Late one night in April 2026, someone posted online: "That campus journal’s Weibo and WeChat accounts both got deregistered."

More than 600 articles spanning 20 years were wiped out with one keystroke. The post got more than 300 comments: "Who’s going to give me back my lost youth?" "That was the first place that made me want to become a journalist." "All that news the students worked so hard at, gone. What will we show new students now?"

From "hotpot" to "deregistered" in ten years. This isn’t just the story of a single campus media outlet; it’s part of a journey that many of us shared.

2016-2018: Hotpot

It’s 2016. We’re in the offices of Xueren, at N University.

The 48-page glossy full-color print edition is fresh from the presses, and still smells of ink. Its opening message is just six characters long: "To enduring insight." That year, WeChat public accounts were still exploding. At an editorial meeting, they decided to turn it into a digital, new-media publication. Z, the editor-in-chief, said to his fellow students, "This place is a hotpot. Anyone who dips themselves in it will carry its flavor away with them."

That year, the Chinese University Media Union published its Campus Media Development Report. Their data showed that more than 80% of campus media outlets had already begun the process of convergence. Traditional formats were contracting, while new media was expanding. This change wasn’t just happening at N University, it was the challenge facing a whole generation of those in campus media.

At pitch meetings, the students would argue over what to cover. Some of them focused on conditions for delivery workers—that piece "Squat, Wait, Ride, Return: The Daily Routines of Two Delivery Drivers" was later picked up by some bigger platforms. Some tracked the fates of retired athletes; some dug through archives looking to unearth the story of why an unpopular field of study got axed; others discussed the problem of inadequate on-campus first-aid facilities.

"No one gave us assignments, there were no KPIs," a former staffer recalled. "If we found something interesting and meaningful, we’d go cover it."

Back then, the campus still had newsstands. According to a survey, more than 80% of students supported having newsstands on campus. But things had already begun to change: some of the campus newsstands had been replaced with snack kiosks or fruit stalls.

In those days, idealism still burned bright. Students still believed in the power of words, and in "striving to capture complex truth in elegant prose." Campus media outlets weren’t just publicity channels, they were more like training grounds for observing the world and recording its details.

Graffiti on the wall of Xueren’s former office. These include the slogan, “To enduring insight”; the comment “turn off all the lights, eternity can’t knock us down”; and the name Jingshi Xueren in large characters with a large red 拆 chāi character in a red circle, signifying imminent demolition

2019-2022: Closure

In 2019, the Shengshiqing Bookstore received an eviction notice.

This more than twenty-year-old academic bookstore had once been one of the most important cultural landmarks in N University’s neighborhood. Scholars and professors alike admired the owner’s tasteful selection. If you told him about your academic focus, he could give you a more detailed reading list than your own academic advisor. Regular customers included professors of film and literature, linguistics scholars, and a film director who’d often come to browse the shelves.

The store officially closed its doors in March 2021. The owner posted a handwritten note on the glass door: "The bookstore may fade, but the memory remains. May culture flourish, and life be peaceful."

Then came the clean-up of the East Gate’s Snack Street. After summer break in 2019, returning students realized that the whole street was sealed off. Next to say farewell was Moxiang [Ink-scent] Bookstore, a used bookstore hidden in a hutong by the North Gate that specialized in literary and historical classics and lasted for nine years before finally closing its doors.

Space always disappears from the edges inward.

In 2020, a certain well-known disaster [the start of the COVID pandemic] accelerated this process. The campus installed a system of turnstiles, and entry and exit became subject to approval. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission advanced a policy of "semi-closed campuses" for colleges and universities, with "no leaving campus unless necessary," and no one from off-campus was allowed to enter. Many campuses adopted strict entrance-control measures, requiring students and faculty to show ID to enter or exit, and it became almost impossible to conduct newsgathering off-campus.

Newsgathering grew increasingly difficult for that campus outlet. Outsiders couldn’t come onto the campus, and moving from one campus to another required prior approval. Their office space was repurposed, and regular meetings drifted from place to place like an unmoored boat. The poems, quotes, and headlines of celebrated articles that had adorned the walls disappeared under a new coat of paint.

As physical spaces were being sealed off, layer by layer, the boundaries of speech were silently closing in as well. Pitch approval and interviews were increasingly hard to obtain, and one after another, the corners in which raising questions had once been possible disappeared.

From the bedside of his dying mother, a former editor-in-chief wrote an article reminiscing about his time at the university. Its title contained the word "Neverland," the home of Peter Pan, a place where you never grow up. He recalled his experience, as editor-in-chief, of having to personally delete a newly published article, then rushing off the campus on his bicycle and sobbing uncontrollably. By then, the changes had already begun.

But at least the account was still there, and its archived articles still online.

You could still dig out an old piece late at night and send it to a friend, saying: "Look! Here’s something I wrote back then."

“We are all part of a ‘manufactured’ generation. Many of the bitter details in the human lives we document are really extreme versions of what we’re all experiencing. The facts and feelings we’ve recorded are all more meaningful with hindsight than we realized at the time. We have limited influence, but if we’re willing to give our all to keep creating and sharing sincere work, this must be the greatest support and honesty we can offer the world. Jingshi Xueren, we look forward to all your contributions.”

2023-2025: Suffocation

2023 brought a structural overhaul. That campus media outlet, previously an independent operation, was folded into the school’s official new media matrix. The WeChat public account was no longer updated, but the archive was still there.

The "Three Reviews, Three Proofs" system also landed heavily at major universities that year. A succession of universities including Shanxi University, Fuzhou University, and the Minzu University of China issued notices requiring that all work units strictly implement "Three Reviews, Three Proofs" on published information, adopt a workflow of "tiered review before publishing," and employ unified management of all campus media based on "one standard, one yardstick, one bottom line" to further standardize newsgathering, editing, and publishing processes. Guizhou Normal University, Hubei Second Normal University, and others issued measures for managing new media outlets on campus, requiring close attention to online public sentiment and prompt reports to work unit leaders and Party committee propaganda departments of any major incidents, urgent information, or information that could prove harmful to the school’s reputation.

At the same time, fundamental shifts were also taking place in the WeChat public accounts ecosystem. The average “open rate” for public account posts in 2016 was around 8%; by 2025, this had fallen to about 1%. Pushing content to subscribers became less effective, algorithmic recommendations carried growing weight, and the relationship between authors and subscribers was steadily being eroded. The impact of short video was even more direct: the average Douyin user was getting through 200 clips a day, and WeChat’s own founder admitted in an internal meeting that short video had bitten a large chunk out of other online products, and would eat into the time spent on longer videos, games, and other online content.

One former staffer recalled this process: "The moment the account was closed, I already felt inwardly that that quirky little organization was dead and gone."

"Quirky" … that’s exactly the right word. It evokes a kind of temperament: not playing by the normal rules, staying curious about the world, and remaining patient in the face of complexity. An increasingly standardized management system had less space for this kind of temperament.

In 2022, the LAKER’S bar outside N University’s West Gate had relocated for the second time. The first time had been because of climbing rent; the second was because of "business restructuring." Its new site was further from the university, and students went there less often. The bar owner said: "Students these days don’t even drink anymore, they just scroll through short videos."

Indeed, short video had already displaced deep reading as the primary means of consuming information. The open rate on that campus media outlet’s posts kept falling. The editorial department talked about a "pivot," but nothing ever came of it.

The demise of campus media wasn’t just about problems within campus media itself. It was the product of combined factors in general public discourse, macro-level policy, and media technology. With ever-tighter review and censorship processes, algorithmic recommendations supplanting subscriber relationships, and short video cutting attention spans to mere seconds, how can an in-depth report with weeks of work behind it compete with a fifteen-second wardrobe-switch video in the flood of information?

At the same time, the appeal of the journalism and communications major itself was waning. Its overall graduate employment rate for 2023 ranked in the bottom quartile of all majors; the proportion of graduates finding jobs in that particular field was 19.42% in 2021, falling to 11.01% by 2025.

The death of campus media is the result of this logic, pushed to its natural conclusion.

In the spring of 2024, Xueren held its final event: its "Closing Down Exhibition." On the empty space south of the school gymnasium, tables were set up to display printed back-issues, reporting notes, and photos. Not many people came to see them; most who did were former staffers who’d already graduated.

Controversy over the journalism and communications major drew broader attention that year. A famous graduate-admissions advisor, now sadly departed, said that "If my kid insisted on studying journalism, I’d punch his lights out." This remark went viral on social media. A survey showed that only 40% of journalism and communications graduates would pick the same major again, given the chance. The declines of professional journalism and campus media are two points on the same trajectory.

Quite a few student clubs ceased operations that year. The space for diversity was contracting—not just physical space, but discursive and practical space, as well.

But let’s step back for a moment.

At least the ruins were still standing. The archive was still there.

You could still pass by, point it out to those who’d come later, and say: "This used to be …." [Chinese]

Part two will follow shortly.

A statement issued on May 1 by the RightsCon and AccessNow teams explains why they “believe foreign interference [by China] is the reason RightsCon 2026 won’t proceed in Zambia or online”:

At 9:33pm Lusaka time, on April 28, a national public holiday, local state-owned media announced that the government had “postponed” RightsCon. Our team was shocked: despite an established partnership and previously open lines of communication, a decision was made by the government without consultation or formal notice. We had no prior knowledge of the publication of the news article, nor any opportunity to comment.

[…O]n April 29, we finally received a letter over WhatsApp from the MoTS. This was our first official, written communication from the Ministry. According to the letter, the postponement was “necessitated by the need for comprehensive disclosure of critical information relating to key thematic issues proposed for discussion,” which would be “essential to ensure full alignment with Zambia’s national values and broader public interest considerations.”

The statement, although seemingly an invitation to negotiate, still lacked any concrete information as to why the government decided to announce they were postponing RightsCon. What the government wanted from us in order to lift the postponement was conveyed to us informally from multiple sources: in order for RightsCon to continue, we would have to moderate specific topics and exclude communities at risk, including our Taiwanese participants, from in-person and online participation.

[…] This was our red line. Not because we were unwilling to engage, but because the conditions set before us were unacceptable and counter to what RightsCon is and what Access Now stands for.

