Below is a list of key topics and some related deleted articles from CDT’s summary of deleted content for May 2026. Between May 1-31, CDT Chinese added 43 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 May included:

• The participation of Chinese elementary school students in the Russian “Victory Day” Parade in Vladivostok
• Wuhan University distancing itself from an alumnus who created a controversial Mother’s Day ad for smartphone manufacturer OPPO
• The Liushenyu coal mine explosion in Shanxi province that killed 82 miners and injured 128
• A promising response from the Supreme People’s Court on LGBTQ+ rights
• German criminal prosecutions of men involved in a Chinese-language Telegram group that shared information on drugging and raping women
• Douyin’s banning of academic-fraud activist and whistleblower Geng Hongwei’s account
• Continuing police harassment of environmental activist Wu Qiang, in retaliation for his work exposing industrial pollution in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province
• Accusations that “foreign forces” are behind a food-safety scandal involving adulterated bayberries
• MSS claims that unnamed “foreign forces” are promoting “lying down” (slackerism) among Chinese youth

The participation of Chinese elementary school students in the Russian “Victory Day” Parade in Vladivostok

In early May, before the respective Xi-Trump and Xi-Putin summits, online controversy erupted over Sputnik news agency footage of Chinese schoolchildren, clad in retro Red Army uniforms, marching in a Vladivostok parade in the run-up to Russia’s May 9 “Victory Day” commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany in WWII. CDT editors observed unusually stringent censorship of the topic, with at least a dozen deleted articles, including one promptly scrubbed from the People’s Daily website.

Ceded by the Qing to Tsarist Russia in the mid-19th century period of “unequal treaties,” Vladivostok was later the site of massacres of ethnic Chinese residents. Many Chinese bloggers and commenters argued that given the city’s history, it was deeply offensive to allow Chinese schoolchildren to be used as “props” in a Russian military parade there. Some critics described it as “dancing on their ancestors’ graves” and “forgetting where they came from.” According to one widely circulated analogy: “It’s like if someone broke into your ancestral home, confiscated the house, and banished your ancestors, but generations later you decide to foot the bill to send your kids to the marauders’ commemoration.”

Some of the Vladivostok-themed deleted pieces were critical of the double standards applied to former Chinese territories now occupied by Russia, and those occupied by Japan or other nations with whom the PRC has a frostier diplomatic relationship. “When First-Graders Set Foot in the ‘Ruler of the East,’” a deleted long-form article from WeChat account 新观察笔记 (Xīnguānchá bǐjì, “Journal of New Observations”), makes this point in the excerpt below:

Today, 160 years after the fact, [unequal] treaties can go unmentioned, historical enmities can be set aside, and it’s fine to say that we should focus on the future. But standing in the middle of a city whose name means “Ruler of the East,” listening to declarations like "Our heroes fought for your children!" feels a bit like this: several generations after your family was dispossessed of their ancestral home, the descendants of the occupiers invite your kids into their yard and dress them up in old military uniforms to help celebrate their historical "victory." Call it what you will—friendship, exchange, or internationalism—but in this case, language obscures more than it reveals.

[…] The term "double standard" couldn’t be more apt here. Ponder this simple question: If a Western nation were still holding military parades in a city ceded from China, and inviting Chinese children to attend and help commemorate a "just war" totally unrelated to that city’s cession, how do you think the Chinese public would react?

I don’t think I need to spell it out; you know as well as I do what the reaction would be. On some historical questions, our reaction is knee-jerk, a conditioned response. But when it comes to Russia, there are suddenly all sorts of justifications: “it was understandable,” or “grounded in practical interests,” or “it’s time to turn the page on that history.” That’s not diplomatic caution, it’s a double standard. These two very different reaction systems operate in parallel and no one thinks it strange, but it is our "dual-SIM" mentality that gives rise to such absurdities. [Source]

Wuhan University distancing itself from a graduate who created a controversial Mother’s Day ad for smartphone manufacturer OPPO

Following PR fallout from OPPO’s Mother’s Day ad campaign (“my mom has two husbands,” about a fangirl mom who considers her entertainment idol her “second husband”), Wuhan University took the unusual step of distancing itself from one of its alumnae—OPPO China region brand strategy director, Yu Siyue, whose team created the controversial ad. The university’s response met with dismay and derision online, and CDT Chinese editors have archived five censored articles on the topic.

A deleted piece from current-affairs blogger Wei Chunliang, “Wuhan University, Please Treat Your Students With the Respect Adults Deserve,” describes the university’s response as “ridiculous” and writes that it was unlikely anyone would have drawn a connection between the director of the ad campaign and the school, had Wuhan University not made a point of calling attention to the matter. “Why Did Wuhan University Overreact Today?” by blogger Jiang Ye, describes the OPPO ad as “obscene and vulgar,” and posits that Wuhan University has become thin-skinned in response to various recent criticisms, thus explaining its assertive reaction to the OPPO flap. A deleted satirical piece, “A Mysterious Alien Force Has Invaded Wuhan University,” from WeChat account Liushen Leilei Reads Jin Yong, characterizes the university’s response as “bizarre” and jokes that perhaps its social media department has been overrun by hostile extraterrestrial forces.

A deleted article from a legal blogger, titled “Wuhan University Hands You a Rope,” suggests that OPPO would have been wise to consult its legal department before releasing the problematic ad, and then goes on to list some of Wuhan University’s more notorious alumni, including cadres imprisoned for corruption. Blogger Wang Wusi—via his oft-reincarnated WeChat account, now known as New New New Silence—mines a similar theme, mentioning the many ethical missteps of other Wuhan University alumni, including Xiaomi founder Lei Jun. Wang wonders why Wuhan University was so oddly critical of advertising exec Yu, while neglecting to distance itself from its many other, much more controversial alums.

The Liushenyu coal mine explosion in Shanxi province that killed 82 miners and injured 128

Public anger and attendant online censorship ran high after a May 22 gas explosion at Liushenyu coal mine in Shanxi province killed at least 82 miners and injured 128 others—China’s deadliest mine accident in nearly 17 years. While the cause of the accident remains under investigation by a team assembled by China’s State Council, Xinhua reported that “concealed mining tunnels, falsified drawings and outsourced and unregistered ⁠miners, who had not been provided with required life-saving location trackers, were contributing factors to the deadly incident.”

CDT Chinese editors archived nine articles about the mine disaster, at least three of which were deleted from WeChat. One of the censored pieces, from Xu Peng’s WeChat account History Rhymes, focused on the workers and families affected, and speculated about whether the names of the 82 miners who died in the disaster will ever be made public. Another deleted article on a similar theme, from former journalist Huang Zhijie, argued that the best way to prevent cover-ups of mining and other industrial accidents is to release the lists of victim names.

“The Moment Instructions Came Down From Beijing, the Death Toll in the Shanxi Coal Mine Disaster Rose Tenfold,” from WeChat blogger Li Yuchen, includes a timeline showing that as soon as higher authorities in Beijing issued instructions to be more forthcoming in releasing information, the reported death toll in the mine disaster quickly went from eight to 82, suggesting that information on casualties had been suppressed. A portion of Li’s translated article appears below:

So 247 people went down into the mine. That number, 247, was in compliance with procedure. Eight deaths were reported, then 82, then 90, all procedurally compliant. Past mine-safety violations resulted in fines, in compliance with procedure, but no shutdowns were ordered, because that wouldn’t be in line with procedure. Downplaying the initial death toll, then revising the figures upward? Just following procedure. Ren Tiezhu serving as a People’s Congress delegate, his mine being twice-fined but allowed to continue operating, and Ren being detained only after the tragedy occurred? Check, check, check—everything compliant with procedure.

Everyone behaved in accordance with procedure. Procedure wasn’t the problem—it was those 90 people trapped underground. Numbers like that are never released all at once: you report one figure first, wait for approval from the higher-ups, then report the next figure. That’s the procedure.

While search and rescue operations were still underway at Liushenyu mine, CCTV News reported that the State Council had issued a directive calling for “all-out efforts to locate and rescue trapped personnel, provide medical treatment to the injured, properly handle the aftermath of the accident, release information in a timely and accurate manner, ascertain the cause of the accident as soon as possible, and identify and punish those responsible in accordance with laws and regulations."

Note that one particular phrase: “Release information in a timely and accurate manner.”

[…] There is only reason for such an addition: the higher-ups had already anticipated that the information would not be released ‘in a timely or accurate manner.’” [Source]

A promising response from the Supreme People’s Court on LGBTQ+ rights

In May, Chinese LGBTQ+ groups reacted with various levels of optimism to news that China’s highest court, in a written reply to a citizen petition, considers “discrimination and rights violations based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression” to be unlawful in legal practice. The court’s reply, while not a binding legal document and not officially confirmed as genuine, was widely circulated online in screenshot form. It was reportedly issued in response to a request for legal clarification from a postgraduate in Qingdao (nicknamed “Xiao Tu”) who “urged the court to establish clearer judicial standards against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

CDT editors archived three deleted articles on the topic from LGBTQ+-themed WeChat accounts, expressing support for the court’s response and interpreting it as a positive sign. One author praised Xiao Tu’s proactive approach, observing that such efforts to spur progress should be supported and perhaps even emulated. An archived piece from WeChat account “The Harmonious Rainbow Speaks” described the court’s response as “a belated but significant reassurance” whose value “lies not only in reviewing past precedents, but also in clarifying the direction for the future.” Another archived article, from WeChat account “Action for Love,” was perhaps the most optimistic, praising the court’s response as a “landmark document in the history of Chinese jurisprudence, signifying equal protection for sexual minorities.” But the mere fact that these three predominantly laudatory articles were censored indicates the continuing suppression of online discussion about LGBTQ+ rights and legal efforts to combat discrimination in schools, workplaces, and the courts.

German criminal prosecution of one of eight men involved in a Chinese-language Telegram group that shared information on drugging and raping women

In May, CDT editors archived four censored articles about international criminal investigations and prosecutions of eight men (including a doctor, an IT manager, and graduate students) involved in a Chinese-language Telegram group that shared content and information about the drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) of women. The most recent court case concluded in April in Munich, where a man named Jiang Zhongyi was sentenced to over 11 years in prison on two counts of attempted murder and seven counts of aggravated rape. The investigations and prosecutions have attracted much attention on Chinese social media, with many netizens wondering why—given the fact that nearly all of the perpetrators and victims were Chinese, and that while most of the assaults occurred overseas, some took place in China—it wasn’t until overseas law enforcement got involved that the group was disbanded and its members arrested and tried.

All of this month’s four deleted articles on the topic (1, 2, 3, and 4) are long-form pieces that list the names of the men, the details of their crimes, the criminal charges filed against them, and the length of their prison sentences (the maximum sentence thus far was 14 years; one of the accused committed suicide while awaiting trial). Ongoing online censorship about the group and the trials has focused mainly on articles from feminist-themed accounts, and indicates the shrinking online space for discussion about topics ranging from sexual assault and violence against women, to feminism and women’s rights.

Douyin’s banning of academic-fraud activist and whistleblower Geng Hongwei’s account

In May, amid news that Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese counterpart) had banned the account of academic-fraud activist and whistleblower Geng Hongwei—also known online as “classmate Geng”—CDT editors archived two censored articles about Geng and his invaluable contributions to academic honesty and accountability. A former doctoral candidate turned academic-fraud whistleblower, Geng has leveraged the powers of AI and online video platforms to expose numerous cases of data manipulation and other forms of academic fraud, resulting in the dismissal of some very prominent academics and sending a collective shiver through the halls of Chinese academe. In one of the deleted pieces, “In Support of Classmate Geng: Our Society Should Be Tolerant of People Who Want to Make Things Better,” former journalist Huang Zhijie argues that depriving Geng of his living and his online following (over two million on Douyin and over two million on Bilibili, at last count) is unfair, and a way of punishing the messenger rather than addressing the problem. Another censored piece from WeChat blogger Mu Bai, “How Did ‘Classmate Geng’ End Up Like This?” also addresses the unfairness of punishing Geng for simply exposing the malfeasance of others.

Continuing police harassment of environmental activist Wu Qiang, in retaliation for his work exposing industrial pollution in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province

CDT also archived two deleted articles, both published in late May, about the continuing police harassment of environmental activist Wu Qiang, and about the mistreatment he suffered while he was being held in detention last year. Wu himself describes how in April 2025, just two days after filming and posting a video showing water pollution in a local river, he was arrested on charges of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." During his year-long detention in a detention center, Wu alleges he was subjected to sustained sleep deprivation, forced labor, restricted food and water, and hours of being made to stand on his feet. Upon completing his sentence, Wu was placed under a further six-month period of "residential surveillance," which his defense lawyer has argued is illegal, because his sentence cannot be increased on appeal and the original term has already been served. Now, a year after Wu’s release, police have been pressuring him to delete videos documenting his case, summoned him to a police station, and warned him that any further posts will result in immediate detention, suggesting that the authorities’ primary concern is suppressing Wu’s account of his mistreatment.

