of a one-meter stretch of dam can be called "a gap," as can the collapse of a ten-meter, or even a fifty-meter stretch.

So how big, exactly, was the “gap” that suddenly appeared in a stretch of the Liulan Reservoir? Digging through state-media reports, I located a precise figure: it seems there were two main breaches, a combined collapse of roughly 50 meters (164 feet) in length.

[…] Floods are a fairly common natural disaster; similar calamities occur across the country most every summer. Yet I have rarely, if ever, heard or seen the word "gap" used in reporting on such disasters.

[…] So why the insistence on the term "gap"? Why, whenever any other phrasing appeared online, was it swiftly "debunked" as a rumor? I can’t fathom a reason. But interestingly, while writing this article, I came across a document stating that […] between 2023-2025, the local government had secured 382.53 million yuan (US $56 million) in Ministry of Water Resources funding for a project to comprehensively renovate and upgrade the Liulan Reservoir irrigation district.

In June 2025, the Liulan Reservoir renovation project was completed and became fully operational.

In other words, scarcely one year elapsed between the completion of a 380-million-yuan reservoir renovation project and the appearance of a "gap" in that reservoir.

How could this happen after only one year? I suppose this might have been a “once-in-ten-thousand-year” flood; after all, the renovation and upgrade only accounted for a “once-in-a-thousand-year” flood scenario.

On the official WeChat account "Hengzhou Water Resources Bulletin," I found a report from last year, which concludes:

"Flood-control and safety capabilities have been significantly strengthened, thus creating a ‘bulwark’ to safeguard the lives and property of residents in townships downstream; irrigation and water-supply capacity has been greatly enhanced, guaranteeing a water supply for more than 20,000 mu (3,300 acres) of surrounding farmland and helping boost agricultural output and incomes." [Chinese]

1. COVID-19, from "pneumonia of unknown origin" to the death of Li Wenliang

If reporting on the pneumonia of unknown origin that broke out in Wuhan, Hubei Province, take information released by authoritative departments as standard. Do not make unfounded conjectures, and verify points of uncertainty with health departments to prevent inaccurate reports from inciting mass panic. — January 2, 2020

Reminder: Do not use the term "whistleblower" in any reporting. — February 7, 2020

2. Top leader: seven set templates for negative information relating to Xi Jinping

Handling of negative and harmful information related to Xi Jinping: XX deleted, XX filtered. (Cite five prominent examples for each category, in the format: post time and date, author name, posted content.)

1. Rumors and attacks targeting Chairman Xi himself (e.g. health, educational record, assets, lifestyle, etc.; also photoshopped images, memes, etc.)
2. Sensationalist negative content targeting Chairman Xi’s family members (e.g. [his wife] Peng Liyuan, [their daughter] Xi Mingze, etc.)
3. Sensationalist negative content involving links between Chairman Xi and general or specific policies
4. Sensationalist negative speculation about high-level personnel changes in relation to Chairman Xi
5. Sensationalist negative content exploiting recent sensitive hotspot issues, cases, or incidents in relation to Chairman Xi
6. Negative content aimed at Chairman Xi’s travel, onscreen appearances, overseas visits or other activities
7. Republishing sensationalist negative reporting from overseas media — January 2, 2020; February 7, 2020

3. Foreign relations and international affairs: clean up public opinion on Wang Yi and Meng Wanzhou, and prohibit mockery of North Korean leader

Recently, hostile foreign media have spread harmful information such as sensationalist rumors that Foreign Minister Wang Yi owns a mansion in Canada. All platforms, please clean up related content and report on handling of the situation, providing data on deletions and filtering.

