This phenomenon is not merely a return to old habits or rural mysticism. It has become a nationwide consumer frenzy, driven by the very demographic the Communist Party hoped would be its most rational constituency: the young and educated. In chasing these modern symbols of hope, they are losing more than just money.

[…] In today’s China, the most popular “spiritual” items aren’t books or teachings but small objects—especially crystals. These are sold not only as fashion items but as tools for cosmic power. Supposedly, they bring wealth, block bad energy, and balance inner forces. Livestreams offer quick lessons in “crystal basics,” and influencers promote them with the excitement once shown for new tech.

[…] Along with the crystal craze, astrology, tarot, and fortune-telling have become small but growing businesses. Highly educated youth—graduates, civil servants, tech workers—are quitting their jobs to become full-time “mystics.” On platforms like Taobao and WeChat, paid readings are everywhere. In many cities, you’ll find stylish little shops doing tarot readings, often run by baristas turned fortune-tellers.

This is happening despite—or maybe because of—government crackdowns. In 2021, China banned religious content on e-commerce sites and tightened rules on spiritual services. But the demand only adapted. Tarot readers now call themselves “emotional consultants.” Horoscope sellers move to foreign platforms like Discord. The state fights superstition with censorship, and loses every time.

[…] It would be wrong to see this wave of superstition as a uniquely Chinese flaw. But since 2024, China’s superstition boom has become a pressure cooker where many deep problems have gathered: economic slowdown, job stress, burnout, pushy online systems, and a desperate need for meaning.

Young Chinese are not naturally more superstitious. But they are trapped in an unstable system, and with no clear future, they are buying ready-made ones. These crystals and tarot cards aren’t ancient traditions—they’re quick-fix stories built from what’s left in the marketplace. Meanwhile, sellers and platforms continue testing how much people are willing to pay to ease their fears. [Source]

The Economist in January similarly described trends such as app-based horoscopes and fortune-telling and offline “metaphysical bars,” fueled by frustration at “a sluggish economy, a tight job market and intense competition in many aspects of life.” (Another Economist report the week before noted similar phenomena in the U.S. and India.)

The Communist Party has long tried to rid itself of what it calls “feudal superstition”. Last year the Central Party School, a training academy for officials, expressed concern about the number of members and cadres “believing in ghosts and gods”. It tried to clarify the party’s restrictions by publishing a Q&A on the matter. Occasionally participating in local folk customs or consulting a fortune-teller on a name for your baby? That’s fine. Spending a lot of time and money, especially public funds, on superstitious activities? Unacceptable.

The masses are also discouraged from embracing such practices. A notice issued by the city of Sanming in 2023 stated: “The public should improve their scientific literacy, enhance their psychological immunity to superstitious activities and not seek spiritual comfort through ‘fortune-telling’ when encountering real setbacks.” Other cities have followed suit. Last year some local governments cracked down on the burning of fake money and other paper offerings to the dead during the annual grave-sweeping festival.

State censors, with the help of internet firms, have tried to curb the spread of superstitious beliefs and divination services online. Search terms such as “astrology” and “fortune-telling” have been blocked on Taobao, an e-commerce market. But on Weibo, a social-media site, popular astrologers have accumulated tens of millions of followers. Some speak of playing a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities. A 24-year-old tarot-card reader in Shanghai jokes that she tries to divine her own fate—to see if jail time is in the offing. [Source]

There is also online hay to be made from confronting superstition. In April, South China Morning Post’s Zoey Zhang reported on Shandong-based influencer Zhang Shulin, who has built a following with video stunts debunking beliefs such as hauntings, shamanism, and ghost marriages. This, too, can be a hazardous approach if targets include traditional practices favored with official endorsement, however. Mixed martial artist Xu Xiaodong was hit with censorship, travel restrictions, financial penalties, and forced apologies following his efforts to puncture the inflated claims of purported kung fu masters, some of whom he flattened in bouts lasting only seconds. In 2022, a number of prominent online voices were silenced in apparent retaliation for their criticism of Lianhua Qingwen, a traditional Chinese medicine-based herbal product promoted by Chinese authorities for treatment of COVID.

A pair of translations at CDT last month described how other frustrated young Chinese are turning to another old ritual: the annual civil service exams.

However, the real winner might be China’s military-industrial complex, according to some analysts and Chinese nationalists. Pakistan’s government claimed to have shot down three of India’s new French-made Rafale jets (at least one was confirmed) using Chinese-made J-10C fighter jets. Over 80 percent of Pakistan’s military equipment comes from China, while India’s military is increasingly reliant on Western countries. The conflict seemed to give Chinese weapons a significant boost in credibility, with the Chinese manufacturer of the J-10 announcing that its shares had risen by over 40 percent in two days. “There’s no better advertisement than a real combat situation … This came as a pleasant surprise for China … the result is quite striking,” Yun Sun from the Stimson Center told the Financial Times. Eric Olander at the China-Global South Project noted that some analysts described this as China’s “DeepSeek Moment” for military technology:

There was a palpable sense of euphoria in China this weekend as Chinese-made J-10C and JF-17 fighter jets saw combat for the first time over the disputed Kashmir region — and performed impressively.

The J-10C’s successful use of electronic jamming and reports of downing several Indian Air Force Rafale jets (the exact number remains disputed) were widely celebrated in Chinese media. Many likened the moment to another "DeepSeek Moment" — a reference to China’s growing confidence in its domestically developed technologies.

But beneath the excitement was also a deep sense of relief. These jets had never been tested in actual combat, and despite public bravado, few could say with certainty how they’d perform under pressure.

[…] Now, it appears China has succeeded — and the world should take note. [Source]

On Weibo, the hashtag “US officials claim J-10 shot down at least two Indian warplanes” attracted over 35 million views, and state-affiliated media published promotional content about the Chinese aircraft. Perhaps the most notable example of nationalism to emerge from the Chinese internet was a viral video by a Chinese influencer “Brother Hao” mocking India’s downed military jets, featuring Chinese actors dressed up in Indian costumes singing along to a remix of the Indian song “Tunak Tunak Tun.” Yuanyue Dang reported for the South China Morning Post:

The minute-long parody video, which has even gone viral overseas, has fuelled a new wave of nationalist fervour in China. Similar videos have appeared on Pakistani social media, while Indian social media users expressed anger.

The video is the latest celebration among Chinese netizens over the performance of the J-10C fighter jet in last week’s India-Pakistan conflict, although Beijing has remained cautious about commenting on the issue.

[…] “Brother Hao” has nearly 16 million followers on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, and is known for creating videos in which he adapts songs from other ethnic groups and imitates people from those cultures, including Indians and Arabs.

The influencer is no stranger to controversy. His parody videos often show him wearing Indian clothing, sporting a small moustache and painting his face brown, with frequent references to “curry”. In 2023, an Indian TV channel accused him of racism.

Some people have expressed concern that the video could harm China-India relations, but nationalist influencers have defended the content creator. [Source]

While the majority of comments under Chinese social-media posts sharing Brother Hao’s video were supportive, some criticized the video as being racist. CDT Chinese editors published a compilation of some of these critical comments, which referenced past incidents of double standards applied to Chinese citizens’ tolerance of discrimination. Some examples include the recurrent blackface skits aired on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala, racist fan encounters during iShowSpeed’s recent China tour, and nationalist deflections of Chinese-commissioned African “shout-out” videos. The CDT Chinese article about the Brother Hao video analyzed some of the dualities surrounding racial and ethnic discrimination in China. One netizen comment referenced online speculation about whether Ms. Dong, a trainee doctor involved in the recent “4+4” medical scandal, benefited from nepotism in her career by being born into a family of "Beijing Brahmins"—in other words, a well-educated and well-connected family:

Some netizens have commented that Chinese people exhibit both hypersensitivity to racial discrimination (when accusing others of insulting China) and extreme insensitivity (when casually insulting others). "They are outraged when others racially discriminate against them," wrote one, "yet take unmitigated glee in racially discriminating against others". […] Of course, many Chinese also expressed strong criticism of Brother Hao’s video. As one said, "This willingness to resort to anything just to generate online hype is a disgrace to all Chinese people." Another wrote, "If the shoe were on the other foot, would Chinese people be considered the victims of racism, or just hypersensitive?" One netizen observed sharply: "We ourselves are guilty of dividing people into hierarchies. Just last week, we were talking about whether Miss Dong had been born into a family of ‘Beijing Brahmins,’ but now we’re suddenly finding some kind of ethnic cohesion in insulting Indians." [Chinese]

The India-Pakistan conflict also revealed certain similarities between those countries and China when it comes to media control. Jon Allsop at the Columbia Journalism Review wrote about the “fog of war” resulting from both governments trying to control the narrative. The Indian government blocked thousands of social media accounts belonging to prominent figures and media outlets, removed Pakistani audio-video content from platforms, blocked news websites, and arrested journalists who reported critically on the conflict. The Pakistani government, ironically, lifted a long-standing ban on the social-media platform X in order to enlist its citizens in the battle to control the global narrative. Government-backed disinformation has been propagated by both sides. (All of these media censorship tactics are common in China.)

Other pieces highlighted the narrative front of the conflict. Global Voices provided an analysis of the narratives regarding Kashmir. And the Eye on China Substack, produced by the Takshashila Institution, a research think tank based out of Bengaluru, India, argued in a recent article that the Chinese government’s public messaging during the conflict expressed implicit support for Pakistan. The author, Anushka Saxena, stated that coverage by Xinhua and CCTV was notably similar to that of Pakistani media. She also noted that Chinese military analysts had eagerly written that a hot war would be an opportunity to test all of the “Made in China” defence products acquired by Pakistan’s military.

Translations by Cindy Carter.

The controversy entered the public eye in late April, courtesy of a leaked letter from the estranged wife of Dr. Xiao Fei, a thoracic surgeon at Beijing’s prestigious China-Japan Friendship Hospital, to the hospital disciplinary committee. The letter contained details of the doctor’s alleged affairs with several colleagues (including one Dong Xiying, a young resident at the hospital), and an allegation that Dr. Xiao left a patient anesthetized on the operating table for 40 minutes while he left the operating theatre to comfort Ms. Dong. After a brief investigation, Dr. Xiao was sacked by the hospital and expelled from the Chinese Communist Party.

But that was simply the first act in what would become a much larger controversy. Internet sleuths who dug into Ms. Dong’s background discovered that she was a “returnee” who had earned an economics degree at Barnard College in the U.S., was from a fairly influential family background, and had enjoyed an academic and career trajectory that may have been helped along by nepotism and string-pulling. Perhaps most controversial was Dong’s rapid rise via the “4+4” accelerated-degree pilot program at Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), which allows a small number of “elite” university graduates—even those with undergraduate degrees unrelated to medicine or biology—to attain a medical degree in only four years, a much shorter timeline than is typical for medical students in China. Netizens also raised questions about Ms. Dong’s publication history, including a graduate thesis that was suspiciously short, and author credits on research papers for projects she didn’t seem to have played much of a role in. (For more background on the multifaceted scandal, we recommend What’s On Weibo’s excellent account of the key protagonists and events.)

Discussion of the scandal proved so popular that at one point, it accounted for more than half of the top 50 “hot search” topics on Weibo, according to WeChat blogger “History Rhymes.” But just a few days later, as the blogger noted on May 5, they had disappeared from the list:

I checked Weibo’s “hot search” list today, and there are no longer any topics about Miss Dong, Peking Union Medical College, etc.

Keep in mind that just a couple of days ago, more than half of the top 50 “hot search” topics were about or related to her.

But just because it’s not trending, doesn’t mean that people aren’t discussing it. Netizens are still digging into the matter. [Chinese]

In addition to Weibo apparently muting the topic, there was also self-censorship on the part of PUMC, which removed content related to Ms. Dong from its website and edited her name out of a 2023 commencement speech given by the college president. Ms. Dong’s graduate thesis and other publications mysteriously disappeared from the academic database portal CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure). After their removal was noticed, it briefly became the top trending search topic on Weibo.

CDT Chinese editors have archived 21 articles and essays related to the “4+4” scandal and its various corollaries; at least three of these have since been censored. The first of these deleted articles appeared on May 1, under the headline, “Could Miss Dong’s Family Be Considered Beijing Brahmins?” Written by journalist Wang Mingyuan, who runs the WeChat public account Fuchengmen Courtyard No. 6, the article argues that Ms. Dong’s family are simply upper middle class, not highly privileged cadres, suggesting that the kind of string-pulling behind her career could be even more pervasive and concerning. Wang’s article also includes a widely circulated (and now censored) meme poking fun at hospital corruption. In the now iconic cartoon, every doctor, nurse, patient, lamp, and piece of medical equipment in the operating theater claims to have gotten into the hospital by leveraging connections:

Patient on the operating table: I got in here through connections.
Doctor: Me, too.
Row of nurses: I did, too. Me too! Same here.
Various medicine cabinets and items of medical equipment: Me, too.
Overhead surgical lamp: Same here!
Another item of medical equipment, with a thought bubble: Hey, didn’t we all?
(source: Wang Mingyuan/WeChat)

Another now-deleted article, published on May 4 by WeChat account Elephant News, provides details about PUMC’s accelerated “4+4” doctoral degree program, and compares it to the usual "5+3+4" route for Chinese medical students: five years of undergraduate-level medical education, followed by three years of master’s-level medical coursework and four years of doctoral-level medical coursework. The author notes how unusual it was that Dong Xiying, whose undergraduate degree was in economics, was allowed to help perform surgery when she was only in her second year of medical school. The article also includes a screenshot showing angry comments left under a PUMC social media account, with netizens complaining that going to see a doctor now feels like “making a holy pilgrimage,” expressing concerns that their doctors might not be qualified if they graduated from the accelerated “4+4” program, and demanding that PUMC make the list of “4+4” program participants public.