[…] We see this unilateral decision, and the way it was taken, as evidence of the far reach of transnational repression targeting civil society, and effectively shrinking the spaces in which we operate. At a time when this sector is already under immense financial and political strain, what we and our community forcefully experienced is unprecedented and existential. [Source]

At Wired, Vittoria Elliott and Zeyi Yang reported on some of the conference’s planned panels and participants, and on the chain of events that led to “the Chinese government [getting] the world’s largest digital rights conference canceled”:

RightsCon 2026 was set to feature several panels on China’s international influence, including about how Beijing exports digital authoritarianism and spreads disinformation in regions like Africa, as well as discussions on Chinese cyberattacks and the global spread of its censorship and surveillance technologies.

[…] On April 27, […] Access Now “became aware that the in-person participation of people from Taiwan had caught the attention of the Government of the People’s Republic of China. In turn, Chinese authorities were, apparently, trying to influence the Zambian government’s approach to Taiwanese participants’ movement across the border,” says [Arzu Geybulla, the co-executive director of Access Now]. “Soon after, the Zambian government publicly referred to ‘diplomatic protocols’ and ‘pending administrative and security clearances’ of participants as reasons for their disrupting RightsCon.”

Open Culture Foundation, a Taiwanese nonprofit organization that was scheduled to attend RightsCon this year, says that it was warned by Access Now that Taiwanese citizens may have problems entering Zambia due to possible concerns from the Chinese Embassy. They were told to pause their travel plans while the host coordinated with Zambian officials.

[…] An employee of another human rights organization, who asked not to be named for security reasons, tells WIRED that after RightsCon was officially postponed, they were told by one of their grant funders that the Chinese government had been pressuring the Zambian government for days over the presence of a Taiwanese delegation at the conference. [Source]

A piece from Human Rights Watch on the cancellation featured reactions from researchers, civil society groups, and activists in the fields of human rights and digital rights:

“The Zambia government’s flimsy reasons for postponing RightsCon suggest that the government wanted to control the summit’s human rights agenda,” said Idriss Ali Nassah, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should fully explain the last-minute cancellation, which is a serious loss for the promotion of human rights.”

Civil society groups have criticized the action. A statement by the Net Rights Coalition and more than 130 digital rights stakeholders said that the postponement and effective cancellation of the event raises concerns about closing the civic space in Zambia.

[…] “By shutting down RightsCon, the Zambian government is shutting down discussions and opportunities to strategize and connect on some of the most crucial human rights issues of our time,” said Deborah Brown, technology and rights deputy director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s a terrible blow to the digital rights movement in Zambia and globally.”

[…] A civil society activist involved in the RightsCon organizing committee in Lusaka told Human Rights Watch that the postponement came after the Chinese government had expressed displeasure to Zambian authorities about invited participants from Taiwan. A Zambian media outlet similarly reported that Zambian authorities were uncomfortable with the participation of “Taiwanese delegates who would potentially speak against China at a venue donated by the Chinese government.”

The Mulungushi Conference Center, which was to host the summit, was refurbished in 2020 with funding from the Chinese government at a reported cost of US$60 million. Zambian authorities at the time described the support as a “gift from […] China” with “no strings attached.” [Source]

Article 19’s Michael Caster discussed the cancelation and its implications at TechPolicy.press:

Precisely because China’s attack on RightsCon stems from its attempt to block Taiwanese participation, global civil society should redouble efforts at engagement and empowerment of Taiwanese civil society through inclusion at global gatherings. Like-minded governments should furthermore ensure diplomatic support. This is as much about demonstrating solidarity with Taiwan as it is about acknowledging Taiwanese civil society has a unique contribution to make with its experience identifying and responding to distinct information and digital threats from China.

China was able to exert pressure on Zambia to take this unprecedented step toward canceling a major international conference in part because China’s influence on the continent has expanded in the absence of adequate rights-based alternatives. Contesting China’s adverse influence in Africa, and around the world, cannot rest merely on criticizing its assault on human rights but must also come with positive and accessible rights-based solutions to real digital development needs. The world’s remaining liberal democracies must expand their efforts to meet the moment, or risk ceding more of the globe to Chinese-style authoritarianism.

And because China’s assault on RightsCon is further emblematic of its broader efforts to influence global digital norms-setting, responding to this incident additionally demands that like-minded governments reiterate their support for multistakeholderism. It calls for redoubling political and diplomatic commitments to human rights-based governance and safeguards, especially in emerging technologies. [Source]

As noted above, the Zambian government has received funding and assistance from the Chinese government in the past. Only a week before the RightsCon cancellation, China inked an agreement with Zambia to provide grant funding for a number of cooperative projects. “The signing of this agreement is an important manifestation of China’s sincere support for the Zambian people,” said Han Jing, China’s Ambassador to Zambia, during a signing ceremony held with Zambian Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane. Several days earlier, Taiwan reported that Beijing had intervened to prevent Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te from visiting the southern African nation of Eswatini, the only African nation that maintains formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. As reported by Gerald Imray of the Associated Press, “Lai’s trip was called off after the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles were pressured by China to withdraw permission for Lai’s plane to fly over their territory.”

CDT has covered many past incidents of transnational repression and pressure campaigns by China, including the increasing use of government-backed “puppet NGOs” to monitor and intimidate human-rights activists critical of the Chinese government from testifying at the United Nations; the forced closure of the IndieChina film festival in New York City in 2025; the censorship of parts of an exhibition critical of “the global machinery of authoritarian solidarity” at a prominent art gallery in Bangkok, Thailand in 2025; a long-running campaign to pressure French museums into erasing and Sinicizing Tibetan culture; and other cases such as the forced deportation of Uyghurs from Thailand, and targeting Chinese students overseas for their speech or activism.

The MSS article was widely republished under various headlines and promoted by state-media outlets such as Xinhua, China News Service, China Central Television (CCTV), and China National Radio (CNR). It also spread across Chinese social media, including Weibo, where the hashtag #Foreign Organizations Bankroll Influencers to Promote Slackerism rose to the top of the trending search list. On sites and platforms such as Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Zhihu, and others, the piece was met with a collective eyeroll, as comments sections were flooded with responses from readers challenging the framing of the MSS article, questioning the existence of these “hostile foreign forces,” and pointing out that the “lying flat” movement grew out of frustration with domestic factors such as high unemployment, unrelenting competition, excessive overtime and “996” schedules, weak labor-law enforcement, and declining social mobility. Some commenters noted a whiff of desperation in the MSS article, and wondered if the Chinese authorities, thrown into a panic by seemingly intractable economic problems, had resorted to “shooting at ghosts,” i.e. blaming unnamed enemies for their own woes. (Earlier this month, the MSS published another fairly alarmist article, "Seeing Through the Spy ‘Playbook’ in Spring Recruitment," which warns recent graduates to be alert to foreign intelligence operatives and agencies attempting to "disguise themselves as legitimate companies or research institutions" during spring hiring season.)

CDT Chinese editors have compiled some of the recent comments on the MSS post from Weibo, Kuaishou, and X, a selection of which are translated below. Among the themes are skepticism that unnamed “hostile foreign forces” are to blame for China’s domestic structural or economic woes; jokes about bosses and others in their daily lives being covert foreign forces; humorous requests for stable, lucrative jobs “within the system”; and confusion over mixed messaging that seems to forbid both “lying down” and “rising up” to take a stand:

Weibo commenter from Guangdong: Don’t try to blame "foreign forces" if young people are "lying down"; that won’t solve the problem. Instead, consider when "lie-downism" first became popular. The phrase "six wallets" cropped up around 2018, when government experts were actively encouraging young couples to pool their savings and their parents’ and in-laws’ savings (i.e. "six wallets") to buy homes. If young people took a step back and realized this meant draining the savings—and the future—of their entire family to buy one measly house, you can see why they’d consider "lying down" a more sensible option, right? The "six wallets" theory is just one of many factors contributing to lie-downism.

雷诺2023: Obviously, anyone who decides not to get married or have kids has been bewitched by hostile foreign forces.

椌蕪花園理髮店: Sounds like a good deal, actually. If someone’s willing to subsidize you to slack off, why wouldn’t you take them up on it?

黑风大王生气气: First specify who you’re talking about. Firing at imaginary enemies is meaningless.

SKrAs299792458: Come on, if you’re trying to scare us, you can do better than that!

大岛元太: I suspect my boss is a “hostile foreign force,” because we work ourselves to death every day, but we’re still broke. Clearly, our spymaster boss is using this tactic to incite employees to slack off, the diabolical fiend.

有味的光: Turns out that hostile foreign forces are pretty dull. Their nefarious plots are the same lame, boring things I get up to.

mikuoa: Give everyone a two-day weekend, an eight-hour workday, and the full “five social insurances” plus the “housing provident fund.” Enforce the Labor Law properly, and those hostile foreign forces will be speechless.

用户7969870671: O Great Organization, you had me at “slacking off.” Now, where do I sign up?

ke_cheng23602: "Foreign organizations" is a catch-all term, a basket you can stuff anything into. Weak economy? Blame foreign organizations. Low birth rate? Pin it on those foreign organizations. Low marriage rate, high divorce rate? Darn those hostile foreign organizations. Everything’s their fault.

POI_KakuSAMA: "Lying flat" [躺平, tǎngpíng] clearly impinges on the sacred name of the current Emperor. Such a taboo word must be sanctioned. The Emperor must always stand firm, and never lie down. [The second character (平, píng, meaning “flat,” “even,” “level”), is also the last character in Xi Jinping’s name (习近平, Xí Jìnpíng). In Chinese imperial culture, using the characters in the ruling Emperor’s given name in certain contexts was considered taboo.]

XIAOQINGMANTAN: If you don’t want your “oxen and horses” to lie flat, you need to actually provide jobs for them. Is there anyone who’s unaware of the dire employment situation in China right now?

lingjlng2: This is pretty funny. The poor little spin doctors can’t even keep their stories straight anymore. 😂

jenner70873905: Hostile foreign forces: "Apparently everyone’s on our payroll, which basically amounts to no one being on the payroll."

sfflwbd: Fine, we won’t slack off anymore. Tomorrow we’ll rouse ourselves and go demand some accountability from corrupt officials.

