China NewsBase
Fast, easy search of the China news that matters
The China News Database was last updated at 10:45PM on August 15, 2022.
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319 articles matching the search query.
Shanghai residents angered by forced-entry disinfection as Beijing censors WHO director’s comments
The glittering metropolis of Shanghai is entering its sixth week of government-mandated lockdowns as China pursues its COVID-zero strategy despite widespread skepticism about its efficacy and growing protests from exhausted residents.
Hong Kong Journalists Association's press freedom award suspended - Hong Kong Free Press HKFP
A Hong Kong journalist group has postponed its press freedom award due to “the COVID pandemic and sociopolitical involvement in recent months,” Hong Kong Journalists Association chair Ronson Chan said on Tuesday.
Earlier this week, another journalist group in the city, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC), suspended its annual Human Rights Press Awards so as not to “unintentionally” violate any laws. Hong Kong Free Press published the names of the winners anyway: In full: Winners of the axed FCC Human Rights Press Awards — revealed. In The Atlantic, Timothy McLaughlin writes: “Hong Kong’s main press club has given up in the face of a new, repressive regime.”
How China’s Response to COVID-19 Set the Stage for a Worldwide Wave of Censorship
China’s COVID censors are setting “a playbook for information repression” where authoritarian governments in 80 nations have now placed new curbs on free speech and political expression that were “falsely described as public-health measures,” the New Yorker reports.
WeChat censorship of video detailing lockdown nightmare in Shanghai sparks outrage and protests
The six-minute clip, originally uploaded to WeChat in the early hours this morning, is an unflinching and candid documentation of what happened in Shanghai, where an ongoing COVID lockdown has made procuring food and accessing non-COVID-related medical treatment a struggle for the city’s 25 million residents.
Lockdown eases in Shanghai
Today in pandemic news from China: Despite an ease in quarantine rules, troublesome accounts of official incompetence and of residents being treated badly are still popping up in Shanghai.
Chinese censors struggle to keep up with Megan Thee Stallion at Coachella
“Hang in there, Puxi people! This song is for you!”
Shanghai reports first COVID-related deaths as lockdowns stretch on
Despite three COVID deaths and shocking accounts from quarantine facilities, Beijing is sticking to its pandemic playbook.
China censors gay storyline in new Fantastic Beasts franchise movie
China has nixed another gay movie storyline, this time from the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Warner Bros caved to demands from the Chinese government to censor references to a queer relationship from dialogue.
Editor’s Note for Wednesday, March 30, 2022
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn. Today: Academia struggles to survive under China’s closing mind.
Chinese government pressures scholars to withdraw from online panels at international conference
At an international conference, at least five scholars based in China faced pressure from Chinese officials to withdraw.
James Millward 米華健 on Twitter
Reports of political interference at the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) conference: James Millward, a professor of history at Georgetown University and a renowned scholar of Xinjiang and Central Asia, tweeted yesterday that some “PRC-based scholars were blocked from participating by their government” in the conference held this past weekend, and the “extent of this is not yet clear, but broad.” Today, AAS said that it is “currently investigating and will post an update as soon as possible.”
Eco-activism, sustainability, and food security in China: A conversation with Sonalie Figueiras
Sonalie Figueiras, founder of Hong Kong-based sustainability platform Green Queen, talks about China’s environment and food security goals, and challenges that censorship presents for eco-activism.
Justice Department accuses five people of intimidating Chinese dissidents in the United States
Five people have been charged by the United States Department of Justice for intimidating U.S.-based Chinese dissidents on behalf of the People’s Republic of China.
Editor’s Note for Thursday, March 3, 2022
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn. Today: SupChina has been under a sustained attack from nationalist internet trolls.
Prominent rights attorney Xie Yang arrested for subversion in China's Hunan
Authorities in Hunan have arrested rights lawyer Xiè Yáng 谢阳 for subversion, after he supported a primary teacher forced into psychiatric “treatment” for her outspoken comments on social media.
The shadowy messengers delivering threats to Hong Kong civil society - Hong Kong Free Press HKFP
Hong Kong civil groups received veiled threats prior to being shut down, with many staffers warned through phone calls and messages from so-called “middlemen” that revealed private information about them, according to interviews from the Agence France-Presse.
‘We’re going backward’: Chinese viewers upset by censorship of LGBTQ content in ‘Friends’
China’s media nannies have censored ‘Friends,’ even though the classic American sitcom, much loved in China, used to be available in all its unbowdlerized glory.
China video site Bilibili to add 1,000 censors after worker dies
Bilibili plans to hire 1,000 content censors in a continued effort to deny accusations that the company was responsible for overworking a 25-year-old member to death last week, per Nikkei Asia. The young worker’s death sparked another round of criticism over China’s grueling work culture in the tech industry.
Yesterday on SupChina: Tech workers angered as Bilibili censors posts after employee’s death.
China's Tencent restores Fight Club ending after backlash
A rare instance of reversed censorship: Tencent restored the original ending to Fight Club after the abridged version of the movie triggered social media backlash over cinematic censorship, per Bloomberg. Tencent’s version had replaced the explosive ending with a silent line of text declaring that authorities brought the criminals to justice, the BBC reports.
Fight Club Ending in China Changed Back After Weibo Social Backlash
A rare instance of reversed censorship: Tencent restored the original ending to Fight Club after the abridged version of the movie triggered social media backlash over cinematic censorship, per Bloomberg. Tencent’s version had replaced the explosive ending with a silent line of text declaring that authorities brought the criminals to justice, the BBC reports.
