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<title>Bleak Assessments of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, Five Years On</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/07/bleak-assessments-of-hong-kongs-national-security-law-five-years-on/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cindy Carter]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2025 03:10:27 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Culture & the Arts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Human Rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[academic freedom]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[arrests]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Article 23]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[freedom of association]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong activism]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hong kong basic law]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong democracy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong legal system]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hong kong national security law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hong kong politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong press freedom]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[human rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[human rights violations in Hong Kong]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Joshua Wong]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[legislation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[national security]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[one country two systems]]></category>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704315</guid>
<description><![CDATA[June 30 marked the fifth anniversary of Beijing’s imposition of a heavy-handed national security law (NSL) on Hong Kong, which has altered the sociopolitical landscape of the city by undermining its democratic institutions, weakening civil society, and severely curtailing a wide range of freedoms. In the last five years, groups of opposition politicians have been […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[June 30 marked the <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250627-hong-kong-s-dragnet-widens-5-years-after-national-security-law">fifth anniversary</a> of Beijing’s imposition of a heavy-handed <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/hong-kong-national-security-law/">national security law</a> (NSL) on Hong Kong, which has altered the sociopolitical landscape of the city by undermining its democratic institutions, weakening <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/09/more-hong-kong-civil-society-groups-disband-under-pressure-from-national-security-law/">civil society</a>, and severely curtailing a wide range of freedoms. In the last five years, groups of <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/11/hong-kong-sentences-45-pro-democracy-figures-to-up-to-ten-years-in-prison/">opposition politicians</a> have been jailed, labor unions and <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/09/human-rights-watch-report-shows-decline-of-academic-freedom-in-hong-kong/">universities cowed</a>, <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/06/apple-daily-publishes-final-issue-amid-tears-applause-and-fears-for-hong-kongs-future/">once prominent</a> media <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/08/stand-news-editors-convicted-of-sedition-in-latest-blow-to-hong-kong-press-freedom/">outlets shuttered</a>, public protests quashed, and June 4 <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/hong-kong-again-stifles-commemoration-of-tiananmen-massacre/">commemorations banned</a>. Many Hong Kong activists and organizations have been forced into exile, and some have experienced <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5442500/five-years-of-a-strict-national-security-law-in-hong-kong">transnational repression</a> even in their new locales.
In May, the Hong Kong government fast-tracked new legislation to further solidify Beijing’s influence and <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/05/hong-kong-strengthens-national-security-legislation-expands-beijings-influence/">impose harsher punishments for national security offences</a>, including jail time for merely sharing information about investigations. This marked an expansion of Hong Kong’s <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/03/hong-kong-legislature-unanimously-passes-fast-tracked-national-security-law/">homegrown “Article 23” national security law</a> (Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, enacted in March 2024) that targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, theft of state secrets, and espionage—adding even more repressive ammunition to the antecedent <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/06/chill-descends-on-hong-kong-as-national-security-legislation-passes/">2020 National Security Law</a> imposed by Beijing. Hong Kong’s government is now <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/hong-kong-government-adds-new-charges-to-prolong-joshua-wongs-imprisonment/">attempting to prolong the imprisonment</a> of some previously prosecuted democracy activists, such as Joshua Wong (slated to be released in early 2027), by adding even more serious charges such as “conspiring to collude with foreign forces.”
A month earlier, <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/04/hong-kong-democratic-party-to-disband-amnesty-international-hong-kong-office-opens-abroad/">Hong Kong’s Democratic Party announced that it would disband</a> under pressure from local authorities, and Amnesty International, which closed its Hong Kong office in 2021, launched a new overseas office (officially registered in Switzerland) to “<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/04/new-amnesty-international-hong-kong-office-opens-overseas/">focus on advocating for human rights of Hongkongers</a>, within Hong Kong and abroad, amplifying their voices and fostering a strong diaspora community globally.” Yet another seasoned opposition party, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/hong-kongs-last-active-pro-democracy-group-says-it-will-disband-amid-security-2025-06-29/">the League of Social Democrats</a> (LSD), announced this week that it would disband after nearly two decades of democratic political activity. At Nikkei Asia, Kenji Kawase and Peggy Ye described how Hong Kong’s “zero tolerance” for political dissent <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Hong-Kong-security-law/Hong-Kong-s-zero-tolerance-dooms-last-vocal-pro-democracy-party">doomed LSD, the city’s last genuinely vocal pro-democracy party</a>:
<blockquote>
"Today, with deep sorrow, we announce that, in the face of immense political pressure and after careful deliberation — particularly with regard to the consequences for our members and comrades — we have made the difficult decision to disband," said Chan Po-ying, the group’s chairwoman, in a news conference on Sunday.
[…] Alric Lee, founder of Lady Liberty Hong Kong, a Tokyo-based nonprofit organization promoting democracy, human rights and freedom in the city, told Nikkei Asia that the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities are "trying to break our morale [and] tell Hong Kong people that there will be no more hope, no more room for any democratic voices." He bemoaned how they are now adopting a "total ‘zero tolerance’ strategy" in the city.
"Once this group disbands, no formal pro-democracy presence will remain in Hong Kong’s political landscape," said Huen Lam, communications director at the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a pro-democracy advocacy group based in Washington. The party is the latest casualty of the crackdown on dissent since the imposition of the national security law, and follows the Civic Party’s dissolution and the Democratic Party’s shutdown announcement. [<a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Hong-Kong-security-law/Hong-Kong-s-zero-tolerance-dooms-last-vocal-pro-democracy-party">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
Numerous media outlets have published assessments of how the National Security Law has reshaped Hong Kong over the course of five years. Foreign Policy featured <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/29/hong-kong-national-security-law-china-protests-oppression/">a collection of five essays by various contributors</a> on topics such as daily life in Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s warning signs for America, Hong Kong’s “show trials” of prominent dissenters, the limits of bureaucratic authoritarianism, and the importance of recognizing Hong Kong in terms of its own nuanced history, rather than a mere casualty of “great power” politics. Tiffany May at the New York Times interviewed three young former protesters from Hong Kong who spoke about their lives today, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/world/asia/hong-kong-protesters.html">the price they paid for their principled activism</a>. An article from AFP about how democratic politicians, activists, and even their lawyers have been caught up in the National Security Law’s widening dragnet, included a quote from Eric Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, who noted that <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250627-hong-kong-s-dragnet-widens-5-years-after-national-security-law">Hong Kong “was adapting approaches from mainland China such as ‘invitation to tea’</a> — a practice associated with state security agents. Such informal methods ‘to regulate and to stabilise society’ were favoured because they are ‘less visible,’ Lai said.” A recent piece in DW included interviews with Hong Kongers mourning the demise of the city’s annual July 1 mass public rally, in which hundreds of thousands of citizens would march and articulate their demands for freedom and democracy. "I stopped going in 2020, when marches were no longer allowed,” one pseudonymous Hong Kong man told DW. “Now it’s just red flags and celebration. […] Looking back, it almost feels romantic — that <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/hong-kongs-democracy-movement-marks-a-somber-july-1/a-73093642">we once believed we could ask the government for change</a>."
For Hong Kong Free Press, James Lee published an explainer on <a href="https://hongkongfp.com/2025/06/29/explainer-how-national-security-permeates-hong-kong-bureaucracy-5-years-after-law-enacted/">how national security has come to permeate every corner of Hong Kong’s bureaucracy</a>, including departments in charge of arts and culture, labor and social welfare, land development, financial auditing, and even <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hong-kong-national-security-law-five-years-restaurants-be9ba88d5af8e039558007c64c5247e4">routine oversight of local shops</a> and businesses:
<blockquote>
Most recently, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) notified businesses of new national security clauses under the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance.
The new rule is the latest addition to similar provisions in official guidelines. Government departments and statutory bodies across different sectors, including education, labour, social welfare, arts and culture, and the environment, have added clauses relating to national security to their terms and conditions.
[…] In letters sent to businesses, the department said that it could revoke business licences if operators – including license holders, directors, management, employees, agents, and subcontractors – engage in “offending conduct” against national security or the public interest.
The move has raised suspicions as to whether it targets “yellow shops” – businesses sympathetic to Hong Kong’s democracy movement.
In addition, Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan pledged earlier this month to tighten scrutiny of applicants and recipients of the government’s Environment and Conservation Fund (ECF), saying public resources must not fall into the hands of “non-patriots.” [<a href="https://hongkongfp.com/2025/06/29/explainer-how-national-security-permeates-hong-kong-bureaucracy-5-years-after-law-enacted/">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
Human rights groups have also issued studies and assessments detailing the profound toll of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, and calling on other governments to continue to exert pressure on Hong Kong’s government to respect the rights and freedoms of its citizens. A piece from Human Rights Watch described <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/29/china-building-a-patriots-only-hong-kong">the many casualties of China’s program of “building a ‘patriots only’ Hong Kong”</a>:
<blockquote>
“In just five years, the Chinese government has extinguished Hong Kong’s political and civil vibrancy and replaced it with the uniformity of enforced patriotism,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “This heightened oppression may have dire long-term consequences for Hong Kong, even though many Hong Kongers have found subtle ways to resist tyrannical rule.”
Since adopting the National Security Law, the Chinese government has largely dismantled freedoms of expression, association and assembly, as well as free and fair elections, fair trial rights and judicial independence. The government has increasingly politicized education, created impunity for police abuses, and ended the city’s semi-democracy. Many of Hong Kong’s independent civil society groups, labor unions, political parties, and media outlets have been shuttered.
The Chinese government has been building a new and opaque national security legal regime and bureaucracy, weaponizing the courts to hand down severe punishment for dissent – up to life in prison – and harassing and surveilling Hong Kongers at home and abroad. The authorities are also rewriting Hong Kong’s history.
[…] Since 2020, 326 people have been arrested for national security offenses; and 187 people and 5 companies have been charged. National security trials have a nearly 100 percent conviction rate. [<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/29/china-building-a-patriots-only-hong-kong">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
In the judicial realm, new research from Amnesty International suggested that <a href="%20https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/hong-kong-80-people-convicted-under-draconian-national-security-law-should-never-0">80% of the individuals who have been convicted under Hong Kong’s National Security Law should never have been charged in the first place</a>:
<blockquote>
Amnesty’s analysis of 255 people targeted under the draconian law in Hong Kong since 30 June 2020 also showed that bail was denied in almost 90% of cases where charges were brought, and that those denied bail were forced to spend an average of 11 months in detention before facing trial.
[…] The analysis found that of the 78 concluded cases under the National Security Law, at least 66 (84.6%) involved legitimate expression where there was no evidence of violent conduct or incitement and should not have been criminalised according to international standards.
When concluded cases under Article 23 and pre-Article 23 “sedition” offences are included, at least 108 out of a total of 127 cases (85%) involved similarly legitimate forms of expression which were unjustly prosecuted. These cases fall well short of the high threshold required for criminalisation under international standards.
[…] Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China Director, said: “Five years after the enactment of the National Security Law, our alarming findings show that the fears we raised about this law in 2020 have been realised. The Hong Kong government must stop using the pretext of ‘national security’ to punish legitimate expression.”
[…] “This research demonstrates that the vast majority of those charged with national security offences have acted entirely within their rights. Other governments should step up and use their influence to urgently press the Hong Kong and Chinese authorities to repeal the law.” [<a href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/hong-kong-80-people-convicted-under-draconian-national-security-law-should-never-0">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
In a recent article for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation, Thomas E. Kellogg, legal scholar and executive director of the Center for Asian Law, summarized some of <a href="https://thecfhk.org/the-hong-kong-national-security-law-at-5-unhappy-birthday/">the most concerning results of five years of Hong Kong’s NSL, and what they might bode for Hong Kong’s future</a>. In addition to describing how the NSL has been used to decimate Hong Kong’s pan-democratic political parties, Kellogg noted the targeting of everyday citizens, the erosion of the judiciary, the expansion of Hong Kong’s national security state, and the rise in the use of extra-legal threats and harassment to suppress dissent:
<blockquote>
The NSL was enacted to transform Hong Kong, and it has succeeded. Numbers can tell part of the story: since the law went into effect, 332 people have been arrested, and 165 have been convicted and imprisoned, according to the Hong Kong government. At least 90 civil society organizations have been shuttered between July 2020 and March 2024, along with more than 20 media outlets, according to a recent report I co-authored with two Hong Konger colleagues. A more recent analysis found that over 250 workers’ unions have been deregistered over the past five years. An estimated 500,000 Hong Kongers have left the city over the past five years, many of them fleeing the repressive political environment. They have taken up residence in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, and elsewhere.
[…] Hong Kong’s national security state now stretches well beyond the NSL itself. The new regime includes new institutions created by the NSL, such as the powerful and secretive Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS). Also, several new laws have further expanded the government’s national security powers and further undermined basic rights. In March 2024, for example, the Legislative Council enacted the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which added several new national security crimes to Hong Kong law, while also dramatically expanding the government’s already broad national security powers. More recently, in May 2025, the government used its quasi-legislative authority to enact supplemental regulations that expanded the role of the Mainland-run Office for Safeguarding National Security, a clear violation of Hong Kong’s once-vaunted autonomy. […] It’s unlikely that the government is done adding restrictive new laws to the books.
Beyond criminal prosecution, the government also uses extra-legal threats and harassment to keep its critics in line. Since July 2020, criminal prosecution under the NSL and the sedition provision of the SNSO have been the Hong Kong government’s primary tools for enforcing political red lines. But it also regularly relies on threats and intimidation to silence critics. In the spring of 2021, for example, the pro-Beijing Ta Kung Pao newspaper published an attack on the pro-democracy NGO Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), calling it “the anti-China agent of chaos in Hong Kong.” This rhetorical strike, along with other moves, led to the closure of CHRF just months later. In other cases, the government has relied on threats of arrest and prosecution made to individuals behind closed doors, which similarly led several organizations to “voluntarily” shut down.
More recently, the government has used tax investigations and regulatory enforcement as its chief tool. The goal is not to force the closure of targeted groups, but rather to sap their resources and remind them that they could be shut down at any time. [<a href="https://thecfhk.org/the-hong-kong-national-security-law-at-5-unhappy-birthday/">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
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</item>
<item>
<title>Global Voices – Hundreds of women writers arrested as China extends crackdown on ‘Boys’ Love’ fantasies</title>
<link>https://globalvoices.org/2025/06/25/hundreds-of-women-writers-arrested-as-china-extends-crackdown-on-boys-love-fantasies/#new_tab</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cindy Carter]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 01:53:16 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[CDT in the news]]></category>
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<title>CNN – China tightens internet controls with new centralized form of virtual ID</title>
<link>https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/20/tech/china-censorship-internet-id-hnk-intl#new_tab</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cindy Carter]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 01:44:51 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[CDT in the news]]></category>
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<title>Profit-Seeking Police Crack Down on “Danmei” Erotic Fiction Writers</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/profit-seeking-police-crack-down-on-danmei-erotic-fiction-writers/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arthur Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 01:31:36 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Culture & the Arts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[arts censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[authors]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cross-border detentions]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[fiction]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gender]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gender imbalance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gender roles]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[homosexuality]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[LGBTQ+]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[literature]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[online censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[police]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Public Security Bureau]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[queer culture]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sexuality]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[women]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[women's rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[writers]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704305</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Chinese authorities have arrested dozens of writers of Boys’ Love (BL), or danmei, a genre of online homoerotic fiction featuring male protagonists, and typically created by and for women. This latest crackdown appears driven by a variety of factors, such as the patriarchal government’s efforts to control women and censor content that it considers sexually […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Chinese authorities have arrested dozens of writers of Boys’ Love (BL), or danmei, a genre of online homoerotic fiction featuring male protagonists, and typically created by and for women. This latest crackdown appears driven by a variety of factors, such as the patriarchal government’s efforts to <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/womens-rights/">control women</a> and censor content that it considers <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/sexuality/">sexually “deviant”</a>; outdated and overly restrictive legal definitions of obscenity; and cash-strapped local police departments pushing the boundaries of their respective jurisdictions. Yi Ma and Eunice Yang from the BBC described <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056nle2drno">the scope of the arrests and censorship</a>:
<blockquote>
At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.
They had published their work on Haitang Literature City, a Taiwan-hosted platform known for its "danmei", the genre of so-called boys’ love and erotic fiction.
[…] Although authors of heterosexual erotica have been jailed in China, observers say the genre is subjected to far less censorship. Gay erotica, which is more subversive, seems to bother authorities more. Volunteers in a support group for the Haitang writers told the BBC police even questioned some readers.