云千河: I don’t want to be a slacker. I want a government job where I can “put down roots at the grassroots level.” [a reference to a phrase used in the MSS article.]

慈悲心肠: I want to be a public servant so I can Serve the People.

Frebel_L: If everyone slacked off, who’d be left to exploit?

youran8964: The CCP is terrified that if the “chives” start slacking, they won’t be able to chop them down any more.

wurenhua: The CCP can slack off, but the Chinese people aren’t allowed to.

没有粗面x: The “oxen and horses” would rather daydream than keep their noses to the grindstone, and all of our problems are caused by outsiders.

gfwsucks: Since we aren’t allowed to lie down, does this mean we can stand up and storm the barricades? [Chinese]

In addition to the voluble online backlash to the MSS piece, CDT editors have observed some online censorship of the topic. Weibo appears to have banned the hashtag #Lying Flat once more; it had been subject to temporary bans in the past. CDT has also documented the closure of WeChat account 野柚的显微镜 (yě yòu de xiǎnwēijìng, "wild pomelo microscope") after it published an article criticizing the MSS for “reopening the wound” of the death of educational influencer Zhang Xuefeng. Zhang, who died of a heart attack last month at the age of 41, was widely known for his relentless work ethic, penchant for long-distance running, and habit of getting by on only three or four hours of sleep a night. In many ways, Zhang epitomized both the highs and the lows of contemporary ambition and striving. Another article recently added to CDT’s archive, from WeChat blogger Mu Qi Says, cites statistics from the International Labour Organization (ILO) showing that the average annual number of working hours per person in China is 2,548 hours, the highest among the OECD nations. Mu Qi argues that Chinese people have never really “slacked off,” and in fact, they should be encouraged to work fewer hours and enjoy the fruits of China’s past economic growth and “demographic dividends.”

The “lying flat” or “lying down” movement, which first became popular in 2021, has been the target of government criticism and suppression before. In May of 2021, a “lie-downism” Douban group with close to 10,000 members was banned; a month later, a censorship directive ordered e-commerce platforms to stop selling merchandise featuring slacker-themed memes or slogans. In 2023, after an official campaign attempted to counter slacker sentiment by touting the “Red Flag Canal Spirit,” unemployed and underemployed Chinese young people were unimpressed and unconvinced: some countered that they “weren’t so much lying down as finding it impossible to get ahead.” Against the backdrop of persistently high youth unemployment, officials banned a number of popular “lying down” influencers and vloggers in the summer of 2025.

The post below is the first half of journalist Peng Yuanwen’s account of a recent livestream conversation with rural public-benefit activist Zhou Jian. (Part two will follow shortly.) Peng, a regular presence in CDT’s 404 Deleted Content Archive, recently received the award for best commentary in the grassroots Journalists Home News Prize founded by recently detained investigative reporter Liu Hu. The jury cited more than 30 of Peng’s pieces on rural pensions, crediting them for some of the issue’s currently high public profile. Zhou began working in rural poverty alleviation and development after the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, and co-founded the Beijing Gan’en Philanthropic Foundation in 2012. He discussed his work in a 2021 essay for Made in China Journal. In their recent conversation, Zhou set out to answer what Peng described as his one core question: "How far apart, really, is rural reality from city-dwellers’ impressions?"

At 9:00 last night I did my second livestream, with guest Zhou Jian, known online as "Uncle Zhou." He blogs as "Uncle Zhou Walks the Countryside," and is chairman of the Beijing Gan’en Philanthropic Foundation. We’re both originally from Sichuan, and got to know each other through the rural pensions issue. After our first meeting, we decided to do a livestream together. We ended up chatting until nearly midnight last night, and only wrapped up then for the sake of viewers who’d have work the next day.

I particularly wanted to talk to Uncle Zhou because he’s been to places I never have: he’s visited nearly 3,000 villages in 150 of China’s impoverished counties, conducting in-depth interviews with some 2-3,000 rural people. I have more faith in people like him and Zhao Yushun and Yuan Zhenzhen from "Chronicles of True Encounters" than in "Three Rural Issues" experts who go on about the "protective dual urban-rural system" or the rural-development crowd with their claims of "revitalizing the countryside."

I had only one core question in this conversation: How far apart, really, is rural reality from city-dwellers’ impressions?

1. Do farmers "own land" that they can fall back on?

This is an unavoidable question, because in the eyes of many urban residents, farmers’ "land ownership" is a huge advantage. I asked Uncle Zhou: In all the many places you’ve been to, and among all the many farmers you’ve met, have you ever come across a family that got rich from working the land?

His answer was extremely direct: "Not one. I’ve been to more than 150 counties, and never even heard of a farmer who’d managed to do that. Basically, the whole income from farming covers only a part of their living costs—it’s nearly impossible to generate cash income beyond that. That is, in the countryside today, a family that doesn’t have anyone bringing in income with migrant work elsewhere will most likely be on welfare."

This is at heart because the rate of increase of production and labor costs in recent decades has outpaced that of grain prices many times over. Uncle Zhou added that when they abolished agricultural tax in 2006, one important reason was that the combined salaries of the tax collectors were greater than the revenue that it generated. In other words, the value of agricultural production had fallen so far that it couldn’t even pay the tax collectors, yet there are still people saying farmers can pull a fortune out of the soil. What kind of sense does that make?

Take Sichuan, where the paddy field per capita may be less than a mu [about a sixth of an acre]. Even by the most optimistic estimates, you’d be lucky to earn 800 yuan [about $120 U.S.] from two annual crops after seed, pesticide, fertilizer, and machinery costs. A family plot of two or three mu might bring in one or two thousand yuan [about $150-300] a year. That amount "means you can catch a cold a few times, or buy a couple of months’ medication for high blood pressure or diabetes, and it’s all gone."

And that’s for those who can still farm. But the farmers’ pensions issue we were discussing is about the elderly, not able-bodied people of working age. This is a key point that many urban residents, consciously or not, overlook. So I asked Uncle Zhou: "Can these elderly people still do the work?"

"It’s not a matter of whether they can do it or not," he answered. "They have no choice but to do it, because a month’s pension won’t even cover the most basic necessities. If they don’t farm, what will they eat? It’s a matter of life and death."

He went on to describe a long list of common health issues he’d seen among the rural elderly: an excess of chronic conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Minor ailments go untreated, and major ones are simply endured. When they can’t be endured any longer, you go to hospital; the doctor takes a quick look, and if they say it’s gotten serious, you go home to wait for death. He met a Five Guarantees recipient [food, clothing, medical care, housing, burial expenses] from Zhongjiang, Sichuan last year who cut his toe on a piece of glass. His medical insurance would have covered hospital treatment itself, but he couldn’t afford food or travel costs, so he just cut the toe off with a kitchen cleaver. A living, breathing human treating his own body like expendable parts. Later, he fell ill again, spent two days on an IV drip, and died the day after returning home.

City-dwellers think the rural elderly can live off the land. The reality is they don’t have the physical strength for farm work.

2. Farmers "have land," but it’s not really theirs.

Beyond the fact that, as we’ve seen, you can’t make a living from farming, there’s a still more fundamental issue: legally speaking, farmers don’t actually own their land.

Uncle Zhou explained a property rights issue that a great many people don’t have a clear understanding of. After 1949, land was appropriated from wealthy landlords and redistributed to farmers, but the collectivization movement that began in 1953 put farmland under collective ownership. After Reform and Opening, the "village group" became the smallest unit of rural land ownership, but these village groups don’t even have legal standing as entities; they’re artificial grassroots organizations that are actually run by the village committees. So legally speaking, farmers only have usage rights to the land, not ownership rights, still less full rights to dispose of the land as they see fit.

This means that farmers have no say in cases of land expropriation; they can’t borrow a cent using the land as collateral. You’re using a bowl passed to you by others, which can’t be passed on. The minute you lose your connections with the village collective, the bowl’s taken back.

What’s even more absurd is that state subsidies don’t go to individual farmers, but only to large-scale operations. Uncle Zhou met one farmer who’d originally had a private plot that was part of a larger field. When that field was consolidated into a bigger operation, his plot went with it. The only way the old man could eke out a living was by moving the wall of his courtyard a metre and a half [five feet], opening up a little patch of land between the wall and the road where he could grow vegetables.

So subsidies are out of reach [for small farmers]. In many areas, the subsidies have a minimum threshold, and only large operations qualify.

Urbanites think farmers’ land ownership is a special privilege, but in fact "their" land doesn’t bring in any money, doesn’t get them any subsidies, and isn’t really theirs at all.

3. Homestead land is a plus, right? But the downside is location.

Another thing city-dwellers often envy is the rural homestead. In a country where land is owned by the state, and most urban residents can only buy apartments, having your own patch of land seems like an enormous perk.

Uncle Zhou’s response is straightforward: "A rural homestead isn’t worth a fart."

Anyone who’s bought property in the cities can understand his reasoning: location is invariably what determines property value. A 50-square-metre [538-square-foot] apartment inside Beijing’s Second Ring Road is simply a different kettle of fish to a villa in Sichuan’s Daliang Mountains. I can’t understand why city-dwellers treat "location, location, location" as the golden rule when they buy homes, but as soon as talk turns to rural homesteads, they suddenly forget this basic common sense.

What’s the use of a homestead in a mountain village where the ambulance wouldn’t come even if you had the cell signal to call it? Uncle Zhou’s mother-in-law lives outside the Fifth Ring Road [of Beijing], and even she always complains about the distance, saying "I’d be a goner before the ambulance got out here." As for a housing plot in a rural village, do you really want to retire somewhere where you can’t even call an ambulance?

All that aside, you don’t have full property rights to the homestead. It can’t be inherited, and if you sell it you can only sell the structure itself, not the land beneath it. This kind of "ownership" is more like a temporary residence permit.

4. The countryside’s low cost of living? Maybe it’s cheap because it’s flooded with fakes.

Another talking point in urban fantasies of the countryside is that "rural prices are low; living there is cheap."