Accusations that “foreign forces” are behind a food-safety scandal involving adulterated bayberries

After authorities in Fujian province punished nearly two dozen officials in May for oversight failures regarding illegal adulteration of fresh bayberries (such as soaking them in the preservative sodium dehydroacetate, banned in China for use in fresh fruit), an online commenter suggested that outside elements had “maliciously hyped” the story to stir public anxiety about food safety. WeChat public account Old Xiao’s Random Jottings responded with a scathing assault on the rhetorical strategies used to deflect or diminish China’s many food safety scandals, the weaponization of patriotic posturing, and the tendency to blame those who highlight problems instead of those who actually caused them. An excerpt from that archived and translated article appears below:

What’s really hurting fruit farmers isn’t the people raising the problem, it’s conspiracy theories about external forces that undermine normal regulatory efforts, hinder solutions to the problem, and end up harming the whole fruit sector.

The real crisis isn’t "external forces" magnifying anxiety, it’s the discourse trap that equates "raising questions” with “hurting farmers” and “being unpatriotic." This zips people’s mouths shut so that no one dares speak out, and allows dishonest vendors to go on making their dirty money and negligent regulators to keep slacking off.

The toxins in doped bayberries won’t become a miracle cure if you stick a "foreign forces" label on them, just as the dogshit on your shoe won’t become less sticky or less stinky if you say "external forces" shat it out.

If you’re using tricks like this to cover up problems, you’d be better off blaming everything on the moon’s gravitational pull. At least that way, you’ll still look pretty smart, because no “cosmic forces” are going to show up and start disputing your point. It’s certainly a step up from lazily scapegoating "external forces."

Is there anything lower than making dirty money and shirking one’s official duties, on one hand, while raising a memorial arch proclaiming "We care about the nation and its people," on the other?

As long as these human offal exist and are able to go on conning people, they’ll just keep wreaking general havoc, and the nation and society will suffer for it. [Source]

MSS claims that unnamed “foreign forces” are promoting “lying down” (slackerism) among Chinese youth

On the topic of unfounded accusations that “foreign forces” are fomenting all manner of societal ills, there continued to be some online censorship in May—following a raft of deleted pieces in April—of commentary on Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) claims that unnamed “foreign organizations” are trying to brainwash Chinese youth into “lying down” (slacking off). Back in April, these claims met with intense backlash online, as comments sections on Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Zhihu filled with responses challenging the framing and factuality of the MSS article, and pointing out that the slackerist movement is being driven by domestic socioeconomic forces such as high unemployment, unrelenting competition, excessive overtime and “996” schedules, weak labor-law enforcement, and declining social mobility.

On May 5, CDT Chinese editors archived a creatively humorous response, deleted from Q&A site Zhihu, in which the author purports to find “evidence” that hostile foreign forces have been wreaking havoc on China for millennia. Titled “Tao Yuanming’s ‘Lying Down’ Case: Ironclad Evidence of Foreign Infiltration into the Eastern Jin Dynasty,” the satirical piece dissects the “malign foreign hand” that purportedly prompted Tao (365–427 C.E.) to withdraw from the civil service into a life of idyllic rustication, filled with the pleasures of poetry, wine, farming, and the infrequent visitor. “Comrades, open your eyes to history!” exhorts the Zhihu author. “This case amply demonstrates that lying down is never a personal choice, but rather a conspiracy by foreign forces that has remained unchanged for thousands of years. […] We must be on guard against the various ‘contemporary Tao Yuanmings’ emerging on the internet today. […] Be vigilant, vigilant, vigilant!!”

For Apple users in China, the resulting situation is what the following meme describes as 一[苹]果两制 yī [píng]guǒ liǎng zhì, or "One Apple, Two Systems"—a pun on the official formulation 一国两制 yī guó liǎng zhì, or "One Country, Two Systems," referring to the principle by which Hong Kong and Macau exercise increasingly limited autonomy within China.

“Others are already using AI. You’re still waiting for Siri to evolve
One world, different permissions
Apple Intelligence
iOS 27 • International Edition
‘One Apple, Two Systems’
One world, two kinds of Siri.”

In the E.U.’s case, the issue is the requirement under the Digital Markets Act that third-party AI services must receive the same data and system access as Apple’s own. The company issued a lengthy statement this week arguing that this would present unacceptable privacy and security risks, and criticizing European regulators’ "extreme interpretation" of the law and refusal to accept compromises it had offered.

Curiously, Apple does not appear to have published any similarly in-depth explanation and objection in China’s case, offering only a footnote saying that "Siri AI and the other new Apple Intelligence features will not be available in China while Apple works through regulatory requirements." The company has worked with local partners to enable a Chinese launch of earlier Apple Intelligence features, which were announced in mid-2024, but these efforts have yet to bear fruit. Apple Intelligence features did appear briefly on China-based devices in March of this year, but this was reportedly an error: Bloomberg Apple reporter Mark Gurman posted on X that "it’s been ready to go for months but Apple doesn’t yet have regulatory approval."

Political guardrails will be key among the regulatory requirements in question. The Wall Street Journal’s Stu Woo noted in December that domestic chatbots must undergo internal and external safety checks related to 31 risk categories, with “incitement to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system” topping the list. (Other risks cover less contentious ground such as promotion of violence or discrimination, or unauthorized use of others’ likeness.) One recent result is ByteDance chatbot Doubao’s refusal to explain the meaning of the English phrase "It’s my duty," which is associated with the 1989 Tiananmen protests.

Chinese users are hardly without domestic alternatives, and Apple is widely seen as lagging behind the competition even in markets where its AI features are actually available. But as illustrated by the controversial "Apple People vs Android People" discourse led by deplatformed former influencer Hu Chenfeng, the company and its products still have an aura of prestige and sophistication for many Chinese consumers. AI has also been more warmly embraced in China than in the West, so continuing to miss out on Apple Intelligence is galling for some.

For more on AI in the context of China’s online censorship, see China Media Project’s China Chatbot series, and related discussion in our interview with "Locknet" report authors Jessica Battke and Laura Edelson.

What does [the English phrase] "it’s my duty" mean?

This content is in suspected violation of Doubao’s terms of use. If you believe this is an error, please press and hold this message and select "Dislike" to submit feedback. [Chinese]

"It’s my duty" refers to an iconic scene from the BBC’s coverage of the 1989 protest movement before its violent suppression. The clip was filmed by a BBC crew driving alongside a young man cycling joyfully through Beijing wearing a red headband. Asked where he was headed, the man responded in English: "Going to march! Tiananmen Square! … Why? I think it’s my duty!"

The clip captures something of the protest movement’s optimism and sense of possibility, now often forgotten in the shadow of the subsequent tragedy. The phrase "it’s my duty"—either in English or in Chinese transliterations like 麦丢替 mài diūtì—has become a potent symbol of protest and defiance. CDT Chinese reported that the phrase was blocked on Weibo after users posted it en masse around June 4, 2022. It appeared again later that year amid the White Paper protests in Beijing against draconian zero-COVID policies, in a prose poem recited by a Chinese student at Columbia, and in a song inspired by the poem the following year.

A more ironic echo of the phrase came after a pro-democracy protester was beaten and dragged onto the grounds of China’s consulate in Manchester, U.K. in October 2022. After being filmed pulling a protester’s hair, consul-general Zheng Xiyuan explained to reporters that "he was abusing my country, my leader. I think it’s my duty."

CDT Chinese editors noted that three other PRC-based chatbots proved similarly evasive about the anniversary. More traditional temporary controls were also in evidence this year, such as blocks on profile changes or candle emoji. KFC’s regular "Crazy Thursday" promotion was caught in the crossfire because it happened to fall on June 4, while Taylor Swift’s album "1989" (named for her birth year) could not be shared on QQ Music. The Weibo account of the British Embassy in Beijing was reportedly suspended in response to a post about the anniversary; the account is back, but the post is not.

For more on June 4th-related censorship, see our recent collection of search-censored "sensitive words." For more on AI in the context of China’s online censorship, see China Media Project’s China Chatbot series, and related discussion in our interview with "Locknet" report authors Jessica Battke and Laura Edelson.

While eating bayberries recently, I bit into the most ridiculous "truth" under heaven: it turns out that all those cases of bayberries soaked in illegal preservatives were not, at heart, a matter of unscrupulous homegrown profiteering. It was all the sneaky doing of vile "external forces."

With one flap of the lips, someone elevates a clear matter of right and wrong to the level of us-vs-them contradiction and the fate of the nation.

"First strawberries, then bayberries, then lychees: it feels like external forces are actively working to harm our Chinese fruit farmers."

Each of these incidents is a deliberate attempt by external forces to "strike at our country’s agricultural sector" by "amplifying food safety anxiety."

The rise and fall of nations rests upon a single poisoned bayberry … what a waste that the creative genius behind that concept isn’t in Hollywood writing spy thrillers.

In the eyes of "strategic geniuses" like this, the concrete pools for soaking adulterated bayberries were secretly dug by spies in the dead of night. The illegal sodium dehydroacetate was smuggled over the mountains and furtively poured in. All that’s missing is a signed confession from a crooked local vendor caught red-handed, twisted to show "an innocent coerced into a life of crime by malign external forces."

As if this gang of crooked scoundrels were just honest merchants, pure as the driven snow, who would never have dreamed of doing something so grubby were it not for “external forces’” pointing a gun at their heads.

The implication is clear: if you dare to dig for the truth, to raise uncomfortable questions, then you’re a traitor in the pay of the U.S., helping "external forces" wage public opinion warfare.

Those able to muddy the waters like this are more cunning than a swindler at the mahjong table. After sneaking good tiles into their own hand and filling their pockets with winnings, they insist on sweeping the whole table into chaos, banging their fist and yelling "Someone messed with the shuffle!" and leaving everyone else at the table in confusion and wondering who the guilty party is.

Every case of excessive agricultural residue that’s been made public to date, like illegally adding sodium dehydroacetate to bayberries, or detection of the illegal insecticide carbofuran in freeze-dried strawberries or excessive levels of carbendazim in lychees, involved illegal practices by domestic traders to increase shelf life or sweetness and cut costs. In none of them has any official investigation revealed the involvement of foreign forces.

Agricultural espionage cases reported by the state security organs have focused on theft of parent seed stock or agricultural data, not issues of pesticide residue in agricultural produce. The goals, methods, and legal nature of these two things are completely unrelated to one another.

Some might say these braindead arguments aren’t worth responding to. The problem is, however you look at it, their blathering this time doesn’t seem merely thoughtless. This kind of malicious, deliberate misdirection is even more detestable than mindlessly spewing bullshit. Bullshit is thoughtless, while malice is calculated. This is not a trivial distinction.

After all these years, I’ve come up with this rule of thumb: almost inevitably, whatever the situation, when someone brings up hostile foreign forces, they have no intention of being reasonable about it.

Thinking it over, those dragging external forces into the bayberry doping affair tend to be one of three types of lowlife:

First, those who dress stupidity up as sense using patriotism as a business strategy.

They can twist any topic into a political stance: even eating fruit can be spun as some sort of “divine mission.” The moment you raise an issue with bayberries, they accuse you of being “unpatriotic.” In one breath, they’ll say “the enemy wants us in disarray”; in the next, they’ll claim, “you’re aiding the enemy.”

They can’t even be bothered to learn what sodium dehydroacetate is, and are hazy on whether you can add preservatives to fresh fruit, yet they dare denounce people as traitors for asking questions. When you bring up facts and regulations with them, they’ll respond with political posturing and conspiracy theories. Patriotism is an all-purpose brick you can use anywhere, ideal for blocking up the mouths of ordinary people.

Are they stupid? Not necessarily: it’s just that they’re rotten to the core, wielding patriotism as a talisman while helping bad guys cheat our own people and imagining that they’re doing Heaven’s will.

The second group are shills for corrupt business interests.

They know better than anyone who’s really soaking bayberries: local brokers who’d pour any illegal chemical into the tanks if it meant a longer-lasting product and doubled profits. These types have less shame than snake-oil salesmen.

But they insist no one can lift the lid on it, and lay the whole thing at the feet of “external forces,” like a thief who snatches a wallet, points the finger at someone else, shouts “Stop that thief!” and while everyone’s distracted by the commotion, hides the loot neatly away.

Since foreign forces are invisible and intangible, it costs nothing to throw the label around. If you can muddy the waters, it’ll completely obscure the homegrown corruption, and the ill-gotten gains will pour in.

Do they believe these conspiracy theories, you might ask? Not in the least, it’s all to help the villains keep things under wraps. The whole fruit market suffers the rot, the masses get cheated, and these purveyors of conspiracy theories are the ones raking in the cash.

The third kind, most odious of all, are the craven officials trying to duck their regulatory duties.

There are massive loopholes in oversight, additive bans go unenforced, and inspections of violations are cursory at best. When the public raises questions, instead of reflecting on their own dereliction of duty, the officials leap straight to yelling “This is sabotage by external forces!” Inadequate oversight isn’t our fault, they claim—the enemy is simply too cunning.

Every case investigated by our own law enforcement agencies has been traced back to domestic illegal manufacturing operations, with not a hint of foreign forces to be found.

Why not say external forces meddled with that sampling gear you’re holding, and forced you to dilute those regulations you made?

Pulling out the great banner of “external forces” whenever problems arise is typical scapegoating rhetoric. In essence, it’s evasion of responsibility for industrial oversight and management.