‘Unprecedented hurdles’ for foreign journalists in China
The foreign press corp in China, still coping with the visa cancellations of early 2020, says that Beijing has only dialed up its harassment of journalists in China, including of Chinese staff at international news bureaus.
Gay dating app Grindr disappears from multiple app stores in China
Popular gay dating app Grindr has been removed from app stores in China, the latest victim of internet regulators’ purge of all content that does not sing the Party tune.
Editor’s note for Thursday, January 27, 2022
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn. Today: Is the World Trade Organization back in play? The European Union launched a case against China at the WTO over Beijing’s trade pressure on Lithuania. Meanwhile, the trade body ruled in China’s favor in a decade-long dispute with the U.S. Separately, U.S. senators urged the Biden administration to act after a new report found that Chinese censorship had hurt companies like Google and Apple.
Chinese censors give ‘Fight Club’ new ending to make police win, angering fans and inspiring memes
Although there’s no evidence that the editing was ordered by Chinese authorities, many critics pinned the blame on the complex — and sometimes arbitrary — censorship rules in China, which discourage the release of cultural products with portrayals of nudity, violence, and other intense material.
Editor’s note for Wednesday, January 19, 2022
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn. Today: At the World Economic Forum, Xi Jinping warns against countries like the U.S. building “exclusive yards with high walls,” even as Beijing builds its Great Firewall ever higher; meanwhile, in the U.S., there is a flourishing industry of professional China threat-mongers.
Human Rights Watch, the New York–based NGO, released its 32nd annual report on human rights conditions worldwide. Here is what it had to say on a few key China topics:
On the internet: “The once-cacophonous internet is now dominated by pro-government voices that report to the authorities on people whose views they deem insufficiently nationalistic.” On Hong Kong: “Authorities devastated human rights protections and civil liberties in Hong Kong, recasting much of the peaceful behavior that had undergirded Hong Kong life, such as publishing news, as acts of subversion.” On Xinjiang: “The Chinese authorities are committing crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.”
China harvests masses of data on Western targets, documents show
Chinese data surveillance and harassment of critics on foreign social media: The Washington Post and the New York Times both have new investigations into how Chinese security authorities are more closely monitoring Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms that are censored in China. “China is turning a major part of its internal Internet-data surveillance network outward, mining Western social media, including Facebook and Twitter, to equip its government agencies, military and police with information on foreign targets,” the Washington Post says. “With growing frequency, the authorities are harassing critics both inside and outside China, as well as threatening relatives, in an effort to get them to delete content deemed criminal,” the NYT reports.
Editor’s note for Monday, January 3, 2022
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn. Today: Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam masters the language of Beijing as she defends the closing of Stand News.
Citizen News becomes latest Hong Kong news site to close down
In less than a year, three independent media outlets in Hong Kong — Apple Daily, Stand News, and now Citizen News — have closed due to increased pressure from authorities enforcing the National Security Law.
2021: The year in censored terms on the Chinese internet
What was censored in the past year?
Douban punished for weak censorship, pulled from app stores
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is banning Douban from app stores, though its website is still online and existing users can still access the app. This is Douban’s second punishment in 10 days.
As many as 127 journalists are behind bars in China and Hong Kong
China is the “world’s worst jailer of journalists,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said in its annual survey. Reporters Without Borders estimated that 127 journalists are currently detained in China, including Hong Kong, which has seen its press freedoms rapidly deteriorate under the National Security Law.
Zuo Fang, Chinese Journalist Who Challenged the Powerful, Dies at 86
One of the founders of the Southern Weekly newspaper, Zuǒ Fāng 左方, has died at the age of 86. A New York Times obituary notes that the newspaper he worked at for decades, also known in English as Southern Weekend, had “laid the groundwork for a golden era of Chinese journalism in the 1990s and 2000s” — an era very different from the current one for Chinese media.
Chinese Journalist Who Reported From Wuhan Is Gravely Ill After Prison Hunger Strike
Imprisoned citizen journalist Zhāng Zhǎn 张展 is “gravely ill after going on a hunger strike, according to her family and attorney,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Zhang was initially detained in May 2020, and later convicted of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” in December 2020 for her reporting from Wuhan in the early days of COVID-19 and criticism of the government’s response. The U.S. State Department and Human Rights Watch have called for her immediate release, per the New York Times.
Hong Kong independence activist with ‘clear conscience’ admits secession
Hong Kong under the National Security Law: Activist Tony Chung (鍾翰林 Zhōng Hànlín), 20, became the “youngest person convicted under national security law [but told the] judge he has no regrets for continuing his independence campaign,” while Hong Kong filmmakers see their future being censored.
Shutting Down Historical Debate, China Makes It a Crime to Mock Heroes
“Officials have defended the law as a necessary tool to fight what one director with the Cyberspace Administration of China, Wen Youhua, called ‘historical nihilism,’ which officials often use to describe deviant views.”
China accused of blocking media access to Winter Olympics
Foreign media say authorities have blocked requests for access and harassed reporters
Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 Organizers Block Foreign Media Coverage
China’s foreign press corps urged the International Olympic Committee for greater access to the Beijing Winter Games, complaining that organizers have “continuously stymied” them from covering preparations for the event.
China blamed for cancellation of events for German book on Xi Jinping
Publisher says situation is a ‘disquieting signal’ after presentations pulled at short notice
‘We are so divided now’: how China controls thought and speech beyond its borders
The long read: The arrest of a Tibetan New York city cop on spying charges plays into the community’s long-held suspicions that the People’s Republic is watching them
