While playing the popular role of “mad monk” Ji Gong in a theatrical performance in Wuhan earlier this month, Guo improvised some new lyrics to “Playing My Beloved Pipa,” a tune best known for its inclusion as a musical interlude in the 1956 revolutionary film “Railway Guerrilla” (Chinese title: 铁道游击队, Tiědào Yóujīduì). Guo changed the line "All is quiet on Weishan Lake" to "All is quiet in the Forbidden City," and played the scene for laughs, adding a bit of gibberish (妈咪妈咪哄, māmi māmi hōng) that is a comedic mangling of the Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme hum.”

Following a complaint from an unknown member of the public who accused Guo of “distorting” and “vulgarizing” a revolutionary classic, the Wuhan Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism announced that it was investigating Guo and the Qilin Opera Society, a group he cofounded, for violating regulations by performing content that had not been submitted for prior approval. Guo, arguably China’s most famous comedian, has been accused of overstepping red lines before: in late 2025, he was reportedly called in for a scolding by the Beijing Xicheng District Bureau of Culture and Tourism for his crosstalk routine "Great Skill, Little Courage," which made unflattering allusions to state-affiliated theatrical troupes.

The online reaction to this latest investigation into Guo Degang was withering. Many Chinese netizens characterized the investigation as a politically motivated overreaction, a harbinger of China’s shrinking cultural space, and a throwback to Cultural Revolution-era persecutions of performers, writers, musicians, and other creators. One commenter repeated a quote attributed to Guo to describe the political pressure and betrayal he experienced during a 2010 “anti-vulgarity” campaign: “Those who wrong you understand even better than you just how wronged you are.” Another alluded to a joke that got comedian House (Li Haoshi) banned back in 2023.

CDT editors have archived eleven articles, five of which were later censored, about the controversy over Guo’s performance and subsequent investigation, as well as a compilation of comments from Weibo and X criticizing the investigation into Guo Degang, a selection of which are translated below:

你永远不懂的流年: What era are we in, anyway? They’re being way too sensitive.

KingC天: He “distorted” the lyrics? That’s a bit much.

严小猥c: Sure, let’s stick to model operas from now on, you can’t go wrong with those.

自来火wx: It was just some random song in a movie. Elevating it to a major political offense is pathetic.

王胖子大明白: The entertainment space keeps shrinking.

毛豆蔻800: “Those who wrong you understand even better than you just how wronged you are.”

村口的蓝猫: “The Forbidden City is silent” — isn’t that true? The Qing was China’s last feudal dynasty.

元帅V587: We’re still doing this sort of persecution?

小花大咖秀: Hard to believe this is happening in 2026 …

ge0sn0w: When the body politic is all festering sores, wherever you poke it, it’s going to hurt.

qSMwoZXfW1y64WW: From now on, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala can just be 20 different performers singing the same national anthem.

HLCtoC: This outdoes the Qing Dynasty’s literary inquisition.

cloud_bingo: The Cultural Revolution never ended.

Ktan4A: Two dogs on a leash: one’s named “Fight to Win” and the other’s “Exemplary Conduct.” [A reference to a joke riffing on two PLA slogans that got comedian Li Haoshi banned back in 2023.]

XPD_Schenn83: The moment he sang those words “Forbidden City,” you knew exactly who was going to get pissed off behind the scenes. [Chinese]

One of the five deleted pieces in CDT’s archive about Guo’s latest tussle with cultural censors comes from WeChat account I Come From the Next Life. In “Might I Meekly Say a Few Words in Guo Degang’s Defense?" author Fan Dang describes the chilling effect that such comedy crackdowns have on all forms of self-expression. The author’s intentional use of trepidatious language and textual attempts to dodge platform censorship (for example, writing "sensitive word" as "敏g词," rather than the typicall "敏感词," mǐngǎn cí) vividly illustrate how exacting and exhausting self-censorship has become. A portion of Fan’s essay is translated below:

I’m honestly not trying to make excuses for Guo Degang, or to show any disrespect toward our history or the forebears represented in these "red" works. I just … can’t help feeling that if a comedian cracking some harmless little joke onstage can escalate into a formal investigation, doesn’t that mean that the space for all of us ordinary people—the space to talk, chat, or joke around—is just going to keep getting narrower, too?

Nowadays before I post anything to my WeChat Moments, I have to draft it, read and reread it, delete any word that could possibly be misinterpreted, and even agonize over which stickers or emojis I use, just in case they convey some unintended meaning. After all that, and only after running it through a "sensitive-word" checking tool, do I finally dare to hit “send.” When I’m out eating with friends and the conversation touches on anything even slightly sensitive, I find myself glancing around and lowering my voice, like I’m some underground Party operative meeting a secret contact.

I always think that when it comes to culture, there’s got to be some room for harmless joking around, otherwise the bow is strung too tightly—ready to snap at the slightest touch.

By this point, I’ve already gone back and revised this piece at least seven times. I’ve double-checked every sentence, changed the punctuation more than a few times, and even closed and reopened the document on three separate occasions, out of fear that some line might come out wrong. If there’s anything inappropriate, I’ll fix it right away, even delete the whole thing if I have to. I’m about as ordinary a person as they come, and today it took me nearly two hours to work up the nerve to finally hit "send" and timidly speak a few honest words I’d been sitting on for a long time. That’s all I meant to say, truly.

Truly. [Chinese]

Nevertheless, the notice that has replaced it online says that "this content cannot be viewed due to rule violations. Following relevant complaints, it was found to violate the Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China." Automated keyword scanning may also have played a role: see other recent translations for more on collateral damage from this approach, and efforts by users to evade it.

Now that Zhengyangmen is open to the public, I felt compelled to make the obligatory visit to Tiananmen Square again.

I was already a bit apprehensive about the security checks after my parents’ trip to Beijing last year, when they’d decided to visit Mao’s mausoleum.

This time happened to coincide with the peak of the summer break. The heat was stifling, and it seemed like things would be even worse than before.

My goal, Zhengyangmen, is by Exit A of Qianmen Station on Line 2, but unfortunately, as I only realised later when I was trying to leave, that’s a one-way exit.

So after leaving through Exit C, I couldn’t just go straight across the road; I had to cross twice, through two separate underpasses.