Uncle Zhou topples this argument with his own personal experience. He saw a lot of market data for electronic goods while working at CCID some years back, and concluded that manufactured goods sold for lower prices in big cities, where there were price wars. Smaller markets saw fewer sales, businesses had no incentive to compete, and consumer prices are inflated by various layers of taxes and transportation costs. By way of example, he cited the purchase of new curtains for Wenquan Elementary School in Yunnan’s Mengla County. When volunteers checked the price, they found it "too expensive," and challenged the principal. Deeply aggrieved at this, the principal urged them to talk directly to the supplier. The supplier walked them through the numbers: At each step of the way from Shanghai to Kunming, from Kunming to Xishuangbanna, from Xishuangbanna to Mengla, and from Mengla to their own town, there were new shipping costs and taxes. After those four legs of the journey, the cost was more than 50% higher than it would have been in Shanghai.

That’s the case with genuine goods. What about counterfeits?

Uncle Zhou said that rural areas have long been a dumping ground for counterfeit and substandard goods, and that small village stores are flooded with shanzhai versions of all kinds of products from big brands. From goods that won’t sell in the cities to government project procurement, anything that can be bundled off to the countryside, is. "They’ve really become the intermediaries of this economy—anything that can’t be sold, anything that should really be written off, they’ll happily accept it all."

This includes the livestream commerce that’s booming at the moment, which has an inferior class of goods for rural customers. As we discussed in my last livestream with Zhao Yushun, the system will send lesser-quality "B"-grade items to customer addresses that it identifies as rural, because rural consumers have less awareness of their rights and nothing to compare against.

The conclusion is very simple: in the countryside you can choose between paying more than urbanites for the same thing, or paying less for an item of lesser quality. The supposed "low cost of living" is a myth. [Chinese]

Part Two will follow shortly.

On March 31, China’s State Council released the new regulations regarding industrial and supply-chain security, followed by the April 7 publication of new restrictions regarding sanctions, export controls, and data disclosure requirements by overseas governments. (For more detail, see China Law Translate’s full-text translation of the 18-article “State Council Provisions on Industrial and Supply Chain Security” and the 20-article “PRC Regulations on Countering Improper Extraterritorial Jurisdiction by Foreign States.”)

Bloomberg News provided more detail on new regulatory measures, their potential penalties, and how these might be meted out:

The latest measures build on China’s existing legal tools to retaliate against external threats such as sanctions. They’ve also sparked concerns that doing business in or with the world’s second-largest economy could become riskier for multinational firms.

[…] One set of regulations, which took effect at the end of March, is focused on protecting sectors critical to China’s national and economic security, while also reinforcing its central role in global supply chains. Government agencies have been empowered to launch probes and retaliate if a country, region or international company adopts measures deemed discriminatory against China and a threat to supply chain security.

Another set of rules, rolled out in early April, is designed to counter what the government calls “improper extraterritorial jurisdiction by foreign countries.” The idea is that other nations are enforcing measures such as sanctions, export controls and data disclosure requirements beyond their own borders, potentially hindering Chinese companies.

In both cases, penalties can be applied not just to organizations but to individuals as well. Punishments include restrictions on imports, exports and investment in China, fines, asset seizures, visa cancellations and curbs on people’s ability to leave the country. [Source]

Reporting for the Wall Street Journal, Chun Han Wong and Yang Jie explained how the regulations could place American and other Western companies operating in China in an awkward position—obliged to comply with U.S. trade restrictions on China, yet also exposed to pressure, punishment, or even expulsion by the Chinese government:

The Chinese regulations feature vague provisions that make it hard for foreign businesses to judge what would trigger Beijing’s reaction—which may be part of the point. The lack of specificity leaves “open the possibility that several legitimate commercial decisions could be interpreted” as threatening Chinese supply chains, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said.

The rules require Chinese companies and research institutions to step up security protocols governing key technologies and data. And they hinted at a tighter leash on foreigners who analyze Chinese business, saying officials should police misconduct involving “information-gathering activities related to industrial and supply chains” in China.

On Monday, Beijing published another set of regulations against those who assert “unjustified extraterritorial jurisdiction” over Chinese entities and people.

Under these 20-point rules, offending foreign organizations and individuals would be added to a “malicious entity list” and face penalties including entry bans, expulsion and asset seizures. These rules also applied broad definitions on the kind of actions that would trigger punishment. [Source]

A piece from AFP highlighted reactions from business groups such as the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in China and the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC):

The regulations, released on April 7, allow Chinese authorities to take measures against foreign companies or individuals that "harm China’s industrial and supply chain security".

The rules appeared aimed at stopping companies from removing China from their supply chains, AmCham China’s president Michael Hart said on Thursday.

[…] The European Union Chamber of Commerce in China (EUCCC) criticised the provisions as "unclear and vague" earlier this month, saying their implementation "increases the risk of doing business in or with China".

[…] "The threat that individual employees could be punished through exit bans is concerning," the EUCCC added. [Source]

CDT editors have observed that discussion of the new regulations appears to have been restricted on platforms such as Weibo and Zhihu, with relatively few public comments. Chinese social media users on some overseas websites described the regulations as akin to “barring the door to beat the dog”—that is, entrapping foreign companies and investors in order to coerce them into certain desired behaviors. Others warned that the new rules could well prove counterproductive by discouraging foreign investment, accelerating capital flight, and “throwing the economy into reverse gear.” Still others noted that the new rafts of regulations, coupled with recent crackdowns on VPN use, made a mockery of the Chinese government’s stated commitments to "expanding high-standard opening-up" and "optimizing the business environment."

Below are some online comments, compiled by CDT editors from Weibo and X, nearly all questioning the wisdom of the State Council’s attempts to exert such stringent control over foreign companies operating within China’s borders. Some commenters made pointed reference to Xi Jinping as “Accelerator-in-Chief,” i.e. a leader who seems dead-set on running China into the ground:

TAOwilltalk: Nobody’s going to dare invest in China now, and they’ll scare off the ones who already did.

huabuguo43: Kidnapper sez: “Thanks for the ransom, bud, but you’re not going anywhere."

BGates69218: Way to send foreign investors running for the hills. And talk about a master accelerationist: apparently the Chinese economy isn’t collapsing fast enough, and he wants to speed things along so we can catch up with North Korea.

Death8964: Every single time, they always manage to pick the worst possible policy. The "Accelerator-in-Chief" title is well-deserved.

200cattieswheat: How is this not a fuckin’ shakedown?

ping47341: Trying to manipulate corporate behavior by destroying market fundamentals is never a winning strategy. All it’ll do is make everyone hold their noses and steer clear of you from now on.

用户6318682028: Complete idiots. They haven’t even figured out who needs who more, and they’re just talking out of their asses.

Vorathen: Hahaha, every investment promotion officer in the country just shit themselves. Who the hell would want to invest now?

poppy208209: They used to say "clear the cage to make room for bigger birds." Turns out they emptied the cage, alright—all the birds flew the coop!

2073egun: In economic terms, it’s a trade barrier. In political terms, it’s a closed-door policy. In terms of bullshit, it’s just a clown show for the bozos at home. [Chinese]

the skyscraper never finished. Tianjin, China, by Lei Han (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

At Reuters, Clare Jim reported on the court proceedings, which lasted only a day and a half, and what they bode for Evergrande’s creditors and customers:

While the indictment of the billionaire founder of what was once China’s No.1 property developer would mark an end to his rags to riches story, it is unlikely to bring much solace to Evergrande’s domestic and foreign creditors.

Evergrande has defaulted since 2021 on most of its $300 billion in liabilities, in troubles emblematic of China’s property sector woes that have long dragged on economic growth.

Founder Hui Ka Yan "pleaded ​guilty and expressed remorse" in trial proceedings on Monday and Tuesday against him and Evergrande, the court said in a posting on its official ​WeChat account.

[…] "The chances are extremely ​high that Hui will receive life sentences, given the amount of money involved, the number of victims, and the associated financial risks and social impact are almost unprecedented in China," ‌said Xinpeng ⁠Zhu, a lawyer at Shanghai Rongying Law Firm, who represented investors in Evergrande’s debt.

"The court’s ruling will serve as an answer to the prevailing sentiments in society and a means of easing public anger." [Source]

Despite the low-key nature of the trial, it has attracted intense public interest on Chinese social media, and brought renewed attention to the financial woes, unfinished projects, and questionable business practices that have plagued the real-estate sector in China. Property developer Pan Shiyi, who cofounded SOHO China with his wife Zhang Xin in 1995 (the pair stepped away from their company in 2022 and now live in New York City), recently resurfaced on WeChat after three years of radio silence to post some thoughts on the “Ponzi scheme” nature of the Chinese property market. That post, archived at CDT, was later censored across numerous Chinese social media platforms. A related post from WeChat account Beast Office, “Pan Shiyi Tests the Waters,” was also censored online but added to our archive.

CDT Chinese editors have archived four recent articles about Evergrande and Xu Jiayin’s trial, and several related to Pan Shiyi’s surprise reappearance on Chinese social media. Of the four pieces about Evergrande and Xu, two point out that there were many other individuals complicit in Evergrande’s malfeasance but that they will likely go unpunished, insulated by their high-level connections. Portions of these are translated below.

In “Xu Jiayin Pleads Guilty, but Did He Really Manage To Dig That 2.4 Trillion Yuan Pit All by Himself?” from WeChat account History Rhymes, current-affairs commentator Xu Peng highlights the stark contrast between a small group of politically well-connected individuals who struck it rich during China’s property-development heyday, and the millions of ordinary citizens who accumulated unprecedented levels of debt, or even lost their life savings due to unfinished housing projects, cratering real-estate prices, and other knock-on effects of the Evergrande collapse:

The charges against Xu—illegally taking public deposits, fraudulent fundraising, illegal lending, illegal use of funds, fraudulent issuance of securities, violations regarding the disclosure of pertinent information, embezzlement, and corporate bribery—are primarily economic crimes, which frankly are unlikely to result in a death sentence. At most, he might be sentenced to life in prison.

[…] But if you dig a little deeper, you will find that this matter is far from simple.

