China Change, March 24, 2016. In no particular order and with a couple of exceptions, we sample Chinese netizens’ thoughts on March 21, 2016, Twitter’s 10th anniversary. We don’t know who else will be touched by this, but we certainly are. – The Editors   乌鸦哥哥 ‏@wuyagege : Twitter is like a small cafe that never closes. Peo [...] Keep reading »

China Change, March 23, 2016 Social media is by nature subversive in a country like China, where totalitarian rule depends on monopolizing the narrative and suppressing free speech. The Chinese Communist Party is well aware, and worried: state propaganda calls social media an “opposing sphere of opinion,” and hawkish PLA generals refer to it a [...] Keep reading »

China Change, March 16, 2016   At around 8:15 p.m. on March 15, the Chinese columnist Jia Jia (贾葭) disappeared, after going to the Beijing airport in the afternoon for a flight to Hong Kong. The incident is believed to be connected to an open letter to Xi Jinping published on the website www.watching.cn (无界新闻). Jia Jia told to frie [...] Keep reading »

By China Change, published: February 27, 2016 After someone dug up an old People’s Daily post from last year, Chinese netizens seized upon it to mock the Party and its recent ideological crackdown, particularly taking a dig at the Party for its recent Cultural Revolution-style crusade against the real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang.  After 20,000 re [...] Keep reading »

By China Change, published: February 25, 2016 Retired Chinese real estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang (任志强), known as “Cannon Ren,” fired at Xi Jinping after Xi’s tour of China Central Television. Xi Dada’s opinion warriors are now all over him, outdoing one another to see who can work themselves into the biggest frenzy.  – The Editors &nb [...] Keep reading »

By Song Zhibiao, Qiao Mu, and Mo Zhixu, published: January 6, 2016   As the year 2015 was drawing to its end, a new expression was born on China’s social media: “the Zhaos” (“赵家人”).  New phrases pop up regularly online in China, but “the Zhaos” has been hailed as revolutionary. Never has an expression captured the essence [...] Keep reading »

By Mo Zhixu, published: December 21, 2015 “Pu Zhiqiang has many facets to his character. He is a rights lawyer, an Internet opinion leader, and a dissident, in the broader sense of the word. His commitments and pursuits over the past 26 years help to explain how Pu has come to be so influential.”     On December 14, 2015, renowned hum [...] Keep reading »

By Mo Zhixu, published: October 4, 2015 “[T]he existence of a relatively free, relaxed, and anonymous Internet for the regime is ‘the root of all evil.'”   August 5 was the last day that opinions were solicited by the government for its new Internet Security Law, meaning that in the near future the legislation will be formall [...] Keep reading »

By @beidaijin, published: February 17, 2014 Total control that leaves no stone unturned.    In November, 2014, 163.com suddenly announced that it would close down its microblog service, or Weibo. Three months ago, qq.com announced that it would not add new features to its microblog service. It is unsure how long qq’s microblog will last before [...] Keep reading »