On the Huawei/Meng Wanzhou situation [namely her house arrest in Canada pending possible extradition to the United States], report the number of news clicks, media reports, netizen comments, and pieces of negative content deleted or filtered. Provide five representative content samples. — January 2, 2020

Please continue to monitor and report recent information that vilifies, spoofs, or denigrates North Korea’s state leader, or that sows discord in and undermines China–DPRK relations. This includes video websites and gaming websites …. Third: public opinion concerning Kim Jong-un’s visit to China and recent visits to South Korea by relevant leaders of our country. — January 1, 2019

4. Ethnicity and religion: careful classification of content involving Tibet, Xinjiang, or Inner Mongolia; guard against the spread of wall-scaling activities

X pieces of negative content involving Tibet deleted; X filtered. Specific categories:

1. Any kind of rumor or misinformation regarding Tibet
2. Articles, images, ebooks, or audio/video content propagating ethnic separatism, religious extremism, or violent terrorist ideology
3. Content from hostile news websites containing sensationalist distortions and defamatory accusations against us
4. Content vilifying Tibet-related departments, leaders, and patriotic religious figures
5. Content inciting activities such as illegal gatherings
6. Negative sensationalist content related to sensitive incidents involving Tibet
7. Information on any kind of "wall-scaling" tools spread into Tibet
8. Content disseminating terrorist or explosive-manufacturing methods
9. [Content] related to the sensitive date "310" [March 10, anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan Uprising]

X pieces of harmful content involving Xinjiang deleted, X filtered … \
6. X pieces spreading "wall-scaling" software and usage instructions to people inside Xinjiang — January 1, 2019

5. Hong Kong’s "anti-extradition movement" became a standard reporting category

[Provide] figures on handling of negative content on anti-extradition [protests] in Hong Kong, including deletions, filtering, blocks, and samples of newly added harmful information. — January 2, 2020

6. Simultaneous monitoring of public opinion on celebrities (e.g. Fan Bingbing tax-evasion case) and public incidents (e.g. campus #MeToo)

Track the number of clicks and comments on news stories related to "tax departments investigating tax evasion such as Fan Bingbing’s ‘yin-yang contracts’ in accordance with the law" [see an earlier directive posted at the time]; clean up content that exploits the situation to attack the Party, state apparatus, or public security departments. Provide updates each day at 4:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. on the number of items deleted or filtered.

On news related to former Peking University professor Shen Yang’s sexual assault of student Gao Yan [a 1998 case which erupted back into the spotlight in 2018]: X clicks on related news, X media reports, X user comments, X Weibo discussions, X blocked images, X deletions, X items filtered in the previous 24 hours, and provide five notable examples. — January 1, 2019

7. Content reporting requirements on rights defense lawyers, police, the military, etc. Even old cases remain under scrutiny.

Please clean up negative content related to rights defense lawyers, [and report] numbers of deletions and items filtered.

Please continue to ramp up handling of negative content about the military posted on public platforms … Categories: questioning official reports on the serious violent crime incident in Pingdu [a protest by military veterans which turned violent]; attacking the Party, government, and social system; negativity about the police; republishing foreign [material]. — January 1, 2019

Figures for handling of negative content on the Lei Yang case [a fatal police beating in 2016]: deletions, items filtered (provide three examples, if available); and the total number of new comments posted during the Lei Yang case period. — January 2, 2020 [Chinese]

See CDT Chinese for the full collection of directives.

The post contrasts neatly with an earlier translation warning fellow WeChat bloggers to assiduously police their comment sections to avoid collateral censorship. That author, instead of blaming AI, turned to a chatbot for advice, an increasingly common trend as users struggle to navigate online content sensitivities.

Recently the AI system for public accounts has made me a bit emo. WeChat readers who look back over my public account will see that I’ve been posting for nearly a decade, always "keeping it Zen" and writing about whatever it struck me to write about. I accepted long ago that no one would take any interest in my posts, and if no one reads what I’ve written I might feel a tinge of regret, but I don’t let it get me down.

From March this year, my posts gradually started to get more views, and reader comments increased in tandem. That’s when I started to get emo.

The reason I’m emo is this: many reader comments don’t break the rules at all as far as I can see, but get deleted by the system because "this comment is suspected of violating regulations and can no longer be viewed." In many cases, certain comments were visible until I selected them as featured comments and went to reply, at which point they were suddenly flagged for violations. Some met the same fate after I’d selected and diligently replied to them.