This bunch of garbage people have scraped together another pile of spurious excuses: "Talking about toxicity without taking into account the dosage is just scaremongering."

There’s some scientific truth in this: the error is in using it as a blanket denial of dangers from agricultural residue. The key distinction is that detecting trace amounts of legal residue ≠ detecting excessive or illegal residue.

Refusing to carry out spot-checks or accept responsibility because "trace amounts are harmless" amounts to tacitly condoning the argument that "as long as it’s within statutory limits, anything goes."

Tell them that "this chemical isn’t allowed anyway," and they reply "toxicology tests are part of the compliance process." Tell them "consuming ten times the limit is harmful," and they’ll say "trace amounts never killed anyone."

If little old me was to sprinkle 0.01g of arsenic onto your rice right now, could I then claim with confidence, "Toxicity depends on the dosage! A little residue won’t kill you, so all this moaning of yours is just scaremongering!"

When did the state say it was OK to soak fresh fruit in banned preservatives? The point of the GB 2763 National Food Safety Standard MRLs for Pesticides in Foods is to set red lines for safe use of compliant agricultural chemicals, not to give illegal or illegally applied ones the green light.

‌"Trace residues aren’t harmful" is fine in the context of legally compliant use, but it has no explanatory power when it comes to illegal additives. Consumers are worried about "unwitting high-risk exposure," not "theoretical risk at lab-measured doses."

The nonsense deepens with this claim: "No food’s clean under a microscope." Consumers can eat fresh fruit that meets national safety standards without a care in the world; there’s no need to talk about "no food being clean under a microscope" to justify illegal practices.

Pursuing absolute zero toxicity was never the point of the current regulations. The point is effective enforcement of bans and limits, and accountability for overstepping, so the masses have a baseline of safety they can rely on.

What the public objects to has never been legally compliant residue, it’s people secretly using banned chemicals, endangering others’ lives by overusing them, and not being held to account when people get sick. When has anyone ever demanded absolutely zero residue?

Why not mention that our fruit exports to the E.U. consistently meet standards far higher than those we have at home? We can control these things when we want to, but domestic regulations are lax, and the cost of flouting them is low.

The most stomach-turning thing of all is using the argument "But it harms fruit growers" as a cudgel. Saying that exposing the problem has wrecked their livelihoods—but who is it who’s really driven honest farmers to despair?

Fruit growers who play by the rules incur costs 50% higher than those selling adulterated fruit, and now sales are down across the industry in the wake of the scandal. And then you don’t blame the profiteers, you don’t fix the regulatory loopholes—you just attack those who exposed and questioned these practices. Isn’t that a bit like a murderer taking hostages to use as human shields, and then having the nerve to claim it’s for their own good?

What’s really hurting fruit farmers isn’t the people raising the problem, it’s conspiracy theories about external forces that undermine normal regulatory efforts, hinder solutions to the problem, and end up harming the whole fruit sector.

The real crisis isn’t "external forces" magnifying anxiety, it’s the discourse trap that equates "raising questions” with “hurting farmers” and “being unpatriotic." This zips people’s mouths shut so that no one dares speak out, and allows dishonest vendors to go on making their dirty money and negligent regulators to keep slacking off.

The toxins in doped bayberries won’t become a miracle cure if you stick a "foreign forces" label on them, just as the dogshit on your shoe won’t become less sticky or less stinky if you say "external forces" shat it out.

If you’re using tricks like this to cover up problems, you’d be better off blaming everything on the moon’s gravitational pull. At least that way, you’ll still look pretty smart, because no “cosmic forces” are going to show up and start disputing your point. It’s certainly a step up from lazily scapegoating "external forces."

Is there anything lower than making dirty money and shirking one’s official duties, on one hand, while raising a memorial arch proclaiming "We care about the nation and its people," on the other?

As long as these human offal exist and are able to go on conning people, they’ll just keep wreaking general havoc, and the nation and society will suffer for it. [Chinese]

Another response to the bayberries scandal came from Wang Wusi at the serially reincarnated WeChat account New New New Silence, who used it as the launchpad for an energetic barrage against prominent nationalist academics.

Direct references:

• 六四 liùsì, "64" in Chinese characters
• 六4 liù4, "64" in a mix of Chinese and Arabic numerals
• 6肆 6sì, another mix using an anti-fraud character for "4"
• 陆肆 lùsì, 64 in anti-fraud characters
• 8 de + píngfāng, "8 squared"
• 535 + 64. “535” refers to “May 35th,” a coded reference to June 4th that is now itself targeted for censorship
• 64 + 29 nián, "64 + 29 years," likely carried over from 2018

Person + incident:

• 胡耀邦+六四+纪念 ‌Hú Yàobāng + liùsì + jìniàn, "Hu Yaobang + 64 + commemoration." Hu was the popular General Secretary whose death on April 15, 1989 triggered the movement that was crushed on June 4th.
• 耀邦+六四 ‌Yàobāng + liùsì, "Yaobang + 64"
• 耀邦+周年 ‌Yàobāng + zhōunián, "Yaobang + anniversary"
• 胡耀邦天安门 ‌Hú Yàobāng Tiān’ānmén, "Hu Yaobang Tiananmen"
• 习近平+天安门母亲 Xí Jìnpíng + Tiān’ānmén Mǔqīn, "Xi Jinping + Tiananmen Mothers"

Setting + action:

• 六四烛光 ‌liùsì zhúguāng, "64 candlelight"
• 六四戒严 ‌liùsì jièyán, "64 impose martial law"
• 六四+冤魂 liùsì + yuānhún, "64 vengeful spirits"
• 屠城 ‌túchéng, "butcher a city"
• 流血事件 ‌liúxuè shìjiàn, "bloodletting incident"
• 坦克+安门 tǎnkè + ānmén, "tank + …anmen," likely blocked in response to use of "…anmen" as a censorship evasion term without the "Tian"
• 烧坦克 ‌shāo tǎnkè, "burning tank"
• 人+坦克 ‌rén tǎnkè, "person + tank"
• 坦克+人 tǎnkè rén, "tank + person"
• 事件+坦克 ‌shìjiàn tǎnkè, "incident + tank"
• 枪声+广场 qiāng shēng guǎngchǎng, "gunfire + square"

Coded variants:

• 学运 xué yùn, "student movement"
• 學運 xué yùn, "student movement" in traditional characters
• 八九年 bājiǔ nián, "’89"
• 32年前 32 nián qián, "32 years ago," likely carried over from 2021
• 32年前+民主 32 nián qián + mínzhǔ, "32 years ago + democracy"
• 天安門 ‌Tiān’ānmén, "Tiananmen" in traditional characters
• 天安门 Tiān’ānmén, "Tiananmen" in simplified characters
• 惨案+六十四 cǎn’àn liùshísì, "massacre + sixty four"
• 六十四+惨案 liùshísì + cǎn’àn, "sixty four + massacre"

Other:

• 64+分化 ‌64 + fēnhuà, "64 + division"
• 6+4+领袖 ‌6 + 4 + lǐngxiù, "6 + 4 + leader"
• 64+领袖 64 + lǐngxiù‌, "64 + leader"
• 6+4+祭 ‌6 + 4 + jì, "6 + 4 + memorial"
• 期間+64 qíjiān + 64‌, "period + 64" in traditional characters

CDT Chinese editors highlighted the term “64 + division” as “worth noting. This phrase hints at the authorities’ high level of alertness for societal polarization resulting from the topic of June 4.” Other topics in the Chinese Sensitive Words post include Taiwan, Trump and Putin’s recent state visits to Beijing, the alleged role of foreign forces in encouraging young Chinese to slack off, and a vehicular attack in Chengdu last month.

Coverage of the anniversary elsewhere includes reports on the unprecedented ban on cemetery visits by the Tiananmen Mothers, parents of the crackdown’s victims. The group issued its annual statement ahead of the anniversary:

We reaffirm our three longstanding demands:

Disclose the full truth of the June Fourth Massacre;

Provide just compensation for the victims and their families;

Hold those responsible legally accountable in accordance with the law. [Source]

The Hoover Institution’s Rowena He wrote on the cemetery ban at The Diplomat:

For over three decades, Wan’an Cemetery served as the sole sanctioned space where grieving families could mourn together each June 4 – though always under heavy police surveillance. When I showed footage of the cemetery grounds to my Harvard freshman class 15 years ago, my students were stunned to see surveillance cameras deliberately installed over the burial sites of Tiananmen victims. Even the headstones told a story of fear: many originally omitted “June 4” as the date of death, with families adding it only years later.

[…] For decades, the CCP barely tolerated the Tiananmen Mothers’ quiet grief, allowing them limited space to mourn once a year while suppressing all public memory. But this fragile status quo shattered when a six-hour video of Major General Xu Qinxian’s 1990 secret military trial was recently leaked. Xu, commander of the 38th Army, had refused to deploy his troops to crush the 1989 protest movement. For this act of conscience, he was court-martialed, imprisoned for five years, and expelled from the CCP. His trial revealed what the regime had long concealed: that even within the military, there had been opposition – and that the supposed “consensus” about June 4 was enforced through punishment and fear.

The leak represented a dangerous crack in the official memory. The Tiananmen Mothers, with their persistent documentation and annual commemorations, suddenly posed a greater threat to a regime whose legitimacy rests on lies. They were not only grieving parents but keepers of a counter-memory that could now connect to evidence of elite resistance. [Source]

CDT Chinese published a 70,000-character transcript of the trial video in December, while CDT English collected commentary on the video’s context, provenance, and significance.

Elsewhere, Hong Kong Free Press covered the "patriotic" carnival that has replaced the city’s traditional commemorations in recent years, as well as police interference with smaller-scale commemorative activities and the criminal trials of other activists. New Bloom’s Brian Hioe noted support for Hong Kong activists from their counterparts in Taiwan, while Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te himself posted a statement expressing "hope that China can face up to the June 4 incident of 37 years ago, acknowledge the truth, soothe the pain, and open the door to reconciliation and dialogue."

At China Books Review, Yangyang Cheng examined Tiananmen in Chinese and diasporic fiction, and the Party’s own shifting narratives about it. In the Lingua Sinica newsletter, China Media Project’s David Bandurski identified June Fourth as a pivotal moment in the Party’s approach to narrative control in general: "For the hardliners who prevailed in that fateful political moment, the upheaval that spring was first and foremost a failure of media policy. And that perceived failure would shape the Party’s approach to media and information for decades to come, right through Xi Jinping’s undisguised declaration of media subservience in 2016." The Guardian’s Amy Hawkins, meanwhile, profiled the China Unofficial Archives project that aims to gather and preserve alternative materials on June Fourth and other sensitive topics.

2026: Deregistration

An ordinary night in April 2026.

An inquisitive alumnus realised that that campus media outlet’s Weibo account had been deregistered. Its WeChat account showed as deregistered as well. They entered the account name they’d used for a decade: nothing. Searched again: nothing. Tried a different platform: nothing.

More than 600 articles, accumulated over 20 years. The blood, tears, arguments, and reconciliations of so many successive cohorts of students. A place where so many young people fought their way through confusion and found clarity.

Wiped out in a single click.

There was no announcement or explanation, no "thanks for your efforts over the past 20 years," no "goodbye."

It’s like walking past a place you lived for a long time and realising that the house number’s been taken down, the door’s locked, and the curtains are closed. You stand on the doorstep, not knowing what happened or even who to ask about it.

People in the comments said: "It wasn’t enough to stop updating the account? They had to wipe the old content as well?"

Stopping updates meant goodbye; wiping the account deleted even the evidence of that.

What happened between 2016 and 2026 wasn’t a sudden disappearance but a gradual process, a matter of degrees. First the range of possible reporting shrank; then the space for doing that reporting went away; then the name of the organization fell out of use; until at last, every trace of its existence was expunged from the digital world..

There are probably many reasons. In the current environment, campus new media’s submission, review, and content management oversight has become standard practice at universities across the country. As adults, years later, many people express understanding of this cautious management. Every era has its problems, and every job its challenges.

But there’s one thing that many people have found regrettable: there was never any explanation.

It’s not that they can’t accept an outlet’s closure. Every story comes to an end. But if a place has sustained so many through their youth, then when it’s time for it to depart, perhaps a word of farewell is in order. Just one.

Declining, but not alone

The decline of campus media never took place in isolation.

It was part of the same shift as the disappearance of news kiosks on campus: the "news grandpa" who’d run his stand for more than 20 years said: "If I stop selling papers here, no one will." It was part of the same shift as the departure of campus bookstores: the retreat of academic bookstores like Shengshiqing and Moxiang meant fewer spaces to sustain intellectual culture. It was part of the same shift as the changes in campus management: the installation of turnstiles changed the university’s traditional openness. It was part of the same shift as the controversy over journalistic training: with people calling journalism a "dead-end major" and students switching careers as soon as they graduated, the plight of campus media was just a microcosm of the waning appeal of the journalism industry as a whole.

This is the challenge of our era.

We happen to have experienced a period of phenomenally swift change. In 2016, a WeChat public account could still catapult an ordinary person to unlikely prominence. Now, in 2026, the information ecosystem looks completely different. The past decade has seen the remolding of information channels, the maturation of the attention economy, and the continuous optimization of strategies for managing them.