[…] It made Beijing uneasy enough that discussions have been vanishing: #HaitangAuthorsArrested drew more than 30 million views on Weibo before it was censored. Posts offering legal advice are gone. A prominent Chinese news site’s story has been taken down. Writers’ accounts, and some of [their online] handles, are also disappearing.
After [popular “danmei” author] Pingping Anan Yongfu’s post went viral, she deleted it and wrote another, thanking supporters and admitting her writing had violated the law. She then deleted her handle. [<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056nle2drno">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
CDT Chinese has documented several instances of censorship related to this crackdown over the past month. A Sanlian Lifeweek article discussing the justifications for prosecuting the authors of BL novels was <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718682.html">censored on WeChat</a>. A WeChat article by Wei Ziyou criticizing those judicial standards as being out of touch with reality was also <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718557.html">censored</a>. Last week, even former Global Times editor Hu Xijin ran afoul of platform censors with a Weibo post he wrote arguing that authorities should avoid setting overly broad definitions of pornography in order to avoid further contributing to what he called a phenomenon of “<a href="https://www.thinkchina.sg/society/chinese-netizens-declare-sex-recession-among-youths">sexual recession</a>” in Chinese society. <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718554.html">Hu’s post was soon deleted</a>. In other censorship news, the public WeChat account of the Chinese Rainbow Network, the largest Chinese LGBTQ+ group in North America, was <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/719137.html">blocked</a> on June 22, and all of its content has become inaccessible on that platform.
Under Xi Jinping, Chinese authorities have increasingly restricted expressions of <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/lgbtq/">queer identity, sexuality, and community</a>, including BL fiction. In 2018, a writer was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/20/chinese-writer-tianyi-sentenced-to-decade-in-prison-for-gay-erotic-novel">sentenced to ten and a half years in prison</a> for publishing a BL novel. In 2022, Chinese media regulators <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3165101/china-moves-kill-romantic-gay-themed-boys">banned BL dramas</a> from TV. Oiwan Lam at Global Voices provided a short timeline of BL crackdowns and described how <a href="https://globalvoices.org/2025/06/25/hundreds-of-women-writers-arrested-as-china-extends-crackdown-on-boys-love-fantasies/">many victims of this latest wave of suppression were part of a Taiwan-based BL platform called Haitang Literature City</a>:
<blockquote>
“Haitang Literature City” is a simplified Chinese erotica platform featuring aesthetic Boys’ Love (BL) fiction as its primary focus. It was founded in 2015 and is hosted in Taiwan as an adult content site for users aged 18 and above in order to evade mainland Chinese internet censorship. Writers and audiences, primarily young women, must use a VPN to access the site. Subscribers must register an account and purchase a virtual currency called “Haitang coin” to access VIP content.
However, the site became the target of a crackdown in 2024. The security police from Jixi County in Anhui Province carried out a cross-regional operation. They arrested more than 50 writers, and many were charged for disseminating pornographic materials under article 363 of China’s criminal law, which scales the severity of the offence and sentence into minor (less than 3 years), serious (3–10 years), and especially serious (10 to life imprisonment). 
As for the Haitang case, reportedly, for less popular writers who earned less than RMB 250,000 (approximately USD 35,000) from their writings, most received a jail term of less than 2 years with a 2-year probation period. But for popular writers, the sentence was up to 4–5 years.
[…] As a result of the crackdown, “Haitang Literature City” suspended its platform temporarily and removed its content and user accounts upon request. [<a href="https://globalvoices.org/2025/06/25/hundreds-of-women-writers-arrested-as-china-extends-crackdown-on-boys-love-fantasies/">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
BL literature allows many women authors and readers to explore their sexuality beyond gender stereotypes, and like online pornography more broadly, it has become an <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/07/chinas-lgbtq-groups-focus-on-community-building-and-quiet-commemorations-of-pride/">important tool in the construction, education, and discussion of sexual identities</a> in a highly censored and conservative China. As a result, “Officials may think that these [arrests] can eliminate the social influence [of queer love stories] and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-12/police-in-china-arrest-female-writers-over-homosexual-novels/105403258">give young people a more ‘positive’ sexual orientation</a>, and in a way promote fertility rates,” Beijing-based lawyer Zhang Dongshuo told Australia’s ABC. Many netizens also questioned why writing BL literature is often punished more severely than writing and publishing heteroerotica, or committing financial crimes such as bribery, or even violent crimes such as rape. Vivian Wang at The New York Times wrote that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/world/asia/china-boys-love-women.html">a deeper motivation for authorities, beyond combatting “obscenity,” is controlling women and limiting freedom of expression</a> as it relates to sexual identity:
<blockquote>
To many people, the arrests also show how much the space for female and L.G.B.T.Q. expression has shrunk in China.
The scale of the crackdown is not entirely clear, partly because many authors have been afraid to talk about it. Also, discussion of the topic online has been heavily censored. But some observers say it appears to be the first time that Boys’ Love writers have been charged with crimes en masse, rather than merely censored or targeted individually.
[…] Cassie Hu, a China-based academic who studies Boys’ Love, said targeting it was a way “to control and highly supervise straight women” and reinforce the traditional, heterosexual family structure amid concern about China’s plummeting birthrate.
[…] More writers were arrested this spring, by the police in Lanzhou. This time, the authors were less well known, according to interviews with two lawyers involved in the cases, as well as social media posts. They included university students and a writer who had earned less than $30, according to a post by one lawyer, Zhao Yijie. [<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/world/asia/china-boys-love-women.html">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
The severe punishments against BL writers are driven partly by 20-year-old sentencing guidelines for posting graphic content online, which under a 2010 ruling allows erotic material that attracts <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3293014/chinese-police-target-writers-gay-erotica-prison-terms-and-heavy-fines">more than 5,000 clicks to be deemed a criminal offence</a>. Another factor is “<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/05/chengyu-for-xi-jinpings-new-era-part-1/">fishing the high seas</a>” or “pursuit-of-profit policing,” whereby public security officials from one province or city cross into another to pursue “major cases” (with potentially lucrative outcomes) with no clear jurisdictional authority or public safety imperative. Police in Gansu and Anhui detained BL authors from other provinces, and RFA stated that cases in Anhui appeared focused on <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/china/2025/06/09/china-fiction-arrests/">how much profit</a> the writers made. Emphasizing this angle, The Economist wrote that “Chinese cops are cuffing erotica” and described it as a “<a href="https://www.economist.com/china/2025/06/26/chinese-cops-are-cuffing-erotica">perverse way to raise money</a>.”
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<title>Photo: 中国贵州省贵阳市云岩区花果园小区, by 荧_Lumine</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/photo-%e4%b8%ad%e5%9b%bd%e8%b4%b5%e5%b7%9e%e7%9c%81%e8%b4%b5%e9%98%b3%e5%b8%82%e4%ba%91%e5%b2%a9%e5%8c%ba%e8%8a%b1%e6%9e%9c%e5%9b%ad%e5%b0%8f%e5%8c%ba-by-%e8%8d%a7_lumine/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cindy Carter]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 03:47:03 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Main Photo]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704301</guid>
<description><![CDATA[]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_704302" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-704302" src="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/中国贵州省贵阳市云岩区花果园小区-by-荧_Lumine-e1750995922105.jpg" alt="Hundreds upon hundreds of identical windows adorn the white and peach-colored exteriors of several enormous residential high-rises in the city of Guiyang, Guizhou province. In the space between two of the mammoth buildings, even more similar buildings are visible in the distance." width="600" height="338" class="size-full wp-image-704302" />
中国贵州省贵阳市云岩区花果园小区, by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/luminemains/54557136134/">荧_Lumine (CC BY 2.0)</a>
</div>
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<title>Translation of Chai Jing Interview With Chinese Civil War Survivor Gao Binghan, Part 2: “War Is Always a Tragedy, Something I Cannot Endorse.”</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/translation-of-chai-jing-interview-with-chinese-civil-war-survivor-gao-binghan-part-2-war-is-always-a-tragedy-something-i-cannot-endorse/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cindy Carter]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 02:42:51 +0000</pubDate>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704294</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Chai_Jing">investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing</a> has revisited and updated her <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718102.html">iconic 2012 interview</a> with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides’ successors are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are destined to suffer again.”
Back in 1948, when he was 13 years old, Gao left his home in Shandong province, weathered a perilous cross-country trek to escape the fighting that had engulfed China, and eventually escaped to Taiwan, where he lives today. Chai Jing’s original 2012 interview with Gao aired on CCTV-1 to great acclaim, but there was much content that was elided due to state-media censorship and the sensitivity of the topic. For that reason, Chai and Gao decided to revisit that interview and fill in some of the gaps. In new portions of the interview, Gao recounts his wartime experiences fleeing through southern China; his hardscrabble existence in Taiwan as a newly arrived refugee; his subsequent education and legal career; and his more recent efforts to help repatriate the remains of former Nationalist soldiers who spent their lives longing to revisit their relatives and hometowns in China.
Chai Jing, who worked as a reporter, newscaster, and host at China Central Television from 2001 to 2014, has lived abroad since 2017. In 2015, her self-funded and <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/03/tang-yinghong-chai-jings-dome-went-viral/">hugely influential</a> documentary “<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/03/chai-jing-dome/">Under the Dome</a>,” which raised public awareness of air pollution in China, was <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/03/minitrue-dont-hype-dome/">the subject</a> of several <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/03/minitrue-clamping-dome/">official censorship directives</a>. It was viewed more than 200 million times before <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/03/minitrue-delete-dome/">it was completely censored online</a>. In 2023, Chai began <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@chaijing2023">her own YouTube channel</a>, on which she broadcasts in-depth interviews on topics as diverse as China-Taiwan relations, the war in Ukraine, international jihadism, and Chinese history and politics. A recent article in Matters provides a <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718259.html">panoramic look at Chai Jing’s career</a>, past and present, and the inspiration she provided for young journalists. CDT previously translated, in two parts, <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/04/translation-chai-jing-interview-with-a-chinese-mercenary-fighting-for-russia-in-ukraine-part-one/">Chai’s interview with</a> a <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/04/translation-chai-jing-interviews-a-chinese-mercenary-fighting-for-russia-in-ukraine-part-two/">Chinese mercenary fighting for Russia</a> in Ukraine.
In mid-May of this year, Chai Jing’s best-selling 2012 autobiography “Insight” (the same title as a CCTV program she once hosted) was recalled from multiple Chinese e-commerce platforms including Taobao and JD.com, ostensibly due to unspecified “quality issues.” CDT Chinese editors <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718260.html">reported on this thinly veiled censorship of Chai’s book</a>, and noted that as of May 21, the book’s page on Douban had also been deleted. It seems extremely likely that this censorship is related to Chai’s ongoing series of hard-hitting YouTube interviews, all of which are self-produced and uncensored.
<iframe title="柴静对话国共内战时13岁逃亡者“忘记苦难历史的人，必将成为下一次苦难的受害者”" width="1080" height="608" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Db17u8E1t0g?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Following on from <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/05/translation-of-chai-jing-interview-with-chinese-civil-war-survivor-gao-binghan-part-1-those-who-forget-that-history-of-suffering-are-destined-to-suffer-again/">Part One</a>, below is Part Two of CDT’s full translation of <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718049.html">Chai Jing’s interview with Gao Binghan</a>, published with Chai Jing’s permission. It picks up with 13-year-old Gao Binghan still fleeing south with Nationalist troops as they retreat from the advancing People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This covers the remainder of the interview, between 13:43 and 53:17. Some explanatory links and descriptions of audio-visual content have been added for clarity.
<blockquote>
Chai Jing (V.O.): <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Ruming">Liu Ruming</a> had been a renowned Nationalist general in the war against Japan’s occupation of China. During the [1933] campaign to defend the Great Wall, he personally led his forces into battle. His troops had once laid down their lives to defend this land, but now Liu had become one of those threatening to destroy it.
Chai Jing: Here’s what I can’t quite understand: during the war against Japan, Liu Ruming’s troops had been seen as national heroes, and he was a highly respected figure himself. He even sent his own son [to the U.S.] to study aviation. [Liu’s eldest son, <a href="https://www.163.com/dy/article/JG82JVI105566PRN.html">Liu Tieshan</a>, returned to China after his training, became a fighter pilot, and later died in battle.] So how did he and his troops fall so low during the civil war?
Gao Binghan: During wartime, desertion is a natural phenomenon. Those soldiers were just trying to survive.
Chai: And what did civilians do to survive?
Gao: Under those circumstances, anyone who was able to—men, women, and children—fled into the mountains. Only the elderly were left behind. The common people felt very resentful [at being abandoned].
Chai: Gao Binghan said he could never understand why [the retreating Nationalist] soldiers would set fire to villages and markets, smash stoves and crockery after they’d used them, and poison wells (to prevent pursuing PLA troops from using them). How can you destroy these people’s stoves and cookware, he wondered, when they still need them to cook with?
Chai (V.O.): In mid-May, when Liu Ruming’s troops entered Fujian, the Nationalist government-backed currency had collapsed. Fujian’s provincial government would only provide supplies if payment was made in silver dollars [because of hyperinflation]. Mired in a desolate region with an inhospitable climate, and unable to supply his troops with adequate clothing or food, Liu Ruming wrote: "Never in my military career have I experienced such misery and privation." In retaliation, Liu Ruming disobeyed the Fujian military governor’s orders to stay in northern Fujian to block the PLA’s southward advance. Instead, he and his troops continued retreating south. By that point, the relationship between local authorities and the military had become openly antagonistic.
That same month, Gao Binghan—trailing along behind two straggling Nationalist soldiers—arrived at Shibei village in Pucheng county, Fujian. Like them, he wore a military uniform, but it was too big for him, and hung down to his knees.
Gao: When I first saw that old lady (in the village), she reminded me of my grandmother. I nodded to her and sat down. Those soldiers went into her room and were rummaging through her things. As soon as I sat down, as soon as I laid down, I fell asleep. But when I woke up, I saw that those two soldiers had their heads smashed in.
Chai: Oh… [reacting in surprise] 
Gao: Late that night, the old lady’s kids had come back down from the mountain and found the three of us sleeping there [in the house], with our guns. Her sons killed the two soldiers … [stuttering] …they beat them to death. Their brains were splattered on my face. The sound woke me up, and I was so scared, I started crying. The old lady hugged me and told her sons, "He’s just a kid. Don’t hurt him." It was drizzling rain, I still remember. I knelt down in front of her and kowtowed, and then they let me leave.
Chai (V.O.): The old woman picked a few leaves from the courtyard and boiled them in a bowl of hot water for Gao Binghan to drink. Then she took him by the hand and pointed to show him which direction the retreating Nationalist troops had gone.
Chai: When I interviewed Mr. Gao in Taipei in 2012, it was sweltering hot, but he wore a tightly buttoned shirt and tie, with a vest and suit jacket. During the five hours we spoke, he didn’t take a single sip of water. He said it was a survival skill honed during his time on the run—he’d learned to endure hunger, thirst, and pain. He rolled up his pant legs to show me the scars from his ordeal sixty years ago. I still remember the feeling of touching those black scars. They felt hollow, with no flesh but a thin layer of skin. Mr. Gao said they had been eaten away by maggots.
[The next section is footage from the 2012 documentary.]
Chai (V.O.): Amidst a chaotic crowd, someone had spilled burning porridge on him and scalded both of his legs. But there was no medical treatment available, and throughout Gao’s journey, his wounds continued to fester and attract maggots.
Gao: I thought about suicide many times.
Chai: Really?
Gao: Yes, because the pain was so unbearable. But I had to go on living, for my mother’s sake.
Chai: Not for yourself, but for your mother?
Gao: For her. I had to stay alive to see her again.
Chai: [present day footage] Thirteen-year-old Gao Binghan had no one to take care of him, and nothing to eat. He scavenged for leftover horse fodder and competed with rats for scraps of food. He wore a string of garlic around his neck, and would gnaw on a clove of garlic when drinking unboiled water.
He was suffering from a high fever and delirium, and both of his legs were swollen up like balloons. When he arrived at the village of Jiumou in Fujian, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see a soldier wearing a red-star cap.
Chai: [2012 interview footage] How did you react?
Gao: When I saw that red star, I thought of what my mom had told me: “If you see [someone wearing] a red star, run away as fast as you can. They’re the ones who killed your father.” I just stared at him, but he was pulling me along, and I had no choice.
Chai: Were you scared?
Gao: Sure I was. He was pulling me along, and I thought he was going to push me off the mountain, kill me on the rocks below. But he brought me to this natural spring, washed the maggots off my legs, and put red mercury [Mercurochrome] on my wounds. Then he used the bandages in two first-aid kits to bandage my legs. I was surprised to meet someone good from the Eighth Route Army, because my mom had always told me they were bad guys. But here was a good guy, and he’d saved my life. So after that, I followed the PLA for a while.