This involves one ID-card swipe, and a security check.

They had to look through my bag at the security check, so I quickly got my things out. That day, that meant a book, a notebook for collecting tourist stamps and, because it had been raining a lot, an umbrella. That was about it.

I was extremely cooperative, hoping they’d finish up and let me through as quickly as possible, and of course that’s what happened.

I could see Zhengyangmen ahead of me on the right and, wanting to get inside quickly, I rushed forward without thinking.

The security checker must have sensed my impatience, because they drawled said, "No point in hurrying, there’s more security up ahead."

With hindsight, that first security check was just a canapé before the banquet.

As I crossed the intersection of Qianmen West and East Avenues and turned north onto West Guangchang Road, the crowds became denser.

At this point, Zhengyangmen was directly to my east. I was about to start lining up in that direction when I was courteously informed that that was the line for the group security check, and I needed to keep going.

So I kept heading north. The crowd had slowed to a crawl, and started to divide again into streams: those with bags, and without.

Those without bags moved on a bit quicker, while those of us with bags continued to wait.

By now, the sun was beating down on us mercilessly, and a lot of people were using parasols. Some were chatting about other places they’d visited over the past few days.

The Numismatic Museum was to the left, the building a fairly impressive sight from that angle. To the right was the mausoleum, looking solemn and dignified as always.

By then, we’d been kept waiting so long and had grown so impatient that it was hard to appreciate the sights.

The kids in the crowd started to get rowdy, and were variously consoled or scolded by the adults, who were suffering every bit as much as the little ones.

Kids are just more straightforward about voicing their annoyance.

The whole security line had stopped, and we had no idea what was going on up ahead.

I didn’t realize how stringent the security checks were until I actually experienced it myself. It’s even stricter than at the airport.

There are two stages to the personal security check. In the first, they pass a handheld sensor wand over your whole body and pat down your pockets, so I had to take off my sun jacket and also remove my keys, cellphone, etc. from my pockets.

I even had to take my phone out of its case so the inspector could take a look.

When you get to the second stage, an inspector of the same gender as you pats down your whole body wearing disposable gloves, and lifts the hem of your top to check for concealed items around your waist.

They poked and prodded at my shoes for a while, but fortunately they didn’t make me take them off.

Once the personal check was over, it was time for the bag inspection, and you had to take out all the contents. They looked through every page in my book, but didn’t say anything in the end.

The person inspecting the group next to me told them they couldn’t take photos with a book and certain other item—I don’t know what kind of book it was.

One reason things moved slowly was that the police were involved through the whole process: if one of the staff wasn’t sure about something, they’d call the police over, which led to more waiting.

In short, after layer after layer of checks, I got through and left the guardhouse. When I looked round, I realized there were very few others coming out, and an endless line of people still waiting.

I don’t know whether I just turned up at the busiest time, but I’d avoid wandering onto the Square without a particular reason, especially in summer. If you must go, stow your bags elsewhere beforehand.

Having said that, you should travel while you can. I miss the old days when you didn’t have to book in advance. [Chinese]

In contrast with this post’s deletion, another recently archived article takes a much more critical stance on security checks, but currently remains online. At the WeChat account 白马狗熊 Bái Mǎ Gǒuxióng ("White Horse Black Bear"), Song Jinbo notes tightening security checks at subway stations in many Chinese cities, and highlights claims that they are actually detrimental to public safety, causing potentially dangerous bottlenecks. Moreover, he expresses concern that well over 100,000 young Chinese may be wasting key years in their early 20s performing labor of dubious value, pointedly contrasting this with Marx’s calls for people’s "all-round development" and Xi’s calls for the young to "cherish the springtime of their lives" and strive for self-improvement in the national interest. Song posits that the checks endure because of financial interests in what has become a multi-billion-yuan industry, and because officials are reluctant to ever remove security measures in case subsequent events should make that look reckless, wrecking their careers. Meanwhile, taxpayers who objected to the cost, inconvenience, and ineffectiveness of the security checks would have no way to exert effective pressure against them. Song opens the piece with a 2024 case in which 14 fraud victims reportedly worked in non-existent outsourced roles on the Shanghai Metro for months, while their unauthorized presence went unnoticed. "A system that can’t even tell fake workers apart from real ones requires you every day to put your water bottle through security and your tote bag through a scanner. Consummate artistry."

Wang Hong (王虹, Wáng Hóng), age 35, was born and raised in Guilin, Guangxi province. After graduating from Peking University, she earned advanced degrees in engineering (École Polytechnique) and mathematics (Paris-Sud) in France, and her doctorate in mathematics from MIT. Now a professor at NYU’s Courant Institute and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Wang was awarded the Fields Medal for her contributions to harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, and major advances on a number of mathematical conundrums, including her work on the three-dimensional “Kakeya conjecture” with collaborator Joshua Zahl (University of British Columbia). Wang is the first Chinese woman—and only the third woman overall—to win in the award’s 90-year history.

Deng Yu (邓煜, Dèng Yù), 37, was born in Kaifeng, Henan province, and raised in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. After two years at Peking University, he transferred to MIT for his undergraduate work, and later earned a doctorate in mathematics from Princeton. Currently a professor at the University of Chicago, Deng received the Fields Medal for his work in partial differential equations and his breakthrough on "Hilbert’s sixth problem," with University of Michigan collaborators Zaher Hani and Ma Xiao (Xiao Ma, in English).

CDT editors have archived over a dozen articles on various topics related to the Fields Medal winners. One popular topic concerned how much credit is due to Peking University (PKU), which proudly trumpeted the news of alums Wang and Deng winning the prestigious prize by putting up festive banners and projecting congratulatory messages onto the campus’ famed Boya Pagoda. PKU’s official WeChat account also republished an interview with Deng Yu, conducted by the Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research (BICMR), but internet users quickly noticed that PKU’s version of the interview had been selectively edited, with numerous alterations and a question about overseas study deleted entirely. CDT Chinese editors compiled a side-by-side comparison of the original interview and PKU’s selectively edited text.

Congratulatory messages projected onto Peking University’s famed Boya Pagoda read: “Congratulations to Wang Hong and Deng Yu!” and “Congratulations to Chinese mathematics!”