In such an era, the departure of that campus media outlet, like those of its peers, was all but inevitable.

They were too slow. Deep investigative reporting takes weeks, but hot topics cool down within hours.

They were too unruly. Student reporters lack "a proper sense of restraint," and tend to push the boundaries.

They were too idealistic. In the age of AI, they still believe that "journalism should record the truth."

So they had to yield, in the name of "safety," "efficiency," and "stability."

But stepping aside doesn’t mean disappearing.

An anthropologist once said that each of us is a convergence of elements in the world, a temporary convergence under historical conditions. There are things that must yield to reality’s demands, and spaces that need to be repurposed. But stepping aside doesn’t mean leaving nothing behind, like a certain quality, a certain spirit.

The scent of hotpot

That campus media outlet could be wiped off the servers, but its deep influence on a generation of people can’t be deleted.

The habit of asking tough questions honed in pitch meetings, the empathy cultivated through interviewing, the patience gained through writing … these "aromas" will linger throughout their lives.

Some became journalists, some teachers, some entrepreneurs. Some sit in offices, staring blankly at blank documents. But they all remember that "hotpot," and those indelible words: "To enduring insight."

Perhaps all we can do for now is preserve the fragments that can still be found: screenshots, PDFs, print editions, residual back-end data. Gather the fragments, and piece together the memories.

Then: wait.

Wait for a day when spring comes again. Wait for a day when the flame’s lit under a new hotpot. Wait for a day when young people can sit together again and debate what stories should be covered, believing in the power of words and in "striving to capture complex truth in elegant prose."

An Exquisite Heart [an allusion to Shang Dynasty minister Bi Gan, executed for his candid criticism of the ruler]

We’ve hit rock bottom. Renmin University student publication Youth, Peking University’s Here, our own Xueren, they’re all gone, though something of them lives on.

This is an attitude I came to after living through some life-and-death experiences. Compared with challenges like that, I have no real complaints about most things, only a slight sense of regret.

What’s regrettable is that there’s one less training ground for young people who might have become journalists, authors, or social commentators. What’s regrettable is that there’s one less channel for telling the stories of delivery drivers, retired athletes, and marginalized people on campus.

But regret is not the end of it.

Through their 20 years of story selection, newsgathering, and drafting, the young people of that campus media outlet set a standard of curiosity, intellectual inquiry, and consideration for others. This standard isn’t bound to a particular building, title, or motto. It’s in the generations of people who passed through it.

Those of you who carry the “aroma” of that hotpot have scattered to the four corners of the earth.

Some are in media, doggedly pursuing deep investigations; some are in education, assuring students that their viewpoints matter; some are in the public benefit sector, busying themselves on behalf of underprivileged groups. Some are just ordinary people, but when they see injustice, they might still subconsciously ask the question: "Why?"

That’s the seed.

There’s no need for a spectacular comeback, just for preserving the habit of asking questions, the capacity for empathy, and the belief in the power of words among the cracks and corners of everyday life.

(As this story "went to press," the RedNote thread reporting the account’s disappearance was also “disappeared.” What are they so afraid of?)

Postscript: The age of AI, a new enemy, and what it means to be human

Having covered those ten years, this piece should end here.

But the story’s not over. Bitterness and difficulty are part of writing’s essence. The delete key is always the first to wear out, and the callus where you grip the pen is always the thickest. Maintaining your focus on writing and avoiding paralysis by perfectionism is an ongoing struggle to avoid losing your intuition for words, your perception of new phenomena, and your awareness of “what it means to be you.” Technological innovation can enforce higher productivity, but when it comes to crafting words that exhibit depth of thought, or political precision, or genuine warmth—that kind of writing requires a human being behind it.

If you’re writing about comprehensive rural revitalization, and don’t stand at the edge of the fields to see how the wheat seedlings are growing and how moist the soil is, you can’t convey the implacable urgency of the agricultural cycle. If you’re reporting on people’s livelihoods, and don’t listen to the old folks’ chatter in neighborhoods, villages, and towns, you can’t understand the dialectic that links day-to-day concerns with the big picture. If you’re writing a draft on risk governance without digging into "trouble zones” or wandering the “back alleyways,” you can’t gain a visceral understanding of the problems at hand.

AI can boil down a hundred reports to a single summary, but it can never take the place of a person squatting at the entrance to a courier station, waiting for an interviewee who’s willing to talk. It can mimic anyone’s voice, but it can never write about how something struck "me" at the instant of perception.

As long as there are people out there earnestly haggling over phrasing late at night, too excited by their subject to sleep, as long as there’s someone who believes that "this is worth writing about," then "The Snowman" has not yet melted. Bolstered by this era of big data, it will certainly be resurrected in a new, non-commercial form. When that time comes, it will certainly be a mighty and irresistible force, and everyone will be able to share in the joy that was once ours.

Of this I am certain.

Those outlets have faded, but have taken new forms, and will continue to grow.

Information in parts of this article is based on material from publications including the ‘Campus Media Development Report’ and ‘Chinese Higher Education Communications Media Unified Survey.’ All people are referred to using pseudonyms. Every effort has been made to ensure accuracy in the timeline and details; your understanding is requested in the event of any discrepancies. [Chinese]

On May 22, the China Securities Regulatory Commission announced that it would punish three popular stock-trading apps (Futu, Tiger Brokers and Long Bridge) for offering mainland Chinese investors access to overseas stocks without licenses. This was followed by the news that some banks in Hong Kong, seeking to comply with Beijing’s crackdown on capital flows, would require mainland clients seeking to open investment accounts to sign a ⁠declaration confirming their funds come from overseas rather than China.

At South China Morning Post, Zhang Shidong reported on the new restrictions and what they bode for Hong Kong’s stock market and for mainland investors:

The sweeping campaign may affect between HK$150 billion to HK$180 billion worth of assets owned by mainland Chinese investors with Hong Kong stock accounts at Futu Securities International, Tian Liang, chief financial analyst at Citic Securities, said in a note on Sunday. Between an estimated HK$45 billion and HK$50 billion of similar assets at Tiger Brokers could also be affected, he said, totaling around HK$250 billion worth of assets in Hong Kong when including amounts from other brokerages, such as Long Bridge Securities, which were affected by the crackdown, according to the report.

[…] The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) made an abrupt move on Friday to punish Futu, Tiger Brokers and Long Bridge for offering mainland Chinese investors trading access to overseas stocks without licenses. Gains from the unlicensed trades were confiscated by the regulator at all three organisations, and they were given two years to clean up the accounts, during which time stock buying would be prohibited and only selling would be allowed.

The move marks an escalation in a campaign that began at the end of 2022, when the CSRC first focused on unlicensed trading by banning Futu and its peers from adding new clients on the mainland. [Source]

CDT Chinese editors have compiled a selection of comments, translated below, from Xiaohongshu (RedNote) and X in response to the new policies. Some commenters bemoaned the fact that yet another investment avenue seems to have been cut off for mainland investors, and wondered why the announced retroactive audits of brokerage accounts would only go back three years, to January of 2023. Others suggested that Hong Kong’s economic policy is now being dictated by Beijing, and that Hong Kong’s loss of stature as a financial capital will likely be Singapore’s gain. Many commenters offered sardonic praise for the “wisdom” of these restrictive new financial policies:

Momo: Bummer that you can’t choose where you were born.

BLANC: Even assuming you can still make money on U.S. stocks, it’s getting harder to open an account.

别瞅: A financial system in ruins. [referring to Hong Kong]

Lord21: Hong Kong, a district of Shenzhen.

ALEX: “Asia’s financial hub”

牛哥: Singapore says: Turns out we can win without lifting a finger!

黑龙江小助手: The audits are only retroactive for three years? Shouldn’t that be “three decades”? [This refers to 2024 reports that China’s State Taxation Administration had conducted retroactive corporate tax audits going back twenty or even thirty years.]

Sth.Crazy: So they’re just going to ignore everything before January 2023? Seriously?

好想快啲退休: Exactly, now be a good little boy and do what mother says.

徐磊: Seems pointless to go there [HK] now. They’ll just ask where your money comes from, and if it’s from the mainland, odds are you won’t be allowed to open a brokerage account, anyway.

北山北下种番茄: Retail investors are state-owned assets. Futu and Tiger Brokers caused a hemorrhage of state-owned assets, so they deserve to be struck hard. I fully support this!

骆驼的咖啡馆: Now these funds will flow back in to prop up domestic markets …

JH@dream: I’m more worried about Hong Kong stocks. As a long-term Tencent shareholder, should I bail out ASAP? U.S. stocks probably won’t take much of a hit, but Hong Kong stocks are definitely going to go belly up.

two3pro: Capital flows follow their own logic. Meddling will only backfire.

xpnikapax: Excellent! Now we can finally achieve that laudable goal: “Don’t let capital flow abroad—everyone’s happier at home!”

realjiucai: How many more signals do slow-on-the-uptake people need before they get it: Hong Kong is done for!

twyard2013: Who’d have thought? They’re even nationalizing “the chives.” [Chinese]

On May 26, Bloomberg reported another type of outward-bound restriction—overseas travel for certain top Chinese AI professionals will now reportedly be subject to government approval:

China is restricting overseas travel for top AI professionals in private firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and DeepSeek, suggesting an escalation in measures intended to safeguard its technology and catch up to the US in a pivotal sphere.

Government agencies have begun imposing restrictions on individuals involved in advanced AI work and considered strategically important to the country, people familiar with the matter said. That means they need approval from relevant authorities before embarking on overseas travel, the people said, asking for anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

Beijing has for years imposed travel restrictions on key personnel from prominent college researchers to nuclear scientists and executives at state firms. The government is now specifically targeting talent within the AI sphere. Among the key industry professionals who’ve been informed they’ll be subject to such restrictions are a mix of startup founders, researchers and executives, the people said. [Source]

The news that the nation’s top AI engineers would now be regarded by the Chinese government as “strategic assets” was met with incredulity online, and speculation about whether this would undermine Chinese AI companies efforts to recruit and retain talent. A selection of online comments on the topic, from Xiaohongshu (RedNote) and X, are translated below:

giantcutie666: I thought it was a rumor, but turns out it’s actually a Bloomberg report. What genius came up with the brilliant idea of restricting top talent from leaving the country?

djkfxs: Damn, didn’t this sort of treatment used to apply only to government and SOE employees? Why are they doing it to private companies now?

james17_Canada: The CCP thinks that locking talented people up like prisoners means they’ll still be able to come with amazing inventions and innovations. It’s the height of idiocy.

old5: The flow of talent follows the direction of civilization.

shhhsjmm: The unspoken implication of this "exit requires approval" policy is terrifying: in this country, if your skills are considered valuable, you will forever be deprived of your freedom of movement. Your brain belongs to the rulers, and your rights are worth nothing.

xpnikapax: Don’t try to make a “run” for it, bros. The government has blocked off your escape routes. Just hunker down and “involute” at home.

BelloKevinBob: It’s looking more and more like the Cultural Revolution, when the country was closed off, and only top officials got to travel abroad. [Chinese]

In addition to expressions of sympathy for the victims and and concern about mine safety in general, many initial online reactions were critical of what appeared to be a cover-up of the true death toll—at least, until higher authorities in Beijing issued a directive demanding the timely and accurate release of information, at which point the reported death toll leaped from eight to 82. Also fueling public anger were reports that although 247 miners were underground at the time of the blast, only 124 were listed on the company’s public-notice board, meaning that 123 others were unregistered and unauthorized to enter the mine: the fact that their information was missing from the system further complicated search and rescue efforts. Several online articles expressed incredulity that no documentation could be found for those 123 workers, with one noting that in 2026—with all our cell phones, cameras, and sophisticated information technology—it is inconceivable that a mine could simply “lose track” of 123 people working underground, unless the elision was a deliberate attempt to skirt the law.

CDT Chinese editors have archived nine articles about the mine disaster, at least three of which have been deleted from WeChat. Two of the undeleted articles were from large news outlets Phoenix News (“Behind the ‘Hidden Coalfaces’: An Investigation into the Mine Disaster in Qinyuan, Shanxi Province”) and China Newsweek (“Exposing a Mine’s Hidden Facets: Fake Rectifications, Fake Shutdowns, Fake Data, Fake Blueprints, and Fake Reports.”) The Phoenix News article, published two days after the explosion, is a longform investigation into the many longstanding safety violations at the Liushenyu mine, including the existence of illegal, unregistered coalfaces (暗面, àn miàn): secret tunnels bricked up and concealed from inspectors, where workers labored without the required trackers, meaning rescuers had no way of locating them after the explosion. Workers describe a culture of routine safety violations and corner-cutting resulting in inadequate ventilation, substandard safety training, and outdated or poorly maintained equipment. The company is characterized as unusually stingy even by mining industry standards, with frequent wage arrears and workers forced to buy their own boots, bedding, and basic supplies.

A WeChat article from blogger Wei Chunliang, “The Shanxi Mine Disaster: The Deeper You Dig, the More Shocking It Is,” discusses some of the many serious and long-running safety violations at the mine, and marvels at the fact that they were allowed to go on for so long. A brief excerpt:

This coal mine is like a house with gaping holes on all four sides. If you wanted to plug those gaps, you’d hardly even know where to begin.