On May 5, CDT Chinese editors archived a deleted WeChat article by Sina Finance, which reproduced the answer given by Tencent’s Yuanbao AI chatbot in response to a Sina editor’s query about what other individuals might be implicated in violating the regulations of PUMC’s “4+4” program. The chatbot gave a detailed answer organized into four headings, the first of which listed known participants in the “4+4” program. The second listed individuals who may have benefited from personal connections or affiliations. The third section, enumerating some characteristic examples of systemic privilege, claimed that “35% of the ‘4+4’ program participants have parents who are departmental-level or higher-level cadres, which far exceeds the proportion found among students in typical medical school programs (2.1%).” The chatbot also claimed to have found admission loopholes (“Some of the ‘4+4’ students did not meet the pre-med course requirements”) and possible academic fraud (“Some of the students’ thesis papers did not meet the required page length, with some only 12 pages long”). The fourth and final section in the AI’s answer discussed the broader public opinion controversy over the “4+4” scandal.

One WeChat essay, published on May 6 and still available online, provides an interesting personal and historical perspective on how socioeconomic privilege has evolved since the beginning of China’s Reform and Opening. In "Deteriorating Circumstances Have Given Rise to ‘Second-Generation Privilege,’” essayist and commentator Xipo (“Western Slope”) explores how slowing economic growth, fiercer competition, and fewer opportunities for social mobility in recent years have spurred those with privilege to resort to ever more extreme measures to pass on that privilege to their children:

After publishing my last article [“All that Remains of the ‘4+4’ Scandal Is the Meme About It”], a friend and I discussed the phenomenon of “second-generation privilege.” That discussion made me realize that the unchecked proliferation of second-generation privilege is actually the result of deteriorating [socioeconomic] circumstances. It took me a while to realize this, but now that I do, it makes a lot of sense.

This friend of mine works at a scientific research institute in southern China. He was at university around the year 2000, a critical juncture in time [for the purpose of our discussion]. I won’t mention his field of study, but let us call him “Professor A.”

Professor A recalls that when he was at university, few of his classmates were what we might call “second-generation scions.” While there were some who excelled at their studies and followed conventional paths mapped out for them by parents, most students pursued majors in different fields from those of their parents.

Back then, of course, the overall population was much less educated than it is today. Many university students had parents who were farmers or factory workers, which is something we should keep in mind.

Professor A observes that when he was a student, even the children of professors and department heads rarely followed in their parents’ footsteps. “In those years, there was an abundance of choice when it came to academic majors and career paths. The children of faculty members chose various majors, regardless of what their parents happened to be teaching.”

But there has been a palpable shift over the past six or seven years, he notes. Now an academic advisor to university students, Professor A has found that most of his colleagues’ children are pursuing the same fields of study as their parents.

Thinking back over the news and public discourse of the past few years, I found that many things instantly clicked into place. That oft-repeated term “involution” [内卷 nèijuǎn, a profound sense of burnout caused by cutthroat academic and socioeconomic competition], suddenly took on a concrete form.

As the old saying goes, “Pavilions situated closest to the water are the first to bask in the moonlight” [近水楼台先得月, jìnshuǐlóutái xiān dé yuè; in other words, proximity has its benefits]. But in order to benefit from structural proximity, there must first be a structure in place. If we examine the history of China’s gaokao [university entrance exam], the most illuminating example can be found in the large cohort of post-Cultural Revolution exam-takers. [This cohort encompassed individuals across an unusually diverse age range, from teens to thirty-somethings whose education had been interrupted by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.] Back then, teachers and students alike were starting from scratch, and everyone was positioned at the same starting line.

As the educational system gradually returned to normal and became more standardized, a certain group of people (or more accurately, a certain group of families) came to occupy central positions in the hierarchy of academia, scientific research, and resource allocation. This is not to dismiss them entirely, of course, for their contributions were essential as China was starting again from scratch.

During the phase of socioeconomic expansion, this wasn’t too big a problem. Right around the year 2000, for example, socioeconomic conflict was still largely centered in rural areas, and the “three rural issues” (agricultural production, rural development, and rural income) commanded nationwide attention. Although this was only a couple of decades ago, it now feels like a distant memory.

Naturally, by then, some far-sighted types had already begun grooming their second-generation successors. But it was also a time in which emerging industries were booming, culture was vibrant, and society was suffused with ambition and optimism. Even privileged members of the “second generation” didn’t just want to ride their parents’ coattails: they wanted to outdo them, to leave them in the dust.

But as China began to transition from one phase to the next, from expansion to contraction, both the first and second generations came to realize that the most reliable path to success was for children to follow in their parents’ footsteps.

By the latter half of the 2010s, China’s period of breakneck urbanization and industrialization was drawing to a close, and [socioeconomic mobility] had begun to congeal. There were also harbingers that China’s integration into the international economic system had run its course.

Now that we’re as materially well-off as other countries, and are more or less able to compete at the same level, our once-blue oceans of opportunity have become churning red seas of competition.

This is the point at which the first generation advises their children to follow in their footsteps, the better to avail themselves of a wealth of parental first-hand experience and ready-made resources. If the children demur, the parents might say, “Fine, go out and try to make your own way in the world. See how you like competing with a mob of people, all fighting over the same lousy job.” And after taking a quick look around and sizing up the competition, the second generation might think to themselves, “Sure, I’ll take your advice. Work is work. What more could I want?”

Uncertainty about the future is spurring those who already occupy lofty positions to marshal all available resources to pass their competitive advantages on to the next generation. This type of survival strategy does not differ fundamentally from that seen in the animal and plant kingdoms.

Naturally, these sorts of collective choices can have extremely negative consequences. Amid deteriorating circumstances, second-generation scions may happily “settle” for enjoying their second-generation privilege, but today’s bona-fide “first generation,” those with no parental legacy to lean on, suffer a dual blow. There are fewer opportunities available to them, and increasingly unfair competition for the few opportunities that do remain.

With this in mind, I have even more empathy for young people today. The ones wailing in frustration are those who bear the brunt of this “dual blow.”

Yet I would still advise them not to conflate their own career development with critical analysis of the socioeconomic environment. As I’ve said before, we can’t wait for society to improve before we start living our own lives. Even in conditions of unfair competition, we must take the initiative and find our own ladder to success. But I now have a deeper understanding of the dejection that so many are feeling right now.

And to those privileged first and second generations, I would like to say: “Other people still exist, even if you don’t see them. Other voices still exist, even if you don’t hear them. They are not simply your competitors; they are emblematic of shared opportunity and a path forward for everyone.”

Although humans are part of the animal kingdom, too, we should be able to do better than simply adhere to the doctrine of “survival of the fittest.” Even beavers know how to shape the environment to their advantage by building dams. Human beings, especially those who consider themselves “elites,” must learn to take responsibility for the environment they shape and inhabit.

After all, someone needs to think about the long-term prospects and overall health of our society. [Chinese]

On Thursday, the Made in China Journal (MICJ) published its latest issue, titled “Chinese Journalism is Dead: Long Live Chinese Journalism!” The issue traces transformations in China’s media landscape over the past decade to demonstrate the ways in which journalism has both deteriorated and adapted to the Party-state’s tightening grip on information. One article, by Dan Chen, analyzes how Chinese local television news "performs governance." Chen focuses on a genre of local television news called minsheng xinwen (民生新闻, literally “news about people’s livelihood”), which highlights “citizen grievances and bureaucratic failures, framing them within a narrative of governmental accountability and responsiveness.” While these sorts of programs reinforce the state’s legitimacy, their top-down orchestration has also eroded public trust in media:

This practice of ‘controlled criticism’ allows limited critiques of governance to flourish within carefully delineated boundaries. Minsheng xinwen programs use investigative reporting to expose problems such as delayed services, poor infrastructure, and bureaucratic inefficiencies. Yet, far from threatening the regime, this critical reporting reinforces its legitimacy by positioning the state as both responsive to citizen concerns and capable of delivering solutions.

[…] In the early years of minsheng xinwen, many reports arose organically, driven by journalists who independently identified compelling stories through citizen complaints, hotline calls, or grassroots investigations. These organically initiated stories often reflected the agency of journalists within the constraints of state control. However, as political oversight tightened under President Xi Jinping’s leadership, this space for spontaneity has steadily diminished.

[…] The shift towards orchestrated reporting carries significant implications for the credibility of local television news. Early iterations of minsheng xinwen enjoyed widespread public trust, as their investigative tone and tangible outcomes made them appear authentic advocates for citizen concerns. Over time, however, the increasingly performative nature of orchestrated reports has eroded this trust. [Source]

At a smaller scale, a similar sleight of hand by the state can be seen in the evolution of print media. Last month, Jianbing Li, Jiakun Jack Zhang, Duoji Jiang, and Weifeng Zhong published an article in the Journal of Contemporary China titled, “Domestic Politics and Editorial Control Over Foreign News Coverage in the People’s Daily, 1993–2022.” The article found that, particularly under Xi Jinping, news coverage of foreign affairs in the People’s Daily has been steadily replaced by editorializing about foreign affairs:

This study examines the dynamics of foreign coverage in China’s official media as the country becomes more globally active. Many scholars argue that China has adopted a more assertive foreign policy and positioned itself as a global leader under Xi Jinping. Yet, analysis of over 1 million People’s Daily articles from 1993 to 2022 reveals that official Chinese media have notably reduced foreign news coverage during his administration. The authors suggest that foreign coverage is influenced more by domestic politics than by China’s growing international interests. As Chinese leaders consolidate power in their second terms, they exert greater editorial control, replacing foreign news coverage with commentary on foreign policy. This trend is not unique to Xi, but it is particularly pronounced during his tenure. [Source]

Our analysis reveals that foreign coverage is influenced more by domestic politics than by China’s growing international interests.

As Chinese leaders consolidate power, they exert greater editorial control, replacing foreign news coverage with commentary on foreign policy. pic.twitter.com/BFBt9WAV2m

— Jack Zhang (@HanFeiTzu) April 21, 2025

Many journalists are also deterred by their lack of autonomy and grueling work conditions. The South China Morning Post recently highlighted the story of a young woman who obtained a master’s degree in journalism from Peking University, interned at prominent state media agencies, and then swapped her high-paying media job for working at the university canteen. She stated that at the media outlets where she had worked, she chafed at the rigorous performance indicators and pressure to reply to messages from her boss at all hours of the day and night. “Compared to those jobs, working as a canteen auntie brings me more joy,” she said. In an article for Initium Media, translated by China Media Project, Xiaobai Yu described how many state television stations not only impose arduous working conditions but also force journalists to solicit advertisements in order to alleviate financial pressure, which corrupts their journalistic work and erodes public trust in the media:

In China today, there are 389 broadcasting and television stations at the prefecture-level and above, according to early 2024 data from China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA). There are 2,099 county-level television stations, and 33 educational television stations. Each television station broadcasts across several channels, and some operate 10 or more. But in 2024, as rumors circulated on social platforms that “nearly 2,000 local television stations are on the verge of collapse” (有近2000家地方電視台行將倒閉), the veneer of viability seemed to slip.

Regarding this figure, an individual working in a propaganda management department of a central government institution told Initium Media that while the above statement may to some extent be exaggerated, the fact that numerous local television stations face financial difficulties is undeniable. “Everyone is living like beggars, including China Central Television and leading provincial satellite TV stations,” they said.

[…] The gradual “salesification” (銷售化) of reporters has become a trend for television station workers in China, including at major state-run outfits like China Central Television (CCTV). To alleviate financial pressure, many television stations assign business tasks to their staff, meaning that directors, editors, and reporters must actively solicit advertisements. This, in fact, has become the primary standard for assessment when it comes to key performance indicators, or KPIs.

[…] “Under the current atmosphere of high-pressure control and political prioritization, television will gradually die out,” [said the aforementioned source working in the propaganda office of a central government institution]. “This is an inevitable end.” [Source]

In the face of these challenges, many Chinese journalists have ventured abroad to pursue media initiatives in the diaspora. Vivian Wu, founder of the media platform Dasheng (大声), wrote in MICJ about how the influx of fresh talent through migration has made Chinese diasporic media more diverse and active in offering uncensored content that both complements existing news from mainland China and offers its own unique perspectives. Last month, Oiwan Lam at Global Voices sampled several Hong Kong exile media outlets, among hundreds of Hong Kong journalists who left the city since the National Security Law. She also noted their struggles for financial sustainability (Flow HK announced it will shut down) and against transnational repression (numerous media workers are among those wanted for national security cases).

Land sales measures, foreign investment data and unemployment indicators have gone dark in recent years. Data on cremations and a business confidence index have been cut off. Even official soy sauce production reports are gone.

In all, Chinese officials have stopped publishing hundreds of data points once used by researchers and investors, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

In most cases, Chinese authorities haven’t given any reason for ending or withholding data. But the missing numbers have come as the world’s second biggest economy has stumbled under the weight of excessive debt, a crumbling real-estate market and other troubles—spurring heavy-handed efforts by authorities to control the narrative.

[…] Some data are still publicly available but harder to get. Beijing passed a law in 2021 that caused data providers to make certain information—such as corporate registry data and satellite images—accessible only in mainland China.