Perhaps the most viral topic was a video interview in which Wang confided that she “felt a little discouraged” during her time at Peking University. The English word “discouraged” soon became a trending hashtag on Weibo, but was later censored, although some related content referencing Wang’s use of “discouraged” could still be viewed. Many Chinese social media users shared their own experiences of feeling thwarted by what they described as an overly hierarchical and inflexible academic system, and debated whether the two Fields Medal winners would have chalked up the same achievements had they remained in China. Wang’s comment clearly resonated with many Chinese netizens, and CDT has archived several articles on the subject. A piece from WeChat account Her Narrative, “Thank You, Wang Hong, for Saying the Word ‘Discouraged,’” describes Wang’s early frustrations and circuitous academic path, highlights the importance of her graduate studies in France and the U.S. and finding her “true mentors,” and encourages readers to live life at their own pace and not to lose confidence. In “Why We All Understood What Wang Hong Meant by ‘Discouraged,’” from WeChat account Plucking a Bashful Moon, the author discusses growing up in China and having their shortcomings frequently pointed out by teachers and parents, and contrasts this with what they view as a more supportive and positive culture of encouragement in Italy, where the author has spent some time.

In a video interview, Fields Medalist Wang Hong described her time studying Earth Sciences at Peking University, “I felt a little discouraged.”

In connection with this discussion of “educational trauma,” some suggested using the term “school of origin” (原生学校, yuánshēng xuéxiào) to refer to PKU’s complex relationship with alumni such as Wang and Deng. “School of origin” derives from "family of origin" (原生家庭, yuánshēng jiātíng), a term used in psychology to refer to the family—and family trauma—one was born into. One Chinese-language comment on Threads that received over 5,000 likes said that in the case of Wang and Deng, “PKU has played the role of their ‘school of origin.’” Other users agreed, with one humorously complaining, “Look at my family of origin, school of origin, and country of origin … I’m totally screwed.”

In an archived piece from WeChat account History Rhymes, “Wang Hong and Deng Yu Won the Fields Medal, But How Much Credit Does Peking University Really Deserve?” current affairs blogger Xu Peng discusses this question in light of the academic histories of the two mathematicians, both of whom attended PKU but whose advanced degrees and subsequent academic achievements were earned abroad. In one widely-shared quote, Xu likens their relationship with their Chinese alma mater to that between Yang Guo, the fictional protagonist of Jin Yong’s wuxia novel “The Return of the Condor Heroes,” and the Quanzhen martial arts sect. In Xu’s example, the Quanzhen Sect served as Yang Guo’s “school of origin,” the place where he spent an unhappy and unproductive tutelage under a master who resented him. A short excerpt from Xu’s article follows:

The recent news that two Chinese mathematicians have won the Fields Medal has sparked a frenzy online and given our nation’s “triumphalists” yet another reason to cheer.

Many say that the awards won by Wang Hong and Deng Yu, both Chinese, are a milestone for China. Chinese media has also emphasized that Wang Hong and Deng Yu are both alumni of Peking University.

[…] But how much did their success really have to do with Peking University? There’s certainly some connection there, but the university likely played a minor role.

You could call it the first step on their mathematical path. Without that first step, they might not have reached the pinnacle of their profession.

It feels a bit like Yang Guo’s relationship with the Quanzhen Sect.

If they hadn’t gone abroad, and had conducted their mathematical research in China, would they still have won the Fields Medal?

[…] They are the first two Chinese nationals to win that prize, and this goes to prove that Chinese people are capable of such an achievement.

But as the saying goes: "Orange trees grown south of the River Huai yield sweet fruit, while those north of the river bear bitter fruit.” Even the best seedlings require good soil if they’re to produce a bountiful harvest. [Chinese]

CHINA – PINGYAO, by Pierre Doyen (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Many people have had similar experiences with social media, comments sections, or livestreams: a perfectly normal post or comment expressing one’s feelings or discussing social realities is flagged for violations, blocked, and simply muted. Many quite neutral and ordinary words and expressions inexplicably trip the filters; to avoid this, people are forced to use homophones, pinyin initials, and coded terms in place of the original, straightforward Chinese, making it difficult to just say what you mean.

Many people simply interpret this phenomenon as a policy-level prohibition on online discussion, but that’s not what’s really going on. National laws and regulations determine the bottom line of online speech, prohibiting harmful and illegal content like rumors and libel, inciting antagonism, violence and pornography, or content that infringes others’ rights. But they don’t lay out a public "Directory of Blocked Terms," still less require platforms to restrict ordinary social commentary or reasonable expressions of public sentiment. The large-scale blocking and filtering we see arises from a multiplicity of other factors and pressures: put simply, it’s about negligence.

The foremost pressure in practice comes from platforms’ primary responsibility. According to the current regulations on internet governance, internet platforms must take responsibility for content on their own sites, and will face penalties if they allow widespread dissemination of illegal or harmful content. Confronted by hundreds of millions of users and a vast quantity of messages, bullet-screen comments, and post submissions per second, platforms cannot possibly subject every piece of content to individual human review. Automated keyword filtering has become the cheapest and most efficient first line of defense.

Automated moderation has an inherent shortcoming. Its algorithms can only recognize characters; it’s very difficult for it to understand context or tone. A given word might be an objective statement in an article denouncing violence, but might break the rules in the context of malicious incitement, and it’s very hard for machines to tell the two apart. To avoid missing hazardous content, many platforms opt for a conservative strategy of "erring on the side of caution" by constantly expanding their lists of banned words. Neutral vocabulary and objective descriptions of social phenomena can be caught in the crossfire—a form of filtering that people often complain is "indiscriminate."

Filtering like this in self-defense can also lead to a vicious cycle. When some words are blocked, netizens might create homophones, pinyin initials, or coded terms to avoid detection by the system. To plug these leaks, platforms in turn constantly expand the blocked word lists to intercept those substitute terms. So the word lists keep growing, incorporating more and more ordinary vocabulary, distorting the whole ecosystem of online speech. Content that should be expressable directly must take circuitous routes, a whole set of online argot arises, and communication becomes ever more costly.

