China Digital Times

China Digital Times (CDT) is an independent media organization that operates in both Chinese and English, working to share uncensored news and diverse voices from China with a global audience. We achieve this through: - Curating and summarizing news from English-language sources while providing a wider social and political context. - Elevating the perspectives of Chinese citizens by translating their voices. - Exposing the workings of state censorship by gathering and translating filtered keywords, propaganda instructions, and official statements. - Analyzing the resistance language of Chinese internet users by translating and explaining the codes, metaphors, and satire they create in response to current events and censorship. CDT English began in 2003 as a blog focused on monitoring the evolution of the internet in China, and it quickly transformed into a full-fledged news platform. In 2010, we introduced CDT Chinese to compile content that has been censored or blocked within Chinese online spaces. We carefully choose significant and relevant material from CDT Chinese to translate for our English-speaking audience. Although CDT is based in Berkeley, California, our team collaborates from various locations around the world.

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Articles

Ne Zha 2's Heat Masks Broader Chill for Chinese Box Office

2 weeks ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

The massive success of Ne Zha 2, boosted by patriotic group-buys and shielded by censors, buoyed a series of triumphal state media headlines earlier this year. Box office takings for the year to date were indeed up substantially from 2024, but this was a relatively low bar after a sharp slump from a spike in 2023. Even that year’s haul fell well short of the industry’s pre-pandemic peak in 2019.
Young Chinese Turn to Digital Mysticism

3 weeks ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

At Project Sinopsis, Ansel Li examines how many young Chinese are seeking solace in mystical crystals and spirituality-based scams. Superstitious elements have blended with livestream- and app-driven hyperconsumerism; Li even attributes a substantial slice of homegrown AI champion DeepSeek’s public adoption to demand for AI-generated fortunes and horoscopes. This phenomenon is not merely a return to old habits or rural mysticism.
“If We’re Winning This Much After Losing the U.S. Market, Imagine How Much We'd Win if We Lost All of Them.”

1 month ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

Amid signs that U.S. tariffs are starting to bite into China’s exports, the country’s foreign ministry issued a defiant vow not to "kneel" on Wednesday, declaring: "Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst. […] For China, for the world, we must rise and fight on." Some commentators in the West argue that China has the upper hand; naturally, many official voices in China agree. But some views expressed online are darker.
Sinopsis: China’s Dual-Use Infrastructure in the Pacific

1 month ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

CDT noted last month that recent Chinese naval exercises around Australia had sparked a spike in comments on Chinese social media advocating the conquest of Australia. While some may have been a joke, others appeared serious, and were taken seriously by commentators such as current affairs and science blogger Xiang Dongliang, who wrote: “Popular sentiment really has shifted.
Translations: Tiananmen’s Long Shadow Falls on Tributes to Hu Dehua and His Father, Hu Yaobang

1 month ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

Hu Dehua, the third son of former General Secretary Hu Yaobang, died in Beijing on March 30. The anniversary of his father’s death in 1989, which sparked the protests crushed by the June 4 crackdown, is April 15. That historical context, as well as Hu Dehua’s own vocal defense of his father’s legacy and criticism of Xi Jinping, imbued the younger Hu’s death with heightened political sensitivity.
Translations: DeepSeek’s “Outstanding Results in the Field” of Public Security and Public Opinion Response

1 month ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

Recent weeks have seen a mounting chorus of praise from Chinese companies and other organizations for the new national AI champion DeepSeek. At Rest of World, Kinling Lo noted its integration in cars, smartphones, household appliances, and healthcare, as well as government departments. Other recent reports have noted signs of the adoption of AI technologies in surveillance, censorship, and even non-combat military applications.
Translations: China’s “Officialdom Complex”-Cures and Effects

2 months ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

While the CCP swept away many remnants of China’s imperial past, one prominent feature has endured: the existence of an elevated official class, to which fiercely contested examinations offer an entryway.
Translation: Is Punishing Workers With Literal Suspension About Safety, or Power?

2 months ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

A photo showing three construction workers suspended from a gateway in their safety harnesses has sparked discussion online over the use of Cultural Revolution-style humiliation, workplace discipline versus personal dignity, the abuse of ordinary Chinese by those who wield power over them, and the different standards of accountability to which people from different social strata are held.
Hangzhou Jobseekers Compared With Terracotta Warriors

2 months ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Samuel Wade

At South China Morning Post last week, Mandy Zuo reported on employment targets announced at the Two Sessions legislative and advisory meetings, which concluded on Tuesday in Beijing:The Chinese government wants the economy to create more than 12 million new urban jobs in 2025 while facing “more pronounced structural employment problems”, Premier Li Qiang said in his annual work report to China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, on Wednesday.
Minitrue Plus Five: March 9, 2020 - BBC on Tibet, China-CEEC Summit, COVID Goes Global

2 months ago | chinadigitaltimes.net | Josh Rudolph

In late 2020, CDT acquired and verified a collection of propaganda directives issued by central Party authorities to state media at the beginning of that year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020 through the early weeks of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, and shed light on the propaganda machinery’s efforts to grapple with the outbreak.