[….] Some information that has disappeared defies explanation. Data providing estimates of the size of elementary school toilets stopped being released in 2022, then resumed publication in February. Official soy sauce production data stopped appearing in May 2021, and hasn’t returned. [Source]

Another reminder of the unreliability of China’s official statistics came in March after the U.S. announced that its embassies around the world would cease publishing data about local air quality. This long-running transparency initiative began in 2008 when the U.S. Embassy in Beijing shared real-time information about toxic levels of PM2.5 microparticles in the capital’s air. The Chinese Foreign Ministry later complained that because the U.S. data conflicted with China’s (which measured only larger PM10 particles), they were causing “confusion” and undesirable “social consequences.” Under pressure, the Chinese government eventually established its own PM2.5 monitoring system, admitted that air pollution was a significant problem, and took greater corrective measures. However, there is still insufficient transparency in this domain. A recent paper in the journal Nature revealed notable discrepancies between China’s annual and monthly official statistics regarding CO2 emissions between 2014 and 2020 when calculating near real-time estimates of those emissions.

Shaky statistics such as those help Chinese state media’s external propaganda. In an article from March titled “Fact Check: What Western media get wrong about China’s economy,” Xinhua argued that “Western media’s relentless fixation on peddling narratives of China’s economic doom demonstrates their entrenched bias and agenda-driven reporting. Contrary to those claims, […] key economic indicators showed significant improvement” in China’s economy. Western reporting aside, China’s official annual GDP growth rates have been widely seen as misleading, generating doubts about the true state of the Chinese economy. In March, Nicholas R. Lardy and Tianlei Huang at the Peterson Institute for International Economics noted that while China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has improved the quality of certain macroeconomic data—such as fixed asset investment, international trade in goods, household income and expenditure, and value-added in financial services—it continues to selectively withhold other important information:

The paradox of China’s economic data thus lies in its dual character: The disappearance of certain data points, sometimes those related to economic weakness, raise concerns about the authority’s selective transparency. Yet at the same time, Beijing has better aligned its data with international standards and improved their quality. While its push for quality improvements shows its commitment to more reliable statistics, its selective withholding of information inevitably undermines confidence in the overall picture. If Beijing really wants to build trust in its economic data, it needs to ensure greater transparency, even though some statistics may expose vulnerabilities in its economy. [Source]

Last November, Vincent Brussee published an article in The China Quarterly about the “missingness” of Chinese policy documents. Among the hundreds of thousands of policy documents he scraped from official sources between 2021 and 2023, nearly 20 percent were unavailable two years after their publication. Within the latter group, 10 percent were unavailable due to issues uploading the websites, 7.7 percent due to broken links, and 1.9 percent had been intentionally deleted. Brussee described the implications of these findings for researchers’ knowledge base of China:

As this paper demonstrates, there is significant variation in policy transparency and document availability over time. Transparency originally improved between 2008 and the mid-2010s. Today, however, transparency is in decline in several fields, especially in fields where there are related geopolitical tensions. There is also significant variation among types of documents, with top-level policies seeing significantly higher disclosure rates than lower-level documents. Variation among topics appears primarily in the extent to which a topic is related to national security or citizens’ daily lives. Finally, disappearance of documents is a real challenge for research. Thus, studies working with policy data must be open about how they mitigate missingness.

[…] This paper invites broader reflection on the fragility of our knowledge base and the use of convenient datasets in China studies. Policy documents are not propaganda, yet the fact that all these data are available to “us” also suggests that their availability serves a political purpose. The developments highlighted throughout this paper suggests that this curation of information sources is only likely to intensify. Understanding the context in which these sources are produced and what can – and, more importantly, cannot – be learned from them is crucial. [Source]

CDT has covered numerous incidents of Chinese sources publishing, and often later censoring, official data in ways that many netizens deem questionable. The following is a non-exhaustive list of examples from the past two years.

• January 2025: After online sleuths found numerous examples of data fraud in clinical trials for generic drugs in China, China’s National Medical Products Administration claimed the data irregularities were simply “editing errors” and then blocked access to the data.
• December 2024: Viral video and transcripts of two unusually critical speeches about the accuracy of official statistics on the Chinese economy—by economists Gao Shanwen and Fu Peng, respectively—were deleted from multiple Chinese social media platforms, and the economists’ WeChat accounts were shut down.
• August 2024: After the State Council Information Office hosted a series of press conferences intended to showcase government accomplishments using optimistic statistics, some netizens sardonically mentioned “launching Sputniks” or “10,000 catties per mu,” phrases that reference the insanely optimistic targets and grossly exaggerated rice and grain yields reported by localities during the Great Leap Forward.
• July 2024: Public access to a tanker-truck tracking app was suspended after investigative reports revealed that cooking oil was being transported in fuel-oil tanker trucks that were not washed between transports.
• April 2024: The NBS announcement of a high nationwide average per-capita disposable income led many netizens to mock this “daily dose of humor” and wonder, “When can I expect to receive my portion of this increase?”
• February 2024: A Guangzhou research center’s public opinion poll on the state of the private economy, the outlook for employment, and current incomes showed the largest drop in public satisfaction in 30 years. A post about the poll was deleted from WeChat.
• August 2023: After youth unemployment hit a record 21.3 percent, the government stopped publishing data on the subject and online censors targeted discussion of unemployment.
• July 2023: A report on provincial cremation statistics was removed from Zhejiang’s government website and discussion of the statistics were censored on Q&A site Zhihu, after the central government stopped publishing cremation data.
• June 2023: A series of infographics from Sohu News highlighting poverty, youth unemployment, and other social issues, using statistics mostly drawn from government sources, were scrubbed from Weibo.
• May 2023: Media outlets reported that China’s top financial data provider, Wind Information, began restricting foreign access to its data in 2022, and company information databases Qichacha and Tianyancha also shut down access for foreign users.
• January 2023: After the NBS announced China’s sharp population decline, the state-affiliated Beijing Business Today reported on a survey purporting to show that “80% of university students would like to have two children,” drawing online mockery about the misleading results.

For more on this topic, see CDT’s archives related to data and statistics, and our interview with Jeremy Wallace about data manipulation in China. (This CDT post from May 2024 also contains a related timeline about censorship of economic content in China, which includes but is not limited to content about official statistics.)

Over the past 100 years, the most important achievement of theoretical innovation and practical development of the Party’s labour movement cause has been the formation of the trade union development path with Chinese socialist characteristics. This path adheres to the Party’s comprehensive leadership over the labour movement cause and trade union work, ensuring that the labour movement always advances in the correct direction.

[…] Trade unions at all levels must fully implement the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee, promote the high-quality development of trade union work, and write a more magnificent chapter of our country’s labour movement cause in the new era.

We must adhere to the correct political direction and unite the broad masses of workers and labourers closely around the Party. We must resolutely uphold the authority and centralised unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, and implement the Party’s leadership throughout the process and in all aspects of trade union work. Persist in using the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era to arm minds, guide practice, and promote work; resolutely shoulder the political responsibility of leading the workers and labourers to listen to the Party and obey the Party… [Source]

Some Chinese state-media reports unintentionally revealed the tension between the government and the people over what constitutes fair labor practices. One example, described by China Media Project (CMP), involved the aftermath of a heroic rescue of a child stuck in a narrow well by Bupatam Abdukader, a 24-year-old female auxiliary police officer in Xinjiang. As the story went viral online, many netizens wondered why she had been working in an informal role with pay and benefits that lagged behind her formally employed counterparts. This public pressure led Xinjiang authorities to give her a promotion, but only within the confines of her auxiliary status. This in turn led to more public pressure and forced the authorities to make an announcement—praised by CCTV and a Xinhua-run official journal—advocating the importance of following strict procedures of career advancement. CMP summarized the situation as such:

At its core, Bupatam’s story is about a gap in visions of what heroism means, and how it should be rewarded. While public sentiment called for the officer’s brave human acts to be rewarded with real and tangible benefits, and the dignity that comes with truly equal status, the authorities managed to contain her within the Party’s limited vision of heroism. In that vision, the hero’s extraordinary sacrifice works only to serve and preserve the system — even if that system is premised on the most ordinary perpetuation of inequalities. [Source]

In other cases of divergent visions of ideal labor conditions, netizens directed their criticism directly at the media. This was seen in reactions to a viral Weibo topic, covered favorably by state-aligned media, about a construction worker who had ostensibly saved two million yuan over nine years by carrying bricks on his back. In one WeChat article commenting on the story last week, author Song Qingren wrote skeptically about state media’s propagandistic glorification of such low-paid and physically gruelling work, and noted that only a few carefully selected comments with scant likes appeared under the high-engagement post: “Propaganda is very inspiring, sure, but will people actually buy into it? No, not only will people disbelieve such content, they will sigh in frustration and proceed to ridicule and mock it. And the more the media publishes such content, the lower they will fall in the public’s estimation, the more they will be despised.” Another WeChat article, by Unyielding Bamboo, excoriated media coverage that purports to be encouraging but in fact treats workers as little more than beasts of burden to be exploited:

The media, rather than doing what they ought to be doing—that is, exposing and reporting on serious issues—are instead encouraging people to sacrifice their health and well-being in pursuit of profit. Rather than tell the truth, they fritter away their time penning fictitious scripts; rather than bring problems to light, they focus on manufacturing delusions. I simply cannot comprehend such misplaced priorities. [Chinese]

Avenues for successfully pushing back against poor labor conditions are limited. As China Labor Watch has argued, workers in China “are routinely denied their fundamental right to strike and to both form and join unions of their choice and take part in relevant activities.” Those that attempt to strike are often met with violence. In April, police reportedly beat some of the hundreds of female workers at Hubei’s Chenlong Electronics who went on strike to protest six months of unpaid wages and two years of missing social security contributions. Nonetheless, China Labour Bulletin has documented at least 573 strikes across the country since the start of 2025, almost identical to the number of strikes in the same period from last year.

Perhaps in reaction to public pressure, some companies have enacted policies encouraging employees to work less, such as mandatory clock-off times and bans on after-hours meetings, according to Reuters. A Beijing law firm was also given a rare fine in March for failing to take corrective measures after illegally extending staff working hours. But as The Economist reported last month, this new phenomenon of limiting working hours might also be motivated more by the state’s economic self-interest than by a concern for labor rights:

These new policies align with two of the Chinese state’s current priorities. One is to try to curb a phenomenon known as neijuan—often translated as “involution”. People use the term to describe a situation in which extra input no longer yields more output, like running to stand still. The government wants to prevent this intense, self-harming competition. Perhaps not surprisingly, the new policy has met plenty of cynicism from involuted workers. One newspaper summarised their online snark with the question: “Are the companies that long enforced brutal overtime now going to lead the fight against involution?” Some point to Europe’s new ban on products made with forced labour, including “excessive overtime”, as the motivation for export companies to take action.

The second priority is to give people more time off in order to help bring about the much-needed switch in the economy away from exports and infrastructure towards consumption. In March the government presented a new “special action plan” to increase domestic demand, vowing to deal with “prominent pain points such as the prevalence of overtime culture”, and to protect “rest and vacation rights and interests”. It increased the number of public holidays this year by two days. Getting people to eat out and spend money is difficult if they are stuck at their desk. [Source]

Translations by Cindy Carter.

1. There can be no “national rejuvenation” without systemic political reform
2. The People do not want a political party with unchecked power.
3. China does not need someone to “point the way forward.” Democracy is the way forward. [Chinese]

The three banners hanging from a pedestrian overpass near Chengdu’s Chadianzi Bus Station. Local netizens confirmed the location of the photo, which is close to Chengdu’s Third Ring Road, based on the street layout and the illuminated signs visible in the background.

The date of the protest is significant because it was the anniversary of the April 15, 1989 death of former General Secretary Hu Yaobang—who for many symbolizes a more progressive, possibly even more democratic “path not taken.” (In the spring of 1989, mourning for Hu’s death coalesced into the massive protests that would later be crushed in the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown.) The language used in the slogans is quite measured, and references the CCP’s oft-lauded goal of “national rejuvenation.” Although Xi Jinping is not mentioned by name, the third slogan is a clear reference to the standard Party formulation of Xi Jinping “pointing the way forward” on various policy issues (at least 240, by one recent count).

Although such offline expressions of political dissent are rare in China, they are not without precedent. CDT Chinese editors have documented three other solitary protests that have occurred over the past three years. The Chengdu protest called to mind antecedents such as the January 2022 “Luohu Warrior” protest in Shenzhen. It also echoed the October 2022 Sitong Bridge banner protest in Beijing, in which solitary protester Peng Lifa displayed banners calling for more freedom, an end to pandemic lockdowns, and for work and academic strikes to topple Xi Jinping. The Chengdu protest also recalled the banner and loudspeaker slogans of Fang Yirong’s one-man protest on a pedestrian overpass in Xinhua county, Hunan province in July 2024.

The protester in Chengdu contacted several well-known whistleblower accounts on X—including Teacher Li (@whyyoutouzhele) and Yesterday (@YesterdayBigcat)—to amplify his message. He sent them his protest slogans, photos of the scene, and even a photo of his ID card, which revealed his identity as Mei Shilin, age 27, from Muchuan county in Sichuan province. Mei soon fell out of contact and his whereabouts are unknown; it is likely that he has been detained by public security officers. (Mei’s name and photo were only shared on social media after he had disappeared and after his identity had been revealed on YouTube.)

Content related to Mei’s protest has been thoroughly scrubbed from the Chinese internet, and CDT editors have noted that his name is now a sensitive word on numerous Chinese platforms and social media sites. Some Chinese netizens who learned of the protest via overseas sites voiced admiration for Mei’s bravery and expressed concern for his safety. A selection of Chinese-language comments from X about Mei’s bold protest have been translated below:

DEMAXIYA159: He’s a hero. It takes a lot of courage for an individual to do something this big. If every city had such a hero, the government would have to face up to its problems. If everyone had such courage, then dictatorship wouldn’t dare raise its head. Democracy means that everyone has the courage to raise their own voice.