This kind of automation has many visible side-effects. Ordinary people sharing daily pressures or discussing social realities obviously have no malicious intent, but their content is intercepted and shot down. Creators documenting events or writing about science have to revise their wording again and again, worrying over every detail. Many people gradually start to self-censor, deleting parts before posting, for fear of carelessly crossing some unknown line. People’s attention shifts away from viewpoints themselves as they expend energy wondering which words might trigger the system, and the oxygen of public debate is depleted as a result.

Still more worthy of attention is the fact that excessive keyword blocking cannot truly resolve online chaos. A great deal of genuine cyberbullying, snide insinuation, and malicious trolling doesn’t use explicitly prohibited language: it relies on euphemism and innuendo, against which simple keyword filtering is ineffective. Automated screening works for written symbols, but not shifting language, and it’s often reasonable everyday users who end up paying the price, while malicious expression adopts new forms and continues to spread.

Of course, we can’t completely dismiss the value of content filtering. The internet is not a lawless zone, and abusive, bullying, rumormongering, or harm-inciting content really does need restriction. This is a necessary means of safeguarding the online public environment. The problem doesn’t lie in "necessary moderation," but in the way moderation is carried out: whether it’s pursued with crude and simple keyword interception, or by a more refined approach that considers context and distinguishes intent.

Regulators have long recognized that "indiscriminate moderation" is problematic, and platforms have repeatedly been asked to refine their moderation mechanisms and to avoid simple reliance on keyword bans, to distinguish between illegal content and citizens’ normal expression, and to improve channels for appeal and review. But in practice, conflicts between technological change, platform costs, and content volume mean that this cannot be achieved overnight.

The online space needs to uphold security standards while also accomodating the authentic voices of ordinary people. An ideal online environment should not force people to speak in riddles. The goal of governance should be to block malice and actual harm, not stifle normal expression. Only with human review as a safety net behind automated initial screening, a well-developed appeals process for misjudgments, and appropriate transparency about the boundaries of the rules, can the amount of senseless collateral damage be reduced, allowing everyone to speak openly, rationally discuss reality, and express their true feelings. [Chinese]

Caixin Weekly reports that Lanzhou migrant worker Jing Shuren has been detained for more than two years now for sharing other people’s Weibo posts about rights defense and unpaid wages. The relevant departments’ ultimate charge against him was “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

The report stated that Jing, a 49-year-old with a junior high school education, was working as a gate guard at the time of his arrest. But as a kind-hearted person, he would frequently repost information about the plight and rights of disadvantaged groups on his personal Sina Weibo account. He posted very little about his own life.

Jing Shuren

I knew of this man. Before his misfortune, he would occasionally comment on my articles or message me on WeChat.

I’ve never tended to communicate a lot with readers. I was a reporter for 16 or 17 years back in the day, and was accustomed to receiving news tips from readers. If there was anything in it, I was happy to reply, but if it was just subjective views and positions, it wasn’t worth much to me, and I’d tend not to bother. As someone covering news stories, I didn’t need readers’ instructions on what attitude or stance to take in my writing; I needed facts and source material that could stand up to scrutiny.

So despite Jing Shuren’s occasional article comments or WeChat messages, I had very little contact with him. We weren’t at all close, and I can’t really say I knew him. Because of that, and because I didn’t know details of his case, I haven’t spoken out about his arrest since it happened. Now that a media institution like Caixin has reported on it, though, I know a bit more about the man, and I feel I should say a few words about him.

Jing Shuren is someone worth speaking up for.

According to Caixin’s report, he shared many posts by other people about unpaid wages or rights defense, and never received a penny in return. There’s no indication in court documents that he received money, and his name doesn’t appear in the relevant departments’ records of illicit payments.

In other words, Jing Shuren’s allegedly quarrelsome and trouble-provoking reposts were motivated only by the desire to help others.

The Caixin report includes this rather moving passage:

A friend once pleaded with him: “You’re a migrant worker trying to eke out a living on construction sites, but every day you’re supervising this or criticizing that … one day they’ll put you away.” [According to the earlier blog post from the time of Jing’s arrest, sociologist Yu Jianrong reported having this conversation with Jing.]

Jing Shuren replied: “What kind of society would we have if no one spoke up?”

The friend said: “What will become of your elderly father and little child if something happens to you?”

After a long pause, Jing Shuren said: "I still want to do something to support rule of law in this country."

According to Zhou Xiaoyun, a lawyer who has been in contact with Jing Shuren, Jing was working as a gate guard before his arrest, making two to three thousand yuan per month, but only keeping 200 yuan for himself, and sending the rest back to his family.

The Caixin report goes on to say that in 2018, a college student from Jing Shuren’s hometown was hoodwinked into a multi-level marketing scheme in Cangzhou, Hebei. When he learned of this, Jing rushed to Hebei at his own expense and extricated the student with the help of local police. On March 4, 2024, while on his way home, Jing noticed that a water pipe had burst near Hanjiashan on provincial route 209 in Gansu’s Longxi county. He immediately called the local water authority to report it, and ended up receiving a text message of thanks from them.

Jing Shuren: “Good day, sir. This flooded road section is on the Dingxi–Longxi highway (Provincial Highway 209), 700 metres past the 235km mark on the uphill stretch toward Dingxi. It’s at the bottom of Hanjia Hill, Daijiamen hamlet, Shangdadao village, Yuntian township, Longxi county. Thank you, sir!”
Response: “Please send an address, and we will arrange a site visit to take care of it. Thank you for your attention to the public highways!”

“‘Safety is the shortest route home,’ I’m not just being a busybody!”
“You’re most conscientious, brother, paying such close attention to the people’s welfare. Respect! We could all learn from you.”
“Thank you for your attention, big brother. Not one snowflake is innocent in an avalanche. Nothing is too minor when it comes to safety, I’m not just being a busybody.”

I dug these up in Jing Shuren’s WeChat Moments—it’s just as the Caixin report described.

When people online praised Jing’s sense of duty, he said: "Not one snowflake is innocent in an avalanche. Nothing is too minor when it comes to safety, I’m not just being a busybody."

That’s the kind of civic-minded person Jing Shuren is.

In life, a lot of people grow cold toward society and those around them because of their own hardships, and many people much better off than Jing Shuren become apathetic and disengaged, never standing up and speaking out for others or lending a hand to those in trouble. Not Jing Shuren. Despite his own hardships and privations, he has never lost hope or given up, and is always concerned for societal progress and the wellbeing of others.