An individual can steer the direction of a company, but no single person could possibly pile up 2.4 trillion yuan ($350 billion U.S.) in debt all by himself.

Lurking behind the scenes are too many uncomfortable truths that can never be fully examined.

Perhaps many years from now, when people look back on this chapter, they will call it “the most insane period in Chinese real-estate history.”

Some became spectacularly wealthy, while others “pooled the contents of six wallets” [referring to a married couple who purchase a house by combining their savings with the savings of both sets of parents] for a mortgage they’ll be paying back for the next thirty years.

Thus did Xu Jiayin become the most “representative” person in this period of our history.

Now he has pleaded guilty, and it remains to be seen how the court will sentence him. [Chinese]

An article from WeChat account 小干体 (Xiǎo gàn tǐ), run by a family heritage researcher who blogs about various societal topics, is titled “Xu Jiayin’s Eight Unpardonable Crimes.” The author writes that Xu’s guilty plea, the brief one-and-a-half-day trial, and the lack of publicity that preceded it suggest that a deal was reached beforehand: Xu would take the fall, but countless others who were complicit in and profited from Evergrande’s corporate malfeasance would remain unknown and unpunished:

The trial was scheduled to last two days, yesterday and today. Yet by midday, it was announced that proceedings had reached a conclusion this morning.

Thus was a case of great magnitude disposed of in a mere day and a half.

Furthermore, Xu Jiayin entered a guilty plea and expressed remorse before the court—a clear sign that a deal had been reached beforehand, and that the trial itself was merely a procedural formality.

What’s more, there hadn’t been the slightest whisper of the proceedings before the hearing commenced, which further confirms that the more hushed-up things are, the bigger the crimes.

All things considered, I stand by my earlier view, expressed in my article "Evergrande’s Party Committee Committed Serious Errors," that Evergrande’s in-house Communist Party Committee failed to properly discharge its oversight duties, which led to that “outstanding senior cadre” [Xu Jiayin, who was both the Chairman and Communist Party Secretary for Evergrande] committing such unpardonable errors.

I expect that the many others who gorged themselves at Evergrande’s trough will be let off lightly. After all, they were merely accessories [to Xu’s crimes], and thanks to friends in very high places, they are untouchable. [Chinese]

WeChat account 摩登中产 (Módēng zhōngchǎn, Modern Middle Class) published “The Era Writes an End to Xu Jiayin,” an in-depth look at how Xu’s life, education, work, and fortunes in many ways paralleled China’s overall national trajectory. The author peppers the piece with fascinating details about Xu’s early life, relentless work ethic, and the overwhelming ambition that brought him enormous success, but culminated in his downfall:

He revered the rules, broke free of them, and eventually wrote his own. Supremely confident in his own calculations, Xu never realized that he himself was nothing more than a variable in the larger calculus of an era.

Under that calculus, he studied tirelessly by the dim light of a kerosene lamp, proudly watched the Chinese women’s volleyball team [win the 1981 Women’s Volleyball World Cup] and cheered the “revitalization of China,” strode across the factory floor full of youthful vigor and ambition, skillfully cornered the property market, and dreamed of leaving a legacy for the ages, until his runaway greed landed him behind bars.

He always believed he was the author of an era, but in the end, it was the era that wrote an end to him. [Chinese]

A piece titled “Where Did Evergrande’s 2.4 Trillion Yuan Go?” from WeChat account 装看见 (Zhuāng kànjiàn, "Pretending to see") argues that Evergrande’s colossal debt of 2.4 trillion yuan didn’t just evaporate; it was systematically extracted in four main ways. First, the author claims, Xu Jiayin and his family siphoned off over 50 billion yuan (over $7.3 billion U.S.) in dividends between 2009 and 2022, transferring the funds to offshore accounts and family trusts, and purchasing luxury properties, private jets, and yachts with the proceeds. Second, vast sums were burned by Evergrande’s reckless diversification into money-losing ventures such as football clubs, electric vehicles, mineral water, and entertainment. Third, the company fell into a debt spiral, forced to take on ever more expensive new debt simply to service the older debt. And fourth, writes the author, Evergrande engaged in systematic fraud by overstating revenues, issuing bonds under false pretenses, and misappropriating funds to put up a false front even as it was nearing collapse. The author then turns to examine the era that made such excess possible, arguing that Xu and many of his peers misguidedly chalked up the windfalls they earned during China’s property boom to their own personal genius. The article contrasts what it describes as Xu’s hubris and recklessness with the prescience and pragmatism of SOHO property-developer Pan Shiyi:

From 2019 to 2020, Evergrande overstated its revenues and profits, fraudulently issued bonds, engaged in illegal lending, misappropriated funds, illegally accepted deposits, and committed fundraising fraud.

The proceeds were used to mislead [investors and regulators], pay bribes, fill funding shortfalls, and maintain a facade of prosperity. In the end, it all turned into bad debt, uncollectible debt.

Those were the jubilee years for real-estate tycoons, whose stubborn faith that property prices would only continue to rise led them to relentlessly leverage and expand the scope of their businesses.

Taking money from the bank, buying land and building houses, pocketing the cash but keeping the debt on the balance sheet—those who played the game this way chalked it up to their personal talent and ability.

But the reason they were able to make money so easily back then wasn’t because they were particularly capable; they simply benefited from the era’s favorable conditions.

In 2021, risks began to surface in the real-estate industry, but few wanted the merry-go-round to stop. For one thing, it was easy money, and for another, no one believed that the risks would ever actually materialize.

Some people are confident that they will have the last laugh, whereas others, even at their earnings peak, are already planning their exit strategy.

I thought of Pan Shiyi, who belongs to the latter category. He started selling off his properties in 2014, and eventually cashed out 30 billion yuan. When he left the country, his money left with him.

When it comes to making money, Pan Shiyi is extremely clear-headed. He knows it’s best to stop while you’re ahead and cash out your winnings.

Pan Shiyi’s clarity is partly down to his wisdom in choosing a good wife. Without Zhang Xin, Pan Shiyi wouldn’t be where he is today.

With extraordinary foresight, the couple began planning their strategy in 2005, and completed it in 2021, a full 16 years later.

It’s also possible that Pan may have been influenced by [Hong Kong property magnate] Li Ka-shing. When Li began divesting [from China] in 2013, Pan Shiyi followed suit and began selling off his own properties in 2014.

In 2015, the refrain “Don’t let Li Ka-shing run away!” might not have set off alarm bells for anyone else, but it spurred Pan Shiyi to hurry up and sell, sell, sell.

Li Ka-shing’s adage, "Never try to earn the last penny," is a potent warning against unchecked greed. [Chinese]

The legal status of VPNs and other circumvention tools is less clear-cut in practice than the article suggests, with enforcement having tended to focus heavily on service providers rather than users. The reference to people held in Southeast-Asian scam compounds is notable: Chinese authorities have faced some criticism for failing to do enough to combat these criminal enterprises. Here, the "Great Firewall" is presented as a protective measure that those lured into the compounds had deliberately rejected. The enthusiastic use of so-called "scare quotes" is also a prominent feature of the article, and of official messaging as a whole.

Some martial embellishments aside, the article is typical—in fact, it closely parallels a 2021 post from a WeChat account affiliated with the PLA Daily. The timing of this iteration may be notable, however: it coincided with signs of escalation in official efforts to fight "wall-scaling," as well as other ominous developments including moves by Apple to more effectively confine PRC-based users to its Chinese app store, and reports of a sharp drop in activity among Chinese-language communities on X, which has remained an important platform for PRC-based wall-scalers.

The world’s so big! I want to go see it all. Gaming is more fun on overseas servers! I want to go play on them. There are so many great online resources overseas! I want to go search through them. Foreigners are so friendly online! I want to go chat with them. Foreign websites are awesome! I want to go take a look. How can I do this? By "scaling the wall." Public security warning: Hold it right there! You’re breaking the law.

Article 6 of the [1996] Interim Provisions of the People’s Republic of China on the Administration of International Networking of Computer Information Networks states: "computer information networks directly connecting to international networks must use entry and exit channels provided by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications’ national public telecommunications network. No work unit or individual may independently establish or employ other channels for cross-border network connections. Relevant rules in the Party’s internal disciplinary regulations and related statutes also expressly prohibit Party members and cadres from engaging in the unlawful act of "scaling the wall."

But what is "scaling the wall"? The "wall" in question refers to the "National Public Network Monitoring System" (GFW), commonly known as China’s national firewall. "Scaling the wall" or "net-breaking" refers to users employing virtual private network (VPN) technology to evade state network oversight, breaking through the firewall’s IP blocks, content filters, DNS hijacking, traffic restrictions, etc. for activities such as accessing overseas websites in violation of national law. More simply, "scaling the wall" means using special tricks to bypass domestic internet restrictions and access blocked or otherwise restricted foreign websites. Deliberate or not, it constitutes an illegal act.

Why is "scaling the wall" prohibited? Just look at the news. In February 2025, Chinese and Thai police successfully rescued 61 victims, including 39 Chinese citizens, who had been lured to scam compounds in Myanmar. Most of these victims had illegally "scaled the wall" with VPNs to register on foreign social media platforms like Telegram, where they were lured abroad by fake ads promising "high-paying customer support work in Thailand, with flights reimbursed." Upon reaching the border, they were trafficked to scam compounds in Myanmar by snakeheads, held captive, tortured with electric shocks, and forced to defraud their own families.

Broadly speaking, there are three main dangers in "scaling the wall." First, one can easily fall into "political traps." As China’s international status has risen, nearly all foreign countries have websites specifically targeting Chinese citizens, publishing so-called alternative political history, shocking exposés, and exclusive scoops with ulterior motives. "Scaling the wall" to browse these sites, one can easily be led astray by reactionary discourse, decadent thinking, and erroneous ideology, and become a conduit for false views, a porter for disinformation, or even a mouthpiece for hostile forces, acting in ways that jeopardize national political security.

Second, one can easily be lured into "collusion traps." Due to the internet’s highly virtual and anonymous nature, and the continuous emergence of new "wall-scaling" tools, the net has become another key battlefront for recruitment and subversion by our enemies. State security departments have exposed many recent cases of foreign spies conspiring to steal our secrets, incidents in which our own people illegally "scaled the wall," were ensnared in traps that had been laid for them, and ended up falling into criminality.

