China Ranks Last of 65 Nations in Internet Freedom
Chinese officials will be able to impose a prison sentence of up to seven years on a person convicted of creating and spreading “false information” online.
Culture
10.07.15
Jia Zhangke on Finding Freedom in China on Film
Jia Zhangke is among the most celebrated filmmakers China has ever produced—outside of China. His 2013 film, A Touch of Sin, a weaving-...
Conversation
09.30.15
The Future of Autonomy in Hong Kong
Yesterday, the governing board of Hong Kong University, one of the territory’s most esteemed institutions of higher education, voted to reject the promotion of Johannes Chan, a former law school dean, over the objections of the faculty and...
Neil Gaiman Joins Authors in Urging Chinese President to Release Jailed Writers
More than 40 authors have written to Xi Jinping, expressing ‘concern about the deteriorating state of free expression in China’.
I’m with the Banned: China Blocks Bon Jovi Gigs
U.S. group were due to perform first China shows next week, but previous use of Dalai Lama image may have prompted officia intervention.
The Singapore Lesson China Missed
It’s impossible to understand Singapore’s success without recognizing the importance of state constraint. Since Mr. Xi acknowledges no such limits, he will have a hard time achieving Singapore’s results.
China Uses ‘Picking Quarrels’ Charge to Cast a Wider Net Online
Artists, essayists, lawyers, bloggers and others deemed to be online troublemakers have been hauled into police stations and investigated or imprisoned for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge that was once confined to physical...
Want to Circumvent China’s Great Firewall? Learn These 9 Phrases First
A story about the newly updated e-book Decoding the Chinese Internet: A Glossary of Political Slang”
China’s War Against One American Journalist
Shohret Hoshur’s brothers are being disappeared by the Chinese government. Beijing is trying to silence an American reporter by sentencing his brothers to China’s gulag.
China National Security Law Aims to Create 'Garrison State'
The law marks a crackdown on activism and dissent, featuring repression of civil-society groups, and warnings against the spread of Western ideas.
CAA China’s Leader on Censorship, Why China Needs a Global Hit and Translating for Spielberg
The first U.S. talent agency with full-time representation in China marks 10 years in Beijing.
Media
06.17.15
American Students in China: It’s Not as Authoritarian as We Thought
For some American students about to embark on a study abroad trip to China, the U.S. media reports of Chinese Internet censorship, jailing of dissidents, and draconian population control laws may dominate their perception of the country. But...
Chinese Hackers Circumvent Popular Web Privacy Tools
The attackers compromised websites frequented by Chinese journalists as well as China’s Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.
China Is Exporting its Tiananmen Censorship, and We Are All Victims
Twenty six years after the killing of student protesters, the code of silence is spreading worldwide.
Q&A—Willy Wo-Lap Lam on ‘Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping’
Xi’s reversal of guiding principles guiding Chinese politics post-Mao signals “the closing of the Chinese mind.”
Should Authors Shun or Cooperate With Chinese Censors?
A PEN American Center report found some books were expurgated by Chinese censors without the authors knowledge.
Corrupting the Chinese Language
The author fears Orwell’s prediciton: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
Conversation
05.21.15
Censorship and Publishing in China
This week, a new PEN American Center report “Censorship and Conscience: Foreign Authors and the Challenge of Chinese Censorship,” by Alexa...
Why Hong Kong is Clamping Down on Creative Writing
The decision to close City University’s MFA program is plainly intended to limit free expression.
Three Days in Beijing with the Global Dissident Elite
Poitras, Oscar-winning Citizenfourdirector, came to Beijing to shoot a film about Appelbaum and Ai meeting and making art.
US and EU Criticise Chinese Journalist’s Jailing for ‘Leaking State Secrets’
Gao Yu vows to appeal her 7-yr sentence for allegedly leaking Document 9, revealing Party hostility to human rights.
Opinion: Gao Yu Verdict Sends Clear Message to Regime Critics in China
Chinese journalist Gao Yu's seven year sentence again shows how Beijing authorities deal with critics of the regime.
Sobering News Out of China, Part 4 Million
Chronicles of a country walling itself off.
The NYRB China Archive
02.09.15
China: Inventing a Crime
from New York Review of BooksIn late January, Chinese authorities announced that they are considering formal charges against Pu Zhiqiang, one of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, who has been in detention since last May. Pu’s friends fear...
China Says No Room for ‘Western Values’ in University Education
Education minister says books which ‘smear socialism’ will be banned.
The Politburo’s Predicament
Freedom House
Drawing on an analysis of hundreds of official documents, censorship directives, and human rights reports, as well as some 30 expert interviews, the study finds that the overall degree of repression has increased under the new leadership. Of 17...
Media
12.08.14
On First Annual Constitution Day, China’s Most Censored Word Was ‘Constitution’
On December 4, China’s first annual Constitution Day, Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily posted the complete text of the Chinese...
Conversation
12.03.14
Can China Conquer the Internet?
Lu Wei, China’s new Internet Czar, recently tried to get the world to agree to...
Media
09.25.14
An Internet Where Nobody Says Anything
Here is what a court in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang region, concludes Ilham Tohti, a balding, thick-set, 44-year-old professor, did: “Using ‘Uighur Online...
New Political News Website Scolded by Party Propaganda Officials for 'Incorrect Practices'
Thepaper.cn given a 'stern warning' after it likely irked propaganda officials.