You can really call him public-spirited, which can’t be said for many people these days.

Lanzhou Public Security arrested him for helping others by sharing their posts about unpaid wages and rights defense. More than two years of investigation have shown that he never received a penny in return, which shows the truth of his words: that he really did step forward and share those posts not for his own profit, but simply because he wanted to do his bit to improve society.

Jing brings to mind the common expression, "Honor is found among the lowliest butchers [and perfidy among the loftiest scholars]."

As things now stand, Jing Shuren neither aimed to disturb social order nor did he actually do so; he simply wanted to help people who were owed unpaid wages. He was a gate guard with only a junior high school-level of education, not a professionally trained reporter, and could not possibly conduct a thorough investigation of every post. He bore no malice toward society, and only wanted to help those even more vulnerable than himself by sharing some rights defense posts. He shouldn’t be unduly criticized.

The crux of the matter is that in many of the unpaid wages cases that Jing Shuren helped to publicize, the party in arrears promptly paid up once the matter came to public attention. In exceptions, when the claims were inaccurate, the other party just didn’t engage. It’s clear that many of the unpaid-wage cases he reposted were genuine and not fabricated, and that Jing’s activity did not bring about any actual social harm.

It’s impossible to make out where or to what extent Jing erred with his rights-defense reposts.

There aren’t many people as public-spirited as Jing Shuren these days. He must not be accused of picking quarrels and provoking trouble just because he might have shared some posts that weren’t completely true; still less should he be sentenced for it. Even if, among all those rights-defense posts, he shared a few that were not entirely accurate, he didn’t do this deliberately. The law cannot label someone as public-spirited as Jing Shuren a criminal.

To Gansu’s judicial departments: Please release Jing Shuren in accordance with the law, and show some warmth and kindness to this man who has always upheld the cause of justice. Someone as public-spirited as he is deserves to be treasured by society.

July 24, 2026

n.b. As this post involves social justice, I have deactivated tipping and ads. I rarely come straight out and ask readers to repost my own content, but this is an exceptional case, and I hope everyone will share it as widely as possible. [Chinese]

A recent article from Guo Yujie, a reporter at the China Youth Daily, adds an absurd new chapter to this ongoing tale: hoping to establish his bona fides and inspire the trust of a potential interview subject, Guo sends the man a photo of the inside page of his press card, a passport-like booklet with a red or blue cover that is issued to journalists in China. He is astonished to receive a clearly AI-generated response, confidently alleging that the credential is a fake. Guo’s piece, “AI Has Determined That My Press Card Is a Fake,” was published by the WeChat account Freezing Point Weekly, a weekly in-depth column from China Youth Daily. A full translation appears below.

A while back, an interview subject contacted me via social media to say he was willing to be interviewed. We promptly scheduled a phone call for later that day, and to earn his trust, I sent him a photo of the inside page of my press card.

A few seconds later, he sent me a lengthy and detailed reply (roughly 500 characters, with at least five bullet points) expressing the unshakable conviction that my press credential was a fake.

Among the evidence he presented: the date of issuance was wrong; the color was wrong, and didn’t comply with regulations; the inside-page layout was sloppy and disorganized, and lacked an embossed seal; and a string of numbers appeared in the wrong place.

His citations of various regulations and official documents were impressively authoritative. By comparison, my own knowledge of press credentials appeared to be wanting. I was taken aback, and felt the need to explain myself.

The man’s message stated that "the new-version press cards should be blue," whereas the inside page of mine in the photo I’d sent was white. “White press-cards fell out of use a long time ago," he told me. Exasperated, I noted that during the four years I’d worked as a journalist, my red-cover press card had indeed been updated to one with a blue cover, but the inside page has always been white. I dug up my old booklet with the red cover and sent him a photo of that, plus a photo of my current booklet with the blue cover. I was surprised when he replied a moment later that both were obvious fakes: a reporter is only ever issued one press-card number, and my old and new cards had different numbers.

The photos I sent must have looked convincing (there was a computer and some clutter in the background), so the guy didn’t go so far as to accuse me personally of being a fraud. Instead he said, "Well, looks like someone scammed you," punctuated with a "crying facepalm" emoji.

As a frequent user of LLM tools like Doubao myself, I could tell his evidence had probably come from an AI. “That’s something Doubao told you, right?” I asked. “I don’t think AI has reached the stage where it’s capable of getting everything right.”

When I dug into it later, I found out that journalists are indeed issued new numbers when their press cards are updated. The number only stays the same if you’re replacing a lost press card. But when I tried to explain this, I was too slow on the draw; I couldn’t keep up with the pace of the AI’s rebuttals.

More crucially, I’m not nearly as "confident" as AI is. There’s a well-known axiom in journalism and media: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” It seems like if you want to win an argument nowadays, you’d better be able to “put your shoes on” within seconds.

But I suspected that no matter what I said to him, the guy was never going to trust me again. The seed of doubt had been planted, and by now we were both getting a bit frustrated. I gave up trying to refute his barrage of AI-generated arguments. “It’s fine,” I said. “If you don’t want to trust me, that’s your right. You don’t have to do the interview.”

To which the would-be interview subject replied, “I don’t want to keep discussing this press-card thing with you. Forget the interview, and I don’t even care to know what you were really up to. Bye."

I tried sending a photo of my press card to my own Doubao account and asking whether it was real. Sure enough, this was the response: “This press card isn’t real. It’s a forgery.” The analysis that followed used phrases like “numerous fatal flaws” and “contradictory key information.” If it hadn’t been my own press card, I might actually have believed it.

It even included this thoughtful addendum: “Forging or altering a press card is illegal, and violations can be reported to the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), or to the local press and publication authorities. Would you like me to put together a complete guide for verifying the authenticity of a press card, including the official verification portal, QR-code scanning tips, and how to report a violation?”

For a moment I genuinely didn’t know how to respond. Then I pushed back: “What if you’re wrong about this?”

A second later, it said, “First, let me sincerely apologize for my previous incorrect assessment.” It then proceeded, in the space of over a thousand characters, to completely overturn its earlier arguments. The new verdict: “It is fully compliant with official regulations.” Doubao’s previous finding that there was "no record on file" for my press card was now deemed to be "completely wrong."

