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]

A promotional poster for Huo Meng’s film “Living the Land”

“Living the Land,” whose Chinese title is 生息之地 (Shēngxī zhī dì), depicts a year in the life of a Chinese farming village in 1991, as several generations of farmers try to come to terms with the massive socio-economic shifts that will soon remake their lives. The film’s young protagonist, a boy named Chuang, is part of the first generation of “left-behind children.” After his parents decamp to Shenzhen to seek work, taking their two older children with them, third-born Chuang is left in the care of his uncle Tuanjie, who never lets Chuang (who has a different surname) forget that he doesn’t quite belong in the village. When the boy innocently wonders where he will someday be buried, his uncle mutters, “This is not your place.” With non-professional actors and realistic settings, “Living the Land” explores complex intergenerational family dynamics, state-enforced family planning policies, developmental disabilities, “left-behind children,” farmers seeking ways to supplement their incomes, encroaching industrialization and urbanization, and more.

Despite the hostile reaction to Huo Meng’s Berlin win from some Weibo users, the film garnered positive reviews in a number of overseas trade publications. Even the Global Times noted that it marked “the first time in six years that a Chinese-language film has won an award at one of the ‘Big Three’ European film festivals, and the first time in 24 years that a Chinese film has won the Best Director award in Berlin.” The Global Times article went on to mention some of the past Chinese films that earned accolades at the Berlin Film Festival, including Chen Kaige’s “Yellow Earth” in 1984, Zhang Yimou’s “Raise the Red Lantern” in 1991, and Diao Yinan’s “Black Coal, Thin Ice” in 2014.

A recent article from WeChat account “Writer” discusses the dilemma of Chinese cinema today, particularly for arthouse films that find themselves locked in a “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t” dynamic with domestic audiences:

At the 75th Berlin Film Festival, Chinese director Huo Meng won the Silver Bear Award for Best Director for "Living the Land."

The film hasn’t been released in China yet, so it’s just a bit of news. Filmmakers are pleased about it, as are those eager to see Chinese films make a resurgence. Some people aren’t pleased, however, as we can see in the [Weibo] comments below:

> 怒海狂蛟79 (from Guangdong): Theme of “rural misery” = a young director’s ticket to kudos from international film festivals

> Vivid飞 (from Shanxi): Europe still hasn’t managed to release “Ne Zha 2 in theatres,” but in 2025, a film that pretends to be objective (but actually aims to slander China) won an award at a European film festival.

> Minar2018 (from Shaanxi): You call this a movie? It’s obviously Western-manufactured propaganda.

> 顽石风烟 (from Jiangsu): Not another one of these films.

> 马蹄岭番鬼局 (from Guangdong): No surprise, foreigners love this sort of subject matter.

> Overly域 (from Chongqing): China’s not just countryside—there are modern cities, too.

In other words, whether you’re pleased or not depends on your reaction to this bit of news. The film, reportedly told from the perspective of a “left-behind” child, chronicles how the changes taking place in rural China in the 1990s—and the attendant clash of values, individual anxieties, and collective difficulties—affected individuals, families, the village, and the world outside the village. Perhaps just reading some of these words will make some folks unhappy.

Chinese cinema has never been as conflicted as it is today. If your box-office earnings are low, they say you’re incompetent; if your box office earnings are high, they say it’s because you’ve got backers with deep pockets. If you’re too ambitious, they say you’re trying to copy from the West; if you’re not ambitious enough, they say you’re an embarrassment to China. If you make “popcorn” commercial movies, they call you superficial; if you make hard-hitting arthouse films, they say you’re slandering China. If you don’t win awards, they say you’re useless; but if you win a big international award, they say you’re just in it for the accolades, that you’re sucking up to the judges, pandering to Western tastes, or only focusing on China’s "backwardness."

[…] In movies, literature, and drama, there is no such thing as “Eastern tastes” or “Western tastes,” only "human tastes.”

[…] Movies, like literature, should portray human lives and human destinies. Society is just part of the backdrop.

If movies were only expected to portray the glamorous side of life, then there wouldn’t be many such films. "Les Miserables" is set in Paris, the most glamorous city in France, but it shows people fleeing through the dark, filthy sewers. "Léon: The Professional" is also set in a glamorous city, but depicts exploited streetwalkers and brutally corrupt law enforcement officers.

[…] And when it comes to “smearing its own reputation,” no one beats Hollywood. We need not mention [serious fare such as] "The Shawshank Redemption.” Even in a romantic film like "Waterloo Bridge,” the heroine falls into prostitution; even in a comedy like "Roman Holiday,” there are sleazy tabloid reporters who stir up gossip for profit.