President_JC23: Respect to that lone warrior. I hope he can stay safe.

wulijin11: Brave warrior, you did what I lacked the courage to do.

Running_Program: It takes a lot of courage to do this “within the wall.”

leaf_sen: It’s impossible to see this [news] in China because the internet is so completely controlled.

Mrdoorvpn: That brave warrior will definitely go down in history, whether you agree with him or not.

geleilaoshi: You are not alone!

rt_cou66416: Whoa, Peng Lifa has returned!

Fulefull: All of society is stagnant, but now and then, there’s a little spark.

wudiniu7764: The security guards in Chengdu are screwed. They’ll have to guard the bridges again. [Chinese]

Many observers and human rights groups are justifiably concerned for Mei Shilin’s safety. In a recent article titled “Another ‘Bridge Man’ in China Forcibly Disappeared,” Human Rights Watch China Researcher Yalkun Uluyol called on the Chinese authorities to immediately disclose Mei Shilin’s whereabouts. It remains unclear when and where Mei was detained, where he is currently being held, and whether he has access to legal representation. An update this week from Qian Lang, reporting for RFA Mandarin, discussed what steps the authorities might take next in a case that they almost certainly wish to suppress:

One of the two sources [familiar with the case], Qin from Chengdu, said if Mei was found by investigators to have overseas ties, he would be handed over to the State Security Bureau and transferred to the Municipal State Security Bureau Detention Center.

“If no substantial evidence of collusion with foreign forces is found, he will be handled by the Chengdu police,” added Qin, who wanted to be identified by a single name for safety reasons.

Legal experts believe authorities may charge Mei with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a common criminal accusation in China that authorities level against political, civil, and human rights advocates.

“They (the prosecution) may file a case for the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble because they don’t want to give him a more glorious charge, such as inciting subversion of state power or subverting state power,” Lu Chenyuan, a legal expert in China, told RFA.

“They are now more inclined to depoliticize (the Mei Shilin case) and want to reduce its political significance,” added Lu. [Source]

The safety and whereabouts of many previous protesters remain unknown. In the case of the “Luohu Warrior,” even his real name is unknown to the public, and for over three years, there has been no official information about where he is being held or whether he has been or will be tried. The most widely known of the protesters is Peng Lifa, dubbed “Bridge Man” after the famous “Tank Man” of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Peng Lifa disappeared soon after his Sitong Bridge protest and has not been heard from since. Peng’s courageous lone protest—which in turn inspired the late 2022 “White Paper Protests” that led to the end of China’s pandemic lockdowns—continues to resonate with a new generation of Chinese citizens. Fang Yirong, the young man in Hunan who used a banner and a loudspeaker to make his political demands heard, has likewise not been heard from since his protest in July of 2024.

The US Empire’s confidence has three roots: the USD, its armed forces, and high technology.

Our confidence has three different roots: tree bark, wild herbs, and Guan Yin clay! [Chinese]

Tree bark, wild grass, and Guan Yin clay (so-called for its use in Buddhist figurines, and potentially fatal to ingest) were three things widely eaten to stave off hunger during China’s Great Famine, in which as many as tens of millions are estimated to have died.

State media have sought to paint a rosier picture of the trade war. A recent report from state broadcaster CCTV, for example, focused on a Zhejiang manufacturer of home appliances which said its overseas orders had actually increased slightly since it turned toward other markets in response to U.S. tariffs. CCTV plugged the story with the hashtags “#Number of overseas orders actually increased after loss of U.S. orders” and “#For Cixi Home Appliances, the East Brightens as the West Dims.”

The story became a “rollover scene” (翻车现场 fānchē xiànchǎng), attracting widespread attention and mockery. CDT Chinese editors compiled a number of reactions from Weibo and X, ranging from the apparently convinced to sarcastic endorsement to outright scorn. Several of the comments play on the tendency for state media to wring claims of victory for China out of any new development.

蔚蓝的白日梦： If we’re winning this much after losing the U.S. market, imagine how much we’d be winning if we lost all of them.

用户130000： Winning this much, and still filtering the comments … our country is modest indeed.

股海东方不败： The point of this news is to convince everyone that even though we’ve lost the American market, business just keeps getting better and better.

心向阳光-奔跑吧少年： China May Be The Biggest Winner

花衿茵梦： Orders drying up? Cixi Appliances says just change the packaging and sell, sell, sell!

长安静轩阁主： Out of respect, I’ll take your word for it. In the meantime, you do you.

财金条： Supplier defeats customer

崇正视角： The days when they could swindle the masses like a bunch of fools are long gone. Unfortunately our bureaucrats are still deluding themselves about their prowess.

zrw2017： Striking first brings swift victory; striking harder brings more wins. Apparently in this trade war they struck too softly, too late.

bodyno214755： Isolated examples can’t show the big picture. This is just a typical propaganda play.

Momo20240808： This is just one very specific, unrepresentative example. What are things like for the majority of businesses?

轻风细雨大叔新号： Looks like everything’s great—raising tariffs boosted exports. The more sanctions, the better!

五更不惑： Looks like it’s a good thing, so let’s have more of the same!

W因紫而来： Whatever you do, don’t tell Trump about this—he’d blow his top.

OL1EiqcQJpZL9nr： Actually this isn’t impossible. According to the article, they relaxed the minimum orders, i.e. they started accepting smaller orders, and lowered the required quantities. The claim is that the number of orders increased, but it didn’t say anything about profits. If a factory does smaller production runs, then unit costs will go up. It’s obvious whether this is a good thing or not.

冲浪冠军很多年： I haven’t seen a single news report so far describing adverse effects from the trade war on domestic businesses.

jenner70873905： "A bit more suffering for the masses"—Ming Dynasty 1566 [A historical TV drama: "During the Ming dynasty, as economic prosperity masked social unrest, the corrupt official Yan Song’s oppressive policies spark a power struggle and intrigue within the imperial court."] [Chinese]

As marriage registrations in China continued to decline in the first quarter of the year, local governments have dangled cash rewards as high as 40,000 yuan (US$5,487) in front of young couples in a bid to rekindle the will to wed and stave off the worst of a demographic crisis.

In the first three months of 2025, 1.81 million couples registered for marriage, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said last week. This represents a decrease of 159,000 couples compared to the same period last year for an 8 per cent drop, with a simultaneous 10 per cent increase in the number of divorce registrations.

[...] Last year, China recorded the lowest number of new marriages since 1980; only 6.10 million couples in China tied the knot in 2024, down 20.5 per cent from 2023, according to the ministry. [Source]

Earlier this month, the government announced a revision to the marriage registration ordinance, the first since its enactment in 2003, that will reduce paperwork and give couples more flexibility to choose where to register their marriage, including in locations beyond their places of permanent residence. Last week, The Economist described how Hohhot and other cities have offered child-care subsidies as part of their pro-natalist push, but that these have been received without much enthusiasm:

In Hohhot, however, the uptake so far appears weak. On March 13th, with fanfare in national media, the city announced one of the biggest cash-for-kids schemes in the country. Mothers will now be paid 10,000 yuan for a first child, 50,000 yuan over five years for a second and 100,000 yuan over ten years for a third. That third-child reward is double the city’s average annual salary. But Hohhot is not offering much beyond the cash payments, and at one local office that processes subsidy registrations an employee said that they have received only seven or eight inquiries in the month since the policy announcement.

Ms Liu at the baby store, who is 35 and has one child, said she would like to have a second if she had more money, but the new incentives do not offset the lack of child-care support and the high costs of raising children in a competitive environment. “The policy might change the minds of people on the fence about having kids, but people like me won’t consider it,” she says.

For Ms Wu, a 29-year-old civil servant about to give birth to her first child, the 10,000 yuan “adds flowers to the brocade” and could help with her mortgage or car loan, but “50,000 yuan is not going to cover the costs of a second child”. It costs high-income families 1.3m yuan to raise a child to adulthood, estimates YuWa Population Research Institute, a think-tank in Beijing. The figure is more like 130,000 yuan for low-income families. Wang Feng of the University of California, Irvine, thinks Hohhot’s policy will not “make a dent” in the city’s population decline. “Babies cannot be bought,” he says. “The cost is lifelong and it’s not just monetary.” [Source]

Many Chinese women have balked at government plans to raise the birth rate. Even Xinhua shared a comment last week by one Weibo user who wrote, “If I were married, there’s no way I’d enjoy the kind of freedom I have now,” and another who wrote, “If I can’t find the right person, I’d rather stay single than settle.” One major impediment is that the government has also made it harder for couples to divorce. This was one of the main points made by behavioral economist Jia Yongmin, who recently published an opinion piece in Fengsheng OPINION discussing why China’s recent pro-matrimony policies are failing to persuade young people to get married:

In fact, increasing impediments to divorce have had a dissuasive effect on marriage. "Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out." The preceding quote comes from Qian Zhongshu’s [1947] masterpiece "Fortress Besieged." Although they are the words of a novelist, the theory behind them has been borne out by economic research.

A paper published by Hauert et al. in the journal Science proved that the freedom of participants to choose to withdraw is a necessary condition for the emergence and maintenance of cooperation. Marriage is undoubtedly a cooperative undertaking. Without the freedom to exit that "fortress besieged", there will surely be less incentive to enter it in the first place. [Chinese]

Highlighting another pro-natalist effort gone awry, women have reported receiving unsolicited WeChat messages from their local “family doctor,” apparently tasked with contacting women aged 14-49 in their district and asking them, “Has your period been normal recently? On what date did you last get your period? Please respond via text. Thank you!” According to screenshots of these messages on Chinese social media shared by Teacher Li, some netizens interpreted this as a call to have children. The incident is similar to reports from last fall that netizens had received calls from local government authorities asking, “Are you pregnant? Do you plan to be? Do you have a boyfriend?”

More promising approaches might be found elsewhere. Elsie Chen at the AP reported on Tuesday about how young Chinese singles are looking for love in video chats:

Frustrated with traditional dating and using the apps, Chen jumped on a new trend among young, single people in China. Those looking for love go into video chatrooms hosted by what’s called a “cyber matchmaker,” all while thousands of viewers watch and comment in real time.

The number of single people in China over 15 reached a record-high of 240 million in 2023, according to government data. Facing a plummeting birth rate and an aging population, the government encouraged single people to marry and have multiple children. Last year, the State Council, China’s cabinet, mandated that local governments build various platforms for youth to have more opportunities to date.

[...] For those who want to get married though, the livestreamed videos are an appealing alternative to traditional matchmaking methods, like marriage markets — where families exchange resumes and arrange dates for their unmarried children.

They’re also another option for those tired of dating apps. [Source]

Other aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war that have received widespread coverage recently are the role of foreign fighters—including a small number of Chinese mercenaries—in the conflict, and the extent to which Chinese companies are supplying Russia with “dual-use” goods that might be used in the war effort. At The Kyiv Independent, Lucy Pakhnyuk reported that this week, Ukraine presented China with evidence that Chinese citizens and companies are providing the Russian military with manpower and munitions to assist in the invasion of Ukraine:

During a meeting with Chinese Ambassador to Ukraine Ma Shengkun, Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgen Perebyinis shared evidence that Chinese citizens and companies are involved in the war in Ukraine.

[...] Perebyinis also called for China to "take measures to stop supporting Russia" in its aggression against Ukraine, and assured that Ukraine "values ​​its strategic partnership with China and expects that China will refrain from taking steps that could hinder bilateral relations."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on April 18 rejected Zelensky’s claims of weapons deliveries as "groundless," insisting that Beijing remains committed to a ceasefire. The same day, Zelensky announced sanctions against multiple entities based in China.

Although China has officially claimed neutrality with regard to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing has deepened economic ties with Moscow, supported Russia against Western sanctions, and emerged as a top supplier of dual-use goods that feed the Russian defense sector.

Earlier this month, Ukraine captured two Chinese citizens fighting for Russia in Donetsk Oblast. President Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that "several hundred" Chinese nationals are fighting on Russia’s side in the war. [Source]

As CNN’s Andrew Carey and Victoria Butenko reported last week, although the extent to which foreign fighters participate in the war remains murky, Ukraine has undoubtedly captured a number of non-Russian POWs, including small groups from former Soviet republics, China, North Korea, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, plus individuals from Somalia, Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Egypt, and Syria. A Ukrainian press conference featured two captured Chinese POWs who stated that they had signed contracts with the Russian military for personal reasons—an attractive monthly salary in one case, and the promise of Russian citizenship in the other. Unlike North Korea, whose government has sent over 14,000 of its soldiers to fight on the Russian side, the Chinese government does not encourage its citizens to get involved in the war, and may even criticize them if they do. In Part One of investigative journalist Chai Jing’s video interview with “Macaron,” a Chinese citizen fighting on the Russian side in Bakhmut, one Chinese mercenary complained that the Chinese embassy refused to help him because it claimed he had made a “personal decision” to enlist in the Russian army. Despite this, it is likely that China’s “no limits partnership” with Russia, strongly pro-Russia state-media coverage of the war, and tolerance of bellicose social media content has fueled the desire of some Chinese men—particularly the unemployed, indebted, or estranged—to go and fight for Russia in Ukraine.