Chai: You followed the PLA? Why?
Gao: I knew it was the only way I could catch up with the Nationalist troops.
Chai: Gao Binghan ate lotus leaves he’d picked along the roadside. When the PLA troops stopped to cook food, they’d give him a spoonful of rice to eat. Along the way, he sometimes saw wounded Nationalist soldiers limping along. They made no attempt to flee, or to put up a fight.
(When the PLA soldiers) would invite them to come along, the Nationalist soldiers would rip the sun insignias from their caps, throw them away, and limp alongside the PLA troops, carrying their rifles backwards with the bullets removed.
During the Chinese Civil War, 1.88 million Nationalist soldiers defected to the Communist camp.
Chai: Did you ever wonder whether there was any point in continuing your journey?
Gao: I didn’t even know if I was going to come out of it alive.
Chai: Right. And where were you heading to?
Gao: I had no idea where I was going. I didn’t yet know I’d end up in Taiwan.
[A black-and-white photo of Gao as a boy, accompanied by audio of a conversation between Chai and Gao.]
Chai (V.O.): You were just a child. What was your understanding of the war?
Gao (V.O.): I thought the Chinese grown-ups were really stupid, not even as smart as us kids.
Chai (V.O.): Why did you think they were stupid?
Gao (V.O.): Because I couldn’t figure out why they were fighting. What was the point? If you can do a good job and make sure everyone has food to eat, then they should let you do that. Whoever does the best job should be allowed to do it. Why fight about it?
Chai: Gao Binghan’s injured legs slowed him down. He soon fell behind the PLA troops he had been following, and had no one to show him the way. He dreaded arriving at crossroads, because he didn’t know which direction to choose.
Chai: In mid-May, he reached Nanping in Fujian. Nanping was a large city in central Fujian province, but at that time, all the shops were shuttered, and there were no city lights or pedestrians. At dusk, he saw a truck that had been set ablaze along the banks of the Min River.
There were two roads ahead of him: one led to Fuzhou, the other to Xiamen. Gao Binghan walked for a kilometer along each road before deciding to go to Xiamen. “That was the most dangerous road,” he told me, “but that’s exactly why I had to take it.”
Gao: What I mean is whichever road had more corpses, more bodies and litter left behind, that’s where the Nationalist troops had passed. 
When I got to Xiamen, I saw a few corpses lying in the road. Because my pants were so tattered, I took a pair from one of them, but I felt bad about it. Wearing his pants felt disrespectful.
Chai: Why did you feel that way?
Gao: It’s only natural. I shouldn’t have done that. He was lying there dead, and now he didn’t even have any pants. It was selfish of me.
Chai: A lot of people would justify it by saying that in wartime, when you’re trying to survive, there’s no room for that sense of morality.
Gao: But morality is innate. There’s no getting around it. That basic human sense of good and evil isn’t something you can just discard. I have my mother to thank for that.
[A black-and-white portrait photo of Gao as a boy, alongside his mother.]
Chai: I remember you telling me she made you practice calligraphy as a child, always writing the same characters over and over.
Gao: Ah yes, it was "Do not do unto others what you would not like done unto yourself." [<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B7%B1%E6%89%80%E4%B8%8D%E6%AC%B2%EF%BC%8C%E5%8B%BF%E6%96%BD%E6%96%BC%E4%BA%BA">from the “Analects</a>”] She’d make me practice writing those characters every day.
Chai (V.O.): On the eve of Dragon Boat Festival [on June 1 of that year], Gao Binghan finally caught up with Liu Ruming’s troops in Longyan, Fujian province. After retreating over 600 miles south from the Yangtze River, they arrived in Xiamen [in early October 1949] just before the Mid-Autumn Festival. They hoped to be able to hold out in Xiamen for three to five years.
[Black-and-white wartime footage, accompanied by sound effects of fighting and explosions.]
Chai (V.O.): [Despite the Nationalists’ plan to] “defend Xiamen, Kinmen Island [Quemoy], and Taiwan," by the afternoon of October 16th, the PLA had reached the center of Xiamen Island. Hoping to evacuate over 30,000 of his soldiers, Liu Ruming personally went to Kinmen Island to obtain ships, but only two landing craft, capable of holding a few thousand people, were dispatched.
Chai: Sometime after 11:00 P.M. that night, all the lights on the island suddenly went out, suggesting that the power plant had been destroyed. [The Nationalists’ defense of] Xiamen was abandoned. The troops on the beach were disorganized, milling around in complete chaos. Among this crowd of tens of thousands was 13-year-old Gao Binghan, limping and leaning on a stick, waiting.
Chai: Just before daybreak, the landing craft could wait no longer and began moving toward shore. Gao Binghan said that at that life-and-death moment, the noisy crowd suddenly fell silent. Never in his life had he heard such a silence. Then he heard the screams of people being trampled underfoot.
Gao: I stepped over corpses to get up onto the boat. A soldier pressed my shoulder down with the butt of his rifle butt as he tried to step over me.
Chai: He tried to climb over you?
Gao: Yes, he tried. Then another officer came from behind and knocked away the butt of his rifle, the one that had been pressing down on my shoulder. That’s why I wasn’t knocked down.
Chai: If you had been knocked down, could you have got up on your feet again?
Gao: No, I couldn’t have stood up. There was this sound from the crowd, like an ocean wave, as they were all pushed down.
Chai: Gao Binghan was pushed into the boat by the crowd, having lost both of his shoes. The [crew of the] landing craft were anxious to close the door and depart, but people were still rushing to get on. The date was October 17th, 1949. The founding of the People’s Republic of China had been proclaimed 16 days earlier.
[Archival footage of Mao Zedong reading his speech amid a crowd of people atop Tiananmen Gate.]
Mao: …To relieve the people of their sufferings, and to struggle for their rights … [the PLA] overthrew the reactionary rule of the Nationalist government!
Chai: It was the last ship from the mainland to Taiwan.
Gao: The landing craft had to close (its door). It was leaving shore and had to close up. But people were crammed in so tightly that the door wouldn’t close. Some of those onboard started shooting their guns and shouting for people to stop pushing so the landing craft could close its door. But it couldn’t close because it was crammed with bodies.
Chai: Were they shooting their own comrades?
Gao: Yes, they tried to stop them from coming. It was a bloodbath outside. And after the landing craft shut its door, the soldiers who didn’t make it onboard started shooting at the ship. That was bloody, too. It was awful, just awful. That’s why I say that war is horrifying. [sighs] We can’t go to war again. I trust that China and Taiwan won’t go to war with each other.
Chai (V.O.): According to PLA records, this was the fate of those [Nationalist Army] foot soldiers who were left ashore:
[A portion of a 2020 CCTV documentary about 1949 fighting in Xiamen features black-and-white war movie footage, with battle sounds and voice-over narration.]
Male narrator (V.O.): The People’s Liberation Army annihilated a total of 27,000 Nationalist Army troops.
Chai (V.O.): I haven’t seen authoritative official statistics from either the Nationalist or the Communist sides regarding civil war casualties. The data most frequently cited online is that military and civilian casualties exceeded ten million. This was the largest-scale, most far-reaching Chinese civil conflict of the twentieth century. From that point on, China and Taiwan would be separate political entities and military rivals.
When the landing craft (carrying Gao Binghan) reached Kaohsiung [in Taiwan], it was forced to stop outside the harbor. By late 1949, the Nationalist government had transported over 600,000 troops to Taiwan. In order to avoid warlordism and maintain public security, Taiwan’s Provincial Governor Chen Cheng decreed that arriving troops must lay down their weapons and heed orders while disembarking. But the officers and soldiers onboard the ship considered surrendering their weapons a great humiliation. Gao Binghan saw some of them brandishing their weapons, vowing to either die fighting or go back home.
But the warships in Kaohsiung harbor had their cannons aimed at the ship. Chen Cheng ordered the soldiers onboard to disembark, unarmed, within a certain deadline, or be sunk. The ship and its passengers, with no food or water, remained outside the harbor for one full day and night. The following day, Liu Ruming commanded his officers and soldiers to abandon their weapons and go ashore. Gao Binghan watched them throw their weapons into the sea. The Northwest Army, which had billed itself as "uncowed by privation or slander, loyal and steadfast to the end," had ceased to exist.
The loudspeaker announcement instructed the passengers to disembark in three groups: officers, rank-and-file soldiers, and family members and dependents. But Gao Binghan had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. He went to a refugee station, where he was given a bowl of congee. As he squatted on the ground to eat, he thought to himself, “I did what you said, mom. I’m still alive."
The small, narrow island of Taiwan had absorbed two million people in one fell swoop. Schools, temples, and warehouses were crammed with people. Gao Binghan slept on wooden benches at Taipei Railway Station, and competed with stray dogs for scraps of food in garbage heaps.
[Footage from the 2012 documentary]
Chai: How did you spend Chinese New Year and other holidays?
Gao: Before dawn on New Year’s Day, I’d climb up a mountain, face the mainland, and have a good long cry. I’d shout as loud as I could, and tell my mom I missed her.
Chai (V.O.): Many years later, his younger brother told him that every Chinese New Year, his mother would place a lantern, made from a hollowed-out daikon radish, at a nearby crossroads. This was a Shandong custom, to light the way home for those who had traveled afar.
Chai: When I was interviewing him in Taiwan, Mr. Gao Binghan handed me a sheet of paper. [An inset photo of a bright yellow paper certificate with black calligraphy, several red official seals, and a small photo of a young Gao Binghan.] It was a piece of handmade cotton paper from 1948, thin and soft to the touch. During his journey, he had lost his bundle, including the rope [given to him by his mother—see <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/05/translation-of-chai-jing-interview-with-chinese-civil-war-survivor-gao-binghan-part-1-those-who-forget-that-history-of-suffering-are-destined-to-suffer-again/">part one</a>] that was inside his bundle, but somehow this paper had survived. How he managed to preserve it, even he doesn’t remember. It was his junior high school admission certificate. Before he left, his mother tucked the paper into his bundle and said, "In times of war and chaos, the scholars are the first to be swept away by the tide. But the future era will depend on knowledge, and this is your path."
Chai (V.O.): Thanks to that piece of paper, Gao Binghan was able to enroll in night classes at <a href="https://www.ck.tp.edu.tw/nss/p/index">Taipei Municipal Chien Kuo High School</a>, where he studied while working part-time. He was later admitted to the <a href="https://www.ndmc.ndu.edu.tw/uniten/100006/24368">Law Department of the National Defense University’s Management College</a>. When he graduated in 1963, he asked to be sent to Kinmen to serve as a military tribunal judge. China was still reeling from the Great Famine, and Chiang Kai-shek was making preparations to launch a counterattack from Kinmen. Gao Binghan thought of Kinmen as being “closest to home,” and he envisioned being the first to land on the mainland and see his mother again. But his first case as a judge resulted in the execution of a man who had tried to go home to see his mother. [The man was an army deserter who used a tire to try to swim from Kinmen in Taiwan to Xiamen in China to visit his mother, but he was carried back to Kinmen by ocean currents and arrested.]
[Footage from the 2012 interview]
Gao: I had become the executioner of a man who wanted to go home to visit his mother, because he missed her. A day or two before the execution, he said, "I know you’re going to execute me anyway. I hope you can do it a bit earlier."
Chai: Why?
Gao: He said he knew there was no way he’d ever see his mother in the flesh, but he hoped could visit her as soon as possible in spirit form.
Chai: When you handed down that man’s death sentence, did you ever ask yourself what you’d have done if you were in his position?
Gao: Sure. I’d have deserted even faster, even earlier, than he did.
Chai: Gao Binghan spoke to the head of his legal group and requested that another judge take over the case, but his supervisor said there was no legal precedent to do so. When Gao Binghan insisted that he couldn’t bear to oversee the case, his supervisor said, "And do you think I could? I’m from Xiamen—my hometown’s right across the strait." The supervisor pointed to some documents on his desk: they were from the Ministry of National Defense, demanding that the case be concluded within a week. The punishment for desertion was execution, with no exceptions, and it was intended to serve as a deterrent to others. Then he softened his tone and said to Gao Binghan: "At least with you overseeing the case, he won’t have to suffer so much."
Gao: Before his execution, I had the soldiers cook him some meat, a big plate of food, and gave him a big bottle of sorghum whiskey. I told him it wouldn’t be long, and that he should try to eat something. He said he didn’t feel like eating. Then I tapped him on the head and said, “If you can’t eat, you should drink that whiskey.” [long pause] He looked up at me, took the open bottle, and guzzled it down. Right after that, they were getting ready to shoot him, and wanted me to leave, but I asked them to wait for a bit. You know why? [wipes his eyes and starts to cry] Because … because I was worried the liquor hadn’t kicked in yet, and I didn’t want him to suffer. It was strong stuff, and I knew it would only take a few minutes to get him drunk. That’s why I asked them to wait just a bit—to ease his suffering.
[Screen fades to black, with background music.] 
[The following section is illustrated with various images, including a photo of an elderly Chiang Kai-shek; Chiang and other leaders in front of a memorial inscription on Kinmen Island; two propaganda posters from China urging the “liberation” of Taiwan; and lastly, a photo of Gao with his wife and three children. All five family members are dressed in academic caps and gowns.]
Chai (V.O.): By the late 1960s, after numerous failed plans, Taiwan’s project to retake the mainland had essentially been abandoned. On April 5, 1975, Chiang Kai-shek died. Per the customs of Jiangsu and Zhejiang [Chiang was born in Zhejiang province, and his ancestral hometown was in Jiangsu province], his casket was not buried underground: as an exile, he would be laid to rest sometime in the future, once his remains had been returned to his ancestral homeland. [After a period of lying-in-state and a state funeral, Chiang’s casket was sealed in a black marble sarcophagus and interred at Cihu Mausoleum in Taipei, Taiwan, where it remains today.]
[On learning of Chiang Kai-shek’s death,] Gao Binghan wept bitterly. What had once been his only hope—Chiang’s promise that "I brought you out, and I will bring you back there"—was now shattered.
[In the wake of Chiang’s death,] rumors were rife among Nationalist Army veterans that the PLA was planning to inflict a bloodbath on Taiwan. Gao Binghan asked his wife to fetch a bottle of sleeping pills from the hospital. If war between China and Taiwan broke out again, he planned to add the sleeping pills to a big pot of porridge and the whole family would eat it together. He couldn’t bear to be a refugee once more, he said. It was too painful.
[Footage of Jimmy Carter reading a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37azeXBjYJc&ab_channel=MCamericanpresident">televised speech</a> on December 15, 1978.]
Carter: A joint communiqué on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China, dated January 1, 1979.
Chai (V.O.): In 1979, China and the United States established diplomatic relations. The mainland ceased shelling Kinmen Island and published a "<a href="http://www.china.org.cn/english/taiwan/7943.htm">Message to Compatriots in Taiwan</a>," calling for reunification and expressing hope for the establishment of transportation, trade, and postal links. Taiwan was by then under the rule of President Chiang Ching-kuo [Chiang Kai-shek’s son], and his response was the "Three No’s": no contact, no negotiation, and no compromise [with the PRC government].
On Kinmen Island, an enormous slogan proclaimed: "Unify China Under the Three Principles of the People." [The three principles, first articulated by Sun Yat-sen, are nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people.] In Xiamen, across the strait, another slogan appeared: "Reunify China Under ‘One Country, Two Systems.’”
That same year, Gao Binghan traveled to Spain to attend an international legal conference. Knowing there would be delegates from the mainland there, he planned to ask one of them to deliver a letter to his mother.
Gao: (reciting the letter he wrote) "Mother, over all these decades, I’ve sustained my willpower, and my will to live, in the hope of meeting you once more in this life. Promise me, Mother, that you’ll wait for me to come back to you, alive."
Chai: But Gao Binghan kept the letter in his pocket and never took it out, not even after the conference had ended. His delegation leader had announced the Justice Ministry of Taiwan’s "Six No’s" policy: no contact, no greetings, no conversation, no interaction, no cooperation, and no photographs [with delegates from the PRC]. Even in elevators, the members of the Taiwanese delegation had to avoid eye contact with the mainland delegates, for fear that a facial expression might be leveraged for China’s "United Front" propaganda. And delegates from both sides were required to report on one another.
When the conference ended and the mainland delegates were taking a group photo, Gao Binghan squeezed into a back-row seat so that he would be included in the photo. He hoped that if the photo were published in mainland newspapers, his mother might see it and realize he was still alive.
As for the letter he kept in his pocket, he managed to send it to China by routing it via the U.S. In 1980, he received a reply from his eldest sister. After reading just one line, he ran off and spent the afternoon tramping through the mountains in the rain, shouting the same phrase over and over again: "I’m sorry."