The mine’s safety management and oversight had completely collapsed. Even during the rescue operation, they were still lying and covering up, providing the rescue teams with useless, doctored blueprints. This prompted an outburst from the on-site operations commander: "Seriously? At a critical moment like this, you’re still trying to cover things up?" [Chinese]

One of the deleted articles archived by CDT is “The Moment Instructions Came Down From Beijing, the Death Toll in the Shanxi Coal Mine Disaster Rose Tenfold,” from WeChat account Li Yuchen. Li includes a timeline illustrating how, as soon as higher authorities in Beijing issued instructions to be more forthcoming in releasing information, the reported death toll in the mine disaster quickly went from eight to 82, suggesting that information on casualties had been suppressed. Li mentions that the mine had been fined twice for safety violations, but was allowed to continue operating, and suggests that tax revenue from the mine was too important to allow it to close down. He also notes that Ren Tiezhu, the chairman of the mining group and a two-time delegate to the Shanxi Provincial People’s Congress, has now been detained by the authorities. A portion of Li’s deleted article is translated below:

Looking back at May 23, the day after the mining disaster, the clearest record is Xinhua News Agency’s own timeline of the rescue effort.

Before dawn, there were four dead. At 7:19 a.m., eight dead. At 10:23 a.m., CCTV broadcasts the directive [calling for the public release of information]. At 12:46 p.m., over 50 are dead. At 1:06 p.m., 82 dead. At 2:00 p.m., the final report shows 82 dead, and nine still missing. Some outlets follow up with a figure of 90 deaths.

So this is what an official notification of a mining disaster looks like. There are still nine miners missing underground at Liushenyu. As for the 82 miners whose bodies were recovered, their numbers gradually appeared in the official reporting—but only in the hours after the central government directive was handed down.

So 247 people went down into the mine. That number, 247, was in compliance with procedure. Eight deaths were reported, then 82, then 90, all procedurally compliant. Past mine-safety violations resulted in fines, in compliance with procedure, but no shutdowns were ordered, because that wouldn’t be in line with procedure. Downplaying the initial death toll, then revising the figures upward? Just following procedure. Ren Tiezhu serving as a People’s Congress delegate, his mine being twice-fined but allowed to continue operating, and Ren being detained only after the tragedy occurred? Check, check, check—everything compliant with procedure.

Everyone behaved in accordance with procedure. Procedure wasn’t the problem—it was those 90 people trapped underground. Numbers like that are never released all at once: you report one figure first, wait for approval from the higher-ups, then report the next figure. That’s the procedure.

While search and rescue operations were still underway at Liushenyu mine, CCTV News reported that the State Council had issued a directive calling for “all-out efforts to locate and rescue trapped personnel, provide medical treatment to the injured, properly handle the aftermath of the accident, release information in a timely and accurate manner, ascertain the cause of the accident as soon as possible, and identify and punish those responsible in accordance with laws and regulations."

Note that one particular phrase: “Release information in a timely and accurate manner.”

The standard template for such a directive usually concerns the handling of search and rescue, medical treatment, aftermath and accountability. This time, the top decision-makers made a point of adding specific language about the public release of information.

There is only reason for such an addition: the higher-ups had already anticipated that the information would not be released ‘in a timely or accurate manner.’” [Chinese]

Another of the censored pieces, a short article from Xu Peng’s WeChat account History Rhymes, focuses on the workers and families affected. Like many other commentators, Xu wonders whether the names of the 82 miners who died in the disaster will ever be made public. On a similar theme was a persuasive article (also later deleted) from former journalist Huang Zhijie, who argues that the best way to prevent cover-ups of mining and other industrial accidents is to release the lists of victim names. Huang describes past disasters in which that was the case, and discusses international norms regarding publishing lists of victims, although he acknowledges that in China, sometimes the pressure not to publish victims’ names comes from the surviving family members. A portion of Huang’s article is translated below:

When I was working as a journalist, we would frequently be assigned to report from the scene of major accidents, and the most frustrating and challenging aspect of that coverage was how to obtain and confirm the list of casualties. I used to think that if only there existed the societal consensus and institutional requirements for casualty lists to be made public, then many avoidable incidents and accidents could be averted, many unnecessary conflicts could be dispelled, and the work of journalists would be less arduous and less dangerous.

So how can we prevent the cover-ups and chronic underreporting of death tolls? The answer is to publish the names of those who have died. Once such a list is made public, it makes it harder to maintain an information blackout, and reduces the likelihood of the death toll being low-balled.

This is also a matter of public rights. When major disasters and accidents occur, the government has an obligation to investigate, and the people have a right to know the truth, the core of which is an accurate accounting of those who died. The public’s right to know is inextricably bound up with our ability to make informed choices about our own safety.

Internationally, it has become standard practice to publish the names of those killed in major accidents. Here in China, this has also been done on multiple occasions in the past. For example, a list of fatalities was published after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake; the first batch alone numbered 19,065 victims. For the 2011 Wenzhou high-speed rail collision, the published list included 39 fatalities; for the 2015 Shanghai Bund stampede, 35 fatalities; and for the 2015 Tianjin port explosion, 165 fatalities. For a time, it seemed a consensus had formed: publishing the names of those who died in major accidents was the mark of a civilised society.

In recent years, however, the handling of most major accidents [in China] hasn’t included published lists of fatalities. Even in cases where it’s been officially confirmed that the death toll was underreported, the names of the victims have never been made public.

[…] Is the loss of human life merely a statistic, or does it represent a collection of specific, vibrant individuals with myriad human connections and social interactions? The answer depends on whether or not the list of victims is made public. Publishing such lists demonstrates respect for humanity, allows the deceased to rest in peace, offers solace to the living, helps clarify who was responsible, and may even prevent similar tragedies from recurring. [Chinese]

The most notable incident of online censorship grew out of an exchange on the U.S. platform X, which is blocked in China and requires a VPN to access there. After well-known Chinese dissident and whistleblower account Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher (@whyyoutouzhele) reposted some videos and photos about the Sino-American summit, Elon Musk posted an unexpected reply in simplified Chinese, stating, “My son is studying Mandarin.” The reply, which attracted over 13 million views, became a hot topic on Chinese social media, as netizens commented on the irony of Musk circumventing the GFW to access a banned overseas site “right under Xi’s nose.” The tweet was reported by China Business Network/CBN [第一财经, Dìyī Cáijīng] and other Chinese media outlets, all of which omitted any mention of the "Teacher Li" account, leaving the response without context. Despite this cautious approach, the original report from CBN and related trending topics on Weibo were completely blocked, and the buzz quickly died down. In response, Teacher Li tweeted: "This proves that even Musk has to bypass the Great Firewall to [read my account] when he comes to China. Xi Jinping and I are just two ‘Voldemorts’ separated by a wall."

CDT Chinese editors also archived two posts that referenced the summit. One was an article from WeChat account He Liuwei that argued against the practice of using schoolchildren to greet and offer flowers to visiting political leaders, including Donald Trump. “The spectacle of minors being trotted out to ‘adorn the lapels’ of political figures turns my stomach, and that reaction didn’t start with Trump,” wrote the author. “When I was a child I thought it odd, but by middle school (this was during the Cultural Revolution), I found it nauseating. Even back then, I told myself that if I ever had a child, I would never allow her to be selected for that ‘honor.’" The other was a post from WeChat account The Sun Also Rises about two recently deleted articles, one of which was titled, “Taking Stock of Trump’s Visit to China.” The author admits to being puzzled as to why it was censored, and goes on to castigate “professional complainers” who lodge complaints with social media platforms for various petty reasons:

As for the second article [about the U.S.-China summit], I don’t believe it contained anything particularly sensitive. You can find similar pieces all over the internet, and I’ve always maintained a careful balance in my writing. The most ridiculous thing is that while my original article was reported and deleted, reposts of it by others remain online. This isn’t the first time I’ve observed this kind of farce.

It’s the fault of those busybodies, those professional complainers. They can’t write anything themselves, but when they read something that doesn’t align with their own viewpoint, or when they’ve left a comment that gets called out by the author or other readers, they feel humiliated and start complaining in retaliation. Certain types of readers will heap fulsome praise on an author who writes an article they agree with, but if that same author writes something they disagree with, they’re quick to accuse the author of "selling out." It’s instructive to look back at the timeline of these readers’ comments: you’ll find not only a diversity of opinion among different readers, but sometimes even “a split opinion” by a single reader. [Chinese]

The following is a (non-comprehensive) list of some “soft censored” sensitive-word combinations related to the recent Sino-American and Sino-Russian summits, according to a tool developed by Citizen Lab. Searches for these terms or combinations on various platforms are subject to varying degrees of censorship, in most cases returning only results from Chinese government websites or state-media outlets.

On the Sino-American summit:

Trump + China visit + protocol/standing (特朗普 + 访华 + 规格)
Trump + China visit + itinerary (特朗普 + 访华 + 行程)
Trump’s China visit itinerary (特朗普訪華行程)
Trump + China visit + arrangements (特朗普 + 访华 + 安排)
Xi-Trump summit + Trump (習特會 + 特朗普)
Trump + China visit + agenda items (特朗普 + 访华 + 议题)
Trump visits the Temple of Heaven (特朗普参观天坛 / 特朗普參觀天壇)
Trump China visit welcoming ceremony (特朗普访华欢迎仪式)
Trump arrives in Beijing (特朗普抵京)
Welcoming US President Trump’s visit to China (欢迎美国总统特朗普访华)

China + policy + Trump (對華 + 政策 + 川普)
Trump + China + policy (川普 + 對華 + 政策)

classic + Trump (經典 + 特朗普)
Trump + classic (特朗普 + 經典)

state banquet + Trump (國宴/ 国宴 + 川普)
Trump + state banquet (川普 + 國宴/ 国宴)
dinner banquet + Trump (晚宴 + 川普)
Trump + dinner banquet (川普 + 晚宴)
state banquet + exposed/leaked (國宴 + 曝光)

U.S.-China heads of state + talks (中美元首 + 會談)
U.S.-China leaders’ meeting (中美領導人會晤)
Trump-Xi secret talks (川習密談)
U.S.-China leaders’ talks (中美领导人会谈)
U.S.-China leaders’ small-group meeting (中美领导人小范围会晤)
Foreign Ministry Q\&A on Trump’s China visit (外交部就特朗普访华情况答问)

Will the CCP really + peacefully coexist with the U.S. (中共真会和美国 + 和平共处)
The US and China should be partners, not rivals (中美应该成为伙伴而不是对手)
Charting a Correct Path of Coexistence Between the Two Great Powers (走出一条中美大国正确相处之道)
U.S.-China relations can only improve, not worsen (中美關係只能搞好不能搞壞)
U.S.-China leaders exchange views on major issues (中美领导人就重大问题交换意见)
U.S.-China Relations Build on the Past and Open Up the Future (中美关系继往开来)
China welcomes the U.S. strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation with China (中方欢迎美国对华加强互利合作)
New positioning of U.S.-China relations (中美关系新定位/中美關係新定位)
Constructive, strategic, stable U.S.-China relations (中美建設性戰略穩定關係)
Stable U.S.-China relations are a boon to the world (中美关系稳定是世界的利好)
The respective successes of the U.S. and China are mutual opportunities (中美各自成功是彼此的机遇)
U.S.-China relations build on the past and open the future (中美關係繼往開來)
The correct path for U.S.-China co-existence (中美正確相處之道)
Trump’s Return to Beijing: A Game Within a Game (川普再临北京的局中局)

On Taiwan:

U.S. + Taiwan policy + Xi (美國 + 對台政策 + 習)
China visit + Taiwan question (访华 + 台湾问题)
The U.S. side must handle the Taiwan question with the utmost prudence (美方务必慎之又慎处理台湾问题)
Foreign Ministry responds on the Taiwan question (外交部回应台湾问题)
Stabilizing U.S.-China Relations Depends on Handling the Taiwan Question Well (台灣問題處理好了中美關係就能穩定)
Maintaining Cross-Strait Peace and Stability Is the Greatest Common Ground Between the U.S. and China (維護台海和平穩定是中美最大公約數)

Trade Negotiations, Boeing Order:
Boeing + order + China (波音 + 订单 + 中国)
Trump China visit + Boeing (川普访华 + 波音)
trade negotiations + Trump (贸易磋商 + 特朗普)

Iran War, Trade with Iran:
Iran + Trump (伊朗 + 特朗普)
Trump + Iran (特朗普 + 伊朗)
Chinese enterprises + Iran (中國企業 + 伊朗)

Detention of Ezra Jin Mingri, pastor of Zion Church:
Jin Mingri + Zion [Church] (金明日 + 锡安)
Jin Mingri + pastor (金明日 + 牧師)

On Elon Musk, his son, and the Chinese tweet:
馬斯克 + 中文 + 兒子 — Musk + Chinese [language] + son
馬斯克 + 兒子 + 虎頭包 — Musk + son + tiger-head bag
馬斯克 + 中文 + 發帖 — Musk + Chinese [language] + post

Referencing both summits:
Putin + Trump + visit to China (普京 + 特朗普 + 访华)
U.S.-Russia heads of state + visit to China (美俄元首 + 访华)

On the Sino-Russian summit:
Jointly Steering New-Era China-Russia Relations Toward Continuous New Achievements (共同引领新时代中俄关系不断取得新成果)
China-Russia Relations Continue on the Right Track (中俄关系继续沿着正确轨道不断发展)
Strategic Guidance for China-Russia Relations in the New Era (新时代中俄关系的战略指引)
Russian President Putin to visit China (俄罗斯总统普京将访华)

If you see a tortoise perched on top of a utility pole, there’s no way it climbed up there itself. It fundamentally lacks the capacity to do so: someone else must have placed it there. But it can’t get down on its own, either, so all it can do is wait to topple off. [Chinese]

The account was subsequently banned, and all of its content deleted. The video was widely and immediately interpreted as a reference to Xi, his perceived lack of qualification for his role—he has often been referred to as "the junior highschooler" in a somewhat uncharitable jab at the interruption of his formal education by the Cultural Revolution—and his steady dismantling of established conventions for orderly leadership succession. The meme recirculated in other forms, however, including a video pairing the original audio with a static generated image of the scenario it described. Many of the comments heaped praise on the analogy and its author, while others analyzed the tortoise’s predicament, possible solutions, and the tortoise’s longevity and potential heirs or successors:

信任: When rank exceeds virtue, calamity must follow.