Part Two of Chai Jing’s YouTube interview with Macaron is translated in full below. (It begins at the 22:47 timestamp in the YouTube video.) Their wide-ranging conversation, conducted by video from a bunker in Bakhmut where Macaron was bivouacked, is interspersed with copious photos, videos, and social media posts from Macaron and other Chinese soldiers involved in the Russia-Ukraine war. This second part covers such topics as drone and trench warfare, landmines, battlefield deaths and injuries, mental health, abandoned homes and animals, the role of foreign mercenaries in the war, and larger moral questions about the morality of warfare. (For more CDT coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war, see “Four Censored Essays on the Ukraine Crisis,” “Netizen Voices on Ukraine,” and a censorship directive with instructions to “keep Weibo posts on Ukraine favorable to Russia.”)

Chai: Would it be possible for you to escape on your own, to just leave the battlefield, say, and walk off? Could you do that?

Macaron: No way. There are checkpoints everywhere. And to be honest, in the areas around us, there’s nothing to stop anyone from just shooting and killing you. This place, there’s no law, no morality, no constraints against … [There is a long pause, as the video becomes choppy and voices are audible in the background. Macaron moves into what looks like a different area of the bunker.] There’s none of that here.

Chai: Our interviews were often interrupted by Russian soldiers. As someone fighting in a foreign army, someone who doesn’t understand the language, Macaron’s constant tension, vigilance, and uneasiness is palpable.

Macaron: This isn’t a good place to be a foreigner. For example, when we’re being shelled, they’ll tell you to get down on the ground, but you won’t understand (the order). They say to turn left, but you turn right instead. The language barrier is a huge obstacle. Once when I was coming back from the bathroom, I saw this wire on the ground. It was a tripwire, and if I’d stepped on it, I would’ve been dead for sure. It was connected to a landmine. Luckily, I stepped over it. When I got back inside, I asked (the other soldiers), “Why didn’t you tell me there were mines out there? Why didn’t you say you’d planted mines outside?”

Chai: Did no one else in your unit know about the mines, besides the person who planted them?

Macaron: Someone might have. Or maybe the person who planted it was already dead.

Chai: It all sounds extremely disorganized. Would that be fair to say?

Macaron: Yes, that’s how it is in war. It’s complete chaos.

Chai: In the [Russian-occupied] Southern Military District, [another Chinese mercenary named] Zhou Zhiqiang described a similar level of chaos. During a battle in the trenches, one of the men in his unit, a Nepalese mercenary, started firing his assault rifle indiscriminately and killed some of his fellow soldiers. Abandoning his injured comrades, the man tried to escape, only to step on a landmine. While fighting in the trenches, Zhou Zhiqiang also came face-to-face with a Ukrainian soldier he dubbed “Grandpa.” During the confrontation, the elderly Ukrainian soldier abandoned his gun, with the safety still on, and fled.

Chai (V.O.): According to the U.S. Department of Defense, as of October 2024, Russian forces had sustained over 600,000 casualties. But Ukraine’s resistance and counteroffensive has also exacted a heavy toll. In August of that same year, Zelenskyy stated that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, and another 370,000 wounded.

Macaron (V.O.): [in a video showing bowls of chicken soup] Last night, we stormed and captured a position, so our commander’s rewarding us with some chicken soup. Despite our lousy equipment, we put up a good fight. But both sides suffered heavy casualties. I won’t even go into the details, it’s too gory.

Chai: Before you made the choice to see these people as “the enemy,” did you ever think to yourself that maybe instead of being the enemy, they’re just victims?

Macaron: Honestly, from Ukraine’s perspective, we are the invaders. Because we’ve attacked their soldiers, we’ve occupied their territory. But from Russia’s perspective, it’s about maintaining peace in the Donbas region and preventing NATO’s expansion. Personally, I don’t have a particular stance.

Chai: But by choosing one side over the other, aren’t you essentially deciding who your enemy is, and whose values you’re defending?

Macaron: For me, it’s not about values. It’s just a job.

Chai: But Macaron, you must realize that a big part of your job involves … killing people.

Macaron: But since we’re an assault unit, most of the time, when we’re far from the enemy, they usually spot us first. Because they have drones. When they spot us, they launch drones—suicide drones—and artillery attacks against us. It’s rare that we really get that close, close enough to see them face to face. That sort of thing is rare. It hardly ever happens.

Chai: I feel like you’re dodging the question a bit. In fact, you are aware that they’re there, and you do come face to face with them, don’t you?

Macaron: Yes. In certain situations, yes, that’s true.

Chai: In that moment when you’re face to face with another human being and you raise your gun at them, do you ever ask yourself if what you’re doing is wrong?

Macaron: In combat, just a few seconds can determine whether you live or die. It all happens so fast, I don’t have time to think about things like that. What I spend most of my time thinking about is how I can get out of this brutal war alive.

Chai: Is it that you don’t have time to think, or that you’re afraid if you start to question things too much, you’ll lose your resolve, and that will put your life in danger?

Macaron: Both. If I hesitate, or overthink, or let my emotions get the better of me, it makes me vulnerable. And that means I could end up like them (other soldiers who have died). Over time, I’ve become numb. Now I’m just numb.

Chai (V.O.): Bakhmut, where Macaron is stationed, was the site of the bloodiest and most protracted battle of the Russia-Ukraine war. This city that was once home to 70,000 residents is now a trench-scarred wasteland. Its schools, hospitals, and churches lie in ruins, and stray cats and dogs wander the streets.

[Chai’s voiceover is accompanied by a photo of a fire in a building in Bakhmut; a video of a huge explosion leveling a vast swath of the city; a photo of a man squatting down to embrace a large stray dog lying in the middle of a road; and a video surveying the collapsed, rubble-strewn interior of a building.]

[In another video, Macaron pets a purring, grey brindled cat standing on the ground near his feet.]

Macaron (V.O.): This is my cat. He’s really friendly. Sometimes when I go out on patrol, he comes along. Look how happy he is to see me. I feed him canned food whenever I can, whatever I can find. Sometimes he even sleeps with me at night. It’s nice. See right there, where his fur is singed off? He got too close to the stove and burned himself.

Chai: But you know you’re standing in someone else’s home, in someone else’s city. You also know that what you’re doing is destructive. Since you have such sympathy for a cat, I would guess that you still have some sympathy for people, too.

Macaron: Actually, I saw this post on Xiaohongshu [Red Note] a while ago. You know Xiaohongshu, right? This post was from a Ukrainian talking about Bakhmut, where I am now. [a video taken by Macaron in Bakhmut shows broken trees, deserted roads, collapsed buildings, and ground littered with debris] He said, “Bakhmut, where my family lived for generations, used to be my home. But now, because of the war, I’ve had to leave.” I sent him a reply saying I was in Bakhmut, and asked him where his house was. He told me it was long gone, just ruins now. I said that’s just how war is. Even though I knew there was nothing I could do to change things, it stirred up a lot of feelings, and I really did want to be his friend. Because if this were my hometown being destroyed, my house being captured by the enemy, I’d be devastated, too. That’s just a normal human reaction. All I could do was try to console him, and maybe I was also trying to fool myself, to numb myself, by saying, “Yeah, that’s just how war is.”

Chai: Macaron, it feels like there are two personalities at war within you.

Macaron: Yeah. Right now, I’m part of this army, so I have to behave according to its rules. But I also have my own thoughts and feelings. And I’ve been treated unfairly, unjustly, and even cruelly by Russians, too. So yeah, I do feel conflicted. It’s complicated.

[The screen fades to a darkened video, with a voice speaking in Russian and explosions in the background.]

Chai (V.O.): When he’s not fighting, Macaron spends most of his time sitting in the dark, listening to the ceaseless gunfire and explosions. Before enlisting in the war, he had cut ties with his parents and broken up with his girlfriend. Over the past year and a half, nearly all the foreign fighters he trained with have died in battle, and those still alive are exhibiting signs of mental breakdown.

Macaron (V.O.): [in another video, showing several pots of instant noodles] There was this Russian guy with a red beard who just disappeared. You could tell he was already fucking starting to lose it. [a fellow soldier shouts incoherently in the background] You get used to it. People just vanish.

Macaron: [speaking with Chai Jing again] A lot of guys here get injured, sent to hospital, and start drinking on the sly. When they drink, it’s like they’ve gone totally insane. I think a lot of soldiers here are like that. Because some have been fighting for two, three years, and it drives them to extremes. Some even use drugs.

Chai: Can you get drugs on the front lines?

Macaron: I don’t know, but some people must have connections. I’ve heard that in the fields around some Ukrainian cities, they grow stuff, but I’m not sure. Me, I don’t normally smoke tobacco, but if we’re taking fire on the battlefield, I need a cigarette just to calm my nerves.

[In another video, Macron speaks to a rat perched on scaffolding against a gray concrete wall.]

Macaron (V.O.): Hey, little buddy, you’re back. What are you doing here? [As the rat scuttles away, there is a booming explosion in the distance.] Fuck.

Chai: I can imagine that when you’re trapped underground like that, in complete darkness, it must be easy to fall into despair.

Macaron: Yeah, it was dark and damp, and you couldn’t even relieve the stress by talking to anyone. It was pretty awful. But by now, I don’t really care anymore, because I’ve gotten used to it. Sometimes I just feel lucky I’m still alive. And if I don’t survive, that’s fine, too. Just make it a quick death, you know? Don’t torture me, just make it quick. I can deal with that. What I can’t deal with is being alive but wanting to die and not being able to. They don’t kill you straight away. First they might blow your leg off, leave you crawling on the ground, then blow away your arm. Then they’d … that’s what they’d do. [Macaron falls silent and looks down. Chai gives a long sigh.] That’s just how war is. It’s the same for soldiers on both sides.

[A photo of a soldier reaching out a hand as if to stop the military drone hovering above him.]

Chai (V.O.): Dreading that kind of suffering, Macaron always carries a grenade with him.

Macaron (V.O.): [in a video, Macaron holds a grenade in one hand] Going into battle, I always keep one last grenade for myself, just in case.

[A photo of a soldier raising both hands in the air as a large military drone approaches. Chinese social media posts about drone attacks.]

Chai (V.O.): Many Chinese mercenaries have been killed by drone strikes. According to Zhou Zhiqiang, after his unit captured a trench, they were struck by explosives dropped by unmanned drones. Afterward, Zhou found [his friend and fellow mercenary] Zhao Rui covered in blood, dead on his back with eyes open, staring at the sky. Zhou, whose leg had been blown off, managed to escape by first playing dead, and then crawling out of the combat zone. It took him six hours to cover the one-kilometer distance.

Zhou Zhiqiang: [In a darkened video, Zhou wears a military-green muffler that covers his neck and mouth. Only his nose and eyes are visible.] Our trenches were bombed. We were bombed, and a lot of people died. I was hit seven times, and it was a miracle I survived. I made it back alive to tell you: don’t come here. Whatever you do, don’t come. My friend Zhao is dead, and it wasn’t a peaceful death.

Chai (V.O.): Zhao Rui had once told Zhou Zhiqiang that his final wish, if he died in battle, was for Zhou to bring a lock of his hair back to his parents, so his “soul could return home.” But there were no scissors at hand on the battlefield, so Zhou only managed to bring back his friend’s ID. [a photo of Zhao Rui in uniform with other soldiers, above a photo page from his passport] It reads: “Zhao Rui. 38 years old. Unmarried. Resident of Chongqing.” This is the last video that Zhao Rui recorded before he died.

Zhao Rui: [In a video, Zhao speaks to the camera. He is dressed in a green camouflage jacket with a hood and a tan mask over the lower half of his face.] Here’s some advice for you guys who’ve messaged me about coming here: don’t come. There’s nothing for you here. Get a job back home. If you work hard, you’ll earn just as much as you would here.

[As Zhao continues speaking, the video switches to grainy drone-based footage of a lone man trudging through the wilderness along a dirt path. The man wears a large backpack, and carries what appear to be two heavy jugs of water. A bomb of some sort falls from the drone, and the man begins racing down the path, raising clouds of dust. Another bomb falls toward the man, and the footage fades to black.]

Zhao Rui (V.O.): It’s been so long since I’ve had food from my hometown. I miss it so much, and wish I could go back. [sigh] I think about what I miss eating the most. I just keep thinking and thinking about it. I think about how much seasoning you’re supposed to add, and how long you should stir-fry it. [laughs]

Chai (V.O.): Zhao Rui was the first confirmed Chinese casualty in the Russia-Ukraine war. There are no reliable statistics on the total number of Chinese mercenaries killed or injured, but Macaron estimates that out of a hundred-plus Chinese fighting there, more than half have been killed or wounded.

[During Chai’s voice-over narration, we see various images and videos: a selfie of Zhao Rui in fatigues with two other foreign soldiers. A video Zhao Rui took upon his arrival in Moscow of a military-themed display of funeral wreaths, photos of fallen soldiers, and various flags, including a flag from the PMC Wagner Group.]

[Another video just shows the ground, and a shadow on the ground. A man speaks, and loud explosions are audible in the background.]

Man in video (V.O.): Every day there’s bombing. Why would you want to come to a place like this?

Chai (V.O.): Macaron made a public announcement about the deaths of four of those men.

[A black-and-white screenshot shows a social media post and video from Macaron, asking for help informing the families of four Chinese men who died in the fighting: Liu Jie, Liu Hongwei, Xu Hang, and Pan Da.]

Chai (V.O.): On August 1, 2024, 20-year-old Liu Jie and his friend Liu Hongwei were both killed by landmines and bombs. It was their first day on the battlefield.

Macaron: [speaking to the camera, in a video he posted to Douyin] From what I heard, four days ago, Liu Jie and Liu Hongwei were carrying out a mission. Liu Hongwei stepped on an IED that injured his leg. Then a drone dropped five bombs and he was killed. The other guy, Liu Jie, the little guy, was killed by bombs from two FPV ["first-person view," or radio-controlled] drones. If anyone out there knows their families, friends, or classmates, please contact me, and I’ll do my best to communicate with the Russians here, so that at the very least, their families can get some closure.