Chai (V.O.): [The letter informed him that] his mother had died over a year earlier. She had kept two things in her pillowcase: a childhood photo of Gao Binghan, and a small cotton jacket he had worn as a child. She had kept these items her entire life, and when she died, they were cremated with her.
Chai: In my interview notes from the time, I’d written that when Mr. Gao got to this part of the story, he suddenly stopped and said, "Sometimes I wish relations between China and Taiwan hadn’t thawed.”
I was puzzled. He explained, "If they hadn’t thawed, then my mother could have stayed alive in my heart forever."
[1987 televised announcement about the lifting of martial law in Taiwan]
Announcer: "Martial law in Taiwan will be lifted starting at midnight on July 15, 1987."
Chai (V.O.): By 1987, when Taiwan began lifting bans on political parties and newspapers, most of the 600,000 soldiers who had come to Taiwan with the KMT [Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party] had been demobilized from the army and were in their sixties.
On May 10th, Mother’s Day, of the following year, over ten thousand KMT veterans stood in formation at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei. They wore white with messages on the front that read "Homesick," and on the back, "I miss you, Mom."
[Black-and-white images of protesting veterans wearing shirts emblazoned with messages and carrying signs with slogans, accompanied by audio of the veterans singing the song “Mother, Where Can You Be?”]
Veterans (V.O.): [singing in chorus] Formations of geese, soaring through the clouds / What have you glimpsed on your long journey? / Might I ask what you’ve seen, / and whether you’ve news of my mother?
Chai: Gao Binghan told me he was very conflicted at the gathering because he had been awarded the "Order of Loyalty and Diligence" from Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo. He had been steeped in the values of patriotism and party loyalty, and wondered whether this sort of protest constituted a betrayal.
But what he saw at the protest changed his mind. The square and streets were filled with veterans prostrating themselves on the ground, begging [the government] to allow them to “go home," and calling for their mothers. Gao Binghan told me that those calling for their mothers were all old men, and they knew they couldn’t go back.
Chai: Looking around him, Gao Binghan said he wanted to shout, hoping that someone would heed his advice: "The time has come, don’t you understand? Never in Chinese history has there been a time when people were banned from going home for decades." Pulling off the towel he’d been wearing around his neck, he waved it in the air, and joined the others in their singing.
Veterans (V.O.): [singing in chorus] Mother, I miss you so! / If only we could turn back time …
Chai (V.O.): On October 15, 1987, the Taiwanese authorities announced that residents of Taiwan would be allowed to visit relatives on the mainland. On May 1 of 1991, Gao Binghan returned to Heze in Shandong province. On the same day, Taiwan announced the <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/04/30/Taipei-announces-end-to-Chinese-civil-war/4233672984000/">termination of the “Period of Mobilization for the Suppression of the Communist Rebellion</a>,” officially putting an end to the state of civil war.
[Footage from the 2012 interview, with video of Gao’s hometown.]
Chai (V.O.): Setting foot in his birthplace for the first time in over four decades, he lingered alone at the entrance to the village for half an hour before he mustered the courage to go in.
Gao: "The nearer to home, the more timid I grow." The ancients knew what they were talking about. That really summed it up perfectly. [The quote is from "<a href="https://100tangpoems.wordpress.com/2023/11/24/crossing-the-han-river/">Crossing the Han River</a>," by Tang Dynasty poet Song Zhiwen.]
Chai: So how did you go into the village?
Gao: When I got there, I was naturally looking around, and an old man asked me, "Sir, who are you looking for?" So I told him I was looking for Gao Chunsheng. That was my childhood name.
Chai: [laughs]
Gao: The old man said, "Gao Chunsheng? Oh my, he died abroad, many years ago. He’s long gone."
Chai: Mr. Gao once told me that the whole time he was fleeing, he never cried once. Children only cry, he said, when they see their mothers.
Chai (V.O.): But when he first saw his mother’s funeral urn, he didn’t shed a single tear, although his younger brother sobbed.
Gao: When I saw my mother, I knelt before her ashes, and scolded her.
Chai: You scolded her?
Gao: I said, "Why couldn’t you wait until I came back? I came back alive—why didn’t you wait for me? You promised you’d wait for me."
Chai: Mr. Gao told me that in the Heze archives, he found a list of those who were killed during the period of land reform.
[Image of Gao Binghan on the cover of the book he wrote, titled “The Road Home.”]
Chai: The list included the name of his father, Gao Jinxi, with the annotation: "Nationalist reactionary, rumormonger, engaged in espionage work." The document had been created after the fact. [Gao’s father, a primary-school principal, was executed by the Chinese Communist Party in 1947—see <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/05/translation-of-chai-jing-interview-with-chinese-civil-war-survivor-gao-binghan-part-1-those-who-forget-that-history-of-suffering-are-destined-to-suffer-again/">part one</a>.] In the “suggestions” column after his father’s name, someone had written, "Deserves execution."
Gao Jinxi had been one of a group of thirteen people executed in the same batch. Below their listed crimes, there were some annotations such as "wrongly executed," "not deserving of execution," or "executed too hastily" (meaning that there was insufficient evidence).
Chai: After confirming your father’s cause of death, how did you feel?
Gao: My family was considered an intellectual household so naturally, in a time of political revolution, we were the first to bear the brunt.
Chai: Why would intellectuals be the first to be targeted in a political movement like that?
Gao: Because my family had social status and influence. The Communists wanted to do away with all that, so they made an example of us. I used to despise the Communist Party, but later I realized that sort of thing was a natural revolutionary tactic. There’s nothing to despise.
Chai: So you came to understand it as somewhat inevitable, given the historical context?
Gao: Yes, yes. It was a historical inevitability. There’s no need for hatred. It was a historical revolutionary tactic, an inevitable outcome. It was the same on both sides. The Nationalists treated the Communists the same. If you were a Communist, you were shot. In our city of Heze, there was a big pit behind the theater where they [the Nationalists] used to bury people alive. They’d make the Communists dig a hole, sit in it, and then they’d bash them over the head with a shovel and bury them alive. I saw it with my own eyes, when I was still a kid.
Chai: Mr. Gao Binghan told me that back then, the countryside around Heze was Communist territory, so his father tried to stay safe by living in the city of Heze, where Nationalist troops were garrisoned. One day he had to go out into the countryside on some business, and only planned to stay there overnight, but that very night he was captured by four strangers, bound with ropes, and executed at gunpoint. The only Communist Party member in that particular village was Gao Binghan’s uncle, so his mother always suspected that uncle of being the informant. Forty years later, when Gao Binghan returned to his hometown, he went to visit that uncle.
Gao: By the time things opened up and I was able to go back to China to visit, my third uncle was already bedridden and partially paralyzed. My younger brother went with me to see him. It was the first time I’d been back to the village, and I made a special trip to see this third uncle, who was in his sickbed. I even kowtowed to him. My brother just stood at the door and wouldn’t go in.
Chai: Why did you kowtow to him?
Gao: I figured there was no way to prove whether or not he was the one who ratted out my father. Besides, he was the only older relative we had left, the last of that generation.
Chai: And what if he really had done it?
Gao: If he had, he would have been ashamed when I kowtowed to him. He’d feel ashamed.
Chai: And what was your uncle’s reaction?
Gao: [Even though he was partially paralyzed,] he rolled over in his bed, and seemed very moved. He rolled over and gently stroked my head. He seemed quite moved.
Chai (V.O.): Most of Gao Binghan’s relatives on the mainland were Communist Party officials. His eldest sister Gao Bingjie had been secretary to Liu Shaoqi and He Long. His brother-in-law Zhu Shaotian had been Chen Yun’s secretary. His uncle-by-marriage Yang Lin had served as director of China’s Petroleum Industry Supervisory Bureau.
Chai: After learning about Mr. Gao’s family background, I asked him whether he thought his mother might have ever regretted sending him away. He looked away and didn’t answer me immediately, then said calmly: "During the Cultural Revolution, my uncle-by-marriage committed suicide. Some students urinated on his head, and he killed himself by smashing his head against a wall. My brother-in-law was shipped off to Xinjiang for eight years of labor reform." Pausing, he added: "My mother didn’t have much hope that I’d survive. The best she could hope was that I’d manage to stay alive a few more days."
[In footage from the 2012 interview, Gao displays some of his late mother’s possessions.]
Gao: This was my mother’s cupping jar [for moxibustion cupping therapy]. Here’s the thermometer she used. I treasure them. Even though she’s not here, just having her things close to me is a comfort.
That whole “great era” left me with nothing but bitter tears. It beat me black and blue. But seeing that I survived it, that I managed to reach the other shore, I want to use the rest of my life to bring some light into people’s lives, to lessen their suffering. I don’t want to hate.
Chai: When I interviewed Mr. Gao, he led me down to the basement, where there were several urns of ashes sitting on a table. "Brothers,” he told them, “someone from back home came to visit you."
Chai: Mr. Shu Kecheng.
Gao: Yes, that’s Mr. Shu Kecheng.
Chai: Did he have any family in Taiwan?
Gao: No, none. He committed suicide.
Chai: Taiwan had long been a heavily militarized island governed under martial law, existing in a heightened state of emergency. The military wanted soldiers who hadn’t put down roots, and who could be called up for battle at any time.
Chai (V.O.): In 1952, Taiwan’s Military Marriage Ordinance (MMO) stipulated that only officers aged 28 or older, or those who were technical non-commissioned officers, could marry.
All rank-and-file soldiers were prohibited from marrying. They were given a promise in the form of a land-grant certificate which, if Taiwan retook the mainland, could be redeemed for a plot of land.
Gao Binghan said the soldiers took this promise very seriously because in times of war and strife, only land is eternal.
Among Taiwan’s lower-ranking soldiers, nearly one-third remained single. Their only social relationships were with fellow soldiers from the same hometown. They lived their entire lives on the margins of Taiwanese society.
After Gao Binghan established his own law practice, he converted one of his offices into a meeting place for these “hometown associations.”
Chai: During Gao Binghan’s escape through southern China, a middle-school student named Wu Quanwen had given him a straw raincoat. After the rapprochement between China and Taiwan, Wu bought a plane ticket to China, and planned to meet his mother there for the Mid-Autumn Festival. But before he could make the trip, he was diagnosed with cancer and died suddenly.
At the Mid-Autumn Festival, Gao Binghan brought Wu Quanwen’s ashes home, following Wu’s original itinerary through Hong Kong to Guangzhou, and then to Lanzhou.
When he got off the plane in Lanzhou, there was a woman in a wheelchair waiting there for him. It was Wu Quanwen’s 91-year-old mother.
Gao: [I told him,] "Even though your mother didn’t get to see you again while you were alive, at least she can fulfill her wish and see your ashes." She rolled over to me in her wheelchair, and said, "I didn’t get to see my son, but thank you for bringing me his remains. I’m so grateful.” There’s joy within that misfortune.
Chai: How do you interpret that?
Gao: No one can predict who’s going to leave this life first. When white-haired parents have to say goodbye to their black-haired children, that’s a terrible misfortune. And this son who grew up in mother’s embrace is, in the end, buried by his mother.
Chai: Like he’s somehow still in her embrace?
Gao: Yes. You were born from her embrace, and in the end, she cradles you again as you leave this world.
[Footage from the 2012 documentary]
Chai (V.O.): In the basement of Gao Binghan’s Taiwan home, his mother’s dark-blue silk dress still hangs from the wall. To protect its delicate threads, he never washes it.
Gao: Every day I go into the basement and place my head against my mother’s dress. That way, I can imagine I’m still in her arms. Even though I’m nearly 80 years old, in some ways I’m still like a little boy.
Chai: [new documentary footage] Mr. Gao turned 90 years old this year. He says when he dreams of his mother, she’s always twisting his ear, and has a fearsome expression on her face.
He asked me if I understood, and I said I didn’t: I always thought dreams were supposed to be warm and gentle. “No,” he said, “gentle things are too fleeting, too easily forgotten. And I don’t want to forget her.”
Ten years ago, Gao Binghan wrote a will instructing his children and grandchildren that after he died, he wanted his ashes scattered on his parents’ grave. That way, time and the elements will cause them to seep into the soil so that Gao and his parents can be reunited underground—as if he were still in his mother’s embrace.
Chai: [Seems to be quoting Gao Binghan] "Years ago, I escaped by following these soldiers, and now I’m bringing them home."
[Footage from the 2012 documentary]
Chai (V.O.): But for those with no living relatives [in China], all Gao can do is find a corn field or pagoda tree in the deceased’s home village, and scatter their ashes there on the soil.
Gao: I say to them, "Brother, you’ve truly made it home." The villagers nearby think I’m completely loony. [laughs] They must wonder what I’m doing, and who I’m talking to. But in my heart, I know I’m keeping a promise I made.
Chai: Are such mementos really that important?
Gao: Those who haven’t wept bitter tears in the dead of night know nothing of life.
[Screen fades to black with musical accompaniment]
Chai: Since I didn’t have a team with me when I was conducting interviews in Taiwan, I hired a cameraman from Taiwan’s CTi Television to help me with the filming. Halfway through the interview, Mr. Gao paused to speak to someone behind me. "It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said consolingly, “That’s all in the past now." It was only when I turned around that I realized the cameraman had been crying.
In a taxi together after the interview, the cameraman told me that he was born in Tainan, Taiwan. His mother was indigenous, and his father had been a Nationalist soldier. He said he’d never cared much about his father’s past, but after listening to the interview that day, he somehow felt a deeper connection to the issue.
I told him I felt the same. We were of a similar age, grew up on opposite sides of the strait, and had studied different history textbooks, but for both of us, the accounts we’d seen were rooted in political ideology. But this interview reminded me that history is a living, breathing thing. It’s connected to me, to him, and to many people; it’s connected to the past, but also to the future.
The KMT and CCP never signed a ceasefire agreement, so in a sense, we are still living amidst that civil war.
Chai (V.O.): Given your frequent appearances in mainland media these days, are there those in Taiwan who claim you’ve been co-opted?
Gao: Well, what I talk about is humanity. I tell them I was born in Shandong, but Taiwan raised me. I say that both sides are my mothers.
Chai: But if someone rejects you because you’re not from Taiwan originally, how do you respond?
Gao: Although someone may not share my way of thinking, he’s still my brother. I still love him. I can’t push him away just because it’s painful. That’s not who I am. So I won’t give up. I’ll never give up.
Chai: But some people feel they can’t wait [for unification], or don’t have the patience, or want to resolve things through force. What do you think of such views?
Gao: On the subject of force, that’s what I fear most. It’s terrifying. War is always a tragedy, something I cannot endorse. The guns of war.
Chai: So what would you suggest?
Gao: Communication. Because of our geography, blood ties, language, and culture, communication between us is only natural. We’re brothers.
Chai: Many people feel that the forces of politics are overwhelming, and that there’s a limit to what individuals can do.
Gao: We need to work together. People can’t live in isolation. Your value is in how much you contribute.
Love is seeing your own contribution to meeting others’ needs. That’s taking action.
And speaking as a 90-year-old man, I have hope in Chinese young people everywhere. [clasps his hands together in supplication] Grandpa Gao is counting on you all.
</blockquote>
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<title>Rights Defenders Criticize Upcoming Rollout of National Internet ID System</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/rights-defenders-criticize-upcoming-rollout-of-national-internet-id-system/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arthur Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 02:35:06 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Sci-Tech]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Chinese law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Cyberspace Administration of China]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[digital security]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[information control]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Internet]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Internet access]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Internet censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Internet control]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Internet governance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Internet surveillance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[online censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[online platforms]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[real name registration]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[surveillance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[surveillance technology]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704286</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Last summer, the Chinese government released a proposal for a national internet ID system. The proposal was met with strong opposition, which was heavily censored online. (See CDT’s past coverage for examples.) The final rules for this new system were then released in May of this year, will be implemented on July 15, and remain […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Last summer, the Chinese government released a proposal for a national internet ID system. The proposal was met with strong opposition, which was <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/08/censors-delete-critiques-of-proposed-national-internet-id-system/">heavily censored online</a>. (See <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/08/critics-of-chinas-proposed-national-internet-id-system-hit-with-online-bans-censorship-harassment/">CDT’s past coverage</a> for examples.) The <a href="https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/online-id-2/">final rules for this new system</a> were then released in May of this year, will be implemented on July 15, and remain largely similar to the original draft that was widely criticized. As the rollout date approaches, experts and activists voiced concern about the impact of these centralized internet controls.