Unfortunately, when I tried to send screenshots of those two responses to the would-be interview subject, I found that he’d already deleted me on WeChat.

AI hallucinations are nothing new, but this was the first time an AI’s error in judgment had a real, negative impact on my work. After I posted about the experience on social media, some of my journalist friends consulted AI chatbots about their own press cards, and some of them got the same "it’s a fake" result.

Not long afterward, I read an article about Li Xiaoliang, a practicing lawyer in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, who discovered that when searching for his name and profession on the Baidu app or website, Baidu’s "AI Smart Answer" feature returned the false claim that "lawyer Li Xiaoliang was sentenced to three years in prison," accompanied by a photo of Li wearing his lawyer’s robes. [Li eventually won his defamation case against Baidu.]

Since the advent of social media, there has been a constant emphasis on educating people in media literacy, and encouraging them to think independently and judge information for themselves. Now, I fear, AI has made the task of discernment and critical thinking even more difficult. An interdisciplinary study led by Shanghai Jiao Tong University found that nearly 70% of Chinese survey respondents had a “low awareness” of AI hallucinations in large language models, while fewer than 10% had a “high awareness.”

Given the underlying logic by which some large-language models operate, the LLM may appear to be thinking, but in fact it is simply predicting “the next most likely word.” As long as the language flows smoothly and suits the context, the AI will generate content, even if it’s fabricated. What’s more, an AI’s training data can’t possibly contain everything. When it can’t find credible or established information, it may end up fabricating or inferring an answer.

An AI’s response also depends on how the query is phrased, but we can’t expect everyone to phrase their queries the way a professional might: "You will take on the role of an objective, neutral credential-verification specialist. Your task is not to subjectively judge the authenticity of this credential, but to help me analyze the various features of the credential based on the images I have provided and other verifiable public information."

Some say we are entering an era of “learning to live with AI hallucinations.” Many believe that, given the underlying technology, AI hallucinations cannot simply be eliminated.

I have no idea how long this era will last, or what changes lie ahead. As an ordinary user, what I’m curious about right now is this: when faced with a question it isn’t entirely sure about, why can’t an AI just say it doesn’t know, instead of always presenting its inferences with such certainty?

A 2025 paper published on arXiv suggests this may be related to how LLMs are trained. Just as humans may guess at multiple-choice answers on an exam, during testing and training, an AI is more likely to score points by making up an answer than by abstaining or expressing uncertainty. Under this kind of binary rubric (“1 point for each correct answer, 0 points for each blank or ‘I don’t know’”), the AI is incentivized to conceal its own uncertainty.

“Humans learn the value of expressing uncertainty outside of school, in the school of hard knocks. On the other hand, language models are primarily evaluated using exams that penalize uncertainty. Therefore, they are always in ‘test-taking’ mode,” the paper states, noting that this kind of binary rubric remains the mainstream standard in the field. In 2026, this research team’s findings were published in Nature, and they called for changing the scoring system [to “open rubric”] to better incentivize LLMs to admit their own shortcomings.

I’m still puzzled by one thing: why, after initially declaring my press card a fake, did the AI do an about-face the moment I pushed back?

A separate study published in July 2025 offers an explanation for this seemingly contradictory trait in AI: its tendency to swing from overconfidence to excessive self-doubt. Among the study’s findings was that the LLMs tested were “overly sensitive to contradiction.” Their confidence wavered more sharply in response to contradiction than agreement, a clear deviation from optimal Bayesian inference (the benchmark for rational decision-making). When users directly challenged the models, they wavered far more than even a mature, rational human would, deviating from the theoretically optimal decision-making path.

It appears that, at least for now, AI is not necessarily more “rational” than human beings are.

Kant urged, “Have the courage to use your own reason.” The opposite of courage isn’t cowardice, but passive dependence—dependence on authority, on the mainstream, on tools.

In an age when AI frequently “makes judgments” on our behalf, perhaps all of us as individuals should reiterate the following: have the courage to use your own reason, and never stop training and honing it. [Chinese]

Xanadu, by Xiquinho Silva (CC BY 2.0)

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

• The usual cross-platform tightening of search censorship and sensitive-word filtering around the June Fourth anniversary
• An animal torture case in Chongqing that sparked online and offline activism, protests, and arrests
• A new report that estimates that in 2025, China had 280 million “flexibly employed” workers, a number predicted to rise to 320 million by 2026
• An investigation into refrigerated cargo trucks being rerouted to Henan province in an extortionate scheme known as “siphon-style enforcement"
• The World Cup and the state of Chinese soccer

The usual cross-platform tightening of search censorship and sensitive-word filtering around the June Fourth anniversary

Ahead of the 37th anniversary of the June Fourth crackdown, CDT editors compiled and translated a number of related terms subject to search censorship across various Chinese online platforms. The terms, detected by a Citizen Lab tracking system, are just a few examples of the long-evolving efforts to "clear the online square" each year. Offline commemorations are subject to escalating repression as well: this year, there was an unprecedented ban on the Tiananmen Mothers’ annual cemetery visits.

An animal torture case in Chongqing that sparked online and offline activism, protests, and arrests

This summer, two high-profile incidents of animal abuse—in Chongqing and Guangdong, respectively—resulted in an outpouring of social-media comments and op-eds, petitions, protests, and billboards, as well as increased momentum for a nationwide animal-protection law. (China has various laws governing the treatment of livestock, lab animals, and endangered wildlife, but there is currently no law prohibiting the mistreatment of cats, dogs, or other companion animals in domestic settings, despite a decade and a half of NPC delegates proposing such legislation during every Two Sessions.)

In June, CDT Chinese editors archived four deleted articles about the first animal-abuse case, involving a man in Chongqing surnamed Li who posed as an animal lover to adopt cats and dogs that he later tortured and killed, sometimes uploading videos of the abuse to domestic video-sharing platforms. After animal-rights activists identified the man and began holding daily protests at his building to demand that he be arrested, police broke up the protests—confiscating signs, and beating and detaining some of the protesters. Online content about the protests was widely deleted, and domestic news reports failed to mention the protests or arrests, noting only that the man was briefly detained on charges of vandalism and throwing objects (in this case, a dog) off his balcony.