Chai: Back home, some of these guys had seen your videos. So on some level, you may have inspired them, or been a factor that influenced their decision to come here. How did you feel when you heard they had died?

Macaron: I think it’s probably true that I did mislead them, to some extent. But after I reported what happened to them, after I exposed their deaths, Douyin straight up banned my account.

Chai: Why do you think that happened?

Macaron: Maybe because they didn’t want people to know that Chinese soldiers were dying here.

[Close ups of the photos of Liu Jie and Liu Hongwei in uniform.]

Chai (V.O.): Did the families of those soldiers who were killed in action ever receive the 5 million rubles (less than 400,000 yuan, or $55,000 U.S.) in compensation that Russia had promised them? Macaron isn’t sure. No one ever contacted him.

[More photos of Liu Jie and Liu Hongwei in uniform, followed by a screenshot of journalist Lu Yuhuang’s online letter to Putin.]

Chai (V.O.): Phoenix TV journalist Lu Yuguang later wrote a letter to Putin, which was published online. The letter stated that a month after Zhao Rui’s death, his parents had yet to receive their son’s remains, or even an official notification. Lu urged Putin to “handle the matter as promptly as possible to ensure that the deceased can receive a dignified burial.” Macaron has some experience helping with the disposition of the remains of soldiers who died in action, but he is reluctant to talk about it.

Chai: Some families didn’t get the promised compensation, did they?

Macaron: Yeah, I think that’s true. A lot of Russian families can’t even find the bodies of their dead relatives. And if there’s no body, they’re considered “missing in action.” It’s a mess, the chaos of war.

Chai: If you were fighting for your own country, maybe you wouldn’t be so … forgotten. You’d be remembered as a martyr.

Macaron: I know. But here we’re nobodies, like flies. From a psychological or moral standpoint, there’s nothing remotely meaningful about this. That’s why I say I have no particular stance. I’m just an ordinary guy who made the wrong choice and got involved in this war. My role is to be a grunt, or maybe more accurately, to be cannon fodder. [chuckles]

[Aerial footage of a Russian soldier in a trench, reading a note dropped from a Ukrainian drone urging him to “follow the drone and surrender.” In subsequent footage, the soldier is seen communicating with the drone via gestures, and later, following the path of the drone in order to surrender to the Ukrainians.]

Chai (V.O.): I’d seen videos of Russian soldiers surrendering to Ukrainian drones. I once asked Macaron why he didn’t do the same: Why not just surrender to the Ukranians, so he could go home?

Macaron (V.O.): Because I’m not Russian. It’s that simple. If you’re Russian, you might have been drafted or conscripted, just like the Ukrainians. Some of these guys were forced to fight, they had no choice, so there’s some mutual understanding there. But for foreign soldiers like us, the Ukrainians are going to wonder why we decided to come here. Was it for the money, or maybe for the thrill of killing? They’re going to feel more hostile toward us.

Chai (V.O.): Macaron believes that unless the war comes to an end, neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians will allow him to leave.

Macaron: [speaking to the camera, in a video posted to social media] They won’t let you leave this place alive.

[Screenshot of the Chinese-language New York Times website with a photo of Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy gesturing at each other during Zelenskyy’s February 28, 2025 visit to the White House.]

Chai (V.O.): Macaron says his only hope is for the war to end. But with the current level of geopolitical instability, ceasefire negotiations will be an uphill battle. The day after our interview, Macaron told me he had finally been transferred out of the assault unit, and allowed to lay down his weapons.

Chai: What do the Russian soldiers think about the current situation?

Macaron: Most of them think the war will be over soon. They don’t want to fight anymore. They just want to go home. All of us feel that way, to be honest. We’re sick of this war.

Chai: How so?

Macaron: Anyone who’s experienced battle, who’s seen war up close, never wants to experience it again. And they don’t tend to glorify it, either. It’s the people online hyping up war and acting all heroic that I find most disgusting. In war, there are no heroes. Everyone’s a villain, because you have no choice but to kill.

Chai: Would you include yourself in that, too?

Macaron: I’d say so, yeah. I made a mistake, a wrong choice, and now I’m stuck fighting this Slavic war. Every inch of territory here is paid for in blood. It’s not at all cool or fun. It’s inhumane and immoral. Especially the way rank-and-file soldiers get treated if they’re captured. Some are humiliated, tortured, or killed. That sort of behavior just goes against basic human decency and morality. It really sucks.

Chai: Before this program aired, Macaron sent me a message saying that he had been injured in a bombing while helping to evacuate the wounded. He had suffered injuries to his arms and legs, and had been sent to a hospital far from the front lines. But for once, he sounded hopeful. He said that of all the things that could have happened to him in this war, this was the best outcome he could have hoped for.

Chai: [speaking to Macaron again, before his injury occurred] After this war is over, would you ever fight in another?

Macaron: I just want the war to end. And if it does, I’d much rather help people than hurt them. Haven’t we been hurt enough? And haven’t we hurt others enough? I think so.

Chai: From what you’re saying, it sounds like even though you try to tamp down your feelings or not succumb to emotional weakness, you do feel … guilty about harming others.

Macaron: I think I do. Even though we try to comfort ourselves, or deceive ourselves, by saying “Oh, this is just how war is,” at some point we have to face reality.

Chai: Over this past year or so of war and everything else you’ve experienced, was there ever a moment that made you feel particularly uncomfortable, or guilty?

Macaron: That sort of thing happens a lot. Especially here in Bakhmut, where we’re often going into empty houses, and there are still things like furniture and stuff inside. If we see something we can use at our command post, we’ll take it. And honestly, that doesn’t seem right to me, taking things that don’t belong to us. Even if no one is coming back for them, they belonged to ordinary people, ordinary Ukrainians. It doesn’t feel right for us to trash or loot or take their things. So sometimes I feel bad about that.

[A video of a soldier, seen from behind, sitting in a wooden chair and playing a piano in an empty house.]

Chai: In one of Macaron’s videos, he and his comrades find a dusty piano in the ruins of someone’s home.

Macaron (V.O.): If I’m honest, sometimes I get a bit emotional when I’m standing there in these wrecked houses, looking at the ruins around me. Sometimes in my mind, I silently apologize to the owners, to the people who used to live there. I feel like I should apologize for my behavior. [the piano video fades away and is replaced with Macaron speaking to Cai Jing again] Even though I wasn’t the one who did it, even if the place was trashed before I showed up, I’m still part of the system. I’m on the side that did this to them, so I’m complicit.

Chai: You said you don’t want to harm people anymore. You want to do something to help, instead. What kind of things?

Macaron: Well, there are a lot of kids in the Donbas region. [A photo shows a blasted-out school building with charred, twisted pieces of metal playground equipment outside.] I used to see kids begging at the train station in Donetsk. Someday if I get the chance, I’d like to do something to help them, even if it’s just making sure they have enough to eat or enough to wear.

Chai: Before this program aired, Macaron was injured. [A video shows only Macaron’s arms and legs. He is sitting in a wheelchair, his right arm encased in a white cast.] Unable to walk, he was evacuated from the front lines to a hospital. In two more months, his contract will be up. When he was in pain and couldn’t sleep at night, he wrote this poem and sent it to me:

[Chai Jing reads the poem, to the accompaniment of tinkling piano music and a video showing Macaron walking outdoors, on patrol with other soldiers amid empty roads and demolished buildings. Lastly, there is an aerial shot of a neighborhood in Bakhmut where all the buildings have been bombed or burned, with smoke still rising from the ruins.]

Chai Jing (V.O.):
I like the pain
because it reminds me
I’m still alive.
Trees have been blasted apart,
but young saplings will bud again.
Houses have been bombed to rubble,
but engineers will rebuild them.
It is only the dead,
their limbs torn asunder,
who won’t be coming back.
The dead watch the living die,
and the living wish the dead could revive.
I am in Bakhmut—
a city destroyed by war. [Chinese]

Chinese state-controlled media’s coverage on his death has been terse. The Chinese government extended its condolences nearly 24 hours after the Vatican’s announcement of the pope’s death – when asked about it at a regular news conference at its foreign ministry.

“In recent years, China and the Vatican have maintained constructive contact and engaged in beneficial exchanges. The Chinese side is willing to work together with the Vatican to promote the continued improvement of China-Vatican relations,” Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for the ministry, told reporters on Tuesday.

China’s minimalist response underscores the sensitivity of ties between the atheist ruling Communist Party and the Holy See. [Source]

After the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, the Chinese government did not send a representative to his funeral and instead criticized then-Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian’s planned trip to the Vatican as a separatist move. The Vatican is one of 11 countries worldwide and the only country in Europe that officially recognizes Taiwan. This week, current Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te expressed his “sincerest condolences on behalf of the people of Taiwan to the Catholic community and everyone mourning the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis,” adding, “We will continue to draw inspiration from his lifelong commitment to peace, global solidarity, and caring for those in need.” Taiwan reportedly hopes to send President Lai to attend Pope Francis’ funeral, and is awaiting a response from the Vatican. Hong Kong’s Catholic Church and religious leaders also expressed their “deepest condolences.” The Dalai Lama stated, “His Holiness Pope Francis dedicated himself to the service of others, […] consistently revealing by his own actions how to live a simple, but meaningful life. The best tribute we can pay to him is to be a warm-hearted person, serving others wherever and in whatever way we can.”

Unlike many of his predecessors, Pope Francis never met with the Dalai Lama, as he tried to thread the needle of the Vatican’s sensitive relationship with China. The Chinese government’s restrictions on Catholicism have produced a decades-long split among the 10-12 million Catholics in China, between the state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association churches and persecuted underground churches that profess loyalty to the pope. Pope Francis reached a landmark agreement with the government in 2018—which was renewed in 2020 and 2022, and renewed again last October for another four years—that ostensibly recognizes the pope as the religious authority of all Chinese Catholics, gives the pope the power to veto appointments of all new bishops nominated by Beijing, and legitimizes those that had been appointed by Beijing without prior papal approval.

Details of the agreement have remained secret. Critics lament that in reality the Chinese government has over the past few years made several high-profile, unilateral appointments that forced the pope to retrospectively ratify in order to maintain the Church’s formal position in China. The Vatican’s muted reaction to Hong Kong’s arrest of Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun in May 2022, just months before the agreement with China was renewed, added to the controversy. And despite these agreements, religious persecution and Sinicization campaigns have only grown under Xi Jinping.

Laura Zhou, Shi Jiangtao, and Lawrence Chung at the South China Morning Post reported how China’s ties with the Vatican might change under a new pope:

“It depends on who will succeed him,” said Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre think tank in Washington.

“If it is a more conservative and orthodox pope, the Vatican will be likely to withdraw some of Pope Francis’ engagement, outreach and pragmatic approach to China, such as the authority to appoint bishops.”

[...] “This issue is not likely to be resolved, whoever will represent the Vatican in this relationship going forward,” [a] specialist on Sino-Christian studies said.

“Beijing will remain pragmatic, the question is to what extent pragmatism will serve the Holy See and China’s Catholic Church.”

[...] “Beijing is unlikely to pay too much attention to the China policy of the Vatican, because China’s position has been consistent and will not be changed because of a new pope,” said Deng Yuwen, former deputy editor of the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper Study Times.

“But of course Beijing would be keen to see a successor who is friendly to China, and who will not have a too close relationship with Taiwan.” [Source]

Pope Francis’ efforts to bridge the Vatican and China will likely not be the last. “The next pope may not be as gifted or confident with Chinese or Asian situations, but it’s going to remain a priority,” Dr. Michel Chambon, a Catholic theologian at the National University of Singapore, told The Sydney Morning Herald. “The next election [for pope] will be probably the first time that, when they select candidates, they will check his view on China. It will be a key criteria that he has a subtle, constructive view on how to engage China.” At Le Monde, Frédéric Lemaître described how, despite the limitations of Pope Francis’ approach, the Vatican is pursuing a realist and long-term strategy:

This key man in Vatican diplomacy[, Benoît Vermander, a Jesuit who teaches philosophy at Fudan University in Shanghai,] is in favor of the agreement, but noted that many Catholics feel that the price to be paid to move toward this greater unity of the Church is high. While Pope Francis was very discreet about human rights abuses in China – only once was he heard praying for "the poor Uyghurs" – Xi clearly has no intention of granting greater autonomy to the Churches. Quite the contrary, in fact. Since 2017, he has been insisting on the Sinicization of religions, a term which means that they must in effect accept the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party. In an interview with the American Catholic channel EWTN News in March 2023, Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, acknowledged that this 2020 agreement is "certainly not the best deal possible."

"Everything is done obviously in the context of Chinese domestic politics (…) And therefore, we can only achieve so much," Gallagher said. "But one of the things that the Chinese and the Catholic Church and the Holy See have in common is that we don’t think in months, or even in years. We’re thinking in terms of a much longer time. And we hope that, in time, the relations between the Catholic Church in China will be shall we say much more ‘normal,’ much more fluid, much more fruitful." While Francis may have been a visionary, it has to be said that he was up against a formidable tactician determined to do him no favors. [Source]

It is not just drones that are promising – or threatening – to upend the tempo of urban life in China. Humanoid robots are particularly buzzy. The highlight of this year’s Spring festival gala, which was viewed nearly 17bn times, was a dance performed by a troupe of humanoid robots made by a company called Unitree. On Saturday, the world’s first humanoid v human race – a half marathon – took place on the outskirts of Beijing.