On Wednesday, Article 19 and Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) released <a href="https://www.article19.org/resources/china-new-internet-id-system-a-threat-to-online-expression/">a joint analysis calling the new internet ID system a threat to online expression</a>. They predicted that the system would negatively affect human rights defenders as a result of increased state surveillance and reduced anonymity; privacy concerns and lack of government accountability; and state control without borders.
<blockquote>
Shane Yi, researcher at CHRD said: “Internet users across China already endure heavy censorship and control by the government. The new Internet ID regulations escalate Beijing’s attack on free speech, putting human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers, and anyone who questions authority at even greater risk.” 
[…] Michael Caster, ARTICLE 19’s Head of Global China Programme said: “Anonymity provides for the privacy and security fundamental to exercising the freedom of opinion and expression. In further chipping away at potential online anonymity through the creation of a national internet ID, in an ecosystem where the Cybersecurity Law already mandates real-name identity verification, China is clearly seeking to intensify its efforts at silencing critical voices. And as China continues to position itself as a global digital governance standard-setter and cyber superpower, the risk is furthermore that we see such repressive policies gain traction beyond China’s borders.” [<a href="https://www.article19.org/resources/china-new-internet-id-system-a-threat-to-online-expression/">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
As Caster and others such as <a href="https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/on-network-codes-and-credentials/">China Law Translate’s Jeremy Daum have noted</a>, China already requires netizens to <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/real-name-registration/">submit their real names</a> when creating online accounts, as well as different types of biographical information depending on the platform. But the new system would centralize the process with a single ID for each person used to access all their accounts, and the ID would be stored directly under the government’s control. Last week, John Liu at CNN shared other critical reactions to the new ID system, including from CDT’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/20/tech/china-censorship-internet-id-hnk-intl">Xiao Qiang, who emphasized its ability to further enhance government surveillance and censorship</a>:
<blockquote>
“This is a state-led, unified identity system capable of real-time monitoring and blocking of users,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist studying internet freedom at the University of California, Berkeley. “It can directly erase voices it doesn’t like from the internet, so it’s more than just a surveillance tool – it is an infrastructure of digital totalitarianism.”
Control of China’s vast portion of the global internet has largely been delegated to a decentralized range of different groups, with authorities relying partially on the social media platforms themselves to identify comments deemed problematic. Xiao warned that a centralized system using the internet ID could make it much easier for the government to wipe out a user’s presence across multiple platforms at once.
[…] In late May, when the finalized rules were unveiled after a year, almost no criticism could be found online. Xiao explained that it’s not the first time authorities have spaced out the time between a proposal and its implementation, to allow critics to “blow off steam.”
“It’s done deliberately … Many of their measures follow the same pattern, and they’ve proven effective,” he said. [<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/20/tech/china-censorship-internet-id-hnk-intl">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
The new regulations state that registering for the system would be voluntary, but shortly after the proposal was announced last year, <a href="https://www.caixinglobal.com/2024-08-03/chinas-new-digital-id-system-trialed-across-over-80-apps-102223181.html">more than 80 apps</a> rolled out beta tests of the system. In recent weeks, Chinese state media have <a href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202505/23/WS68303502a310a04af22c1384.html">hyped up the new system</a> by noting that six million citizens have applied for and activated their internet IDs, and that the authentication app for the IDs has been downloaded over 16 million times. Earlier this month, Alex Colville at China Media Project provided a timeline of the evolution of China’s cyber ID system from 2015 to the present, and described how <a href="https://chinamediaproject.org/2025/06/04/chinas-slow-march-toward-cyber-ids/">the system may eventually become mandatory, and could even be applied in offline, not just online, spaces</a>:
<blockquote>
State media coverage suggests the voluntary nature of these IDs may be temporary. CCTV recently aired detailed step-by-step instructions for viewers to apply — the voluntary nature of the system mentioned just once in passing at the beginning of the segment. The tone throughout implied that enrollment was expected, not optional. 
[…] Take a closer look at state media coverage of the evolving cyber ID system and the expansion of its application seems a foregone conclusion — even extending to the offline world. Coverage by CCTV reported last month that it would make ID verification easier in many contexts. “In the future, it can be used in all the places where you need to show your ID card,” a professor at Tsinghua’s AI Institute said of the cyber ID. Imagine using your cyber ID in the future to board the train or access the expressway.
This long-term planning suggests the government is gently corralling the public into accepting a controversial policy. While Chinese state media emphasize the increased ease and security cyber IDs will bring, the underlying reality is more troubling. Chinese citizens may soon find themselves dependent on government-issued digital credentials for even the most basic freedoms — online and off. [<a href="https://chinamediaproject.org/2025/06/04/chinas-slow-march-toward-cyber-ids/">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
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<title>China Resigned to Quiet Diplomacy After U.S. and Israeli Strikes on Iran</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/china-resigned-to-quiet-diplomacy-after-u-s-and-israeli-strikes-on-iran/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arthur Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:41:40 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[China & the World]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[armed conflict]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[conflict]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[economic influence]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[global challenges]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[global economy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[global influence]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Global South]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[international relations]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[intervention]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Iran oil]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Iran relations]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[israel]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[journalists]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[middle east]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[nuclear]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[nuclear crisis]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[nuclear iran]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[nuclear weapons]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[oil]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[online censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[persian gulf]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[social media censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[state media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[WeChat]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[weibo]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704285</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A fragile ceasefire appears to have paused 12 days of war between Israel and Iran, which has killed at least 28 people in Israel and at least 1,054 people in Iran. As the dust settles, observers have scrutinized not only the U.S., whose military took the dramatic decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites, but […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[A fragile ceasefire appears to have paused <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-iran-war-latest-06-25-2025-a18dbde29c3e564063fd0d9a9e84d0c1">12 days of war between Israel and Iran</a>, which has killed at least 28 people in Israel and at least 1,054 people in Iran. As the dust settles, observers have scrutinized not only the U.S., whose military took the dramatic decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites, but also China, <a href="https://time.com/7296139/china-iran-israel-us-weapons-mediate-war-peace-oil-diplomacy/">whose calls for peace</a> were relegated to the sidelines. Despite its rhetorical alignment with <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/iran/">Iran</a>, the Chinese government maintained a restrained position that revealed its lack of ability or desire to play a more central role in intervening to resolve the region’s armed conflict.
Discussion of the Israel-Iran war was trending on Chinese social media platforms. Many of the top Weibo search topics demonstrated support for Iran and criticism of Israel. Popular commentator Xiang Dongliang <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718994.html">shared a WeChat post</a> inviting discussion on the similarities between Israel attacking Iran and Russia attacking Ukraine. Another WeChat post by Song Qingren <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/719084.html">critiqued the framing of the ceasefire in Chinese media</a>, which in some cases falsely suggested that it was Iran’s retaliatory strike against an American military base in Qatar that pressured the U.S. to make concessions. (Other recent WeChat posts were focused on Iran’s weakness, including one positing that <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718977.html">Iran actually has very few cards to play</a> in the war.)
One CCTV reporter was <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/719035.html">mocked by netizens</a> for becoming emotional while describing an Israeli airstrike on the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster that disrupted a live broadcast and killed one employee. The All-China Journalists Association (ACJA) <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202506/1336322.shtml">released a statement</a> about that incident: “Regardless of the justification, targeting media institutions with firepower crosses the bottom line of civilization.” In a WeChat post that was later deleted, a former journalist <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/719011.html">noted the irony</a> of the ACJA leaping to the defense of Iranian state-media journalists while refusing to speak out for Chinese journalists who had been threatened, detained, or impeded from reporting on news in China. Another WeChat user criticized Chinese media and Weibo for ignoring or downplaying news of deadly floods in Hunan and Guangdong while saturating news feeds with content about the Israel-Iran war. The author argued that Chinese media <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/719013.html">should devote more attention to domestic disasters</a>, but the post was later deleted.
The Chinese foreign ministry stated that it “<a href="http://ca.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/lcbt/wjbfyr/202506/t20250622_11654698.htm">strongly condemns the U.S. attacks</a> on Iran and bombing of nuclear facilities,” adding, “The actions of the U.S. seriously violate the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law.” It also announced that Chinese authorities <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-us-attack-iran-has-damaged-its-credibility-2025-06-22/">evacuated 3,125 Chinese citizens</a> from Iran and over 500 from Israel. In response to Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz-–through which flows 20 percent of global oil and gas, and 45 percent of China’s oil imports—the Chinese foreign ministry called for de-escalation, and the ministry of transport ordered all Chinese vessels in the region to <a href="https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3315527/beijing-tells-china-ships-strait-hormuz-phone-home-flags-shipping-safety">submit daily check-ins</a>. The Chinese government is also reportedly <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/china-russia-gas-pipeline-iran-conflict-e19523b3?mod=china_news_article_pos1">considering resuming plans</a> to complete the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline with Russia, in order to diversify its energy sources.
Many voices in Western media argued that the lack of Chinese material intervention in favor of Iran demonstrated the limitations of China’s influence in the region. “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-iran-israel-geopolitics-oil-a66b5fe05670980c544662bb633e6fe3">Beijing lacks both the diplomatic capabilities and the risk appetite</a> to quickly intervene in, and to think it can successfully navigate, this fast-moving and volatile situation,” said RAND’s Jude Blanchette, who added that China opts to remain “a measured, risk-averse actor” that “isn’t inclined to stick its neck out.” The China-Global South Podcast opined that the war had “forced [China] to regroup” and put it “<a href="https://chinaglobalsouth.com/podcasts/china-strait-of-hormuz-strategy/">in a much weaker position</a>.” AFP <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-helpless-as-middle-east-war-craters-regional-leverage-analysts">described China as “helpless” amidst a war that had “[cratered its] regional leverage”</a>:
<blockquote>
“Beijing has offered Tehran no real help – just rhetoric that paints China as the principled alternative while it stays safely on the sidelines,” Mr Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies think tank, told AFP.
China, he said, “sticks to rhetoric – condemnations, UN statements, talk of ‘dialogue’ – because over-promising and under-delivering would spotlight its power-projection limits”.
“The result is a conspicuously thin response that underscores how little real heft China brings to Iran when the shooting starts.”
[…] “China’s position in the Middle East after this conflict” has been badly affected, [said Dr Ahmed Aboudouh, an associate fellow with the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Programme.]
“Everybody in the Middle East understands that China has little leverage, if any, to play any role in de-escalation.” [<a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-helpless-as-middle-east-war-craters-regional-leverage-analysts">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
Other analysts highlighted <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2025/06/war-in-iran-chinas-short-and-long-term-strategic-calculations/">China’s long-term strategic interests</a> that take priority over possible short-term interventions. Jianli Yang emphasized China’s unequivocal preference for stability in the Middle East, which is vital to safeguarding its Belt and Road Initiative investments in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and the UAE. “During a time when China’s export-driven economy is already facing headwinds from the ongoing China-U.S. trade war and sluggish domestic demand, further economic disruptions are the last thing Beijing wants,” he argued. Summarizing these calculations for Foreign Policy, Jesse Marks wrote that “<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/23/iran-china-gulf-states-strait-hormuz/">Beijing cares more about the Gulf states than Tehran’s future</a>”:
<blockquote>
Beijing doesn’t want deeper Middle East entanglements because it knows there’s no clean exit. Unlike the United States, which has military assets and alliance infrastructure in the region, China lacks the tools—and the appetite—for direct intervention. Its strategy has been to build influence through infrastructure, trade, and diplomatic balancing. A broader war upends that model. If forced to choose sides or take coercive measures, China risks unraveling its hard-earned neutrality, jeopardizing relations not just with Iran but also with key Arab partners such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Even if Beijing wanted to rein in Tehran, it has limited leverage. Iran values the relationship but is unlikely to take direction from China. There’s no defense pact, no military alliance, and no guaranteed oil-for-compliance bargain. China could threaten to curb its economic cooperation or delay investments, but doing so risks pushing Iran further into isolation or deeper into Russia’s orbit. Right now, China’s strongest card is quiet diplomacy, urging restraint behind closed doors, but publicly staying out of the line of fire. This means a posture of risk management, not risk taking. And it shows just how little control Beijing actually has over Iran when the missiles start flying. The United States remains in the driver’s seat.
Beijing will not come to Tehran’s aid. Xi may urge restraint, call for dialogue, and attempt quiet diplomacy behind the scenes. But China will not risk its broader standing in the Gulf—or its long-term strategic interests—by aligning itself with a partner it cannot control and a conflict it cannot shape. For Beijing, stability is strategic. Right now, Iran is not. [<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/23/iran-china-gulf-states-strait-hormuz/">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
Some analysts also discussed the potential <a href="https://www.usip.org/publications/2025/06/whats-stake-china-iran-war">positive opportunities</a> available to China following the U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iran. “[China] will now have more ability to talk about <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/how-china-stands-to-gain-from-us-strikes-on-iran/a-73020874">the U.S. being a disruptive actor</a>, being a potential threat. They have been especially active in pushing this narrative in the global south,” said Ja Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore. Fu Cong, China’s ambassador to the U.N., tried to make this point on Sunday: “Iran is harmed, but <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/world/asia/china-us-iran-credibility.html">also harmed is U.S. credibility</a>.” And while “the United States is going to be stuck fighting unpopular wars, this <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/24/iran-israel-us-china/">allows Xi and China to present themselves as the problem solver</a>, the superpower who uses diplomacy and negotiation,” said John Delury, a senior fellow and China expert at the Asia Society. In Al-Monitor’s China-Middle East newsletter on Wednesday, Joyce Karam listed <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/china">other ways in which the war might provide strategic gains for China</a>:
<blockquote>
Many commentators have been quick to frame the war as a loss for China, watching its partner in Tehran absorb significant damage to its military, energy and nuclear infrastructure. But that interpretation overlooks the fundamentally transactional nature of China-Iran ties, the geopolitical advantage Beijing gains from Washington’s renewed entanglement in Middle East turmoil, and — most significantly — President Donald Trump’s Tuesday concession allowing Chinese purchases of Iranian oil to continue.
That’s not to say China emerged as the war’s winner — far from it. But Beijing does have long-term reasons to view the outcome as a strategic gain.
[…] With its vulnerability and military weaknesses now exposed, Iran will become increasingly dependent on China. Whether in reconstruction, oil sales or rebuilding its missile program, China will be an indispensable partner — should Tehran choose to take that risk. [<a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/china">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
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<title>As Export Controls Fuel Domestic Innovation, China’s AI Industry Closes Gap With U.S.</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/as-export-controls-fuel-domestic-innovation-chinas-ai-industry-closes-gap-with-u-s/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arthur Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2025 00:40:15 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[China & the World]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[Recent News]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[deepseek]]></category>
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<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704277</guid>
<description><![CDATA[China’s AI industry has drawn increasing media attention as its progress generates excitement and trepidation about a global future fueled by Chinese AI. One dimension of this success is the ability of Chinese actors, such as DeepSeek, to circumvent U.S. restrictions on the export of critical technology. According to Reuters, a U.S. official claimed this […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/artificial-intelligence/">China’s AI</a> industry has drawn increasing media attention as its progress generates excitement and trepidation about a global future fueled by Chinese AI. One dimension of this success is the ability of Chinese actors, <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/01/deepseeks-success-challenges-export-control-strategy-and-reignites-us-china-rivalry/">such as DeepSeek</a>, to circumvent U.S. restrictions on the export of critical technology. According to Reuters, a U.S. official claimed this week that DeepSeek had <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/deepseek-aids-chinas-military-evaded-export-controls-us-official-says-2025-06-23/">evaded export controls</a> to gain access to American AI chips. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese engineers <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/china-ai-chip-curb-suitcases-7c47dab1?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAihfFRuxJq3aRp4ldd7Fk0e3oRLeVLcg2lkLNiiiCWAgCjzoeIMuUVkn64bQKs%3D&gaa_ts=685983c7&gaa_sig=9KQZDRPMWmsUffuKsT4Q3OnjUCjpe4LYE-d1SzrU6-JkQnRQq_ILr0_VcpJvRQ7OIyQOggrV7FUgk-d1NDrW0g%3D%3D">transported hard drives with hundreds of gigabytes of AI training data</a> in suitcases to Malaysia in order to bypass U.S. restrictions by using American chips outside of China. But the flipside to this story is how U.S. export controls have encouraged the flourishing of China’s domestic AI ecosystem. Ann Cao and Wency Chen at the South China Morning Post described on Saturday how, following years of U.S. sanctions, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3315239/how-huaweis-silicon-strategy-defies-us-sanctions-advance-chinas-ai-ambitions">Huawei’s advances in home-grown AI chips have allowed it to leapfrog some of its American competitors</a>:
<blockquote>
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of AI chip giant Nvidia, has been the most prominent industry leader to recognise the resurgence of Huawei in the IC sector.