U夹克星: Those born under a bad star spread devastation in their wake.

清半夏: Even high-voltage electricity won’t kill it?

岁月无声: It couldn’t normally have got up there. It must have struck a deal with the Immortals [Party elders]. The pandemic makes this very clear. [Here, "pandemic" 疫情 yìqíng is referred to by its pinyin initials, "yq," to avoid scans for sensitive keywords]

美丽传说: Would it survive the fall?

于 腾跃: Can we swap it for another one?

prince: It couldn’t get up there itself;
It must have been lifted.
Now it’s up there, unsure what to do,
And starts blindly flailing.

穹隆山人: If it wanted to get down, it’d find a way.

静水深流（敬畏金融）: The tortoise is yelling, "We’re out in front, way out in front!"

东风5c: Grind its bones and scatter the ashes.

🥷✱: Could it lay an egg up there?

荒原: It’s also possible that some other tortoises put it up there.

老酒坊: It’s not that it can’t get down, it just doesn’t want to. 😂

.: Do turtles use Douyin?

小阮: Turtles can live to 100. A scary prospect.

热心市民 李先生: But surely it chose to go up there?

芮昌盛玖十三: Every utility pole has one.

云朵: It’ll wear itself out eventually, nod off against the high-voltage line, and get burned to a crisp.

润锋饸饹面: It’s counting on Western medicine to save it, pathetic.

點石成金: Another name for a tortoise [乌龟 wūguī] is wangba. [王八 wángbā, used in several vivid Chinese insults]

遼寧號: It won’t fall on its own, but it’s pretty exposed up on that perch, someone will knock it down eventually.

沐沐: Tortoises live a long time.

用户 8879442378435: Its support base of second- and third-generation tortoises put it up there.

浮城: Someone put it up there, so someone has to take it down.

乘风的沙: Once the weather clears, it’ll topple.

一鸣..: False idol 🤣🤣

杭州翻新改色王师傅: When you outclimb your ability, the fall will be hard, just wait and see. [Chinese]

Some comments, translated here without endorsement, made sarcastic reference to recent precedent in Venezuela and Iran:

风尘: We need a targeted U.S. strike to eliminate it.

一身反骨: You know why 🔫s are banned? If we had 🔫s we could shoot it down.

广州鲸咚电器: If you don’t have the right tool to hand, all you can do is count on the folks from the next village to help out.

用心珍惜: Only a B2 can fix this 2B [idiot]!

你猜: Only a bald eagle can get it down 😁

大肉丸子君: What do you mean, can’t get down? A targeted strike would do it 😮

星汉灿烂若出其里: A 🦅 could grab it and drop it from high altitude, smashing its shell to bits.

余生长假: A drone could sort it out 🥹🥹🥹

铝单板，铝方通厂家: An F35 could get it down. [Chinese]

Another Douyin video showed a pig in a similar pole-top predicament. A caption reads: "Who is it? How did it get up there? How is it still clinging on up there?" According to an unconfirmed claim on X, the person who originally posted it was detained for 15 days and ordered to delete it.

Chinese children, dressed in retro Red Army uniforms, at a celebration in Vladivostok prior to May 9 “Victory Day.”

Vladivostok, still referred to parenthetically on Chinese maps by the older name 海参崴 (Hǎishēncǎi), was once part of vast swaths of Outer Manchuria ceded by the Qing Dynasty to Tsarist Russia in the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin and the 1860 Convention of Peking. Following that transfer of territory, ethnic Chinese residents of the area suffered persecution that persisted even into the Soviet period. In the “Great Purge” of 1937-1938, for example, as many as 10,000 ethnic Chinese fled, disappeared, were sent to the gulag, died of overwork, or were executed. In 2009 and 2010, a highway construction project in Vladivostok unearthed a mass grave containing the historical remains of numerous Chinese who had been executed.

Many Chinese bloggers and commenters argued that in this context, it was deeply offensive to allow Chinese schoolchildren to be used as “props” in a Russian military parade in Vladivostok. Some critics described the spectacle as “dancing on their ancestors’ graves” and “forgetting where they came from.” As one widely circulated analogy phrased it: “It’s like if someone broke into your ancestral home, confiscated the house, and banished your ancestors, but generations later you decide to foot the bill to send your kids to the marauders’ commemoration.”

After a report by Xinhua’s Russian-language service confirmed that "young people from Yiwu, Zhejiang province" were among the participants, Chinese online sleuths pieced together clues to identify Maple Leaf School in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, as the likely organizer. In a now-deleted article, WeChat blogger Nande Jun wrote, “If this decision was made by a principal or leader, I would like to ask: Is that motto inscribed on your school wall—‘Never Forget Our National Humiliation’—just there for decoration?” In another deleted piece, former journalist Huang Zhijie, via his Wechat account Youyou Luming, expanded on the theme of wounded national dignity: “The previous generation was already humiliated, and now we’re sending the next generation over there to be humiliated too?” At the WeChat account 大江报馆 (Dàjiāng bàoguǎn, “The Great River [Yangtze] Gazette”), Gui Hong wrote a scathing takedown of using little kids to propagate a narrative of uninterrupted Sino-Russian friendship: “This bunch of six- and seven-year-olds, forced by grownups into military uniforms and sweating as they marched in formation, probably couldn’t even tell you when the ‘Great Patriotic War’ happened. But still, the little tykes were conscripted to serve as a ‘diplomatic image filters’ and ‘hostages for peace.’”

Even state-media outlet People’s Daily spoke out against the children’s participation in the parade. The People’s Daily “Safe Campus” section published an article that posed the question: “Who Are Chinese Children Cheering for on the Streets of Vladivostok?” Almost as soon as the piece was published, however, it was deleted by the outlet, with no explanation given. CDT has archived several WeChat posts, all of which were later censored, about the People’s Daily piece and its deletion. Blogger Mu Bai mentioned the People’s Daily piece in connection with two of his posts, critical of having Chinese students join in the parade, that were deleted after he became the target of a “complaint campaign” by a group of administrators and parents from the Maple Leaf School. Blogger Xu Peng, on his History Rhymes WeChat account, discussed the People’s Daily deletion and the heavy online censorship of the Vladivostok parade scandal. He also cautioned parents to think carefully before sending their kids on these sorts of propaganda trips, lest it tank their children’s future plans to study abroad in democratic countries.

In a slightly different take that was also scrubbed by platform censors, WeChat account He Liuwei argued against the practice of using schoolchildren to greet and offer flowers to visiting political leaders, including Donald Trump. “The spectacle of minors being trotted out to ‘adorn the lapels’ of political figures turns my stomach, and that reaction didn’t start with Trump,” wrote the author. “When I was a child I thought it odd, but by middle school (this was during the Cultural Revolution), I found it nauseating. Even back then, I told myself that if I ever had a child, I would never allow her to be selected for that ‘honor.’"

Many of the Vladivostok-themed deleted pieces we archived in May discussed double standards regarding former Chinese territories now occupied by Russia, and those occupied by Japan or other nations with whom the PRC has a frostier diplomatic relationship. Among the themes emphasized by online commentators were historical memory, historical nihilism, patriotism, the “national humiliations” of the past, and the elision of certain historical enmities to better align with the Party line on Sino-Russian “friendship with no limits.”

“When First-Graders Set Foot in the ‘Ruler of the East,’” a deleted long-form article from WeChat account 新观察笔记 (Xīnguānchá bǐjì, “Journal of New Observations”), references the history of Vladivostok and the colonial connotations of the name, which the author explains means “Lord of the East” or “Ruler of the East.” The author quotes this analogy: “It’s like someone telling you to your face, ‘Back then, I stole your house and changed the street address to MY HOUSE,’ and you nod and say, ‘That’s a nice name. It’s got a real sense of historical significance.” A portion of the article is translated below:

Now imagine the opposite scenario. What if there were a city in China named after one of the colonial-era Great Powers? Or what if one of the great powers of today were home to a city named "Vanquish Japan," and they invited Japanese elementary school students to attend a military parade dressed in old Japanese Imperial Army uniforms? Just imagine the public reaction—you can be certain it would be very different from the kid-glove treatment we give Russia.

[…] Today, 160 years after the fact, [unequal] treaties can go unmentioned, historical enmities can be set aside, and it’s fine to say that we should focus on the future. But standing in the middle of a city whose name means “Ruler of the East,” listening to declarations like "Our heroes fought for your children!" feels a bit like this: several generations after your family was dispossessed of their ancestral home, the descendants of the occupiers invite your kids into their yard and dress them up in old military uniforms to help celebrate their historical "victory." Call it what you will—friendship, exchange, or internationalism—but in this case, language obscures more than it reveals.

[…] It’s a truism that diplomacy requires pragmatism. International politics isn’t an ethics class, and realpolitik will always trump sentimental considerations. In the current geopolitical landscape, the strategic value of close Sino-Russian relations and coordination is self-evident, no one would deny that.

But being pragmatic doesn’t mean being craven.

[…] The term "double standard" couldn’t be more apt here. Ponder this simple question: If a Western nation were still holding military parades in a city ceded from China, and inviting Chinese children to attend and help commemorate a "just war" totally unrelated to that city’s cession, how do you think the Chinese public would react?

I don’t think I need to spell it out; you know as well as I do what the reaction would be. On some historical questions, our reaction is knee-jerk, a conditioned response. But when it comes to Russia, there are suddenly all sorts of justifications: “it was understandable,” or “grounded in practical interests,” or “it’s time to turn the page on that history.” That’s not diplomatic caution, it’s a double standard. These two very different reaction systems operate in parallel and no one thinks it strange, but it is our "dual-SIM" mentality that gives rise to such absurdities. [Chinese]

Another censored article referencing double standards in historical memory (and strongly condemning past Russian depredations) comes from WeChat blogger Mu Bai: “To the Organizers Who Sent Elementary School Students to Vladivostok’s Victory Day Celebration—Have You No Shame?” A brief excerpt:

We often call for others to “remember history” and “not let our national humiliation be forgotten,” but the reality is that not many young people, it seems, remember the evil country that did the most harm to China.

As such, I would like to ask: Which country occupied and partitioned the most Chinese territory, slaughtered the most Chinese people, and caused Outer Mongolia to split off from China? Which country was constantly stirring up trouble and harassing the People’s Republic of China during its most challenging early years? Which country used nuclear coercion against our nascent, struggling nation?

How many of this generation know that Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake by volume, is the place where Su Wu once herded sheep, a story you studied in school? It is Russian territory now.

If these things are not remembered, history becomes meaningless. [Chinese]

Nor is this the first time that the topic of historical memory about Vladivostok has encountered censorship on the Chinese internet. In a deleted post from May of 2024, WeChat account Sichuan River Tales featured a screenshot of a poster from a Chinese travel agency advertising a package tour to that city, and asked: “Should We Really Be Flagrantly Promoting Tours to View the Military Parade in Vladivostok?" A portion of that post is translated below:

In light of this history, some have questioned whether it is appropriate to travel to Vladivostok to attend the [May 9 Victory Day] military parade. They point out that when two young Chinese women danced in the street wearing Japanese kimonos, they were met with public outrage, whereas there are now tourism posters exhorting Chinese people to travel abroad to experience a foreign military spectacle on what was originally Chinese territory. This contrast is difficult to reconcile.

A photo circulating online shows several Chinese students displaying a Chinese flag atop Mount Fuji, an act that resonated with many in China. Therefore, some feel that Chinese tourists visiting Vladivostok should also display Chinese flags to express their love for the motherland, and that such courage would be commendable. [Chinese]

A travel company poster from two years ago, promoting a four-day tour to view Vladivostok’s May 9 Victory Day Parade, features ranks of smiling, blue-uniformed, rifle-toting soldiers.