Third, one can easily sink into "illegality traps." Foreign websites are saturated with obscene, violent, and vulgar content, as well as links to gambling, drugs, and money-lending sites. The moment you "scale the wall," you’re vulnerable to exploitation by foreign criminal elements and risk being drawn into activities that can lead to prosecution, such as online gambling, illegal money-lending, drugs, soliciting prostitutes, etc.

The consequences of "scaling the wall" and net-breaking can be severe. In legal terms, illegal "wall-scaling" may violate sections of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China pertaining to the crimes of espionage or illegal provision of state secrets or intelligence; or may violate the Espionage Law of the People’s Republic of China or the Interim Provisions of the People’s Republic of China on the Administration of International Networking of Computer Information Networks, incurring a prison sentence or substantial fine. In terms of [Party] discipline, illegal "wall-scaling" is subject to punishment under the Regulations on Disciplinary Action of the Communist Party of China or the [PLA] Disciplinary Regulations. At the individual level, this kind of legal or disciplinary violation will become part of your personal record, a black mark that will follow you for your whole life, and may even exact a heavy toll at critical junctures in your children’s lives, affecting their eligibility to enlist in the army or qualify for the civil service exam or civil service employment.

The way to avoid the dangers of "scaling the wall" is essentially with "a wall in your heart": strengthen your awareness of enemy presence, maintain political vigilance, hone your ability to discern right from wrong, and never forget: "The internet harbors traps and harbors enemies, and is subject to politics and subject to discipline." The key is adherence to the rules: obey the laws and regulations, regulate your online activity, and strengthen your awareness of legitimate net use. Make sure to avoid clicking or visiting links from unclear sources; registering for, purchasing, or using "wall-scaling" extensions, tools, or software; downloading or using foreign software for registering social-media accounts or joining group chats; downloading or using game accelerators to play international editions of online games; using accelerators or search engines with network proxy functions; and investing or speculating in virtual currencies. Focus on consistency and persistence. Strengthen network management, and carry out frequent self-inspections: check your app lists for any "wall-scaling" software tools or foreign apps installed on your phone or computer; check game accelerators to see if there are connections to foreign servers; check email for records of overseas account registration; and conscientiously put a stop to all rule-and-regulation-breaking "wall-scaling" and net-breaking activity.

[Xi Jinping said,] "If you can’t pass the test of the internet, you can’t pass the test of our times." We must maintain a sober awareness that “gambling on not getting caught is never a safe bet.” And we must be especially vigilant against letting habit or complacency turn us into criminal victims or criminal accomplices. Don’t ignorantly or carelessly blunder into a trap, and ensure that in the great online tide, you stand firm instead of being swept off your feet. [Chinese]

I’ll get straight to the point: you can regard this post as a farewell letter from Sanyue Yun and her sisters.

I received another seven-day suspension from March 21 to March 28. During that time, not only was I unable to post or reply, but it was impossible to follow me, and my account didn’t even appear in search results.

What’s even more ridiculous is that, if I paste a screenshot of the platform ban notice in here, it won’t let me publish this post either.

At the same time, they carried out massive and unwarranted deletion and suppression of my posts. I’ve published 147 in total, but how many can you see on my main page? Only 36.

There’s not even a fraction left.

For unwavering perseverance and striving to speak out in every case, I’d like to thank myself. I’m also grateful to all you brave, insightful readers out there at your screens.

I’d be extremely grateful if my sisters who can spare the energy could help share my posts, and if those who can spare the money could hit the tip button at the end of the post.

In any case, please put yourselves first. We’re the ones who are the hope, the embers. I’m grateful to you just for reading this far. I’m beyond grateful to you, my sisters, for your goodwill.

Now, as this post draws to a close, I’ve been wondering how to end it. What does the future hold? How will I keep on writing my posts? How will I keep sharing them? I’m still not sure if there’ll come a day when I’m back to full strength, and I can’t make any promises. But in this moment, I also realize: women will always find a way. [Chinese]

Following a 15-day ban last August, Sanyue vulcanus wrote that she had frequently been tempted to close her account, citing past struggles with anxiety and ongoing exhaustion. The post also mentioned the lesser impact of constant threats and harassment from “tiánlì” 田力—a sarcastic online term for men comprising the dismantled components of the character 男 nán, meaning "man” or “male." "This isn’t the first or second time; I’ve had countless posts taken down one after another, and barely a tenth are now visible on my account page. But the tianli’s smears and incitement of antagonism always go untouched, and even get boosted by the platform. The very field we’re fighting them on is tilted in their favor." The reference to inciting antagonism turns the official accusation of "inciting gender antagonism," often aimed at feminist discourse, around on her attackers. This, and the double standards surrounding it, were discussed in a response to Sanyue Yun’s farewell post on the WeChat account Li Yueliang’s Notes:

I know some people will say "Her viewpoints were too extreme," "She incited gender antagonism," or "She had it coming."

I’d like to ask them:

Why is it "inciting antagonism" when a woman says "We’re treated unfairly," but a "legitimate grievance" when a man says the same?

Why is it that when women get angry, it’s interpreted as "extremism"?

Why is it that when women speak out, it’s perceived as "stirring up trouble"?

Sanyue Yun isn’t the first.

How many *feminist* accounts were reported, “bombed,” and disappeared before hers?

I’ve lost count.

Every time, it’s the same story:

She speaks out → someone feels uncomfortable → an angry mob reports her to the platform → the platform takes her content down → she disappears → everyone says “it’s about time someone dealt with her”

What is it we’re actually afraid of?

Women realising they’ve been treated poorly?

Women actually starting to hold people to account?

Women no longer accepting that "things have always been this way"? [Chinese]

In October, Sanyue vulcanus wrote about her efforts to pursue legal action against participants in these harassment and malicious-reporting campaigns against her. The post was deleted. The account then fell quiet for three months, leading to rumors that the account had been permanently banned, or even that the author had died, but it returned in January with an apology for the silence and an update on the Sisyphean legal process.

Sanyue vulcanus has also been vocal on topics such as the history of women’s rights in China, accusations of "gold-digging" over high bride-prices, women’s access to education, misogynistic online discourse targeting female college students, and last year’s sexual harassment scandal at Wuhan University and the expulsion of a female student from Dalian Polytechnic University for "undermining the national dignity" of China with "improper contact with a foreigner." On the latter case, Sanyue vulcanus commented:

There are no rights without obligations, and no obligations without rights. Rights and obligations must be reciprocal. If women are to be held responsible for upholding the “dignity” of the entire nation, then first please classify the manufacturing of substandard sanitary pads as "profiteering at the expense of the nation"; treat companies and individuals who engage in workplace gender discrimination as "agents of international espionage"; regard violations of women’s rights as an affront to the Chinese nation and the Chinese people; punish those who covertly videotape or photograph women as severely as those who leak state secrets; and treat the mandated divorce cooling-off period as a national disgrace on a par with the [1901] Boxer Protocol. Given that women are excluded from receiving their due share when the pie is being divided, how dare those tianli indulge in fantasies of forcing women to shoulder an unfair share of the collective blame? [Source]

Guiyang, by Pere X (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Below is a list of key topics and some related deleted articles from CDT’s summary of deleted content for March 2026. Between March 1-31, CDT Chinese added 36 new articles, primarily from WeChat, to the archive. (Note that the dates refer to when an article was published on the CDT website, not when it was deleted from Chinese social-media platforms.) Topics targeted for deletion in March included:

• The War in Iran: Iranian politics, women’s rights in Iran, the Iranian women’s soccer team, Chinese pundits’ predictions about the war, a donation scam targeting Chinese social media users, etc.
• March 8 International Women’s Day and content related to feminism and women’s rights
• The legacy of entrance-exam guru and educational influencer Zhang Xuefeng, who died of a heart attack at the age of 41
• March 15 “Consumer Day” in China
• Massive enthusiasm about the open-source AI agent “Open Claw”
• Tightening WeChat censorship and shared WeChat “404 experiences”

The War in Iran

In March, CDT Chinese editors archived a dozen articles about various aspects of the war in Iran, touching on Iranian history and politics, the state of women’s rights in Iran, Chinese state-media coverage of the war, the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei in U.S.-Israeli air strikes, and more.

Quite a few of the censored pieces criticized overly confident televised pronouncements by some Chinese pundits who claimed that the U.S. wouldn’t go to war with Iran, or that if war did occur, that the U.S. and Israel would be routed in short order. A piece by Mu Bai includes a number of screenshots of such pundits, including Fudan University’s Shen Yi and PLA commentator Li Li, making predictions that were rapidly overturned by real-life events. (Another post about Li Li’s poor analytical track record—“Her predictions are spot-on, as long as you reverse them”—was censored back in January.) A now-deleted article by WeChat account Unyielding Bamboo describes some wildly inaccurate analyses by domestic pundits and asks, “Why do people even still believe them?” WeChat account History Rhymes wrote about past repression of dissent by Ali Khamenei and noted that there were reportedly some street celebrations after he and some members of his family were killed in air attacks, although this was not reported by Chinese state media.

"The U.S. and Israel Will Lose So Badly, They Won’t Even Be Able to Find Their Own Underwear" by Lao Xiao, WeChat Account Lao Xiao’s Random Musings
March 3, 2026

In early March, CDT English translated this WeChat post parodying some of the absurdly confident predictions about the war in Iran from Chinese analysts. The last word in the Chinese title is 内衣 nèiyī, a nickname for Khamenei punning on the final characters of his Chinese name, 哈梅内伊 Hāméinèiyī. Although the piece never names Khamenei directly, in an apparent effort to evade keyword scans, it was still deleted from the platform. A portion of the translation is excerpted below:

[A]s soon as the first shot was fired in the 2025 Israel-Iran conflict, [Khamenei] dove into a bunker 80 meters underground.

This "safehouse," strengthened with reinforced concrete and Kevlar fiber, could reportedly withstand a hit from a GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, though it couldn’t shield him from accusations of cowardice from those left outside.