“All in all, the export controls were a failure. The facts would suggest it,” Huang told reporters on the sidelines of last month’s Computex expo in Taipei. He called on the White House to lower barriers to AI chip sales before American firms cede the China market to rivals like Huawei.
[…] The performance of [Huawei’s] Ascend chips against Nvidia’s in-demand GPUs was put under the spotlight this week, following the release of a technical paper that was jointly written by researchers from Huawei and Chinese AI infrastructure start-up SiliconFlow.
According to the paper, Huawei’s Ascend-powered advanced data centre architecture – CloudMatrix 384, along with the serving solution CloudMatrix-Infer – outperformed the Nvidia GPU-based SGLang fast-serving framework for large language models (LLMs), on both the inference and decoding phases, in running DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model.
[…] “Huawei is a generation behind in chips, but its scale-up solution is arguably a generation ahead of Nvidia and AMD’s [Advanced Micro Devices] current products on the market,” the SemiAnalysis report said. [<a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3315239/how-huaweis-silicon-strategy-defies-us-sanctions-advance-chinas-ai-ambitions">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
This month in Western media, experts have continuted to anxiously debate the extent of China’s progress in AI. In a Foreign Policy discussion on <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/12/united-states-china-ai-competition/">whether China can “catch up on AI,”</a> George Lee of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute conceded that “we’re in the sprint mode of a real race for supremacy between the United States and China.” In a Foreign Affairs article titled “<a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/what-if-china-wins-ai-race">What if China Wins the AI Race?</a>,” Sebastian Elbaum and Adam Segal argued that “the gap between U.S. and Chinese cutting-edge AI capabilities is narrowing, [and] American supremacy in AI is far from assured [….] Washington needs to plan for a possible future in which the United States loses the AI competition to China—or, at the very least, one in which Chinese AI models are as popular globally.” In a collection of commentaries at Brookings, Ryan Hass argued, “Rather than obsessing over which country is in the lead and what more the United States can do to slow China’s progress, U.S. policymakers must quickly gain comfort with the fact that <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-will-ai-influence-us-china-relations-in-the-next-5-years/">America and China are going to be navigating the frontiers of AI side-by-side</a> over the coming years.” In a ChinaFile conversation titled “<a href="https://www.chinafile.com/conversation/china-about-produce-next-sputnik-moment">Is China About to Produce the Next ‘Sputnik Moment’?</a>,” Lizzi C. Lee highlighted how the industrialization of China’s AI ecosystem may soon propel it past the U.S.:
<blockquote>
The sector to watch is AI. Chinese leaders increasingly recognize that control over AI depends on more than just models. It hinges on chips, energy, data centers, cooling systems, and even power grids.
Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs, in particular. They have long been viewed with cautious optimism in clean energy circles. In China, they are quickly becoming an emerging backbone of the country’s AI infrastructure strategy. The logic is simple: If compute (industry jargon for the infrastructure powering AI) is the engine of AI progress, energy is the fuel. And China wants control over the pump.
[…] So what might the “Sputnik moment” look like? Perhaps a frontier AI model, trained end-to-end in a nuclear-powered inland data hub, running on Huawei chips. Or a Belt and Road-style deployment of Chinese-built SMRs powering AI-driven logistics in Southeast Asia or Africa, proof that China can export not just textiles, steel, or iPhones, but the off-grid infrastructure needed to run the future of high tech.
The U.S. remains ahead in frontier innovation. But China is innovating in how to industrialize that frontier, specifically how to engineer cost-effective solutions for AI deployment and commercialization, harden the supply chain, and construct a full-stack ecosystem that is sanction-proof and self-sustaining. Quietly, it is building the scaffolding of its economy for the AI era. When that scaffolding becomes visible, that is when the real Sputnik moment will land. It will not arrive with spectacle, but it may arrive first! [<a href="https://www.chinafile.com/conversation/china-about-produce-next-sputnik-moment">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
Recent developments also demonstrate commercial innovation in China’s AI ecosystem. This month, Shanghai-based AI start-up MiniMax <a href="https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3314819/deepseek-rival-minimax-says-its-first-ai-reasoning-model-halves-compute-r1">launched an open-source reasoning model</a> that reportedly requires half the computing resources of DeepSeek-R1 and achieves <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/17/minimax_m1_model_chinese_llm/">similar performance</a> to models by U.S.-based Antropic, OpenAI, and Google. Elsewhere, Chinese influencer Luo Yonghao and co-host Xiao Mu raked in over $7.65 million in six hours by <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/19/ai-humans-in-china-just-proved-they-are-better-influencers.html">using Baidu-AI-generated digital avatars to interact with viewers</a> in real time on e-commerce livestreaming platform Youxuan, marking a potential “DeepSeek moment for China’s entire livestreaming and digital human industry,” Luo’s colleague boasted. Two months ago, China showcased its <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/04/embodied-a-i-deployment-in-china-races-ahead/">strides in embodied AI deployment</a> by hosting the world’s first humanoid-robot half-marathon in Beijing, with <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/beijing-half-marathon-humanoid-robots/">mixed results</a>.
The global repercussions of U.S.-China AI competition are coming into focus. On the hardware side, according to data analyzed by researchers at the University of Oxford, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/23/technology/ai-computing-global-divide.html">American and Chinese companies operate over 90 percent of the world’s data centers</a> used for AI work, which has split the world into countries that rely on the U.S. and those that rely on China. Some African policymakers are working with Huawei to convert existing data centers to include Chinese-made chips, given U.S. restrictions on Africans’ access to American chips. On the software side, the <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2025/06/what-democracies-get-wrong-about-chinese-ai/">global proliferation of Chinese AI services poses certain governance challenges</a> for democratic societies that adopt them, as Kai-Shen Huang recently argued in The Diplomat. Chinese AI has been leveraged for <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/04/translations-deepseeks-outstanding-results-in-the-field-of-public-security/">surveillance</a>, <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/03/database-points-to-chinas-growing-use-of-a-i-for-online-surveillance-and-censorship/">censorship</a>, and <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/02/chinese-and-other-actors-leverage-ai-for-censorship-surveillance-propaganda/">propaganda</a> within China, and <a href="https://linguasinica.substack.com/p/deepseeks-democratic-deficit">DeepSeek and other Chinese AI models are already being instrumentalized by authoritarian actors abroad to extend their influence</a> at the expense of democracy, as Alex Colville argued this week in Lingua Sinica:
<blockquote>
[G]lobal access to an admittedly powerful — and, so far, free — AI model does not necessarily mean democratization of information. This much is already becoming clear. In fact, without proper safeguards, DeepSeek’s accessibility could transform it from a democratizing force into a vehicle for authoritarian influence.
Look no further than another country with big ambitions for AI development: India. Shortly after R1’s global launch Ola, an Indian tech giant, appeared to adapt and deploy a version of R1 to suit India’s information controls. It answered sensitive questions on China that the Chinese version refuses to discuss. But when questioned about anything critical of the government of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, it refused in the same way the Chinese version would do about its own government: claiming the topic was beyond its abilities, and giving no answer.
Governments and experts have argued DeepSeek has few problems beyond small amounts of “half-baked censorship,” and data security issues. They must take it more seriously as a threat to freedom of expression. In our research at CMP, we have found that Chinese Communist Party bias is increasingly permeating the model with every new update, but tech companies are doing little (if anything) to retrain the model in ways that remove or otherwise temper these biases.
DeepSeek is indeed a boon for more accessible AI around the world, just as some have argued. But in the wrong hands, it also has the potential to be not just a vehicle for Chinese propaganda and information suppression, but a tool for authoritarianism worldwide. [<a href="https://linguasinica.substack.com/p/deepseeks-democratic-deficit">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
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<title>Translation: Plunging Prices, Sprouting Weeds, and Broken Dreams</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/translation-plunging-prices-sprouting-weeds-and-broken-dreams/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Samuel Wade]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2025 03:11:46 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[CDT Highlights]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[Shanxi]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704269</guid>
<description><![CDATA[At The New York Times on Monday, columnist Li Yuan describes how, as "wages stagnate and jobs disappear, the promise of upward social mobility is eroding, especially for those from modest backgrounds. For many […], the Chinese Dream no longer feels achievable." Similar themes have featured prominently on CDT in recent months, from uproar over […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[At The New York Times on Monday, columnist Li Yuan describes how, as "wages stagnate and jobs disappear, the promise of upward social mobility is eroding, especially for those from modest backgrounds. For many […], <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/business/china-upward-mobility-inequality.html">the Chinese Dream no longer feels achievable</a>." Similar themes have featured prominently on CDT in recent months, from <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/05/words-of-the-week-nepo-babies-with-connections-and-resources-%e5%85%b3%e7%b3%bb%e5%92%96-guanxi-ka-%e8%b5%84%e6%ba%90%e5%92%96-ziyuan-ka/">uproar over the "4+4" fast-track for medical qualifications</a> to <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/04/translations-chinas-officialdom-complex-cures-and-effects/">commentary on the decline of former "golden ticket" degrees like computer science and the resurgent appeal of official careers</a>. Other examples include gallows humor <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/03/different-armies-same-hole-hangzhou-jobseekers-compared-with-terracotta-warriors/">comparing young jobseekers with Terracotta Warriors</a> and citing <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/04/netizen-voices-if-were-winning-this-much-after-losing-the-u-s-market-imagine-how-much-wed-win-if-we-lost-all-of-them/">the Chinese people’s capacity for hardship as a trade-war superweapon</a>. (As Li notes, <a href="https://defector.com/the-money-is-in-all-the-wrong-places">similar frustrations</a> are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/computer-science-bubble-ai/683242/">widely felt elsewhere</a>.)
A <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718594.html">recent essay on the WeChat public account 老干体v</a> adds to the growing body of online writing on economic precarity and gloom in China. The author notes troubling signs in key economic indicators, arguing that the rich are subject to the whims of the powerful, while ordinary people either sink or swim depending largely on chance.
<blockquote>
The lower bound of Jiangsu’s benchmark coal price recently dropped 22% month-on-month, and 24% year-on-year!
Can it be that this resource-poor country’s chronic energy shortages are finally behind us?
According to former Premier Li Keqiang’s economic analysis, electricity consumption and freight volume serve as the two leading indicators of economic development, the barometer and thermometer of the nation’s economic activity, directly correlated with the rise and fall of GDP.
Does this mean we’re now on a trajectory of declining power consumption and economic contraction?
In fact, it’s not just electricity prices that are tumbling: in the last few years, glass has fallen from 3,300 yuan to 987, lithium carbonate from 230,000 to below 60,000, coking coal from 3,400 to 760, rebar from 6,200 to 2,900 …
Some might wonder whether lower prices aren’t a good thing. If that’s you, don’t bother to read on.
The trend in power consumption was obscured last year by sustained 6.8% growth, and the China Electricity Council predicts 6% growth this year as well, breaking through the 10-trillion kilowatt/hour mark.
But the rate of growth is slowing, for the first time since the [COVID] masks came off—the power consumption index is again showing signs of "irregularity" following its [post-pandemic] return to a normal growth trajectory.
Breaking down the power consumption, industry used 49.7% of the total, but its consumption increased only 5.1% from last year, well below the overall increase of 6.8%.
This year’s projected 6% overall increase will likely be held back again by lagging industrial power consumption.
This way of looking at it clarifies a number of points.
We’ve grown so accustomed to constant growth that we don’t believe that housing prices could fall, or that investors could actually pull out over safety concerns.
Electricity is inextricably linked to coal. Back in the ’90s, some mineshaft engineers from Wenzhou’s Cangnan and Pingyang counties were hired to sink shafts in Shanxi Province.
Once the mines were up and running, the engineers were given ownership as payment, because coal prices at the time were low.
So when we entered the WTO in 2001, the economy soared, power consumption shot up, coal prices exploded, and these coal bosses became the big winners behind the "electricity tigers."
I once went to Shanxi to meet a coal baron who spat right onto the restaurant’s red carpet. When it was time to settle up, he handed over two bricks of 10,000 yuan bills, still wrapped from the bank, and asked if that would cover it. Anything left over, he said, they should keep as a tip. 
Then the industry was abruptly nationalized in the 2008 coal reforms, for safety and other reasons. Prices were unilaterally set by officials, with only a small portion paid up front, and the remainder was indefinitely deferred. 
This disaster crushed the Shanxi coal bosses’ dreams—they still prefer not to talk about it.
Of course, more unforgettable still is the photo of grass sprouting on the Bund that was shared online on April 9, 2022. 
<img decoding="async" src="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/640.png" alt="The Bund in Shanghai, with weeds growing between the paving slabs" />
There was even one video of a pack of stray dogs sniffing around the broad street in search of food.
At that point they thought, like some enterprises, that once the masks came off, the horses would still run and the dancers would keep dancing, just as they had before. [A reference to Deng Xiaoping’s promise of continuity in post-handover Hong Kong.]
But I felt even then that once things relaxed, we’d see the truth.
One acquaintance of mine, a state-owned enterprise boss who was "sent inside" a while ago, once objected to my pessimistic outlook while we were chatting at his place.
There’s a line from Shaanxi opera: "Fate throws misfortune at madmen, like bricks at mad dogs." This is as true for officials as it is for the rest of us. The authorities are finally unable to keep up the game they’ve been playing until now.
On the evening of November 28 last year, there was a "Shanxi Night" reception in Hangzhou to attract investors from Zhejiang. According to public reports, of course, this was a big success, but the rumor was that while the leaders were giving their speeches onstage, the entrepreneurs below grew ravenous. Some tried to pinch some hors d’oeuvres, but were tackled by servers who said "the leaders haven’t started eating yet!"
I could hardly breathe for laughing when I heard this: "The leaders may have changed, but the bosses who got screwed last time are still around!"
The other day, a relative of mine in Shanghai mentioned that commercial rents on Qipu Road have dropped to 500 yuan a month from a peak of 70,000.
She said it will never hit that level again.
My blood ran cold.
Weeds grow on every grave; it’s those left behind who feel this as an affront.
Thinking back to those few years, there was a milk tea shop owner in Shanghai who started doing explicit livestreams [literally "large-scale" livestreams, a censorship-evading euphemism] to pay the rent, and was sentenced to three years.
<img decoding="async" src="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/640-1.png" alt="A distressed woman in a facemask, viewed through prison bars" />
Everyone’s memories of the Three Years of Masking will differ, but for me, this photo of her made a deep impression. Every time I look at it, I almost can’t breathe.
Because that time was also when our editorial department was under the heaviest financial strain. My hair turned grey overnight—if there’d been the slightest interruption to our money flow, we’d all have been out of work.
I had a little more luck than that small business owner, but that I’m the one who made it through is just a matter of survivorship bias.
That three-year sentence will be over now, though I don’t know if she’s free or not.
But either way, her milk tea shop is probably long gone.
That was the life and livelihood she once dreamed about. 
It was also the broken dreams of all the rest of us.
I’ll never be able to forget the look in her eyes through those iron bars. After the rumbling flood passes, all you can do is stare at the crushed rubble of the life you’d painstakingly built. [<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718594.html">Chinese</a>]
</blockquote>
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<title>Words of the Week: “Being Traveled” (被旅游, bèi lǚyóu)</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/words-of-the-week-being-traveled-%e8%a2%ab%e6%97%85%e6%b8%b8-bei-luyou/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Samuel Wade]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 21 Jun 2025 02:44:43 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[CDT Highlights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Translation]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704263</guid>
<description><![CDATA[On June 4, Safeguard Defenders published a new report on the practice of "forced travel," by which politically targeted individuals are removed from their home regions during sensitive periods. The report, Holidays in Handcuffs, is presented satirically in the form of a glossy travel magazine. From its opening "Letter from the Editor": Every year, like […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[On June 4, Safeguard Defenders published <a href="https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/holidays-handcuffs-new-report-examines-forced-travel-china">a new report on the practice of "forced travel,"</a> by which politically targeted individuals are removed from their home regions during sensitive periods. The report, Holidays in Handcuffs, is presented satirically in the form of a glossy travel magazine. From its opening "Letter from the Editor":
<blockquote>
Every year, like clockwork, when major political events or sensitive anniversaries are about to occur, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sends activists and petitioners on “forced travel”. Often those targeted include the same list of long-established rights scholars, lawyers, journalists and intellectuals. There are now so many sensitive dates that these people end up being routinely “forced travelled” several times a year. It doesn’t matter if they are young or old, in good health or ailing, almost without fail they will be escorted by a team from the Public Security Bureau (police) or government department on a “holiday” so that they cannot “cause trouble” at home.