Lastly, a now-deleted article from WeChat account Atypical Buddhist, “Someone Please Save Those Chinese Elementary School Students in Vladivostok,” discusses the history of Vladivostok, how it became Russian territory, the persecution of ethnic Chinese that followed, and the dangers of historical nihilism and “selective editing” of history. The author saves their strongest criticism for those who would leverage Chinese schoolchildren as political pawns and allow their minds to be warped by militaristic displays celebrating a one-sided view of history. The piece ends with a paraphrase of the famous last line (“Save the children …”) of Lu Xun’s 1918 short story “Diary of a Madman”:

We’re always saying we ought to remember history, and that we shouldn’t fall into historical nihilism, and that forgetting history is tantamount to treason. So when we send our schoolchildren to be used as backdrop scenery at a site of our national humiliation, what does that do to their impressionable young minds? Does it imbue them with a sense of “co-prosperity,” of shared glory?

Children are taught to remember some of the humiliations inflicted on their ancestors, but to forget others. Such selective editing of historical memory is a kind of sin. One moment we’re told to bury the hatchet, the next we’re told to never forget the humiliations our nation suffered. This back and forth “sit-up approach” to history leaves people deeply confused.

[…] But children lack this capacity [to judge for themselves how to reconcile history with the present moment]. Ritual works by leveraging atmosphere, symbols, and collective spaces to subtly shape our emotions and memories. Uniforms and orderly ranks of marchers serve to further immerse us in the “monumental” occasion, the environment exerting a subconscious influence and obviating our need to think. Children understand none of this, yet it pulls them into a visceral state of reverence and solemnity that allows certain objects and images to be imprinted onto their minds. In these children’s memories, Vladivostok will forever be associated with victory and friendship, erecting a psychological barrier against the humiliations of the past.

[…] It is the responsibility of educators to spare children from having to perform “historical sit-ups,” to ensure they have sufficient access to information, and that they are able to think independently. But instead, they’ve sent our kids to Vladivostok to take part in a military revue, to serve as props, and to have others’ ideas implanted in their subconscious. Do we really want them to inherit the “Soviet fetish” of their grandparents’ generation? Someone, please … save the children. [Chinese]

Below is a list of key topics and some related deleted articles from CDT’s summary of deleted content for April 2026. Between April 1-30, CDT Chinese added 28 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 April included:

• Online pushback to MSS claims that “hostile foreign forces” are paying Chinese online influencers to incite slackerism (“lying down”) among Chinese youth
• The trial and guilty plea of Xu Jiayin, founder of collapsed property developer Evergrande
• The erosion of campus media, epitomized by the purging of the archives of Beijing Normal University’s long-running journal “Capital Scholar”
• A woman in Shenzhen was strip-searched and detained for five days by police after she complained about a man smoking at a bus stop
• Feminist blogger March vulcanus announces WeChat account closure
• A man reportedly attacked passersby with a knife in Shenyang, Liaoning province, killing as many as six people and injuring a dozen others, but there was no official statement issued
• Beijing’s population of people aged 20-29 has declined from 4 million to just over 2 million in the last decade

Online pushback to MSS claims that “hostile foreign forces” are paying Chinese online influencers to incite slackerism (“lying down”) among Chinese youth

In late April, the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) published an article accusing unnamed “foreign organizations” of trying to brainwash Chinese youth into “lying flat” (also “lying down” or “slacking off”), a meme-fueled lifestyle trend that eschews the rat race for a simpler, slower-paced, less ambitious life. The piece was met with intense backlash online, as comments sections on Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Zhihu filled with responses challenging the framing and factuality of the MSS article, and pointing out that the slackerist movement is being driven by domestic socioeconomic forces such as high unemployment, unrelenting competition, excessive overtime and “996” schedules, weak labor-law enforcement, and declining social mobility.

CDT Chinese editors archived several deleted articles on the topic, and noted that many online comments were censored, and that Weibo appeared to have banned the hashtag #Lying Flat once again. CDT 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. One Zhihu comment, later deleted, made this point: “It’s not ‘lying flat,’ it’s ‘being flattened.’ The phrase ‘lying flat’ is just a modern incarnation of ‘let them eat cake.’ I’m allowed to call myself a slacker if I want, because it’s an outward expression of my optimistic attitude, but when state media or commercial media accuse young people of slacking off, it’s an insult.”

A deleted article from Peng Yuanwen, a veteran journalist who has reported extensively on rural issues and farmers’ pensions, offered a different perspective by asking “why even 70-year-old rural residents can’t afford to slack off.” Peng notes that many impoverished older migrant workers can’t afford to retire, yet face age-related hiring discrimination, prompting some to dye their hair to look younger or use forged documents to conceal their age. He discusses a proposal that would allow migrant laborers to continue working after the current cut-off age of 60, and argues that while it is a step in the right direction, raising rural pensions across the board would be more helpful. Another deleted piece, from WeChat account Youthology, cites statistics that bear out widespread age discrimination against workers over the age of 35, and the double burden of gender and age discrimination that affects women.

The trial and guilty plea of Xu Jiayin, founder of collapsed property developer Evergrande

In a trial in Shenzhen in mid-April, Xu Jiayin (Hui Ka Yan, in Cantonese), the founder of collapsed real-estate conglomerate China Evergrande Group, pleaded guilty to eight charges including the misuse of funds, fraudulent fundraising, and illegally taking public deposits. Xu, whose verdict and sentencing will take place at a later date, could face life imprisonment.

Intense public interest in the trial led to a resurgence of social media content about the financial woes, unfinished projects, and questionable business practices of the real-estate sector in China. CDT Chinese editors archived four deleted posts on the topic: two were about property developer and SOHO founder Pan Shiyi, now based in New York, who broke several years of social media silence to post some thoughts on the “Ponzi scheme” nature of the Chinese property market. The other two censored pieces voiced strong suspicions that Xu Jiayin and Evergrande were aided and abetted by many other powerful interests, but that this will be swept under the rug. “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 materialize overnight, and dissects the era that made such excess possible.

In another now-deleted article, “Xu Jiayin Pleads Guilty, but Did He Really Manage To Dig That 2.4 Trillion Yuan Pit All by Himself?” 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 mortgage 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.” [Source]

The erosion of campus media, epitomized by the purging of the online archives of “Capital Scholar,” Beijing Normal University’s long-running student media outlet

In April, Beijing Normal University student media outlet 京师学人 (Jīngshī Xuérén, "Capital Scholar") had its WeChat public account deregistered and its archive of over 600 articles purged. It was but the latest blow in a decade-long erosion of campus media due to numerous political and commercial pressures, the decline of journalism as a profession, the rise of short video and algorithmic content recommendations, and changes to campus life that were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

CDT English has published a two-part translation of an essay about the history of “Capital Scholar” and what it reveals about campus journalism as a whole. “The Decade-long Death of a Campus Media Outlet,” from WeChat public account "Swimming Across by Moonlight," describes 2016-2018 as the heyday of campus reporting, 2019-2022 as a period of tightening controls, 2023-2025 as “suffocation,” and 2026 as “cancellation.” A portion of CDT’s Part One translation is excerpted below:

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. [Source]

A woman in Shenzhen was strip-searched and detained for five days by police after she complained about a man smoking at a bus stop

In April, CDT editors archived at least three censored articles about an incident in Shenzhen in which police retaliated against a woman who complained about a man smoking at a bus stop. After the woman asked the man to stop smoking, the conflict escalated into an argument, the woman extinguished the man’s cigarette by flinging a beverage at it, and the man responded by picking up the bottle of liquid and throwing it in her face. Both parties contacted the police, and the woman was brought into the police station, made to change clothes, subjected to a strip search, and berated by officers who seemed sympathetic to the smoker and intent on humiliating the complainant. The woman, a blogger, later published a detailed account of the incident online, sparking debate about police misconduct, the rights of non-smokers, Shenzhen’s new anti-smoking regulations, and even the role of China’s tobacco monopoly and the tobacco tax.

The first archived post, from WeChat account La Jeunesse, is titled “Shenzhen, Please Don’t Condone This Intimidation of 1.1 Billion Non-smokers.” The author is highly critical of the illegal strip-search conducted by the police, and argues that Shenzhen’s new regulations against smoking in certain public areas (which just went into effect last month) cover bus stops and deserve to be vigorously enforced, and that concerned citizens have a role in supervising this enforcement.

The second archived piece is a long article from WeChat account A Cup of Starlight, No Sugar, which takes the police to task for violating the law and advises readers on how to defend their rights in such a situation. The author mentions that in addition to being strip-searched, the woman was held in administrative detention for five days—during which time she was constantly monitored, even while using the restroom—and coerced into signing a settlement agreement, whereas the man received no punishment at all. Posing the question, “Is the cost of upholding justice really so high?” the author writes:

When law-abiding citizens face onerous consequences such as detention and personal humiliation when they attempt to dissuade others from engaging in illegal or uncivilized behavior, it seriously undermines their sense of justice and social responsibility. In the future, who will be willing to take the initiative to stop uncivilized behavior and maintain public order?

Law enforcement officers’ abuse of power and disregard for legal provisions not only damages public trust in law enforcement, but also undermines the very authority of the law, thus eroding the public’s faith that they live in a society governed by the rule of law. [Chinese]

The incident also drew attention to the health effects of smoking and second-hand smoke, to the privileged position of the state tobacco monopoly, and to tobacco taxes and what they actually fund. A now-deleted article from journalist Peng Yuanwen (whose latest WeChat account also appears to have been suspended, possibly as a result of publishing this article) argues that the state doesn’t really have an incentive to crack down on smoking, because tobacco tax revenues are so lucrative and needed to fund the national government pension system. Peng refutes the often-used argument that “China’s tobacco tax funds our national defense”—because China’s state tobacco monopoly contributes 1.54 trillion yuan (nearly $227 billion U.S.) to the treasury each year, close to the amount of China’s national defense budget—by pointing out that this is also the amount the government spends annually on pensions for public-sector employees (1.58 trillion yuan in 2024). Peng notes that a draft national smoking-control regulation explicitly banning smoking at outdoor public-transit stops was submitted for review in November 2014 but is still pending, over eleven years later. This regulatory paralysis is offered as the deeper reason public opinion sided so strongly with the woman who threw her drink at a man smoking at a Shenzhen bus stop: people are fed up with the government’s failure to act, and when official power does nothing, the public sympathizes with individuals taking matters into their own hands. The piece closes on a humorous note: the next time a smoker claims his habit contributes to national defense, the author writes, tell him his tobacco taxes are actually subsidizing the generous pensions of government employees, while his own parents in the countryside are living on paltry rural pensions of less than 200 yuan ($30) a month. The tone of Peng’s and other censored articles were notably different from coverage in Chinese state media: a March 26 piece in China Daily featured the rather misleading headline, “Smoking dispute resolved amicably in Shenzhen.”

Feminist blogger March vulcanus announces WeChat account closure

Feminist blogger 三月vulcanus (Sānyuè vulcanus, "March vulcanus") announced that she would abandon her current WeChat account 三月云 (Sānyuè yún, "March Cloud") after a series of temporary suspensions. A new account, 三月云烟 (Sānyuè yúnyān, "March Clouds and Smoke") has been set up, but remains inactive apart from a single-line greeting. The account’s reincarnation comes in the context of sustained pressure on online feminist voices, including a mass ban on the eve of this year’s March 8 International Women’s Day.

CDT published a full translation of March vulcanus’ now-censored farewell letter, a portion of which is excerpted below:

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.

[…] 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. [Source]

A man reportedly attacked passersby with a knife in Shenyang, Liaoning province, killing as many as six people and injuring a dozen others, but there was no official statement issued

There was heavy online censorship of reports, videos, and comments about an April 4 stabbing spree in a busy commercial district in Shenyang, Liaoning province that may have killed between four to six people and injured a dozen others. No official statement was issued, but the attack was reported on by Hong Kong, Japanese, and some other overseas media. People who claim to have witnessed the attack said it seemed to be indiscriminate, and reported seeing dead and injured people lying on the ground. Some reports said the killer jumped from a building, while others said he may have been arrested by police. Given the lack of an official statement or local media reporting on the attack, it is impossible to say how many were killed and injured, what happened to the perpetrator, or what may have motivated him.

CDT Chinese editors archived one very short deleted article from WeChat account Eggbot about the Shenyang attack, and observed online censorship of sensitive word pairs combining the term “indiscriminate attack” with references to the locations of recent reported attacks in Shenyang, Beijing, Fangshan, and Chengdu, respectively.

There continues to be frequent online censorship of reports and debate about indiscriminate “revenge on society” attacks, which are sometimes referred to in Chinese as “Xianzhong attacks,” after 17th-century rebel Zhang Xianzhong, who led a ferocious peasant rebellion during the Ming-Qing transition period. In 2021, CDT flagged “Xianzhong” as one of the most censored words of the year; in 2024, CDT editors chose the victims of such indiscriminate attacks as our “People of the Year.” In October of 2025, there was public outcry after authorities in Shiyan, Hubei province delayed releasing a statement about a “Xianzhong” attack in which a man drove his car into a crowd of schoolchildren and parents, injuring about two dozen, some seriously. Local and national media declined to report on the attack, and the Shiyan Evening News attempted to deflect responsibility by claiming “Our hands are tied, too.” This drew a flood of angry responses from the online public, one of whom retorted: “‘Our hands are tied, too.’ Oh, isn’t that nice! Then what’s the point of you?”