“Applying artificial intelligence to robots basically really kicked into high gear last year,” says Rui Ma, a China technology analyst and investor based in San Francisco. The shift could allow the industry to grow at a much faster rate in 2025 than in previous years. Reinforcement learning, which means training robots to learn from experience rather than relying on rigid models, allows humanoid robots to be trained in months rather than years, hastening the pace of innovation. Toy robot dogs are already part of daily life in China. At a wholesale market in Yiwu, a trading hub in east China’s Zhejiang province, a child plays with a robot dog while his mother haggles with exporters over the price of false eyelashes. On the streets of Shanghai, a woman walks her robot dog, which is helpfully carrying a basket of shopping on its back.

The development of China’s robotics industry is intimately linked to advances in AI. For years, China has been trying to catch up with the United States. Xi wants to drive economic growth through “new quality productive forces”, a concept that includes advanced technologies. [Source]

Some scientists and observers have tried to manage the public’s expectations of China’s AI rollout. Zeyi Yang at WIRED described the setbacks of the “stumbling and overheating” humanoid robots competing in the half marathon, and also noted that “by the end of the race, many people who tuned into the livestream started to comment on how exhausted the robots’ human operators looked.” At a meeting last Wednesday, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ordered representatives from dozens of automakers to stop hyping up the capabilities of smart driving technology. (This followed a highly publicized incident last month, in which a Xiaomi electric car crashed and killed three passengers while the vehicle’s autopilot feature was engaged.) Similarly, leading AI scientist Zhu Songchun recently warned that AI hype and reality have become detached in China, partially because the media have fed the public “exaggerated” stories about AI. Alex Colville at China Media Project described how Zhu’s critical stance appears to have been ignored, if not overridden:

Zhu’s critique of the propaganda-driven approach appears to have fallen victim to precisely the dynamic of hype he described. While his remarks found outlets in more market-oriented publications like Tencent Technology, Caixin and The Paper, flagship state media organizations like Xinhua and the People’s Daily conspicuously omitted his warnings from their coverage. Instead, these Party organs continued to showcase a parade of applications and robots — the very surface-level achievements that Zhu suggested are distracting China from the deeper scientific work needed to truly lead in artificial intelligence. In a system where positive messaging trumps critical analysis, even warnings from one of the nation’s top AI scientists can be edited out of the narrative.

[...] This disconnect was illustrated once again over the weekend, as Beijing hosted a half marathon where Chinese-built robots raced alongside human competitors. The CCP’s official People’s Daily described the event as a “fierce competition” that had pushed the robots to their limits. Xinhua sang about “infinite possibilities,” and proclaimed in its headline that the racing event had “closed the distance between us and the future.” The less stellar reality, alluded to in a report by Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily that noted the “many problems” holding the race down, was that the robots had suffered constant failures and necessitated nearly constant repairs by the exhausted human crews running alongside them. In the end, only six of the 21 robot entries completed the race, and one quite literally lost its head.

But in another sense, the race pointed the way toward the possibility of a healthier, more open and more self-critical attitude toward technology and progress — an alternative to the propaganda of constant rise. The Global Times, though in English-language coverage only, remarked somewhat disingenuously that “[behind] this ‘imperfect’ robot half-marathon is the mature atmosphere of tolerance, understanding and acceptance of failure that has developed in Chinese society from top to bottom toward the high-tech industry.” If that were true, of course, no public moderation of Zhu Songchun’s remarks behind closed doors would have been necessary. It would be perfectly acceptable to say: We are getting this wrong. But the Global Times was on to something. [Source]

China’s rapid deployment of embodied AI is at least partially fueled by its competition with the U.S. for technological superiority. Liu Gang, a professor at Nankai University in Tianjin, stated, “We are picking a path where we lower the costs for innovation and industrialization,” adding, “When many can do things with a comparable quality, whoever makes it more cheaply will have a bigger chance to win.” This is evident in the significantly lower costs of Chinese robot dogs and humanoid robots compared to American ones, and in the free rollout of DeepSeek’s AI chatbot. A recent Foreign Affairs article titled “What America Gets Wrong About the AI Race” underlined this dynamic: “The real lesson of DeepSeek’s success is that AI competition is not simply about which country develops the most advanced models but also about which can adopt them faster across its economy and government.”

Indeed, China’s robotics industry is surging ahead. According to a recent industry report, China will likely produce over 10,000 humanoid robots this year, amounting to over half of global production. Late last month, Du Zhihang, Bao Hongyun, Liu Peilin, and Han Wei from Caixin Global provided a deep dive into China’s production of humanoid robots, underscoring the government’s major investments in this booming sector:

Embodied intelligence has become a buzzword in AI and investment circles in the past two years. Unlike traditional industrial robots, such as mechanical arms, embodied intelligence focuses on humanoid robots that can adaptively perceive and interact with their environments using human-like physical forms. These robots emphasize advanced motor coordination — akin to a cerebellum — and cognitive abilities in vision, language and movement, enabling more natural and versatile interactions. This shift represents a move beyond factory automation toward robots capable of more complex, human tasks.

[...] Since 2024, several Chinese regions have rolled out incentive policies to support AI and robotics industries as the country aims to lead the global tech race. Hangzhou in the eastern Zhejiang province offers up to 5 million yuan in rewards and 25% project funding subsidies, while Beijing has established a 100-billion-yuan government investment fund to support startups. Southern Guangdong province provides up to 50 million yuan for robotics companies and 10 million yuan for AI firms, and Shenzhen has set bold targets for embodied intelligence, aiming to cultivate more than 10 companies valued at more than 10 billion yuan and achieve an industry scale exceeding 100 billion yuan by 2027. Shanghai and the southwestern Sichuan province have also introduced supportive measures.

[...] While China and the United States are seen as equals in AI and robotics technology, China’s strengths in large-scale manufacturing and software optimization give it an edge in industrializing humanoid robots.

[...] As China’s governments increase support for AI and embodied intelligence, leading companies stand to benefit. In March 2025, embodied intelligence was named one of four future industries — alongside biomanufacturing, quantum technology and 6G — in the government work report. [Source]

In the two weeks since Trump launched what he called his “Liberation Day” tariff blitz, Chinese diplomats have taken to X and Facebook — platforms that are banned within China — to post archival footage of President Ronald Reagan deploring trade wars and former Chinese leader Mao Zedong declaring China’s determination to defeat the United States in the Korean War.

Chinese state media have reposted a TikTok video made with AI that shows unhappy American workers sewing garments and assembling smartphones, with the caption: “Make America Great Again.” Several times a week, the state-run China Media Group has been sending personalized emails to reporters covering the trade war, offering them updates on China’s perspective.

[...] “It is not so much a change in China’s propaganda tactics, but that Trump himself messed up, allowing China’s propaganda to score points,” said Deng Yuwen, former deputy editor of the Communist Party-affiliated Study Times, who now lives in the U.S. “The huge controversy caused by the Trump administration has allowed the Chinese government’s methods to win points.”

[...] Now, Beijing is also delivering that message in catchy short videos and snarky memes aimed directly at Americans. A video posted on Facebook earlier this month by Guo Jiakun, a Foreign Ministry official, featured images of stock market indexes crashing and streets full of American protesters, while a narrator intoned in English: “The so-called global beacon now puts America first. … With China here, the sky won’t fall.” [Source]

Some of these efforts have backfired against domestic Chinese audiences. A CCTV account on Douyin published an AI-generated video that showed a factory assembly line of gloomy American government officials, including Trump and J.D. Vance, which evoked a satirical future of revitalized U.S. manufacturing that Trump seeks through his trade war. As CDT Chinese editors highlighted, many netizens criticized the video for its tone-deaf mockery of lower-income, labor-intensive jobs that many Chinese citizens are forced to endure in the present. In response to the avalanche of comments, the account closed the comment section and eventually deleted the video. A selection of critical comments have been translated below:

枫落秋末：The work you look down on is exactly what Chinese workers do every day.

¥金金：I don’t even know who this is trying to humiliate.

热拿铁：What’s the point of this? You’re mocking your own people.

BFSUNSET2887：What you hate is my life.

Xiaxia1357346：Officials know that factory work is grueling and poorly paid, yet they still claim that Chinese folks are poor because they don’t work hard enough.

sinji198183：You’re shooting yourself in the foot here.

WeileiFromSanqi：This is basically the consensus of the Chinese elite: the lives of the lower class are not worth living. If by some stroke of bad luck, they could no longer live an upper-class life, they would rather die.

Nick22022420863：This isn’t America’s desired future; it’s the Chinese people’s present. [Chinese]

Le Monde reported that Chinese influencers have flooded American social media platforms and urged American users to bypass American tariffs by buying goods directly from Chinese factories, which allegedly procure the same goods for a cheaper price than retailers. Some of these videos have received millions of views, propelling Chinese cross-border e-commerce app DHgate, which allows users to buy directly from Chinese factories, to become the second-most popular app on Apple’s App Store in the U.S. on Wednesday. But this alleged workaround may not last long, since the Trump administration’s elimination of the de minimis rule—which exempted Chinese shippers from paying U.S. taxes on goods worth less than $800—will go into effect on May 2. Moreover, many Chinese workers are already suffering from the impacts of the trade war. Yaling Jiang and Rongrong Zhuge at the Following the Yuan Substack shared RedNote posts by Chinese exporters and factory workers, including one from an employee who had just been laid off from their job at a cross-border e-commerce company:

“Who understands? I’ve been working at this company for almost four years, thinking I’d be here until retirement… But then, I received the news — the company had to close down due to 🇺🇸 tariffs! Our boss was truly amazing. He treated all of us like friends. Not only did he pay us our full month’s salary, but he also prepared personal farewell gifts for everyone. I’m so moved 🥹

No fake marketing here, just sharing my personal dramatic experience. I didn’t expect so many others are in the same situation. Please, don’t misjudge based on this.”

Comments:

• So soon, shouldn’t your company wait and see? Maybe your boss has been wanting to quit for a while, that’s why they’re lying flat. // The payroll cost must be high, I assume most of their businesses are with the US. The policy isn’t stable and the uncertainty may last a while. [Source]

"Return to Wuhan: The Unfinished Story From Five Years Ago,” a now-deleted longform article from WeChat public account “Aquarius Era” (水瓶纪元, shuǐpíng jìyuán) includes interviews with journalists, doctors, artists, activists, and others about the early days of the COVID pandemic and the lockdown of Wuhan. (Although the article has been censored on WeChat, it remains available through the Substack account @aquariuseras.) The article also chronicles more recent attempts to combat official “amnesia” with online and offline commemorations of the whistleblowers, citizen journalists, and victims of the pandemic. The translated excerpt below describes some of the restrictions on remembrances of Dr. Li Wenliang, and the daunting challenges of keeping his memory alive:

Li Wenliang was buried in the Wuhan’s Jiufengshan Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs, along with Peng Yinhua, Liu Fan, and others who were recognized as “martyrs” because they sacrificed their lives in the fight against COVID-19. Many local residents who went there to mourn discovered that to enter area two, the section of the cemetery where Dr. Li is buried, they were required to hand in their mobile phones; sign a register with their names, household registration, health codes, and other information; and be escorted by cemetery staff to visit Dr. Li’s grave. Sometimes staff members would say kindly, “If everyone were as cooperative as you, our jobs wouldn’t be so hard.” Other times, staffers would scold coldly, “Make sure to write your ID number clearly, because we have to check it!” Five years on, we no longer have the right to freely visit someone’s grave.

[...As far back as] June 2020, not long after the pandemic in Wuhan had abated, the artist known as "Brother Nut" found that his personal Shimo account [Shimo, which translates as “Graphite,” is a Chinese cloud-storage and document-sharing service similar to Google Docs] was blocked because he included the name "Li Wenliang" in a document title, and he was unable to export any of content from the stored document. When he attempted to defend his rights by filing a complaint, the response from platform customer service was: "You published a document advocating large-scale collective rights protection," and "Your content is politically sensitive."

“The impact of the pandemic period seems much like the virus itself: invisible, intangible, and traceless," said [journalist] Wang Shengnan. [Chinese]

Another longform article noting the fifth anniversary of the Wuhan lockdown was published in early March by RFA-affiliated media outlet Wainao. The now-defunct Chinese-language organization, also known as WHYNOT, was forced to close in mid-March due to steep U.S. funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Titled "Five Years After the Wuhan Lockdown: The Traces of Pain That Remain, and the Ordinary People Resisting ‘Amnesia’ in Their Daily Lives," the article explores the phenomenon of collective amnesia while noting some exceptions—such as the many commemorations still being posted to “Li Wenliang’s Wailing Wall,” the popular comment section under Dr. Li’s final Weibo post.

In Wuhan, to this day, "76" remains a number of special significance. From the beginning of the lockdown on January 23, 2020, until its lifting on April 8, Wuhan residents experienced exactly 76 days of being confined at home and almost completely deprived of their freedom.

Despite all the difficulties that Wuhan residents endured, nowhere in the city is there any acknowledgement of what the people of Wuhan went through during that period—no memorial, no exhibition hall, no genuine commemoration of their suffering.

[...] Wuhan Central Hospital, where Dr. Li Wenliang once worked, was one of the hospitals hardest hit by COVID infections among doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel.

The hospital is located on Nanjing Road, opposite the historic cultural district Xian’an Fang, famed for its narrow alleyways and red-brick exteriors. Nowadays, apart from some chain restaurants, the area is mainly home to an array of distinctive boutiques. Memories of the pandemic occasionally resurface here.