The first deleted article, “When Perpetrators Go Unpunished, What Exactly Is Society Condoning?” from WeChat blogger Sugarbean, argues that a civilized society must take a strong stand against the abuse of animals. The piece includes social-media content about Li’s animal abuse, and two posters designed to raise public awareness of the problem. A second archived piece in a similar vein seeks to debunk some of the arguments opposing a national animal-welfare law, briefly discusses the history of animal-welfare legislation in other countries, and recommends a Bilibili content creator who provides compelling arguments in favor of such legislation.

Another censored piece, by legal blogger Li Yuchen, contrasts the lenient treatment given to the man who tortured many animals to death and the violent police response to hundreds of concerned protesters. Li notes that on-scene video and first-hand evidence from participants indicate that police officers beat some of the protesters, at least 30 of whom were taken into custody, although this content was censored on Chinese social media and omitted from domestic press coverage. A portion of Li Yuchen’s article is translated below:

Soon after these videos documenting the clashes [between police and protesters] began circulating online, they were hit with censorship, and deleted in quick succession.

That act of censorship is fundamentally more truthful than any video footage. It implicitly acknowledges that yes, something did happen that afternoon, something that wasn’t supposed to be seen.

[…The official statement from local authorities] makes no mention of the protests, clashes, clearing, or arrests that took place on the afternoon of June 9th.

Those who were beaten, dragged away, or taken to the hospital were not mentioned in any official report. In the official version of events, that afternoon is a complete blank.

[…] When that very same toolkit of "disturbing the public order" and "picking quarrels and provoking trouble” is applied to a killer and torturer of animals, it is only enough to merit a few days of administrative detention. But when applied to a group of protesters, it is apparently enough to justify clearing the entire protest site and dragging away large groups of protesters. This toolkit measures only the extent to which public order has been disturbed, without taking into account the amount of suffering inflicted on the victims. As for the degree of “disturbance” to the public order, that is entirely determined by the police on the scene. [Chinese]

Another deleted and archived article, “Lives That the Law Doesn’t See: A Discussion of the Chongqing Animal-Torture Case and Why China Doesn’t Criminalize Mistreatment of Animals,” comes from a sociology student with the WeChat account Some Things Have No Name. The author, likely in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid having the piece deleted, uses “nùe杀” in the title rather than 虐杀 (nüèshā, literally "torture to death"). The scholarly, footnoted article suggests four “layers” impeding the enactment of a nationwide animal welfare law:

The first layer is the issue of identifiability in national governance. A nation governs what it can "see," and seeing requires classification, registration, and detailed lists.

[…] Animal suffering cannot be easily compiled into a list, nor does it correspond to any existing governing departments, nor does it generate any quantifiable metrics. A legal interest lacking a clear governing body is almost destined to stall in China’s legislative process: Should the prevention of cruelty to animals law fall under the purview of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security, or the National Forestry and Grassland Administration? This question has remained unanswered for sixteen years because each governing body only “sees” the animals on its own list.

The second layer is the influence of industry. China has the world’s largest livestock, fur, and laboratory-animal industries, not to mention the dog-meat economies that exist in several regions. Any law against cruelty to animals, no matter how narrowly it defines "cruelty," will be interpreted by these industries as a slippery slope: today it might prohibit the killing of pets, but tomorrow it might regulate methods for slaughtering livestock, and the day after that, it might regulate stocking density. Legislators aren’t dealing with the specific question of “whether cats and dogs should be protected,” but with the larger systemic question of "whether to open the Pandora’s box of animal welfare." Maintaining the current legal vacuum is the lowest-cost option.

The third layer concerns “ideological vigilance.” The official perception of the discourse on animal rights is that it is a foreign import linked to environmental NGOs, international animal-protection organizations, and even to a broader discourse about “Western values.” Therefore, animal-protection legislation is seen as tantamount to acknowledging the legitimacy of this discourse.

[…] The fourth layer, and the one I most want to address as a sociology student, is the stigma surrounding animal-rights advocates. In public discourse, people who care about animals are associated with a specific image: emotional, predominantly female, middle-class urbanites who believe that "cats and dogs are more important than people." This stigmatization reduces animal protection issues to mere "emotions" even before they enter the legislative discussion, and of course “emotions” have no place in China’s legislative discourse. [Chinese]

A new report that estimates that in 2025, China had 280 million “flexibly employed" workers, a number predicted to rise to 320 million by 2026

In June, CDT editors noted the continuation of a long-running censorship trend targeting economic topics such as youth unemployment, the implications of the gig economy, perceptions of reduced socioeconomic mobility, and criticism and analysis of specific industries and sectors. Two deleted articles (from Phoenix Finance and Planet Business Review, respectively) discussed the National Audit Office’s annual report, which “named and shamed” the Bank of China and other large state-backed banks for tax evasion and improper lending oversight. Another censored piece focused on May’s dismal consumption data, which showed that retail sales fell for the first time in three years. Also deleted was a longform article from Southern Weekly about Cong Rui’an, a doctoral candidate at Tsinghua University who recently published a book about his eight years of intermittent “undercover research” as a day laborer at Majuqiao, Beijing’s largest informal labor market. Cong and another worker offer a nuanced firsthand view of the pros and cons of gig-work and the precarious lives of informal laborers, who are often exploited by labor brokers or subject to wage theft by employers—realities that challenge the official narrative of "flexible employment" (灵活就业, línghuó jiùyè) as an economic solution.

A major topic of online discussion and online censorship last month was the “2025 China Blue-Collar Employment Research Report,” published by the China Center for Research on New Forms of Employment, a semi-official think tank affiliated with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS). Based on nearly 30,000 survey responses, the report estimates that China had 280 million “flexibly employed” workers in 2025, a figure that includes delivery riders and other gig workers; nannies, house-cleaners, and other providers of domestic services; part-time construction workers and day laborers; and other workers without formal employment contracts. The authors of the study predicted that this number would rise to 320 million people by 2026, accounting for more than 40% of urban employment.

