For any Sinology homies who missed it: I have a *very rough* conversion of Hucker for Pleco that is definitely buggy but may make life easier anyway. If you're up for beta-testing, check it out. 🀄📚

I’ve been enjoying Andrew Rule’s posts of Chinese netlit recs from fans, authors, translators, editors, and academics. He’s now assembled the entire project into a single page with lots of links to originals and translations. (I’m in there recommending 废土西游 and 此刻我存在.) substack.com/home/post/p-...

From another deleted post: "When two young Chinese women danced in the street wearing Japanese kimonos, they were met with outrage. There are posters exhorting Chinese people to travel abroad to a foreign military spectacle on what was originally Chinese territory. This is difficult to reconcile."

@cindycarter.bsky.social epic on useful selectivity of historical grievance. Quote below continues: "These two very different reaction systems operate in parallel and no one thinks it strange, but it is our 'dual-SIM' mentality that gives rise to such absurdities." "Dual-SIM mentality" is a keeper.

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

I’m excited to share a new paper in Nature that shows how large language models launder the strategic rhetoric of authoritarian states. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... A thread.

Insightful interview with rural-welfare activist Zhou Jian: "Legally speaking, farmers don’t actually own their land. They have no say in cases of land expropriation; they can’t borrow a cent using the land as collateral. You’re using a bowl passed to you by others, which can’t be passed on."

Widespread mockery of the MSS broadside against slackerism. Here's one: "I suspect my boss is a 'hostile foreign force,' because we work ourselves to death every day, but we’re still broke. Clearly, our spymaster boss is using this tactic to incite employees to slack off, the diabolical fiend."

Insightful interview with rural-welfare activist Zhou Jian: "Legally speaking, farmers don’t actually own their land. They have no say in cases of land expropriation; they can’t borrow a cent using the land as collateral. You’re using a bowl passed to you by others, which can’t be passed on."

This is a great read if you're interested in learning a bit more about class and poverty in China, because being rural is an incredibly tough life. Makes you understand why someone would leave the countryside to be a delivery driver.

This is a great account of a livestreamed discussion on city-dwellers’ unrealistically sunny views of life in rural China. Worth noting that these misconceptions can easily be transmitted to Westerners and taken as authoritative commentary on “the real China.” There *is* no single “real China”!

RightsCon was delayed by Zambia's Ministry of Information for "thematic issues" and problems with speakers.

Rightscon being postponed by the Zambian government days before thousands of people from hundreds of countries fly in is quite chaotic: www.404media.co/rightscon-hu...

The world’s largest digital rights conference was just canceled a week before it was supposed to take place. It feels emblematic of the state of human rights right now. But that's not a reason to give up. Everyone deserves rights. Everyone wants rights. That will never change.

My colleague @samuelwa.de nailed the scare quotes in this Nat'l Defense Times piece: "Illegal 'wall-scaling' is subject to punishment [...], a black mark that may even exact a toll on your children’s lives, affecting their eligibility to enlist in the army or qualify for the civil service exam."

Ai Daxun on her WeChat account ban: "My concerns weren’t unfounded. Last year just before Women’s Day, I tried to organize an offline book-club meeting in Guangdong, but just two nights before the event, it got canceled. I haven’t tried to organize any offline events since then."

it's an insane resources—if you've got a question about basically ANY major story on the Chinese internet/society/politics, there is a page on CDT contextualizing it with links to original source material. It's such a must-read (and don't forget to click into the 中文 site too: chinadigitaltimes.net)

Our new column What China's Thinking is underpinned by the work of my former colleagues at @chinadigitaltimes.net The superlative Chinese team & my friends/role models @samuelwa.de @cindycarter.bsky.social have contextualized so much of recent Chinese history chinabooksreview.com/2026/01/27/w...

This roundup of 2025's most sensitive words (courtesy of CDT Chinese editors and @samuelwa.de) includes some new and increasingly abstruse Xi Jinping nicknames: i in ing, 123, 羽哥, 长生不老, 150岁, 新加坡, and more.

From WeChat account Mulan’s Worldview: “The tourism industry in China is a chamberpot [...], picked up when needed, and cast aside when it is not. When it is needed to burnish political achievements, tourism is treated as a key driver of GDP growth, but at other times, it becomes a disposable tool."

Does "reincarnation" mean that the bans are no big deal? No. Porosity is a feature, not a bug (see link). As "Du Fu" writes above, bans mean deleted archives and severed connections. They serve as a deterrent to others. And the authorities can always come for you offline if they feel the need to.

Some banned users number their new accounts. Another went from "Silent Observer" to "New Silence," "New New Silence," and now "New New New Silence." Another approach: "Du Fu’s life took him from Shihao Village to Huanhua Creek, and on to Baidi Fortress. So now there’s Du Fu of Baidi Fortress."

"Du Fu wrote 'The state broken, its mountains and rivers remain,' and 'Crimson gates reek with meat and ale, while on the streets are bones of the frozen dead.' Certain people would have called this 'negative energy.' But a thousand years on, it's positive energy that schoolchildren learn by heart."