[...] In 2021, as reported in the media, a nearby café menu once featured a coffee item named "Whistleblower Coffee—100% Controversial.” Today, this café no longer exists. In a stylishly decorated bar [near Wuhan Central Hospital], there is a feminist-themed book display where customers can leave books and post book recommendations. The bookshelf display contains many comments about death and even a book about ophthalmology, but there is no trace of Dr. Li Wenliang. It seems that there is a tacit understanding not to publicly mention Dr. Li.

Dr. Li Wenliang, who worked as an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, later became known as “the whistleblower of the COVID-19 pandemic.” As one of the first to sound the alarm about the emerging coronavirus—in an online alumni group chat—he was admonished by authorities and labeled a "rumormonger." In the early hours of the morning on February 7, 2020, Wuhan Central Hospital announced that 34-year-old Li Wenliang had died of COVID-19, setting off shock waves on the internet.

At Exit F of Wuhan’s Xunlimen subway station, only an eight-minute bike ride from the hospital where Li Wenliang once worked, there is a large shopping mall featuring shops similar to those found in many other Chinese cities: bubble tea shops, beauty salons, and a food court. Across from the mall, there is a small kiosk that specializes in replacing phone screen protectors. "Who is Li Wenliang?” asks the kiosk’s owner [in response to our question], as he wipes a mobile phone screen with an alcohol swab. “I don’t know him!"

Upon further questioning, it turns out that the kiosk owner is not a local, but had come from Hunan to work in Wuhan three years ago. Most Wuhan locals have heard of Li Wenliang. Nowadays, when his name is mentioned, they are likely to respond: "Oh, that doctor who died."

At the hospital where he once worked, the name of the late Dr. Li Wenliang is absent from a wall displaying the names and photos of hospital specialists. Staffers at the hospital information desk answered our questions cautiously: "He used to work here, but we didn’t know him, and don’t know much about it." The owner of a newsstand at the hospital entrance said, "He died, and the pandemic is over. I don’t know much about it. It’s not something we should be blabbing about. Go look it up online if you want to know more.”

In February 2025, a patient walks past the “specialist wall” inside Wuhan Central Hospital. (source: Wainao/photographer Zu Weina)

On the internet, DeepSeek AI—which Chinese people proudly herald as a rival to ChatGPT—is incapable of answering the question "Who is Li Wenliang?" Instead, DeepSeek offers this line of text: "Hello, I am unable to answer this question at the moment. How about we change the topic and chat about something else?"

But there are other places in which Li Wenliang has not been forgotten. On Sina Weibo, Dr. Li’s last public post, dated February 1, 2020, remains frozen in time: “Today, [my] nucleic acid test results came back positive. The dust has settled, there is finally a diagnosis.”

Ever since, there have been daily updates to the comments under that post, with over one million comments posted. [That number is likely higher, but the counter under the post is capped at “one million plus.”] On Valentine’s Day 2025, one commenter confided chattily to Dr. Li: "We split up right around the Lantern Festival and Valentine’s Day. I know it’s the right decision, but who’s ever happy about breaking up, right? And I’m going to take my driving test soon. Hope I pass on the first try." Another expressed their longing thus: "Doc Li, the flowers in Beijing are about to bloom."

While in Wuhan, there is nary a tribute to Dr. Li, countless Chinese people continue to remember him fondly. [Chinese]

The comments section under Li Wenliang’s final Weibo post, mentioned in the article above, has become known as China’s “Wailing Wall,” a place netizens come to mourn and to celebrate, to mark personal milestones or comment on current events, and to wish Dr. Li well and assure him that his sacrifice will not be forgotten. (CDT editors continue to regularly archive and publish updates on recent Wailing Wall content.) The most recent update includes comments left during the April 4 Qingming festival, also known as “Tomb-Sweeping Day,” when many Chinese remember or visit the gravesites of deceased family members. The following Wailing Wall comments were compiled between April 1-April 5:

四灵妖王: Doctor Li, we haven’t forgotten you.

溜溜溜只洋芋: The cherry blossoms are in bloom, Dr. Li.

不想熬夜的夜猫子666: It’s another Qingming Festival, and I miss you. 🕯️ I hope you are doing well in the other world. 🕯️

momomokoo: Dr. Li, I’m afraid of blind dates, and even more afraid of being rejected.

GEVEYteam: "At Qingming, in the drizzling rain / the bereft wander through the lanes." It rained today. [The quoted lines are from the well-known poem “Qingming” by Tang Dynasty poet Du Mu.]

想翻身的孩子: Dr. Li, nothing has changed here, or if anything, it’s worse. I hope you are safe and well, and that things are better now.

不被团结的nevermore: Good evening, Dr. Li. You’ve had a hard day, too, so turn in early and get some rest.

积极创想曲: When I’m feeling lost, I like to visit this Weibo’s comment section and read about people from all walks of life.

我想我喜欢你1997: Dr. Li, I’m confused about my future, what should I do?

晓阳205011: Hi Dr. Li, I’m back. The unbearable month of March is finally over. I hope you’ll bless me with a bit of better luck in April. Because life’s been rough, too rough.

潮汐夕阳杨桃-: I’ve been daydreaming about a lot of things, but it’s these daydreams that keep me going. [Chinese]

CDT’s Wailing Wall archive is compiled by Tony Hu.

Hu Yaobang remained a taboo topic for many years after Tiananmen, albeit with some degree of rehabilitation under Xi Jinping. Hu Dehua was an outspoken advocate for his father’s cause of reform. He criticized Xi Jinping’s analysis of the fall of the U.S.S.R. and its causes in a speech in 2013; in an interview with South China Morning Post the following year, he lamented the stalling of reform in China and the lack of constitutionally guaranteed rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. In an earlier video, Hu Dehua contrasted his father with Deng Xiaoping, saying: “one cared about saving the people and the other cared about saving the Party … Hu Yaobang believed people should always have a place to speak, that the freedom and power to speak were necessary. But Old Deng only permitted people to say the Party was good.” Later, Hu Dehua was a senior figure at the liberal Party journal Yanhuang Chunqiu prior to its aggressive overhaul in 2016.

One deleted post marking Hu Dehua’s death was the following reflection from the WeChat public account 闻道不分朝夕—an earlier tribute to the late General Secretary republished on April 1 with a brief foreword noting that "we know that commemoration of Hu Dehua is actually rooted in gratitude to Hu Yaobang."

I’ll often kill time by chatting with friends.

There are many topics of conversation, of course—we cover everything under the sun. But they always seem to involve anecdotes about notable people. I once asked a friend: Do you still remember Yaobang? To my surprise, he replied, “Who’s Yaobang?”

I was struck speechless, unsure how to respond. But on reflection, it’s not so strange—there can’t be many youngsters born in the 90s and after who remember him.

History marches on.

But there are some people, and some things, that will always be remembered by someone or other. Hu Yaobang made two groundbreaking contributions to China’s reform: discussion of standards of truth, and rehabilitation of the falsely accused. What later generations remember him for is liberating minds, on one hand, and liberating people, on the other. And it was those whose bodies and minds that were liberated that went on to become the driving force of reform.

Of course, he didn’t accomplish this on his own, but it’s undeniable that he fought the hardest, risked the most, and showed the most courage, insight, and resolve.

[…] By an incomplete count, more than three million wrongfully convicted cadres were rehabilitated across the country between 1978 and 1982; more than 470,000 people had their Party membership restored; and tens of millions of cadres and others who had been baselessly implicated were exonerated.

Restoring order and justice on this scale, and bringing about historical reconciliation across the whole breadth of society, allowed for the almost complete reconstruction of the nation’s social foundation. This momentum, this atmosphere, was the spring thaw that melted the snow and ice that had been piling up since 1949.

Given these astonishing figures, there were some who wondered whether Hu Yaobang had rehabilitated too many. Hu’s immediate retort was: Why did no one ask if there were too many when people were seized in the first place?

The late Dai Huang, a former senior correspondent at Xinhua, wrote:

In 1994, Du Daozheng, head of the publisher of the journal Yanhuang Chunqiu, asked me to write about Hu Yaobang. He already had a title in mind: "Hu Yaobang and the Righting of Wrongful Cases." I agreed at once.

In November of the following year, to mark what would have been Hu Yaobang’s 80th birthday, Yanhuang Chunqiu published an excerpt from what I had written, which was then republished by dozens of newspapers including Southern Weekend.

But getting the book published proved to be difficult. The initial publishing contract was with the People’s Press. They had nearly finished editing the manuscript when they decided to unilaterally break off the contract. Later I was approached by the head of the Central Party School Press and one of his editors, so I gave them the manuscript. They edited the whole manuscript of several hundred thousand characters in just three days, but then the head of the press told me they couldn’t publish it right away, and that I should leave the manuscript in their hands while we waited it out. Worried that it might be a very long wait, I went back to the Central Party School Press and managed to get the manuscript back, although they were reluctant to part with it. [Chinese]

Another deleted post was the following one posted on April 4 by Wang Mingyuan on his WeChat public account Fuchengmen No. 6 Courtyard. This focuses more on Hu Dehua himself, and on the author’s personal relationship with him:

On the whole, Mr. Hu Dehua finally began to take some time for himself in the last few years, concentrating his energies on examining the evolution of his father’s thinking, and reflecting on a number of historical issues. He had two main focal points: first, how Hu Yaobang gradually diverged from revolutionary orthodoxy, and secondly, why he drifted apart from Deng Xiaoping on questions of reform. Much of Hu’s analysis is informed by his unique perspective.

Mr. Hu Dehua would often say: "When Deng Xiaoping visited the United States in 1979, he said that those who aligned with the U.S. became richer, but I actually think the flipside of that is also very important: that is, that those who aligned with the U.S.S.R. all became poorer. Why they become poorer is a question well worth asking, but this sort of introspection is rare.”

[…] Mr. Hu Dehua described his father as very upright and inimicably opposed to wrongdoing, never the bearer of grudges, and always inclined to treat others well. He was kind to his personal staff and his subordinates on the Communist Youth League Central Committee, concerning himself not only with their work but also their lives outside it, even though they had denounced him during the Cultural Revolution. Many of his close comrades-in-arms had also turned on him, but afterwards, Hu Yaobang chose to forgive them. At times, his children would anxiously warn him: "Father, don’t you know he’s one of the bad ones? He did so much to hurt you behind your back—how can you be so good to him?" Hu Yaobang would say, with a little smile: "How could I not remember that? But if everyone keeps seeking revenge, when will it end?" [Hu] Deping [Hu Yaobang’s eldest son] and Dehua both said that their father was extremely well versed in political machinations and trickery, but never used them himself. When he became General Secretary, he had said: "If you play Liu Bang [Emperor Han Gaozu], and I play Cao Cao [a key figure in the later dissolution of the Han Dynasty into the Three Kingdoms period], then our China will never move forward. We must practice what we preach, and drive forward rules for civilized politics."

Mr. Hu Dehua inherited his father’s sincerity, candor, and decency. Tao Siliang once said, "Uncle Yaobang’s forthright character made countless people like and feel close to him. His magnanimity and sincerity were his two most outstanding traits." The same could be said of Dehua. He never discriminated by class, and was invariably respectful toward people like waiters, drivers, and guards. He’d never refuse a request for his phone number or WeChat contact.

[…] Mr. Hu Dehua lived very modestly—previously with his mother in a courtyard house on Beichang Street. He’d usually only eat out with friends at places like Zeyuan restaurant—a restaurant for ordinary people set up by Mao Zedong’s chef Cheng Ruming after he retired—ordering simple dishes like corn porridge, scallion pancakes, or soy-braised pork. Whenever I went to see him after he moved to Tianshui Yuan, we’d usually go to Qingfeng Steamed Buns [where Xi Jinping famously acquired his "Steamed Bun" nickname] or McDonalds. He’d enthusiastically put away a 15-yuan plate of six steamed buns dipped in vinegar—which of the other diners would have guessed that his father once led the Chinese Communist Party?! As far as I can recall, the best meal we ever had together was a "luxury banquet" at Huishang Guli for about a thousand yuan [$135]. [Chinese]

Wang also writes of Hu Dehua that: “In business, he kept his hands clean, never colluding with officials or profiting from the national interest, and always relying on his own abilities to get by. As a result, he never made a great fortune.“ The modesty of Hu’s later life may be somewhat overstated in this account: he complained in 2013 that his luxury Beijing villa complex and real estate development company had been targeted by a small army of thugs hired by a rival; and he was named in the 2016 Panama Papers as a shareholder, director, and beneficial owner of an investment vehicle in the British Virgin Islands. Hu subsequently told South China Morning Post that the offshore company was the dormant remnant of an unsuccessful stock exchange listing in Hong Kong. His public comment was itself unusual: asked why other prominent Chinese figures named in the leaks had declined to comment, he said: “This is my style of doing things – a habit I’ve formed over all these the years. But I can’t demand everyone to be like me.”

A third apparent target of censorship is a lengthy account by Hu Dehua himself, recounting his father’s ordeals during the Cultural Revolution, the grace with which he bore them, and the developing relationship between father and son who had been estranged for many years. The piece remains online elsewhere, but reposts following Hu Dehua’s death have reportedly been removed from WeChat. The text both begins and ends with Hu Yaobang’s admonition to his son after the young Hu Dehua suggested that his father endorse false accusations against others in exchange for softer treatment:

“Every word I say must stand up to history’s judgment. In the end, one can only stand up to historical scrutiny by seeking truth from facts. I cannot talk rubbish in exchange for a lighter beating or lesser hardship, and have future generations point at me and say I was spineless. I can’t do it, and I don’t believe our Party will be that way either. I don’t know who wrote those big-character posters [accusing others], but I absolutely believe that in the end, our Party will not be like that, that in the end it will seek truth from facts ….” [Chinese]