He and his wife hid themselves away in a defensive installation 90-100 meters below ground, protected by a phalanx of Revolutionary Guards and a carefully hidden subterranean entrance [….]

On the streets of Tehran, meanwhile, the ordinary people lived in terror of economic sanctions and the flames of war. How were they "sharing the masses’ fate"? On top of everything else, the authorities adopted a series of harsh measures like internet blackouts and security-force deployments beginning in January this year, arresting some 3,000 people and sentencing some of them to hanging, and establishing a draconian control regime comprising a "digital Iron Curtain + armed clearance."

Bullshit is the religious charlatans’ magic weapon: they try to spin their lies into a cloak of authority in the hope that illusory worship will make the masses forget their real suffering. [Source]

Other censored content about the war in Iran includes an article by WeChat blogger Xiang Dongliang about the popular belief among the Chinese public that the U.S. was motivated by a grab for Iranian oil, and a piece from blogger Mu Bai about the proliferation of scams soliciting donations from Chinese netizens to “help Iran.” Mu Bai notes that the Iranian Embassy in China released an official statement warning against these scams, although it was worded in a very roundabout way.

March 8 International Women’s Day and censorship of content related to feminism and women’s rights

Around March 8 International Women’s Day, several deleted posts were highly critical of constraints on women’s rights under the Iranian theocracy, and two other posts highlighted news about members of the Iranian national women’s soccer team who had sought asylum in Australia after their refusal to sing the Iranian national anthem at an overseas match led to them being labeled “wartime traitors” by Iranian state television. (Five of the seven who sought asylum later withdrew their claims and returned to Iran.)

In addition to the usual uptick in deleted content around March 8 International Women’s Day, there was also a spate of bans on the eve of March 8 that struck WeChat public accounts focused on feminism, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, combatting human trafficking, and promoting mental health, a sign of the continuing stigmatization and silencing of debate about these issues. At about the same time, a comedian known as Xiao Pa (full name Paziliyaer Paerhati) had her Weibo account suspended for posting this joke: “I’ve been bedridden for two days with a high fever. Suddenly it hit me that if I had a husband and kids, I’d be clinging to the wall, dragging myself out of bed just to cook for them.” The suspension drew outrage from Weibo users, many of whom said they related to the joke, and that it simply reflected the gender imbalance of household chores common in many households. “What did she write?” read one Weibo comment, which was later deleted by platform censors. “Let me see … Oh, she just wrote the truth.”

CDT editors also archived a farewell letter from WeChat blogger Ai Daxun, discussing the closure of her WeChat account in advance of Women’s Day and thanking her readers for their support. Ai mentions that she is likely the most moderate of the social-affairs commentators many readers follow, and that despite her best efforts, even she was unable to avoid the red lines of censorship:

With Women’s Day approaching, I felt that I should post more, and had a lot of content ready to go, but this is such a sensitive period of time, I was afraid that I might go wrong no matter what I published.

My concerns weren’t unfounded. Last year just before Women’s Day, I tried to organize an offline book-club meeting in Guangdong, but just two nights before the event, I got word that it was canceled. I haven’t tried to organize any offline events since then.

[…] A little while later, I checked the backend again, and realized that […] my account was already gone.

As it turns out, the cause of my account ban was a law-related article I’d published last July about the Wuhan University Library [sexual harassment] incident.

[…] Seven months after the fact, my account was “bombed” because of that article. I find it quite baffling, because I’ve had many other articles deleted in the past. Why would they decide to ban me now, over an article that wasn’t even deleted at the time?

[…] At this juncture, I want to point out that I might be the most moderate of the accounts you follow that are still tracking societal events. Sometimes I even avoid expressing my opinions outright, and confine myself to presenting only what I consider to be crucial evidence. Despite this, my account was still shut down. My constant compromises and abundance of caution proved to be futile in the face of ever-encroaching red lines. [Source]

The legacy of controversial entrance-exam guru and educational influencer Zhang Xuefeng

Another topic targeted for censorship in March was the legacy of educational influencer Zhang Xuefeng, who died of a heart attack at the age of 41. Huge crowds thronged the streets near a funeral home in Suzhou to pay tribute to the “entrance exam guru” who had advised so many young people and their parents—particularly those from rural and working-class backgrounds—on the path to academic and career success.

Chinese editors archived 14 articles, at least four of which were deleted from WeChat, about Zhang’s unabashedly "utilitarian" educational philosophy and his complicated legacy. One censored article, by blogger Lao Xiao, describes Zhang as a sort of “spiritual pacifier” and suggests that students might be better off without his educational bromides. “When the only valid belief is that ‘choosing the right major equals a stable future,’ education is transformed from a nurturing soil to an ‘all-or-nothing’ gamble. Forcing children to abandon humanities and social sciences and dive headfirst into fields they don’t relate to may deprive them of opportunities to define themselves, unleash their creative potential, and better understand the world.”

A deleted piece by current-affairs blogger Wei Chunliang (“Zhang Xuefeng, You Have Become the Memory of a Generation”) argues that if a person’s value is measured by how many others they helped during their lifetime, then Zhang certainly deserves some recognition and gratitude:

[W]hether you liked him or not, you have to admit that when it came to bridging the information gap, Zhang Xuefeng did more, and did it better, than the vast majority of educators out there—especially for kids living out in the sticks or studying at second-rate high schools.

[…] They were like frogs trapped at the bottom of a well, able to glimpse only a tiny patch of the sky above.

The most important thing Zhang Xuefeng did was to lower a rope into that well, offering them a way out.

He didn’t mince words. During one of his livestreams, he told a parent: “If that were my kid and he insisted on studying journalism, I’d knock him senseless and sign him up for something else!"

He had no qualms about shattering illusions: "Unless your family’s loaded, that isn’t the major for you."

Such advice seems harsh, even cruel.

But the thing is: he was telling the truth. [Source]

A deleted article from WeChat account Yaya’s Room (“Rest in Peace, Teacher Zhang Xuefeng, and May Schoolgirls Never Have to Listen to Your Paternalistic Lecturing Again”) offers a different perspective, focusing on the often stark gap between Zhang’s advice to male and female students:

What I find most objectionable is Zhang Xuefeng’s view on gender. This is mainly reflected in his educational advice to female students, which frequently includes the phrase: "Find a boyfriend." In short, regardless of whether or not a girl is seeking relationship advice, Zhang Xuefeng will “offer his two cents” on the subject of love and marriage—the gist of which is to tell her to “find a boyfriend” and “follow him wherever he goes.” Zhang never gives this kind of advice to male students.

As is abundantly clear, Zhang Xuefeng’s advice to many young women is that you don’t need to work hard to develop your career, you just need to find a man who is willing to support you. In his eyes, women’s roles within the family are as wives and mothers, and he hopes that women will internalize these roles and plan their lives accordingly. [Source]

March 15 “Consumer Day” in China

The annual March 15 “Consumer Day” in China, and its often self-congratulatory televised gala component, has long been accused of targeting low-hanging fruit, ignoring China’s glaring lack of consumer-product oversight, and naming and shaming only the most egregious offenders. This year, a censored article by WeChat blogger and current-affairs commentator Wei Chunliang criticized the performative nature of the March 15 televised gala. A translated excerpt of Wei’s article appears below.

“The Performative Annual 315 Gala: Who Are They Fooling?” by Wei Chunliang, WeChat account Liang Jian
March 16, 2026

The annual 315 Gala seems less about proving how awful product quality is than about proving how “inured” we have become to these various toxins.

[…] Each year after March 15th, do the relevant authorities follow up on these cases? And if so, how do they handle them? Are the companies involved given the punishment they deserve? Are the problems addressed and corrected? It seems that very few media outlets are interested in doing follow-up reporting on this.

This centralized command performance, this campaign-style performative enforcement is but a one-off, a fleeting moment that is all fanfare and spectacle.

That said, why do local authorities only pay attention to food safety issues, product quality problems, and regulatory violations after the media reports appear? Isn’t there supposed to be routine oversight and enforcement all year round?

As one internet user put it: “The biggest problem with the 315 Gala is that it turns government inaction and inadequate supervision into a celebratory banquet.” [Chinese]

The FOMO-driven craze for installing open-source AI agent Open Claw

In March, China experienced a nationwide craze for installing Open Claw, an open-source AI agent capable of autonomously controlling a computer, browsing the web, managing files, handling emails, and much more. Many online Chinese articles discussed the lucrative market for these installs, which seemed to be driven, at least in part, by a fear of missing out on the latest AI tool and falling behind one’s colleagues, classmates, or competitors. One such article, “FOMO, Frenzy, and Uninstalling: An Open-Claw ‘Home Installation’ Worker Talks About the Latest Craze,” from WeChat account True Story Project, discusses the lucrative gig economy that appeared overnight, offering home installations of the sought-after tool. The author also notes that before long, reports of security incidents and warnings from Chinese business and cyberspace authorities prompted many users to uninstall Open Claw, opening up another revenue stream for home-installers, some of whom were charging 499 yuan ($73 U.S.) to install it, and 299 yuan ($44) to remove it.

Tightening WeChat censorship and WeChat “404 experiences”

On March 25, WeChat announced that since the beginning of the year, it had permanently banned 1,209 accounts and sanctioned more than 60,000 accounts for various violations. Alongside this tightening platform censorship, many WeChat bloggers have published “404 experience” articles explaining to their readers why certain of their posts were blocked or deleted, or giving advice to other WeChat users about how to avoid falling afoul of platform censors. (See previous CDT translations about a post that got the hammer due to an unruly comments section; a “positive energy” post about energy prices that was too “timely” for its own good; and a post that got scrubbed for quoting official government statistics about the birthrate.) One notable “404 experience” post that was archived by CDT Chinese editors in March is an extraordinary public appeal from legal- and social-affairs blogger Li Yuchen, who has had over 40 WeChat official accounts closed over the years due to their unvarnished coverage of such topics as judicial injustice and the abuse of power. In the archived post, Li asks if anyone might be willing to risk “lending” their WeChat accounts so that Li can continue publishing and advocating for justice, accountability, and fairness.