Some interesting reflections on the fire from mainland voices. Some mourn Hong Kong's "mainlandisation," as well as the dead; others still see and envy some relative openness there. One is very annoyed with people suggesting that the fire was started by Japanese spies.

"When major accidents like this have happened in the past, we’ve always heard: 'Now is the time for all-out rescue efforts. Please don’t analyze causes, assign blame, or speculate about the disaster.' Those who did these things were accused of hindering the response, or harboring ulterior motives."

(That was actually his response to the second ban, when New Silence, formerly Silent Observer and now New New New Silence, became New New Silence.)

Editor of account recently revived after a third ban: "What would you do if years of painstaking effort were wiped out in an instant? Cry and wail and curse your fate? Sink into dejection and give up? No. The late Ming historian Tan Qian had an inspiring answer: count to four, and start again."

Transnational repression at the IndieChina Film Festival: Transnational repression at the IndieChina Film Festival: open.substack.com/pub/donaldcl...

Come for the zesty array of censorship evasion techniques, stay for the tiny thumbnail of an “I Took Part In The Reciprocal Tariff War of April, 2025 And All I Got Was This Lousy Mug” mug.

“Q: What’s your opinion on public account posts getting shot down? A: I have no opinion, and feel nothing but gratitude toward the public account platform.”

Netizen Voices: “Stop Complaining, Hu Xijin. You Played a Part in This.” "Hu asking why everyone's so quiet is like the head palace eunuch asking a junior eunuch, 'Hey, how come your equipment is only good for taking a leak?'" chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/10/neti...

Translations on Chikungunya and Mosquito Eradication in Guangdong: “Hand Over Your Keys or We'll Pick the Locks!” "As Hu Shih once said: 'Maintain a high degree of vigilance against the phrase "at any price." Because one day, you or I might become that "price" they speak of.'"

"We believe: Faith is not a crime. Worship is not a crime. Prayer is not a crime."—Zion Church on detention of dozens of members

The Guardian Interviews Chinese Fighters for Ukraine. "Like many Chinese volunteers, Tim is motivated by a combination of sympathy for the Ukrainian cause and increasing despair at the direction of his own country."

Includes strong commentary from Bitter Winter: "The CCP isn’t just watching your prayers—it’s editing them … Religion isn’t just Sinicized. It’s sanitized, standardized, and subordinated. And if you’re wondering who’s really being worshipped, just look at the podium" bitterwinter.org/red-is-the-n...

A lot of good stuff in here. One thing is that Chinese anxiety about how its education system compares with other countries feels strikingly parallel to other countries' anxieties about how their education systems compare with China's.

Translations: “How Can a Country That Blocks the Nobel Website Hope to Win a Nobel Prize?” "To sum up: if the winner was backed by the Chinese government, it’s the correct decision; if not, it’s using the Nobel Prize to fan anti-China sentiment."

"I truly don’t know what kind of sentiment would lead certain people to compare the sight of a massive nighttime traffic jam at some highway toll gates with a 'galaxy of glittering stars.' All the scene really stirs in me is a headache, backache, and the sensation of an uncomfortably full bladder."

"Topics targeted included multiplatform bans on influencers; Nepal protests; labor rights for delivery riders; pressure on citizen journalism; problems in official news coverage; economic prospects and precarity; domestic violence; a hazardous waste accident; official misconduct; & patriotic cinema"

China's online influencers are finding it harder than ever to navigate the "red lines": "[Recent state-media] criticisms of Zhang Xuefeng [...are] no different from the Cultural Revolution-era practices of 'criticism for the sake of criticism' and 'elevating all issues to the level of politics.'"

Streets are still closed off in front of the Portland ICE facility at 8:30pm. Protesters have gathered on a side street. Dance party in progress.

China's online influencers are finding it harder than ever to navigate the "red lines": "[Recent state-media] criticisms of Zhang Xuefeng [...are] no different from the Cultural Revolution-era practices of 'criticism for the sake of criticism' and 'elevating all issues to the level of politics.'"

A nostalgic look back at the Chengfu Road (成府路) bookstalls and bookstores of Beijing's university district : chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/7214...

Chinese internet users express frustration over the de-platforming of some frugal and very laid-back gamers. One online comment: "You can’t be a slacker, can’t be materialistic, you just have to keep working and grinding away. [...] All we can do is wait until they grind us down to nothing."

“I’m emotionally shellshocked right now,” said one professor in the Texas Tech system. “What does it say about academic freedom? It says we don’t have it.” The professor spoke by phone from the inside of a car to avoid being overheard by colleagues. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/u...

Chinese internet users express frustration over the de-platforming of some frugal and very laid-back gamers. One online comment: "You can’t be a slacker, can’t be materialistic, you just have to keep working and grinding away. [...] All we can do is wait until they grind us down to nothing."

Update, h/t @cindycarter.bsky.social:

A nostalgic look back at the Chengfu Road (成府路) bookstalls and bookstores of Beijing's university district : chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/7214...

Police in China detained a man for comments critical of President Xi Jinping’s military parade, highlighting the ruling Communist Party’s intolerance of dissent. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...