[…] Through interviews with recent victims and analyses of media stories, this report traces how the practice of forced travel declined (but did not completely disappear) during the Covid pandemic (2020 to end 2022) when strict lockdowns were periodically implemented. It also notes how China’s economic problems have shaped a more budget form of forced travel in the post-Covid era.
The use of parody in this report, including in the cover, design and headlines, is not to diminish the seriousness of forced travel. Forced travel is still an illegal and arbitrary form of detention. It violates the fundamental human rights to freedom, liberty of movement, expression and privacy. Rather, parody is employed as a novel approach to raise attention to this repressive practice and to highlight the absurdity of the CCP in pretending forced relocation, surveillance and detention is just a “holiday”. [<a href="https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/holidays-handcuffs-new-report-examines-forced-travel-china">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
The phenomenon was previously highlighted in 2018 by Jianying Zha, who <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/12/how-chinese-activists-are-traveled-or-mentally-illed/">wrote for The New Yorker about her activist brother Zha Jianguo’s experiences</a> of "being traveled."
The Chinese term 被旅游 ‌bèi lǚyóu is an example of what has been called the "<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Passive_era">involuntary passive</a>." Xinhua described the construction’s use in a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120215120833/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-02/16/c_13176690.htm">2010 report on 被 bèi‘s selection as 2009’s "Character of the Year"</a>:
<blockquote>
Nowadays the character is being employed by Chinese to express a sentiment deeper than just the passive voice: they are using it to convey a sense of helplessness in deciding one’s own fate.
The new usage may not conform with grammar rules, but it become an Internet buzzwords in 2009 as it reflected dissatisfaction over the abuse of official power.
"Bei Zi Sha," or "being suicided," is one example.
[…] "Bei Zi Yuan" or "being volunteered" is one example which is used to ridicule some government departments that force people to do something while alleging they "do it out of their own will."
[…] "Bei" was not censored in the government-run poll of buzzwords, and grassroots’ voices are finally being heard and even recognized by the government. [<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120215120833/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-02/16/c_13176690.htm">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
The original Xinhua article is <a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-02/16/c_13176690.htm">no longer online</a>, but the involuntary passive has endured. In 2023, it was chosen by CDT editors as one of 104 terms explained in our <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china-digital-times-ebooks/">20th Anniversary Lexicon ebook</a>, where it is represented by the term 被代表 bèi dàibiǎo, or "be represented." The full entry from the ebook is republished below:
be represented (被代表 bèi dàibiǎo)
Sardonic expression referring to Chinese authorities’ claim to be the sole legitimate representatives of the Chinese nation and its people. Although grammatically identical to a neutrally passive statement, the term often carries the same sardonically contradictory barb as an English phrase like “to be volunteered.” To “be represented” in this sense is to have the Party speak and act on your behalf, regardless of your own thoughts on the matter.
Bèi dàibiǎo is an example of what CDT’s Xiao Qiang and Sinologist Perry Link described as the “involuntary passive” in a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323874204578219832868014140">2013 essay for The Wall Street Journal</a>:
<blockquote>
The imbalance in power between guiguo and pimin [see entries] is sometimes highlighted by the satirical use of bei, which originally meant “quilt” or, as a verb, “to cover,” but about a century ago became a grammatical device used for translating the passive voice in Western languages—like the English phrase “my wallet has been stolen.” Now, wo bei hexie le, or “I have been harmonized,” has become a standard quip when censors strike. The role of bei in this phrase is important. It signals that I suffered the action; it was done to me, and I in no way willed it.
This “involuntarily passive” implication has led to a range of other sarcastic uses. One is bei xingfu, which literally means “happiness-ified.” In the Mao era, it was said that the Great Leader mou xingfu (sought happiness) for the people; to be on the receiving end of this search, then as now, is to be bei xingfu. We look at the officials who “represent” us and see ourselves as bei daibiao or “undergoing representation.” In each case, the point is that the “esteemed country” acts upon the “fart people,” not the other way around.
</blockquote>
In <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/34310041">a 2014 article</a> published in the International Journal of Chinese Linguistics, C.-T. James Huang and Na Liu wrote that “bèi XX constructions are used in satirical writings and can be interpreted in three ways: (a) ‘x gets reported or regarded as having the property denoted by XX; (b) ‘x is forced to acquire the property denoted by XX’; (c) ‘x is treated, acted upon, in a way involving or described by XX’.”
Further examples of each of these usages include:
• to be middle-classed (被小康 bèi xiǎokāng), or officially designated as middle class for political purposes, regardless of actual material circumstances 
• to be employmented (被就业 bèi jiùyè), or falsely reported as employed in order to inflate employment statistics 
• to be satisfactioned (被满意 bèi mǎnyì), or reported to be satisfied with an official policy or response 
• to be emotionally stabilized (被情绪稳定 bèi qíngxù wěndìng), or reported to be emotionally stable in the aftermath of a disaster or other “<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2017/08/interview-jeremy-brown-learning-lessons-maintaining-stability-accidents-disasters/">sudden incident</a>”
• to be stepped down or retired (被退休 bèi tuìxiū), or forced to retire 
• to be volunteered (被自愿 bèi zìyuàn), or forced to volunteer 
• to be donored (被捐款 bèi juānkuǎn), or forced to donate
• to be traveled (被旅游 bèi lǚyóu), or <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/12/how-chinese-activists-are-traveled-or-mentally-illed/">escorted on a trip</a> to ensure one’s absence from a sensitive location at a sensitive time 
• to be mentally-illed (被神经病 bèi shénjīngbìng), or subjected to <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/12/how-chinese-activists-are-traveled-or-mentally-illed/">involuntary psychiatric detention on spurious grounds</a> 
• to be <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/drinking-tea/">tea-drinked</a> (被喝茶 bèi hē chá), or questioned by public security or other officials (see entry) 
• to be wall-raped (被墙奸 bèi qiángjiān, a pun on 被强奸 bèi qiángjiān, meaning “to be raped”), or blocked by the Great Firewall (see entry) 
• to be river-crabbed (被河蟹 bèi héxiè), or harmonized—that is, censored (see entry and blockquote above)
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<title>Photo: Beijing Road, belfast16</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/photo-beijing-road-belfast16/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cindy Carter]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Jun 2025 04:15:25 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Main Photo]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704260</guid>
<description><![CDATA[]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_704261" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-704261" src="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Beijing-Road-belfast16-e1749787971781.jpg" alt="A tiny shop on Guangzhou's Beijing Road displays a collection of musical instruments, including acoustic guitars and steelpan instruments known as "hang," some silver and some painted in bright primary colors. A multicolored neon sign above the shop illuminates the night, and features a guitar, some musical notes, and two Chinese characters meaning "musical instruments."" width="600" height="400" class="size-full wp-image-704261" />
Beijing Road, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/olli-guangzhou/54568636085/">belfast16 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)</a>
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<title>Uyghur Forced Labor Continues to Plague Global Supply Chains</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/uyghur-forced-labor-continues-to-plague-global-supply-chains/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arthur Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Jun 2025 03:47:26 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[China & the World]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Human Rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Recent News]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[business ethics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[factories]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[global economy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[global markets]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[global trade]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hotels]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[human rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[human rights in Xinjiang]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[human rights violations in Xinjiang]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[international law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[international trade]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[labor]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[labor conditions]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[labor law]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[labor rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[mineral resources]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[minerals]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[slave labor]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[supply chain]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Uyghurs]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Xinjiang]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704253</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Several reports over the past two weeks have shed light on the ongoing human rights issue of Uyghur forced labor and its impact on global supply chains. The most recent report was published on Wednesday, as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to a trade deal that would see China resuming exports on certain critical […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Several reports over the past two weeks have shed light on the ongoing human rights issue of Uyghur <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/slave-labor/">forced labor</a> and its impact on global supply chains. The most recent report was published on Wednesday, as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping <a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-xinjiang-critical-minerals-forced-labor-uyghur-eac368889c299fd304a3b7beefc7469a">agreed to a trade deal</a> that would see China resuming exports on <a href="https://apnews.com/article/critical-minerals-supply-world-report-3dbee35f17823656b75939305bbd0512">certain critical minerals</a>. The Global Rights Compliance report on Wednesday analyzed corporate annual reports and marketing, state media, and shipping records to show how four critical minerals—titanium, lithium, beryllium, and magnesium—have <a href="https://globalrightscompliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GRC-critical-minerals.pdf">a significant presence in Xinjiang, where they are supplied by forced labor</a>:
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>
Global Rights Compliance found that for each of the four minerals studied, major mining and processing companies are participating in the state labour transfer programs, which scholars and legal experts identify as forced labour. 
</li>
<li>
The report identifies 77 critical minerals sector companies and downstream manufacturers of minerals-based products operating in the XUAR, and therefore are at risk of participating in labour transfer programs, in the titanium, lithium, beryllium, and magnesium industries. 
</li>
<li>
Research found 15 companies with documented sourcing directly from those XUAR-based companies in the last two years. 
</li>
<li>
The report uncovers 68 downstream customers of those Chinese suppliers with sourcing from the Uyghur Region, indicating a risk that inputs may have been sourced from the region. 
</li>
<li>
Research identified 18 XUAR entity parent companies that may source inputs from their XUAR subsidiaries. [<a href="https://globalrightscompliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GRC-critical-minerals.pdf">Source</a>]
</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
Last week, Peter Irwin and Henryk Szadziewski wrote for Foreign Policy about a recent report they published demonstrating <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/02/china-xinjiang-uyghur-genocide-hotel-chains-marriott-ihg/">how international hotel giants are profiting from forced labor and other abuses in Xinjiang</a>:
<blockquote>
In addition to the 115 hotels that are currently operational in Xinjiang, we identified another 74 in various stages of planning and construction from international hotel giants—Accor, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, Minor Hotels, and Wyndham. Marriott will open at least 13 hotels located in Xinjiang in 2026, including a Ritz-Carlton in Urumqi. IHG will open nine hotels in the region in 2025 and another seven in 2026, including InterContinentals in Urumqi, Kashgar, and Ghulja. (InterContinental is IHG’s flagship luxury brand.)
Moreover, we documented a long list of rights abuses connected to hotels in Xinjiang, including forced labor, presence on territories controlled by an entity under targeted human rights sanctions, financial and management links to Chinese state-owned enterprises, and hotels hosting Chinese state propaganda events. Hilton even opened a hotel on the site of the Duling Mosque in central Khotan, which local authorities demolished in 2018. None of the seven hotel chains responded to our repeated requests for comment.
[…] The business model of international hotel chains means they have avoided the burden of supply chain regulations. A core operation involves licensing their brand name to Chinese companies through franchising agreements or management partnerships, making them virtually invisible to trade-focused rules, such as the UFLPA [U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act].[<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/02/china-xinjiang-uyghur-genocide-hotel-chains-marriott-ihg/">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
Two weeks ago, a joint investigation by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/world/asia/china-uyghur-labor.html">The New York Times</a>, <a href="https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-05-30/the-world-sanctioned-xinjiang-cotton.-china-turned-it-into-chicken-feed">The Bureau of Investigative Journalism</a>, and <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/china-wie-uiguren-zu-billigarbeit-gezwungen-werden-und-deutsche-konzerne-profitieren-a-6d31cd6c-d250-4d71-b052-5ae54ffa1a48">Der Spiegel</a> highlighted the scope of Chinese state-led labor transfer programs that force Uyghurs to work in factories, as far as 2,600 miles from Xinjiang, that supply many major international brands. Reporters examined government and corporate announcements, state media reports, social media posts and research papers; visited areas near two dozen factories linked to Uyghur labor; and spoke to dozens of workers. David Pierson, Vivian Wang, and Daniel Murphy at The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/29/world/asia/china-uyghur-xinjiang-labor-transfers.html">summarized the investigation</a>:
<blockquote>
By the best available estimates, tens of thousands of Uyghurs now toil in these programs. The workers are paid, but the conditions they face are unclear. And U.N. labor experts, scholars and activists say the programs fit well-documented patterns of forced labor.
[…] We documented their presence at 75 factories across 11 provinces in at least five major industries.
[…] These companies supply brands such as Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, McDonald’s, KFC, Samsung, LG and Crocs.
[…] “This is not about poverty alleviation. This is about dispersing Uyghurs as a group and breaking their roots,” Rayhan Asat, a human rights lawyer at the Atlantic Council whose brother has been imprisoned in Xinjiang since 2016.
If multinational brands cannot guarantee that their suppliers are free of forced labor, then they should find other suppliers that they can guarantee are, or pull out of China altogether, Ms. Asat said. [<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/29/world/asia/china-uyghur-xinjiang-labor-transfers.html">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
Evidence of Uyghur forced labor has continued to emerge across a variety of sectors. In February, a French media investigation found evidence of Uyghur forced labor in the supply chain of <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/02/investigation-reveals-uyghur-forced-labor-in-decathlons-supply-chain/">multinational sporting goods company Decathlon</a>. Last December, the BBC published a documentary tracing the shipment of <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/12/china-cites-automation-in-response-to-bbc-report-on-forced-labor-in-xinjiang-tomato-farming/">processed tomato products</a>—made with Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang—to Italy and then onward to the U.K. and Germany. Last November, Volkswagen decided to <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/11/volkswagen-exits-xinjiang-after-criticism-about-complicity-in-human-rights-abuses/">end its presence in Xinjiang</a> after news reports and a <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/09/leaked-volkswagen-audit-of-xinjiang-plant-failed-to-meet-international-standards/">leaked audit</a> revealed that one of its factories near Urumqi used Uyghur forced labor. In 2022, activists protested the International Olympic Committee whose official supplier of IOC uniforms and other apparel for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was a <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/01/as-beijing-winter-olympics-near-global-protests-target-ioc-and-corporate-sponsors/">company publicly using cotton sourced from Xinjiang</a>. Virtually the <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/01/as-beijing-winter-olympics-near-global-protests-target-ioc-and-corporate-sponsors/">entire global supply chain for cotton</a> is tainted by forced labor from Xinjiang.
Despite these ongoing revelations, international legal action to combat the issue of Uyghur forced labor appears to have waned, after a peak in 2022. In June of that year, the U.S. <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/06/uyghur-forced-labor-prevention-act-enters-into-force/">Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act</a> went into effect. Then in August, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery published a report concluding that there is <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/08/un-special-rapporteurs-report-reasonable-to-conclude-existence-of-forced-labor-in-xinjiang/">forced labor in Xinjiang</a>. In September, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report concluding that the serious human rights violations in Xinjiang, including forced labor, <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/09/un-report-serious-human-rights-violations-in-xinjiang-may-constitute-crimes-against-humanity/">may constitute crimes against humanity</a>. Since then, the U.N. Human Rights Council has <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/u-n-human-rights-council-declines-debate-on-xinjiang-report/">declined to address these issues</a>, leaving some activists to seek alternative avenues for <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/07/courts-governments-advance-efforts-to-investigate-forced-labor-in-xinjiang/">justice in regional or national courts</a>. For more on this topic, see CDT’s <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/03/interview-laura-murphy-on-forced-labor-in-xinjiang/">interview with Laura Murphy</a> on forced labor in Xinjiang.
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<title>Polls Show Global Attitudes Towards China Improve, At Expense of U.S.</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/polls-show-global-attitudes-towards-china-improve-at-expense-of-u-s/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arthur Kaufman]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 Jun 2025 06:35:07 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[China & the World]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Recent News]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Africa relations]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[media industry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Pew Global Attitudes Survey]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[polls]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[public opinion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[social media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[soft power]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[survey]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[surveys]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[U.S. relations]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[United States]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Xi Jinping]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Xi Jinping image]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704247</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Numerous public opinion surveys from around the world have highlighted a significant shift in global attitudes towards China. Respondents from countries in both the Global South and Global North have expressed increasingly favorable views towards China and less favorable views towards the U.S. As the surveys and other analyses suggest, this shift is in part […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Numerous <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/survey/">public opinion surveys</a> from around the world have highlighted a significant shift in global attitudes towards China. Respondents from countries in both the Global South and Global North have expressed increasingly favorable views towards China and less favorable views towards the U.S. As the surveys and other analyses suggest, this shift is in part due to perceptions of U.S. instability and a global media landscape that produces a less hostile picture of China.
The latest poll was published on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. In a survey of 24 countries, respondents in Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa, and Mexico expressed a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2025/06/11/comparing-confidence-in-trump-macron-putin-and-xi/">higher confidence in Xi Jinping than Donald Trump</a> to do the right thing regarding world affairs. Those in Greece, Italy, France, Australia, and Kenya trusted Trump more than Xi only by five or less percentage points. (Respondents in Japan, Israel, and Poland had the lowest levels of trust in Xi.) Across all 24 countries, Xi obtained a median of 25 percent, compared to Trump’s 34 percent and Vladimir Putin’s 16 percent.
