Cindy Carter

2 months ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Cindy Carter

This year, China Media Group’s (CMG) annual Spring Festival Gala variety show, celebrating the advent of the Year of the Snake, featured the usual line-up of song and dance routines, operatic and acrobatic feats, comedic skits and cross-talk routines, as well as segments touting the achievements of the military, the tech sector, and various geographical regions of China.

Jan 28, 2025 | chinadigitaltimes.net | Cindy Carter

After several doctors voiced concerns about the poor quality of domestically produced generic medications included in China’s national health-care plan—and after online sleuths found numerous examples of data fraud in clinical trials for generic drugs in China—China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has responded by claiming that the data irregularities were simply “editing errors” that have now been corrected.

Jan 23, 2025 | chinadigitaltimes.net | Cindy Carter

Although an executive order signed by President Trump on Monday gave Bytedance-owned TikTok a 75-day reprieve from an impending U.S. ban, the future—and future ownership—of the popular short-video sharing platform remains uncertain. Seeking an alternative to TikTok, millions of American and U.S.-based “TikTok refugees” have joined Chinese-language social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote.

Jan 18, 2025 | chinadigitaltimes.net | Cindy Carter

As the U.S. Supreme Court voted to uphold a law forcing either the sale or ban of ByteDance-owned TikTok, “TikTok refugees” continued flocking to the Chinese-language app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. The influx of new foreign accounts has both puzzled and fascinated Xiaohongshu’s Chinese members, and raised challenges for the platform’s censorship and language-support capabilities.

Jan 14, 2025 | chinadigitaltimes.net | Cindy Carter

As we enter 2025, Chinese media outlets have continued the tradition of publishing op-ed pieces that pay tribute to the past year. But this year’s outpouring of vague and even confusing New Year’s pieces—most of which do not even mention significant news events that took place in 2024—have met with pushback from essayists criticizing these “tributes” as emblematic of the depressing state of reportage in China.