Beijing’s population of people of young people from ages 20-29 has fallen from 4 million to just over 2 million in the last decade

One of the last censored articles to be added to the CDT archive in April was a piece from WeChat account Fuchengmen Courtyard No. 6, titled “Beijing’s Young Population Falls by Half in Ten Years: Why Is This City Unable to Retain Young People?” Commenting on the dramatic decline of Beijing’s young adult population from roughly 4.6 million in 2015 to under 2.5 million in 2024, the author argues that Beijing has lost its competitive edge in attracting young talent primarily due to a slowdown in tech startup activity and private sector growth, combined with prohibitively high housing costs that put home ownership out of reach for the capital’s young workers. Some of the blame also falls on Beijing’s notoriously rigid household registration (hukou) system, which grants only about 6,000 talent-track hukou slots annually (compared to Shanghai’s roughly 300,000), thus incentivizing talented young professionals to relocate to more welcoming cities such as Shenzhen, Hangzhou, or Chengdu. If these trends continue, the author warns, Beijing’s young population could fall below one million by 2030, threatening the city’s economic primacy. The piece calls for loosening hukou restrictions for private-sector workers and recalibrating the city’s governance approach to be more welcoming to young people.

In China, the drumbeat of nationalistic sentiment has intensified with time. Negative push alerts about Japan from news outlets and social media filled my smartphone screen as relations became more tense. In a museum playroom, a preschool aged child lectured my children and me about how terrible Japan was.

It wasn’t only directed at Japanese. The space for connecting with certain international cultures has shrunk significantly, even when it comes to something relatively innocuous as embracing Western cultural exports.

[…] China has also built a high-tech propaganda machine, filled with messages describing the outside world as dangerous, including the U.S. I noticed that Chinese news apps were often fast to send news alerts about killings or plane crashes, so long as they happened overseas. When bad things happened in China, the news apps were often mum.

[…] As a journalist, I felt the wariness building up. I covered science and technology, and over the years, various topics started to fall under the national security umbrella, including semiconductors and data. Some Chinese people who used to share their perspectives cut off contact with me. When China-Japan ties worsened, some Chinese people I was speaking with asked me to stop reaching out, citing worsening relations, or abruptly ceased communication. Increasingly, in interviews with Chinese companies with U.S. footprint, executives were doing gymnastics to avoid discussing any geopolitical topics. [Source]

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Allyson Horn reported in March on the growing difficulty of speaking on the record with delegates at the National People’s Congress.

CDT has translated numerous examples of Chinese online commentary on official warnings about the dangers of other countries (and even their websites), versus China’s supposed safety. Yanzhong Huang commented in a New York Times op-ed this week that these narratives are contributing to a "dangerous overconfidence":

Traveling across China this spring, I am hearing this narrative everywhere. After one particularly gruesome variation on the “kill line” meme made the rounds recently, my family members in China said they feared for the safety of our relatives in the United States. I hear about students who once dreamed of studying in America now enrolling elsewhere, worried about U.S. crime and poor job prospects.

[…] This belief is partly a defense mechanism to help Chinese people cope with their own problems: a slowing economy, a collapsing property market, high unemployment and a widespread sense of uncertainty. A Beijing taxi driver captured this uneasy mix of anxiety and swagger last month. After venting to me about the problems China’s people face, he added, “At least we have a minimum safety net here. Better than falling below the kill line in America.”

Insular, nationalist voices are amplified more than ever. Zhang Weiwei, a university professor who served as Deng Xiaoping’s interpreter and has millions of online followers, absurdly claimed in a viral video in January that China is the only country in the world whose people eat well. [Source]

Kubota’s departure is just the latest of many, as Eliot Chen reported at The Wire China this week:

Six years after a U.S.-China tit-for-tat cycle of journalist expulsions decimated the foreign correspondent corp in China, the situation remains dire. Through attrition and at least one expulsion, U.S. bureaus are losing reporters, and Beijing has not approved their replacements.

The result is that, even as the leaders of the world’s two largest economies meet next week, it has become harder than ever to get a full picture of what is happening in China — a problem that shows no signs of abating.

“The U.S. has never had so few foreign correspondents in China at any period since diplomatic relations were normalized in the 1970s as now,” says Ian Johnson, a longtime China reporter who was expelled in 2020. “Two correspondents among the big three newspapers [the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post] is a completely outrageous situation.”

[…] “I was almost going to put out a piece about how China is winning the Iran war, but then I went to Guangdong and learned just how much people were really struggling,” [one] correspondent says, adding they saw how manufacturers there were struggling with higher costs. “Telling that story… that’s what journalists with visas can do. That’s what’s important.” [Source]

Hong Kong’s former status as a relative sanctuary has continued to erode, meanwhile. Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index last week ranked Hong Kong and China respectively 140th and 178th out of 180 countries and territories, noting that Hong Kong has dropped 122 places over the 25 years of the Index’s history. Last month, the organization highlighted the detention and deportation from Hong Kong last November of French journalist Antoine Vedeilhe, "at least the thirteenth journalist to have been targeted by the territory’s authorities since the National Security Law was enacted in 2020."

The post below is the second half of journalist Peng Yuanwen’s account of a recent livestream conversation with rural public-benefit activist Zhou Jian. 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?" The first half, published previously, challenged the purported benefits of rural land ownership and self-sufficiency, as well as the notion that life is much cheaper in the countryside. The second, translated below, discusses the limits of traditional frugality and the dibao social safety net. It investigates the political and social forces obstructing communication between countryside and city, and explains how Zhou, Peng and others are working to restore it.

5. Do elderly rural residents not spend much because they’re frugal?

This is another of urbanites’ common arguments still sometimes used by “Three Rural Issues” experts to argue against the necessity of increasing pensions: elderly rural folk are used to frugality and don’t like to spend money, having escaped infection by the “virus of consumerism.” If you give them money, they’ll just hoard it, so it won’t meaningfully stimulate domestic demand.

Uncle Zhou’s answer to this argument hits the nail on the head: “They have no disposable income, they can’t even stay afloat, how can you expect them to spend on consumption?”

He went on to lay out an extremely simple argument: If you give an elderly villager 200 yuan [about $30 U.S.], of course he’ll save it … because he might need 500 yuan saved to cover a single stay at the county hospital. Give him 2000 yuan, then he’ll dare to spend a bit. It’s not that rural folk aren’t consumers by nature: it’s that they’re given too little, only enough to save for emergencies, nowhere near enough to spend freely.

Elderly rural people aren’t at all averse to spending or improving their own lives. Uncle Zhou asked many older people how often they eat meat. The answer was that they usually don’t: eating meat is reserved for weddings and funerals, when they can grab a couple of extra bites at the banquet. This isn’t a matter of simple living; it’s about suppressing desires in response to absolute poverty.

On the issue of daily expenses, Uncle Zhou says much the same as Zhao Yushun. First are medical insurance premiums, which now amount to 400-500 yuan [about $60-75] per year, and are mandatory. Second comes daily medication for chronic health conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes. These require long-term treatment but, depending on the household’s financial situation, those who can’t afford it may have no choice but to go without. Third are social obligations such as weddings and funerals. These are “basic operating costs” in village society, and for many elderly rural folks they’re also rare chances to experience something better.

These expenses combined far exceed the basic [monthly] pension allowance of 163 yuan [about $24].

6. "It’s fine, they’ve got dibao." But there are catches.

City-dwellers have yet another argument in reserve: they have dibao in the countryside—if they can’t make ends meet, they can apply for that.

Uncle Zhou says this is a huge misconception. Many urbanites hear that dibao in Beijing is over a thousand yuan, and in Shanghai it’s 1500 [about $220], and assume that the same level applies nationwide. In fact, in most regions dibao is capped at 500 or 600 yuan [about $75-90], and the criteria for eligibility are completely absurd.

First, your savings cannot exceed a certain amount. In some regions that limit is as low as 5,000 yuan [about $735], and if you have more than that you don’t qualify. Next, children’s earnings and property can be assessed as the parents’ “income”: if they have a son living in the city who bought a car to drive for [Uber-equivalent] Didi, the parents can’t get dibao, because "the household owns a car."

Here we have a logical paradox with Chinese characteristics: when the children pay taxes, they can deduct a certain amount, up to a cap, per person for the support of elderly parents, but when the parents receive benefits, their children’s total assets are factored in. You’re an individual until it’s time to share the financial burden: then you’re part of a family.

More importantly, we all know that city-based children aren’t necessarily able to support rural parents. How much of a monthly 10,000-yuan paycheck [about $1,470] will be left after urban mortgage payments and childcare? But the system doesn’t care: it just converts this straight into a couple of thousand yuan a month of "invisible income" for the elders, and excludes them from dibao as a result.

Many countries don’t run the numbers this way. Take America: even if Elon Musk earns ten billion dollars a year, his mom could get American "dibao" as long as her income was low and she didn’t live with him.

And none of that even takes into account the problem of favoritism in the dibao screening process.

7. Why don’t city-dwellers understand the countryside?

I’ve long wondered why it is that city-dwellers misunderstand the countryside like this. Is it just ignorance, or are they thinking with their backsides instead of their heads—basing their conclusions on where they happen to be sitting?

I think it’s a bit of both, but Uncle Zhou’s response is very direct: "Vested interests. There’s no other way to put it. They don’t know because they don’t want to know. They exist on a more privileged plane, and don’t want to look down."

He cites an example: Every time the topic of educational equity comes up, as soon as there’s talk of dropping Beijing and Shanghai’s special treatment in the college entrance exams, all the Beijing-based experts and scholars calling for educational equity immediately fall silent, because if the walls come down, their own kids might not make the cut. Everyone’s a paragon of justice and ethics until their own interests are at stake.

But, as Uncle Zhou points out, there’s another level to this beneath that of self-interest: the more fundamental problem is the lack of channels for accurate information. The poorer you are, the fewer ways you have to speak out. Elderly villagers lack formal education; they can’t write or make speeches. Their stories don’t make it into the media or broader public consciousness. It’s as if they don’t exist.

What’s even worse is that in today’s “short video” era, the countryside is more "consumed" than "portrayed." What the camera focuses on is the vlogger himself, helping an old person with a gifted bag of rice. It’s the inspirational story of "kind-hearted person changes someone’s life," a staged performance that appeals to urban viewers by making them feel virtuous. Meanwhile, that elderly person still has another 360 days of the year to get through after the camera has stopped rolling.

8. What is public-benefit work? Helping people see one another.

Uncle Zhou’s been doing public-benefit work for a decade, but not in the same way as the vast majority of public-benefit organizations I know.

His organization will install street lamps, but require the local villagers to raise 20% of the funds; they’ll help a village school buy curtains, but insist that the school handle negotiations itself, instead of taking care of everything for them. A lot of people don’t get it: if the recipients are that poor, why make them chip in?

Uncle Zhou explained what I think is a very important point: the fundamental basis of public-benefit work is respect for people. As soon as you involve the local people, they gain ownership of the matter, instead of remaining recipients of charity. That village you pushed to raise 20% may, in the course of that fundraising, reconnect with people who left it many years ago. That elementary school on the Yunnan border got back in touch with former sent-down youth in Shanghai who are now providing them with assistance, letting Uncle Zhou step back.

Sociologist Fei Xiaotong talked about village, school, and clan ties as the three energy meridians of Chinese social relations. Uncle Zhou’s public benefit work essentially follows these three channels to restore lapsed connections, helping people who have left the countryside rediscover the villages that nurtured them—not to pressure them into returning or feeling guilty, just to get them to extend a helping hand to those back home.

"What does our public-benefit work do? It inspires people, and rebuilds them—rebuilds them and their social relationships with others. If no one else is willing to help, why don’t we just band together and support each other?”

9. Atomization is the product of other people’s deliberate intent

Toward the end of the livestream, Uncle Zhou said something that I think was the core of the whole conversation:

"Rural people’s invisibility isn’t because no one else is looking, it’s because people who are suffering are not allowed to be seen—because that would disrupt ‘harmony.’"

In our society today, extremely intractable forces are at work to isolate us from one another. Elderly villagers are on one island, their children working in the cities on another, and every young person who had no choice but to buy at the top of the property market and shoulder a 996 workload to cover the mortgage on another. This atomization didn’t happen by chance, but to a certain extent, by design. Isolated people are powerless to do anything but internalize their suffering.

Uncle Zhou’s work, and my own writing on farmers’ pensions, have essentially the same goal: to make people realize they’re not alone. To make children in the cities realize that they and their parents who stayed in the countryside are one family, the two hardest-pressed generations of our times; to make people who left the countryside realize that they are never truly cut off from their roots, nor should they be. To rebuild a community, however small, from these isolated individuals.

Uncle Zhou does this in the public-benefit field. I do it at my keyboard. Zhao Yushun and Yuan Zhenzhen do it out among the fields. We need more people doing this work.

I’ve always said that those of us children who came from the countryside must speak up for ourselves. Now I want to add a corollary: we must first recognize one another. [Chinese]

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.