Note: I originally posted this on my Toutiao account. It got more than 200 comments in half a day, then was swiftly shadow-banned just as I’d described in the post itself: no deletion notice, but the post was visible only to me. I wonder if the same thing will happen here …

This mechanism exists on many platforms:

Your comment is clearly shown as "successfully published," and you can see it yourself, but it’s invisible to everyone else.

This isn’t a bug, but a carefully designed feature. It boils down to this: the platform doesn’t want to let you speak, but it doesn’t want you to realize you’ve been silenced.

If the platform tags your post as being “in violation of regulations” and just deletes it, at least there’s some transparency. But many platforms choose a different method:

With no notice, no warning, no deletion, and no chance to appeal, your comment is simply set to "visible only to author."

What do you see?

✅ A notification that your comment was posted successfully

✅ "Normal visibility" in the comments section

❌ No Likes, no replies

So you’ll probably blame yourself, and think: "Maybe my comment wasn’t worthwhile."

Nope. It’s not that it wasn’t worthwhile, the point is that nobody can see it.

The brilliance of shadow-banning comments is that it transforms platform decisions into self-doubt.

If they delete your post, you question the platform.

If they ban your account, it highlights the adversarial relationship.

If they shadow-ban it, you start to doubt yourself.

In each of these cases, they wield their power with completely different effects. Most platforms choose the third, because it’s the easiest, stealthiest, and most stifling. You won’t get mad, you’ll just waste your time with self-recrimination about whether your phrasing was too extreme, your argument too muddled, your EQ too low, or if you just lack the ability to “read the room” …

The platform doesn’t need to say a word, because you’re already censoring yourself on its behalf.

A comments section is, in essence, a public space in which others can see and respond. But shadow-banning does something truly low: maintaining the illusion that you’re speaking, while the reality is that they’ve stripped away anyone’s ability to hear you.

You’re not barred from speaking, but you’re only allowed to talk to yourself, to shout into the void. It’s very much like those fake steering wheels they give to patients in psychiatric hospitals, letting you think you’re in control when in fact the vehicle’s not running.

Ironically, the people most often silenced this way aren’t those hurling abuse, but those whose logic is sound but whose views lie outside the mainstream; those offering sober analysis without pandering to emotions; those seriously engaging with societal issues; and even those who merely criticize the platform itself.

Vulgar insults can be overtly deleted, but with viewpoints that "defy easy categorization and may be displeasing to some," it’s better for them to quietly vanish. They don’t clearly break the rules; deleting them outright would make the platform look bad; but they’re too potentially "disruptive" to be left alone.

So the optimal solution seems to be: let them "exist," but erase their societal impact.

We can put up with rules, moderation, even account bans—but only if the platform is upfront about them.

What’s scary about shadow-banning comments isn’t the restriction of expression, but the deprivation of our right to know. It rests on the arrogant premise that users don’t need to know the truth. They just need to be induced to speak less.

This isn’t a community, it’s a fenced-in pasture.

When you see a comments section that’s all consensus and harmony, don’t jump to conclusions: it’s very likely that you’re just seeing the remains of the cull.

Where did the dissenting opinions go?

They weren’t refuted, persuaded, or even deleted, just stealthily muted.

This generates the dangerous misperception among those who remain, that "everyone thinks this way."

If you find that your comments go unanswered for a long time; they don’t break the rules, but get zero engagement; or your friends can never see what you’ve posted …

… please remember that this isn’t about how well you express yourself, it’s not that no one agrees with you: it’s because the platform doesn’t want you to be seen.

Stop measuring your worth by the number of likes—this system corrupted that signal long ago.

Lastly, shadow-banned comments have never been a product of technical neutrality; they’re deliberately designed as an instrument of power. They’re efficient, quiet, and cheap. But at what cost?

Respect for users.

Honesty in public discourse.

The fundamental integrity of "community."

A platform that needs to rely on the illusion of free expression to maintain order isn’t really afraid of rule violations, but of real voices it can’t control. [Chinese]

Emergency Notice on Comprehensively Blocking International Traffic and Strictly Prohibiting Firewall-circumvention Services

Greetings:

In accordance with the latest requirements received from Shaanxi Telecom:

As of today, all IP addresses must completely block access to addresses outside the Chinese mainland, and international traffic must be blocked without exception. This includes, but is not limited to: Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and all other countries and regions. At the same time, it is strictly forbidden to host any kind of firewall circumvention-related service such as VPNs, proxies, etc.

All users, please carry out immediate self-inspection, focused on identifying the following:

• Services for accessing or relaying traffic outside mainland China
• Applications or activity involving VPNs, proxies, firewall-circumvention, etc.
• Abnormalities in up- or downstream traffic (such as peering, tunneling, etc.)

Enforcement:

• Detection of unauthorized firewall-circumvention or international traffic will result in immediate termination (IP blocked, server shut down)
• Data will not be retained after termination; backups must be completed beforehand.
• All consequences of suspension and termination resulting from unauthorized usage are the user’s responsibility. Our company assumes no responsibility.
• Past payments will not be refunded, and there will be no compensation for unused resources.
• No replacement, adjustment, or refund will be available under any circumstances for loss or disruption of existing services due to blocking of international traffic.
• Any subsequent lifting of the ban will be subject to notification from [Shaanxi] Telecom; our company [Qihang CDN] can offer no assurances.

Please treat this matter seriously and carry out immediate rectification to avoid unnecessary losses.

Thank you for your support and cooperation!

March 31, 2026 [Chinese]

Another of the documents is a purported invitation from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to a meeting on "strengthening management of unauthorized internet connections via dedicated cross-border data lines," a focus which suggests that the above corporate memo reflects a broader, coordinated strategy.

Memo from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology

Meeting Notice

China Telecom Corp. Ltd.; China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd.; China United Network Communications Group Co., Ltd.:

In order to strengthen management of unauthorized Internet connections via dedicated cross-border data lines, this office is convening a special meeting in room D103 of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s Xidan offices at 16:00 on Tuesday, April 7.

Supervisors from your work unit’s departments for planning and construction, network operations, and government and enterprise are requested to attend and bring relevant written documentation to the meeting. Please provide our office with attendees’ details by 14:00 on Tuesday, April 7.

[Seal: Bureau of Information and Communications Management, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology]

April 7, 2026

(Contact person and telephone [redacted])

CC: Cybersecurity Bureau [Chinese]

A third document is a purported invitation to a seminar on "Deep Study and Implementation of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Key Thoughts on National Cyber Power" at the Cyberspace Administration of China. The invitation’s contents do not establish a direct link with the "airports" crackdown, but reflect the same climate of steadily tightening control.

Letter of Invitation to a Symposium on In-depth Study and Implementation of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Key Thoughts on National Cyber Power

Comrade [redacted]:

In order to deepen study and implementation of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s key thoughts on national cyber power, the CAC has scheduled a symposium on that topic for 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, April 16 in meeting room 125 at our offices at 11 Chegongzhuang Avenue, Xicheng District [in Beijing]. The comrade with relevant responsibilities from [redacted] is cordially invited to attend; please fax the attached registration form to [redacted] by April 7.

Attendees are requested to arrive at the venue 20 minutes early to complete registration, and to leave cellphones in the security locker at the entrance and remain in the meeting room during the session. Your understanding and cooperation are appreciated.

Contact: [Name redacted] [Phone number redacted]
[Seal: CAC Secretariat]

April 2, 2026 [Chinese]

Jessica Batke and Laura Edelson described "airport" services as follows last year in their ChinaFile report, "The Locknet: How China Controls Its Internet and Why It Matters" (which they discussed in an interview with CDT):

These black-market circumvention services are euphemistically known as “airports” in China, because they connect users to a foreign internet. Such black-market services “always exist when there are barriers to and obstacles to what people want to do, and there’s an opportunity to arbitrage against that with a superior product,” notes Boehler, the media researcher. It’s hard to get a precise fix on how many such “airport” providers are out there—dozens? hundreds?—but the advertisements they post offer some insights into the scale of the market. For one, the advertised prices are quite low, with monthly fees ranging from 15 to 188 renminbi (approximately U.S.$2 to U.S.$26). “If you’re doing something that’s illegal, and the pricing is really low, that is an indication it’s so widespread you can monetize it at that level.” For another, the variety of offerings suggests a highly sophisticated, diversified, and “kind of pervasive” market. “There’s a lot of pricing competition, competition around features, countries you can tunnel into, the amount of servers they have, the throughput in terms of traffic,” Boehler explains.

Individual airports can serve thousands or even tens of thousands of customers, according to local governments that have prosecuted sellers. They can also provide the technical know-how to less tech-savvy users in order to successfully set up their services. “That’s exactly why [airports] exist,” says Boehler. “They don’t require any technical knowledge or paperwork or anything. You just go to Taobao or wherever, you buy a box and connect the box to your WiFi, and you have streaming services on your TV.” In fact, the relative ease of using these services “means that people might not be aware that they’re using airports. They might think they just bought a box. [They’re not thinking] ‘I’m subverting the Communist Party,’ but ‘I just want to watch Netflix.’ [The providers] don’t have to put a warning label, like ‘You’re committing a crime!’” (The unofficial nature of the airport market also gives scammers ample opportunity to bilk money from would-be users.) Source

Last November, China Media Project’s David Bandurski noted a warning from an AI-generated spokesperson for the Ministry of State Security against this and other dangers of "scaling the wall." At China Law Translate in February, Jeremy Daum noted the possibility that the new draft Cybercrime Law could bring further pressure on circumvention tools and services:

Some of the restrictions mentioned above touch on the use of VPNs and proxies, which are of particular concern because they are used by many to circumvent content restrictions and access foreign sites.

Losing access to effective VPNs and being cut off from the global web is a regular concern for many based in China. It is not entirely unfounded, as longstanding rules prohibit the unauthorized establishment of international connections or circumvention tools, and there have been periodic crackdowns reported. Enforcement tends to target those creating, selling, or providing others with circumvention tools, but there are confirmed incidents of people being fined for simply using such tools.

In the context of this draft, however, it is far from clear that there is an intention to move VPN usage further out of the gray area and towards a full prohibition, but it is worth following closely. [Source]