Last week, Xinlu Liang at the South China Morning Post described the results of another survey by U.S. intelligence company Morning Consult showing that, between January and April, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3312932/china-lifts-public-opinion-around-world-us-drops-trump-20-survey-data-shows?module=top_story&pgtype=homepage">favorable views towards China surpassed those towards the U.S.</a> for the first time in recent years:
<blockquote>
By the end of May, China had an 8.8 net favourability rating, compared to -1.5 for the US – which is in stark contrast to January last year when the US rating was above 20 and China was in negative territory, Axios reported on Monday, citing exclusive data acquired from Morning Consult.
[…] The report found that since January, the US’ standing had diminished in 38 of the 41 markets tracked, while China’s standing improved in 34 of them. Only in Russia has there been a significant improvement in views of the US since President Donald Trump took office again in January.
[…] During the surveyed period, 16 countries switched from pro-US to pro-China, bringing this group to 29 countries.
[…] “To a large degree, [China’s] leg up over the United States – which began in early March – is attributable to America’s plummeting reputation throughout 2025, which has seen global favourability of the United States fall far faster than views of China have risen,” the report stated.
“The reputational damage done by the ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcements has now sealed the deal.” [<a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3312932/china-lifts-public-opinion-around-world-us-drops-trump-20-survey-data-shows?module=top_story&pgtype=homepage">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
The Alliance of Democracies Foundation <a href="https://allianceofdemocracies.org/democracy-perception-index">published a related survey</a> last month. Summarizing the findings of the survey, Reuters described how <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/global-perceptions-us-fall-below-china-survey-says-2025-05-12/">global perceptions of China rose above those of the U.S.</a>:
<blockquote>
Global perceptions of the United States have deteriorated across the world over the past year and are now worse than views of China, according to an annual study of perceptions of democracy published on Monday.
[…] When asked why perceptions of the U.S. had slipped, Alliance founder and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: "President Trump has triggered a trade war, scolded Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office, left allies feeling vulnerable and enemies emboldened."
[…] The survey also ranked the perception of countries from -100% to +100%.
The net perception rating of the United States fell to -5% from +22% last year, indicating a greater number of respondents with a negative view of the country compared with those with a positive view.
The share of countries with a positive image of the U.S. dropped to 45% from 76% last year, the survey showed.
For China, the net perception rose to +14% this year from +5% last year, the survey found. [<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/global-perceptions-us-fall-below-china-survey-says-2025-05-12/">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
Even Chinese products appear to be gaining some ground. Two weeks ago, Brand Africa in partnership with GeoPoll published its <a href="https://www.geopoll.com/blog/2025-brand-africa-100/">annual report and ranking</a> of the most admired brands in Africa. The ranking is based on a pan-African survey across 31 countries. Among the top 100 brands in 2025, 12 are Chinese and 28 are American. In the <a href="https://www.brandafrica.org/documents/reports/BrandAfrica100-2024.pdf">2024 ranking</a>, 11 were Chinese and 28 were American.
Together, these polls reflect similar trends that underpinned previous global opinion surveys comparing favorability towards China and the U.S. A <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/10/surveys-show-xis-hardline-foreign-policy-increasingly-unpopular-among-western-and-developed-countries/">series of polls in late 2022</a>, months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, demonstrated that Xi’s hardline foreign policy had become very unpopular among Western countries. Other <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/04/attitudes-in-global-south-tilt-towards-china-at-expense-of-u-s/">polls in the spring of 2024</a> showed that the U.S.’ foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine pushed attitudes in the Global South towards China at the expense of the U.S. Yet more <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/12/global-public-opinion-polls-show-polarized-views-of-china/">polls at the end of 2024</a> showed polarized views of China around the world and in the U.S.
The Economist summarized where the dynamic currently stands, to some extent, with a recent headline titled, “<a href="https://www.economist.com/china/2025/05/20/how-china-became-cool">How China became cool</a>.” The article notes that Western livestreamers are partially to credit for China’s improved image. Indeed, American social-media star <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/04/tour-by-youtube-star-ishowspeed-hailed-as-soft-power-win-for-china/">IShowSpeed’s multi-week tour of China</a> this spring was hailed as a soft-power win for China. Bloomberg also revealed this week that American influencers with over 300,000 online followers have been <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-10/beijing-woos-us-influencers-with-free-trip-to-show-real-china">invited to join a 10-day, all-expenses paid trip to China</a> as part of Beijing’s efforts to showcase the “real China.”
Social media clearly plays a major role in shaping global attitudes towards China. Emphasizing this point, an academic paper by Xiaojun Li and Yuen Yuen Ang forthcoming in the journal Communication and the Public analyzed the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5263311#paper-references-widget">relationship between Americans’ media-consumption patterns and public hostility to China</a>: “the analysis reveals that traditional media sources, such as television, radio, and print newspapers, are associated with heightened hostility towards China. In contrast, consistent engagement with online and social media is linked to lower levels of hostility, suggesting that the broader range of narratives available digitally may foster more nuanced and less adversarial views.” Li noted that these trends largely hold <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2025/05/digital-media-may-be-easing-china-us-tensions-not-fueling-them/">even across different age groups</a>.
Looking at media more broadly, Sean Haines wrote last month on his Too Simple, Sometimes Naive substack that <a href="https://toosimple.substack.com/p/china-is-winning-the-media-war">China’s global public opinion gains are partly due to “winning the media war”</a>:
<blockquote>
The truth is, yes, China is beginning to win the media war, but it is doing so partly by default.
Mostly, the West has crippled itself.
<ul>
<li>
Capacity — already laughably small for covering a country the size and importance of China — has been further decimated by cuts to key services, like: USAID, or the BBC Global Service. 
</li>
<li>
Content: by fetishising negative coverage, that has backfired with Chinese people, who feel under attack from foreigners. 
</li>
<li>
By sloppiness: hastily thrown together hit pieces from afar, that leave holes for the Party to surgically exploit, and shred Western media credibility. 
</li>
<li>
Or by geopolitical hypocrisy: Western leaders pushing values they themselves fail to practice. 
</li>
</ul>
It would be hasty to read this current time as a mere thaw, a temporary correction from China’s historic PR lows. 
The underlying fundamentals suggest we’re entering a new paradigm. One where the CPC has locked down its information sphere sufficiently enough, that it can allow only the stories it wants you to hear. The West, meanwhile, is reaching the point it lacks the will or capacity to penetrate that wall. [<a href="https://toosimple.substack.com/p/china-is-winning-the-media-war">Source</a>]
</blockquote>
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<title>Translations: “What We Commemorate When We Commemorate June 4”</title>
<link>https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/translations-what-we-commemorate-when-we-commemorate-june-4/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cindy Carter]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Jun 2025 19:23:29 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[CDT Highlights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Culture & the Arts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hong Kong]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Human Rights]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Level 2 Article]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Society]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Translation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[1989 protests]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[anniversary]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[artificial intelligence]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CCP history]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CDT translation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[censorship]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Chang Ping]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Chinese history]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[interview]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[June 4 Museum]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[June 4 Online Museum]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[June 4th]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[June 4th Museum]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[mourning]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[music videos]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[photography]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[poetry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[PRC history]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[student protests]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Tiananmen]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Tiananmen massacre]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tiananmen mothers]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Tiananmen Square]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[translation excerpt]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Young people]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=704241</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This year’s 36th anniversary commemorations of the June 4 crackdown were marked by intense, AI-aided censorship on the Chinese internet, muted memorials and arrests in Hong Kong, and a wide variety of online and offline memorials across the world. Noteworthy coverage of the anniversary includes a statement from the Tiananmen Mothers, an interview with exiled […]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[This year’s 36th anniversary commemorations of the June 4 crackdown were marked by <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/powered-by-ai-strict-censorship-on-36th-anniversary-of-tiananmen-massacre/">intense, AI-aided censorship</a> on the Chinese internet, muted memorials and <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/06/hong-kong-again-stifles-commemoration-of-tiananmen-massacre/">arrests in Hong Kong</a>, and a wide variety of <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Dogged-activism-keeps-Tiananmen-flame-burning-36-years-on">online and offline memorials</a> across the world. Noteworthy coverage of the anniversary includes a <a href="https://hrichina.substack.com/p/statement-of-the-tiananmen-mothers">statement from the Tiananmen Mothers</a>, an interview with exiled <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/03/orkesh-dolet-tiananmen-square-china-uyghur-activist-36-years-in-exile">Uyghur activist Örkesh Dölet</a>, an interview with Ian Johnson about the <a href="https://tianjiancmp.substack.com/p/ian-johnson">online Chinese Folk Archives</a>, a panel discussion on <a href="https://x.com/newbloommag/status/1928752963847323699">diversifying Tiananmen Square narratives</a>, and more.
This year, CDT Chinese editors have added even more content to our <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E9%A6%86">extensive archive</a> on the subject of the Tiananmen protests and their violent suppression. There is a reprint of <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718638.html">Wainao’s broad-ranging 35th anniversary feature</a> on how various generations remember, recognize, and commemorate June 4. An <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718637.html">excellent compilation piece features a collection of iconic photographs</a>, personal recollections, interviews, poems, songs, and other artwork from the online June 4th Memory and Human Rights Museum. There are excerpts from the “June 4th Poetry Collection,” a selection of 315 works from 215 authors, edited by poet and former student leader Jiang Pinchao. Taiwanese journalist Yang Du, who covered the protests in 1989, spoke of his 2021 work “Unburned Books,” an account of his experiences in Beijing before, during, and after the massacre. The compilation ends with a section on the protest songs that grew out of June 4, 1989, and includes lyrics and video links.
CDT has also reprinted a recent interview between Deutsche Welle’s Ye Jiajun and Chang Ping—journalist, curator of the online June 4th Memory and Human Rights Museum, and Executive Editor of CDT Chinese. In the interview, titled “<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718653.html">If I Could Go Back to June 4, 1989</a>,” Chang Ping discussed the legacy of June 4 as it relates to himself, to China, and to the world in general. A portion of the interview is translated below:
<blockquote>
Deutsche Welle (DW): At the time, were you scared?
Chang Ping (CP): The dominant emotion at the time wasn’t fear, but humiliation, outrage, pain, and survivor’s guilt. Those feelings continue to this day.
[…] DW: Did that "humiliation" you mentioned, or the experience and memory of June 4th, influence you to pursue a career in news media?
CP: June 4 had a major impact on my entire life and on my later career choices. I would like to first explain what I mean by “humiliation.” This sense of humiliation that has followed me all my life arose from a massacre that took place in plain sight, and for which there was never any justice or accountability. The entire international community watched the atrocities unfold. Those atrocities continue to reverberate even today, and they enabled the commission of further atrocities.
[…] One of the consequences of the June 4 crackdown is that many Chinese no longer believe in justice. (Many protesters) died alone in prison, or have spent their intervening years in exile, living abroad without the company of their loved ones. Was the price they paid worth it? Some claim that China and the Chinese people are capable of enduring a single-party dictatorship for a very long time to come. Is such a country worth sacrificing one’s life for?
There are times when I’ve also questioned the meaning of my life, and the wisdom of my choices. Years ago, when I was working at Southern Weekend, we sincerely believed that every word we wrote, every interview we conducted, exerted a kind of power. Even if that power was exceedingly weak, we still felt like it could slowly but surely help move China in the right direction. But today’s China, and even today’s world, seems to be sliding backward, and historical progress is being erased. More often than not, we find ourselves resigned to waging what feels like a hopeless fight. We fight back not because we’re certain of victory, but because we believe that the struggle itself is meaningful, even if we are defeated. This is the credo that I live by, that was shaped by June 4th.
[…] DW: Will you talk about June 4th with your family, and share your experiences with the next generation?
CP: My daughter could be considered part of the “June 4 second generation" because she grew up in Germany. […] One day I heard her say, while chatting with someone, "You know, we’re in exile." I was both surprised and saddened to hear her say that.
She didn’t say her dad was in exile, or her mom was in exile, but that "we" are in exile. She included herself in that. And what she said was entirely accurate, because she can’t return to China either. More importantly, she was affirming her political identity and status.
DW: If you could go back to that day—to June 4, 1989—and speak to that passionate twenty-something young man you were at the time, what would you say to him?
CP: That’s a good question, thank you for asking it. It’s a scene I’ve often envisioned. I’d even go so far as to say that the purpose of my life over the past few decades, and of all of the things I’ve been fighting for, are so that I might be able to face that young man and tell him that I haven’t given up, not completely. Even when it seems humiliating and hopeless, I’ve kept fighting and trying to do whatever I can. I hope that he would approve. [<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718653.html">Chinese</a>]
</blockquote>
An article from Diyin explored the nuances of <a href="https://diyin.org/article/2025/05/china-gen-z-june-fourth-incident/">how China’s Gen Z views June 4</a> and the annual remembrances, given that they were not born at the time, and grew up in an environment of heavy censorship of the topic. In an essay published by Matters, “<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718639.html">What We Commemorate When We Commemorate June 4</a>,” an author born in the late 1990s discusses the enduring importance of remembering, commemorating, and remaining committed to building a better world. A portion of the essay is translated below:
<blockquote>
For our generation, "June 4" is an incomplete sentence.
Growing up in China, learning to forget is part of one’s education. From childhood onward, the body of knowledge we are exposed to simply skips over certain years, certain keywords. In history textbooks, 1989 is a complete blank; internet searches for "the Tiananmen incident" direct the reader to the events of 1976; and the photo of "Tank Man" never even makes a peripheral appearance in teaching materials. Memory comes to resemble a jigsaw puzzle missing several critical pieces—pieces related to the truth, to death, to the people of our nation.
[…] Memory, by its very nature, should be free. But under a totalitarian system, it becomes something that needs to be “managed."
In our current political environment, memory does not flow freely and spontaneously, but is managed and censored. What can be remembered and what must be forgotten, what can be mourned and what must be celebrated—all of these have been pre-arranged. Memory is no longer a personal choice, but a political outcome.
This form of “memory management” is not always crude or obvious; it is often quite subtle and low-key. For example, you can remember China’s “War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” [WWII], but you’re not allowed to remember the mourning that took place during the Qingming Festival in 1976. [The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Tiananmen_incident">two days of spontaneous demonstrations</a> of mourning in Tiananmen Square, following the death of Premier Zhou Enlai earlier that year, were later labeled as “counter-revolutionary.”] You can remember the “volunteer spirit” following the [2008] Wenchuan earthquake, but you’re not allowed to remember <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhAKAi7Qm1Y&rco=1&ab_channel=aiweiweidocumentary">the documentary</a> that <a href="https://medium.com/civic-media-project/blogging-for-truth-ai-weiwei-s-citizen-inevestigation-project-on-china-s-2008-sichuan-eearthquake-68ec10c2b643">Ai Weiwei made about the quake</a>. You can even remember The Square, but you’re not supposed to remember that it was once occupied, or that blood was shed there. Thus is memory parceled up layer by layer, like dossiers labeled and archived by the government.
[…] Memory is not a burden, but an honor. It tells us of the things that happened, even if there is no monument to them. It speaks to us of the people who stood up, even if their names will never be recited aloud. It reminds us of the dreams that still exist, despite the constant hardships.
In this present age, memory serves yet another purpose: combatting division. We live in a state of unspeakable exhaustion and distrust. So many people are fleeing—fleeing their homeland, fleeing reality, fleeing from one another. We are no longer inclined to trust what others say, even if they share beliefs similar to ours. We are suspicious of other people’s motives; we fear being betrayed or exploited. Time and again, we eschew dialogue and raise our defenses, keeping others at bay with our barbed words.
But this state of mutual distrust is not our fault. It is the result of years of totalitarianism. When a regime turns words into weapons, sincerity into a liability, and solidarity into a crime, people learn to protect themselves and become accustomed to isolation.
[…] When we commemorate June 4, what we are actually saying is this: We are not one another’s enemies. Our mutual enemy is the system that enforces silence, manufactures fear, and encourages betrayal; a system that warps truth-telling into “rumor-mongering” and perverts justice into "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." For our enemies have never been those around us, those who like us are also learning how to live and how to remember.
What we do every June is not just about mourning the dead, but also about affording each other a bit more space—space in which to speak, to trust, and to regain that sense of closeness we once had. [<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/718639.html">Chinese</a>]
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
June 4.
I came from a place that once lit candles.
Now, even public remembrance is banned in Hong Kong.
Those in power want to silence history. We cannot let them.
If we still have the freedom to remember, then we must.
— Heiky Kwan (@HeikyKwan) <a href="https://twitter.com/HeikyKwan/status/1930081863911227536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 4, 2025</a></blockquote>
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