Here’s a random recent one … these so-called rule violations are really mystifying. On a post about American print ads, one reader’s "violating" comment simply said that thirty years ago, one of their coworkers had predicted a paperless society, but today the volume of A4 printing is higher than ever. How does this violate regulations? Another of my posts was about daily life in the U.S. A reader replying to an earlier comment simply explained that the U.S. has no agricultural villages [in the Chinese sense], only suburbs, and that its cities aren’t big [by Chinese standards], subtly hinting that the earlier commenter had never lived abroad. This was deemed to violate regulations.

I thought so-called rule violations were restricted to the platform’s few clear-cut categories: vulgarity, pornography, abuse and trolling, gambling and fraud, malicious marketing, privacy violations, dangerous links, sensitive political speech, etc. I didn’t expect that so many flagged violations would rest on that final "etc." Within that "etc.," the scope of potential violations could become so infinite and unpredictable that by the end, you’d have no way of knowing what you’re even allowed to write. After all, everyone has their own point of view. If they want to leave a comment after reading something, shouldn’t they be allowed to express their own thoughts, feelings, and doubts instead of just pablum, humorous deflection, or empty flattery? I was under the impression that in terms of the viewpoints, feelings, and doubts expressed in reader comments, anything goes, as long as there are no personal attacks, sensitive politics, or trolling. Unless the system uses some different criteria for defining "attacks" or "trolling"?

Here’s a hypothetical scenario:

A reader responds with three characters: "哈哈哈" ["hahaha," as in laughter]. The system could spin this into endless interpretations:

• Are you using laughter to conceal some kind of conspiracy?

• What are you laughing at? Are you mocking the efficiency of our AI monitoring? Are you challenging our authority to perform this task, or venting some groundless discontent?

• Your laughter makes it immediately obvious that you’re a slacker at work, a loafer at life, and couldn’t care less about your friends and family. This comment is in even more flagrant violation of the rules, with not a joule of positive energy.

• The pinyin for "哈" is "ha." In Morse code, H is •••, and A is •—, so three HAs in a row is •—•—•— [sic] … which sounds like “tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock”! This comment was clearly left by a dangerous element seeking to cause serious disruption!!! It’s in extra extraordinary violation, and the public absolutely must not be exposed to it, lest it trigger widespread panic.

At this point we’re drifting into the realm of black comedy.

If the internet is a zone of free expression, and this freedom of expression has boundaries, then what actually is the standard for judging what oversteps them? What makes me emo is this sense of powerlessness to know what breaks the rules. So, dear readers, if you leave a comment on my public account and it isn’t displayed, it’s not that I don’t want it displayed, but that I can’t display it. Or if it was a featured comment, and then disappeared a while later, it’s not a menopausally deranged U-turn on my part: it’s the system that’s lost its senses, and I’ve already done all I can. I treasure reader comments. They give me the warm feeling that we’re rushing across a meadow in slow motion to embrace each other. But the system will not allow us this "intimacy," and resolutely keeps us as separated as if by the Milky Way, and all I can do is cry out in vain at this steel behemoth with its "infinite database of sensitive words." But with my last drop of stubbornness, I want to tell that AI censor:

Censor all you want; I’ll keep writing. This is the one pursuit I can stick to my whole life. I’m going to keep on quietly talking to myself. If readers respond, I’ll answer them; and if they don’t, I’ll keep talking to myself anyway, scribbling down whatever nonsense is in my heart. [Chinese]

The following day, a video from the Communist Youth League Central Committee, "100 Heartwarming Seconds from the Ceremony Celebrating the 105th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China," was apparently blocked on Tencent’s QQ Space platform for "suspected violation of national policies and regulations."

“This content temporarily cannot be viewed due to suspected violation of national policies and regulations.”

As illustrated by the comments below, gathered from X by CDT Chinese editors, the blocking sparked schadenfreude and mockery online, laced with sarcastic use of “struggle” and other official formulae as well as references to factional infighting and the Youth League’s greatly diminished standing. Links have been added for context.

Kuyosuki: The CCP’s own censorship system censoring its own propaganda video feels a bit O. Henry.

ErZhong87250: If the Youth League faction’s boss can be hauled out of a meeting, is one blocked video such a surprise?

v_wallout: Since "200 Jin" [meaning Xi] personally destroyed the [Youth League] faction, the ban’s not surprising.

wanker263: This is to purge the “lingering poison” of Li Keqiang.