CDT editors archived four pieces of deleted content about the report and what effects flexible employment is having on China’s socioeconomic landscape. An article by Ni Ren, from the WeChat account Black Noise, presents some of the figures from the report, and cautions that a huge underclass of part-time and undercompensated workers may doom China’s attempts to promote consumption as a key driver of the economy. “The Truth About the 280 Million ‘Flexibly Employed,’” from WeChat account Inspector No. 25, discusses trends in white-collar and blue-collar employment and wages, and notes that “flexible employment has morphed from a supplementary form of employment into a key pillar [of the labor market].”

Two other deleted posts take very different approaches to analyzing what the rise in flexible employment bodes for social mobility in China. A long piece from the official WeChat account of the Beijing Cultural Review (BCR), authored by Zhu Guanglei and Han Linxiu of the Zhou Enlai School of Government at Nankai University, examines the latest economic data on flexible employment and extrapolates ten characteristics of China’s changing social structure. Employing standard academic and official verbiage about economic development and social stability, the authors posit a fairly rosy outlook on continued social mobility in China, while cautioning against “the proliferation of artificial factors that could disrupt class harmony and the social order.”

A now-deleted WeChat article from Family Heritage Researcher sounds a much more pessimistic note about the potential for social ossification in an economy increasingly dependent on part-time and non-contract labor:

In the face of this reality, a stable labor contract has become a luxury that exceedingly few people enjoy.

[…] The rungs of the professional and social ladder have been severed, destroying opportunities for upward mobility.

Under this structure, things such as marriage and children, home ownership and upgraded consumption have become simply unattainable.

An even bigger problem is that the national strategy to double incomes […] is predicated on building a vast middle class with steady incomes and predictable futures.

But a food delivery rider, even one who earns more than ten thousand yuan a month, can never count on that kind of stability. [Chinese]

An investigation into refrigerated cargo trucks being rerouted to Henan province in an extortionate scheme known as “siphon-style enforcement"

Market supervision officials in Biyang county, Zhumadian city, Henan province, appear to be at the forefront of a new method of extortion known as “siphon-style enforcement,” which marks an escalation of past attempts to fill local government coffers via “deep-sea” or “distant-water” fishing expeditions to shake down targets in other provinces. There is now an official investigation into how Biyang’s Market Supervision Bureau colluded with intermediaries and drivers to lure cargo owners with below-market freight prices on online logistics platforms such as Yunmanman. The trucks (most carrying cold-storage shipments of meat) were then rerouted to pass through Henan, at which point they were intercepted by market supervision officials and their cargo was impounded for supposed violations, with extortionate fees to get the cargo out of storage.

In June, CDT editors archived six deleted articles criticizing higher-level officials for turning a blind eye to such blatant extortion and only launching an investigation when public outcry and press coverage reached a fever pitch. WeChat account Mu Bai’s Writing is Mediocre likens Zhumadian’s officials to “bandits” and lays out the details of their scheme to funnel trucks through their locality and put the squeeze on cargo owners. Blogger Qing Zhemu lists three questions that the investigation must answer: Who reported the illegal scheme, who condoned it, and who should be responsible for financially compensating the freight owners. Similarly, a piece from WeChat account Plainspoken Yu exclaims, “Twenty-one Truckloads of Frozen Goods Were Held Up in Biyang, Zhumadian for Six Months! Who’ll Pay for the Massive Losses?”

Two other deleted WeChat pieces from Fengsheng OPINION and Xu Peng’s History Rhymes argue that Henan’s “siphon-style enforcement” is much more pernicious than old-school “distant-water fishing,” and poses more of a threat to economic growth and progress. Another of the censored articles, from Xiang Dongliang’s Constructive Opinions WeChat account, reminds readers that although there are credible allegations of “siphon-style enforcement” in other counties in Henan, the investigation seems to be limited to a few officials in Biyang county. As such, Xiang predicts that the investigation will likely be superficial, and that the result will be a foregone conclusion—a few minor officials will take the fall, and the rest will go unpunished.

The World Cup and the state of Chinese soccer

Toward the end of June, CDT editors archived an essay from WeChat account The Wandering Mu Bai, titled, “Instead of Criticizing Chinese Fans for Cheering on the Japanese Team, the Shanghai Football Association Should Focus on Qualifying for the World Cup!” In it, the author takes the Shanghai Football Association to task for its nationalistic response to an AFP report showing a group of Chinese fans wearing Japanese national soccer team jerseys and cheering for the Japanese team as they watched a televised World Cup match in a Shanghai bar. Following the AFP report, the Shanghai Football Association issued a "World Cup Football Match Civilized Viewing Initiative," which urged Chinese fans to show national pride and not to “forget” that they were Chinese. A short excerpt from Mu Bai’s essay follows:

One point on which I disagree with the Shanghai Football Association: you can’t accuse those fans of lacking national pride.

I fully believe that if our national team were playing in the World Cup, these fans would be in bars cheering for the Chinese team, rather than the Japanese team.

The problem is, their own team isn’t in the running. Everyone wants to support and be passionate about their own team, but they don’t have the chance.

Some might argue, "Well, that doesn’t mean they ought to support the Japanese team, either."

But as everyone knows, fans are a passionate breed, and once they get into the groove, it’s hard to shake off. Even if their own team underperforms, they can’t stop watching soccer, so they broaden their enthusiasm. Beyond the nation, there’s the continent, and our continent is Asia. And since Japan is Asia’s soccer powerhouse, fans naturally support the Japanese team.

If South Korea played well, the fans would support South Korea; if North Korea played well, they’d support North Korea. It could just as well be Vietnam or Laos: fans are simply trying to find an outlet for their enthusiasm. It’s as simple as that. [Chinese]

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

To all readers:

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

1. Explanation of the rule-violating usage situation

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

2. Suspension and rectification schedule

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

3. Special reminder

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

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

This concludes the announcement. [Chinese]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today is July 20, 2026.

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

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

I had actually forgotten all about it.

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

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

He never spoke.

The father.

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

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

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

Raincoat Dad’s daughter was among those who died.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m conflicted.

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

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

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

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

Sometimes forgetting is as terrible as the disaster itself.

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

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

Youyou Luming, July 20, 2026 [Chinese]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

广场鸽子, by Costi (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"China is mighty! Rise up, classmates!"

"A memory that will live on forever."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With additional translation by Samuel Wade.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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