Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted—and then quickly deleted—a post supporting the protests in Hong Kong. The tweet generated an immediate outcry. The Chinese Basketball Association announced it was suspending cooperation with the...
A small number of China’s feminist movement’s influential thinkers and organizers have relocated overseas, in search of an environment more hospitable to their activism. Today, though their numbers are relatively small, they have succeeded in...
As authoritarian governments around the world develop sophisticated technologies for controlling information, many observers have predicted that these controls would be ineffective because they are easily thwarted and evaded by savvy Internet users. Margaret Roberts demonstrates that even censorship that is easy to circumvent can still be enormously effective. Taking advantage of digital data harvested from the Chinese Internet and leaks from China’s Propaganda Department, this book sheds light on how and when censorship influences the Chinese public.
Disputed territories including south Tibet, Taiwan and the South China Sea were omitted.
The looming anniversary of a deadly Sichuan earthquake has been named “Thanksgiving Day” by local government officials, drawing scorn from Chinese internet users who feel the government should be honoring the dead instead.
A few short weeks after its release, a Japanese mobile game featuring a traveling frog has become a hit in China.
A well-known Chinese climber has died while performing one of his trademark daredevil skyscraper stunts.
If the Chinese government goes through with a plan to gain board seats at some of its country’s top technology players, will that cause problems when those companies go hunting for deals overseas?
A big step forward for a country long criticized for depriving children of necessary sex education, or graphic bordering on pornographic? That’s the question being asked in China over a series of textbooks aimed at children ages 6 to 13.
While Twitter is going through some rough times, Weibo, which went public in the U.S. in 2014, is thriving. In fact Weibo is on track to surpass its U.S. counterpart in one of the key metrics for social media platforms: monthly active users.
From his hometown in northeast China, Kwon Pyong used the internet to mock and criticize the nation’s rulers, including posting a selfie in which he wore a T-shirt that likened President Xi Jinping to Hitler.
Shares rally on back of Chinese social platform’s ability to monetize subscriber base
A massive backlash on social media in China has apparently led the United Nations to take down two Lunar New Year posts on refugees and poverty from their Chinese Weibo social media site.
When Taiwan last year elected a president eager to reduce the island’s reliance on China, tens of thousands of Chinese netizens attacked Taiwanese websites in a co-ordinated action that was as much a surprise to Beijing as it was to its targets...
City-dwellers in China and the United States are among the greatest beneficiaries of the international trade deals President-elect Trump...
The immense popularity of social media has afforded China watchers a terrific window onto public opinion in China. In recent years, a slew of English-language websites have emerged to interpret the various trends and phenomena, discourse, and...
A former employee gives insight into how Weibo balances the demands of government censorship with the need to attract users.
GreatFire.org has been under an unprecedented denial-of-service attack, receiving more than 2 billion requests per hour.
Blocked websites, jailed journalists, and nationalist rhetoric have long been features of the Chinese Communist Party’s media control strategy. During the Year of the Horse, which just ended on China’s lunar calendar, President Xi Jinping and his...
In 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...
The Chinese government institution with the biggest social media following goes to...the nationwide anti-vice campaign called "Strike the four blacks, Eliminate the four harms." ...
On August 4, a 6.5-magnitude earthquake viciously struck Ludian County, a township in the southwest province of...
China’s social media microblogs, the country’s de facto town square, have for more than a year seethed with oblique flecks at the fate of former security chief Zhou Yongkang.
In recent months, Chinese microblogging service Weibo has been eclipsed by the Facebook-like WeChat, which allows instant messaging within self-selected circles of followers.
China is facing an epidemic of overwork, to hear the state-controlled press and Chinese social media tell it.
A Sichuan newspaper listed "ten forbidden behaviors" for officials—such as don't talk to the public with hands behind your back and don't ask others to carry the suitcase for you.
It’s easier to talk about Jesus than Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping on Weibo, China’s massive Twitter-like social media platform.
The atheist Chinese Communist Party, known for its sometimes heavy-handed...
Earlier this week, Chinese Internet services blocked searches for the phrase mìshū bāng (秘书帮). Roughly...
Panic, calls against racial profiling, and anger at Western coverage permeate Weibo in absence of ongoing TV coverage of terror attacks.
People like to hear voices critical of the government, so social media companies can’t silence them entirely.
Chinese media have debated why January saw pollution so extreme it closed schools and...
The new U.S. Ambassador to China, Max Baucus, asked for suggestions for his Chinese name. Everyone unanimously replied, “Meikesi? Baokesi.” [“He hasn’t...
The Beijing News says the monitors, described as Internet opinion analysts, are on state and commercial payrolls.
This morning, a Chinese street vendor named Xia Junfeng was executed. Xia had been found guilty of murdering two urban enforcers, known colloquially as chengguan, in 2009. Xia’s lawyers argued he acted in self-defense,...
There is a Chinese proverb that says one must kill a chicken to scare the monkeys, which means to punish someone in order to make an example out of them. That is what many believe happened last Sunday when outspoken investor and Internet...
On July 9, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd posted on a social media site about a phone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The twist? The message was written in Chinese on the immensely popular Chinese microblogging platform Sina...
The horse is out of the barn. Now that China’s social Web has given every citizen the ability to publish for a wide audience—a privilege once reserved for the government—state publications and Web users there continue to wrangle over who best...
The family of Lu Lingzi, the young Chinese woman killed in the attack at the Boston Marathon, didn’t want their daughter’s name revealed, but at least 12,000 people had left comments in her memory on her microblog account after it was...
Does Sina Weibo provide an equal platform for expression for both men and women in China? According to a recent study...
Well-known U.S. newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have raised the eyebrows of many Chinese recently in their two questionable reports on sensitive China-related topics.
What should China do to persuade its moody ally North Korea to comply with international restrictions on its nuclear ambitions?
“Free...
Huang Qi is best known in China as the creator of the country’s first human rights website, Liusi Tianwang, or “June 4 Heavenly Web.” A collection of reports and photos, as well as the occasional first-person account of abuse, the site is updated...
A weibo message from Brad Pitt set off a buzz this week, and he’s not the only overseas star invading the microblog.
All of you Sinica old-timers might remember a show we ran two years ago on the death of the China blog, in which Jeremy, Kaiser, and Will Moss mused about whether the...
Two hundred million Sina Weibo users found Tuesday they could search for Chinese leaders and were free to critiique.
An active Beijing-based micro-blogger named Dongdong Wang recently tweeted this image on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter: {vertical_photo_right}
At first glance, it doesn’t look like much: Outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao (left) and outgoing...
A doctored photo of China's top officials doing a popular South Korean dance went viral 'til Chinese censors pulled it down.
Speech on the Chinese Internet, it seems, is beginning to thaw once more following the country’s leadership transition. After months of speculation, new Chinese leader Xi Jinping was announced on November 16 at the close of the 18th...
As Beijing enters extreme lock-down prior to the 18th National Party Congress...
Two characters in China’s English textbook used 20 years ago are back, sparking a wave of nostalgia.