China Bans Unauthorized Critical Coverage by Journalists
Reporters in China are forbidden from publishing critical reports without the approval of their employer, one of China’s top media regulators said on Wednesday.
Deadly McDonald’s Attack Highlights Fears About Cults in China
The perpetrators were six members of a religious cult, including a middle-age man, his two grown daughters and his 12-year-old son, who became angry when refused a phone number.
Cairo in Chinese
When Shen Yitong left her home in China to study French at Cairo University in 2008, she didn’t know that she would come to think of Egypt as a second home, or that she would see revolution come upon the country so suddenly. Her parents came from...
Media
04.17.14
Ai Weiwei’s Reach Draws New Yorkers’ Attention to Free Speech
“
Ai Weiwei retweeted me!” exclaimed a young blonde woman, laughing and waving her iPhone in the air with excitement. She and some two hundred other New Yorkers had gathered on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army...
Media
04.02.14
The Future of Democracy in Hong Kong
Veteran Hong Kong political leaders Anson Chan and Martin Lee describe some of the core values—such as freedom of the press—that they seek to maintain as Beijing asserts greater control over the territory seventeen years after Britain handed it back...
Media
03.17.14
‘Self-Media’ Pushes and Beijing Pushes Back
Michelle Song, twenty-four, studies international relations at Beijing’s prestigious Peking University and lives in a dormitory, so she doesn’t watch television regularly and doesn’t subscribe to newspapers. But this has not hampered her ability...
The State of Journalism in China
How reporters are trying to work around China’s resurgent censorship, 25 years after Tiananmen.
The State of Journalism in China
The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard
The Communist Party has long striven to control freedom of speech in China. Websites from around the world are blocked. Major social media cannot be accessed, and advanced software is used to delete “sensitive” entries from the Internet. Domestic...
Spring Festival Gala Performance by Chinese Rock Icon in Doubt
The popularity and pizzazz of China's “Godfather of Rock” is not worth the political risk for CCTV.
In Rare Video, Wife of Jailed Nobel Laureate Reads Poems While Under House Arrest
The video was filmed by the Independent Chinese PEN Center, a free-speech advocacy group established by Ms. Liu.
A New Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum Puts a Modern Face on Chinese Art
The art world has embraced the evolution of Western art, but when it comes to China, we seem stuck in the past. A new exhibit at the Met wants to shake up these stereotypes.
Snowden Lied About China Contacts
The New York Times has urged the Obama administration to offer Edward Snowden “a plea bargain or some...
China Spins Mandela to Fit Its Political Narrative
State-run newspaper Global Times dismisses Western media comparisons between recently deceased anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison in South Africa, and veteran Chinese human rights advocate, Liu Xiaobo, now...
IKEA Toy Wolf Becomes Unlikely Anti-Government Symbol In Hong Kong
An IKEA toy wolf whose name in Cantonese, Lo Mo Sai, sounds like the offensive phrase "mom’s c***," was thrown at Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying on Sunday. "Throw Lo Mo Sai" in Cantonese sounds like "f*** your mother."
Conversation
12.07.13
Will China Shut Out the Foreign Press?
Some two dozen journalists employed by The New York Times and Bloomberg News have not yet received the visas they need to continue to report and live in China after the end of this year. Without them, they will effectively be expelled from the...
Media
11.25.13
Former Committee to Protect Journalists Honoree Says Bloomberg Chief Should Not Chair Press Freedom Dinner
A prominent Hong Kong-based journalist has called on Daniel Doctoroff, Chief Executive Officer of Bloomberg L.P., to step down from his role as chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) annual...
Conversation
10.30.13
Trial By TV: What Does a Reporter’s Arrest and Confession Tell Us About Chinese Media?
The latest ChinaFile Conversation focuses on the case of Chen Yongzhou, the Guangzhou New Express journalist whose series of investigative reports exposed fraud at the Changsha, Hunan-based heavy machinery maker...
Books
10.24.13
The Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon
Over the years, China Digital Times (CDT) has collected hundreds of words and turns of phrase invented by China’s citizens of the Internet, its “netizenry.” Playfully evading online censors, netizens have created a world of “grass-mud horses” and “river crabs,” forever locked in battle in the “Mahler Desert.” CDT’s Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon is a collection of politically-charged terms which represent netizen resistance discourse.
The NYRB China Archive
10.24.13
China: “Capitulate or Things Will Get Worse”
from New York Review of BooksThe massacre of protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989, and the harsh repression during the months immediately following put China into a foul mood. Among ordinary Chinese, the prestige of the Communist Party, whose leaders had ordered the brutal...
CCTV’s International Expansion: China’s Grand Strategy for Media?
Center for International Media Assistance
China Central Television has come a long ways since its founding as a domestic party propaganda outlet in 1958. The domestic service has been supplemented by an international service, boasting three major global offices in Beijing, Washington,...
The Long Shadow of Chinese Censorship
Center for International Media Assistance
This report provides a survey of the phenomenon of censorship and its recent evolution as it pertains to the news media sector, though similar dynamics also affect the film, literature, and performing arts industries. Specifically, this report...
Sinica Podcast
09.20.13
Chinese Twitter and the Big-V Takedown
from Sinica PodcastJoining Kaiser and Jeremy this week are David Wertime and Rachel Lu from Tea Leaf Nation, along with Paul Mozur from The Wall Street Journal. And our topic? None other than the...