Proofsmith: This move by Tencent shows that content moderation is no longer about technology, but about pricing political risk.

FFayzhang: Once again, we’re in an age when if no enemy exists, one must be created.

gengzishunli: “Struggle” is the only thing the hammer-and-sickle party can do. Any time they’re not fighting among themselves, they’re lashing out at others.

Xmt0dt: Never-ending struggle, “adept at struggle” … the people just want to get on with their lives.

jaheding: Who is Chairman Xi planning to “struggle” against?

GoryRuin: Tencent: "The enemy is at Honnō-ji" [painting the platform as a treacherous ally]

krasusYu: Domestic platforms are really interesting: you can’t enter the names of influential "bad guys." Try it and see.

zpj624: By the time this struggle ends, there won’t be any successors left, and the Party will be dead, dragging the country down with it. [Chinese]

Huaqiangbei Electronics Market, by QuantFoto (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Information from FlightRadar24 and later reporting confirmed that the craft was a small single-engine plane that took off from the Eastern Pioneer flying school in Beijing’s northeastern Pinggu District. After the crash, which occurred in Beijing’s central business district several miles east of the Forbidden City and Chinese Communist Party leadership compound Zhongnanhai, local authorities quickly cordoned off the scene and imposed traffic controls. Police officers prevented residents and tourists from taking photographs, and employees working in the building were told not to discuss the crash with anyone. It also appears that restrictions were placed on flights of private light fixed-wing aircraft across the country, although no policy change has been officially announced.

A week later, on July 2, Beijing’s Chaoyang District government published a WeChat announcement identifying the pilot only by his surname Liu. A 66-year-old Beijing resident who worked freelance, lived alone after a divorce, and held both a sport-pilot license and a private-pilot’s license, Liu reportedly suffered from chronic insomnia and anxiety, and his diary contained numerous mentions of wanting to end his life. The announcement also confirmed the make and registration number of the light, two-seater aircraft Liu had been flying, and said that none of the 13 people hurt had suffered life-threatening injuries, and that one had already been released from hospital.

The crash, a rare incident in a capital city known for its highly restricted airspace, naturally attracted a great deal of attention online, soon followed by blanket censorship. CDT Chinese editors observed numerous examples of online censorship of the topic throughout the week: posts and on-the-scene videos about the crash were deleted en masse from Weibo and Xiaohongshu, WeChat quietly activated keyword censorship, and Weibo blocked searches for terms such as "Beijing plane crash." (See also CDT’s interview with Jeremy Brown on how the Party handles accidents and disasters, and a leaked internal document revealing how social-media platform Xiaohongshu censors “sudden incidents.”)

The question many Chinese citizens and international observers are asking is how, in a metropolis as heavily surveilled and policed as Beijing, such a plane crash could occur just miles from the CCP leadership compound in Zhongnanhai. Some netizens even described it as “China’s 9/11”—not in terms of the scale of casualties, but in the sense that it was a massive security breach that exposed the weaknesses of Beijing’s security and aviation perimeter. Many online commenters mentioned Beijing’s recent city-wide ban on the operation, sale, transportation, and storage of drones, which went into effect on May 1. Given such restrictions even on hobbyist drones, they wondered, how was a small plane able to fly through long-restricted airspace and crash into one of Beijing’s landmark buildings? As one social media user quipped, “How did Xi Jinping manage to half-ass Beijing’s ‘no-fly zone?’”

Among the questions that remain are how the crash will affect sports aviation and civil aviation in China, and if there will be any chilling effect on the development of the much-vaunted “low-altitude economy,” which potentially encompasses both manned and unmanned drone delivery services, flying cars, and flying taxis. China’s Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) has described the low-altitude economy as a “strategic growth industry” estimated to grow into a 3.5 trillion yuan ($516 billion) market by 2035. Then there is the question of what will happen to the newly revised Civil Aviation Law, which was set to take effect on July 1, and its focus on the low-altitude economy, drone management, and high-quality industry development. One Chinese online commenter noted ruefully that nowadays, it seems as if any isolated incident can bring an entire industry to a sudden halt, and a single order from a high-ranking leader is enough to hobble a promising industry overnight.