The South Korean film "Parasite," which won a Best Picture Oscar, might be the most serious example of Korea “smearing its own reputation” by depicting class conflict, economic inequality, rich folks humiliating the poor, the pitiful pride of the poor, and even violent resistance and bloody fights. But oddly, I don’t think Korean society is really like that—I think “Parasite” is a universal metaphor, and the events it depicts could happen in any corner of the Earth.

So the Koreans are happy, but I’m left feeling jealous: remember the glory days when mainland Chinese and Hong Kong films and TV shows were dominant in Asia and on their way to conquering the world? Where were Korean films and TV shows back then? Nowhere, but now they’re leaving us in their dust!

Chinese films are facing strong interference from the forces of cultural conservatism. But actually, people like that never set foot in theatres.

The development of the internet has allowed a small number of people to specialize in hurling abuse at certain writers, directors, novels, movies, companies, and entrepreneurs. In every case, they are simply “pouring dirty water into their own courtyard.” This is the true definition of “smearing China” and it is simply self-destructive. [Chinese]

日月: A shameful day for America.

顾: A day that disgraced the Statue of Liberty.

岭南黎庶: Trump and Vance made fools of themselves.

V: In just 20 minutes, two numbskulls managed to destroy the image that the U.S. has cultivated for over two centuries.

大海: The supporters of the invasion are worse than the invaders themselves!

陈自强: Cheaters! By bullying a small country under the guise of wanting peace, America has abandoned its own values.

江风: No matter what, he is still the president of a country, and you drove him away. Don’t you have any respect for his country or his people? [Chinese]

WeChat public account 兔子兔子画漫画 (Tùzi tùzi huà mànhuà, "Rabbit Rabbit draws comics") posted on Tuesday about how, amid the U.S. government’s increasingly aggressive posture towards Ukraine and softening tone towards Russia, it was “heartwarming” to see such a swift pushback of critical comments under the U.S. Embassy’s post:

These comments gave me the sense that deep down, many of my compatriots still possess a normal sense of right and wrong. We can infer that the commenters all subscribe to the embassy’s official account, which means that at least they closely follow the trajectory of a country that has served as a “beacon” to so many. And when it comes to fundamental questions of right and wrong, they haven’t lost their sense of judgment and have maintained a healthy conscience.

These comments made me realize how many of my compatriots are in sync with mainstream global civilization and values. Opposing aggression and tyranny is one of the most fundamental values of humankind, and there’s nothing uniquely “Chinese” about this. The way they have expressed their opinions fills me with pride and brings some warmth and comfort to this cold world. [Chinese]

Viewing these current events through a historical lens, WeChat blogger Zhang Ming wrote about how the “bullying” of Zelenskyy is emblematic of an old, immoral tradition of statecraft that people today should not tolerate:

I used to think that after World War II, the “law of the jungle” in international politics had faded into history, and that the era of big countries arbitrarily deciding the fate of small countries—as they did in the [1938] Munich Agreement—was a thing of the past. I never thought that a mere change of administration in the U.S. would upend everything.

History may repeat itself, but as people who understand history, we must not consent to playing the same pitiful roles we once did. We must remember that if there is no morality or justice in this world, then life becomes meaningless, and the living are but the walking dead. Such an existence is not worth pursuing, and ordinary people should not be expected to tolerate it. [Chinese]

Chinese commentators also reflected on the merits of diplomacy in their reactions to the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting. On Sunday, popular-science and current-events writer Xiang Dongliang criticized the belief that strong countries can discard diplomacy and bully the weak in order to get their way, and called this an outdated and short-sighted argument that is harmful to both the U.S. and China’s development. In The East is Read newsletter last month, Zichen Wang highlighted a 2009 essay on Ukraine, Europe, and the importance of diplomacy from prominent Chinese social scientist Shiping Tang, who wrote that “the art of diplomacy is not to search for the emotionally gratifying, but the rationally possible, within geographic constraints.” And a China Daily editorial on Sunday described the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting as such: “As diplomacy, the spectacle was unseemly. But as reality television, it offered a gripping and revealing glimpse into the realpolitik of the Trump administration.”

Another article, from WeChat public account 码头青年 (mǎtou qīngnián, "port youth") reflected last week on three years of war between Russia and Ukraine, noting that Trump’s withholding of support to Ukraine has put the latter’s future in jeopardy. The author wrote, “Historically, the moment the U.S. withdraws is often the most dangerous moment for its allies. […] Will 2025 be the year Ukraine is ‘abandoned?’ […] Three years later, we find that what has changed is not the nature of the war, but people’s patience with the war.” Writing for the Carter Center’s US-China Perception Monitor last month, Chinese columnist KS Liu asked, “Is Trump Selling Out Ukraine?”

Other commentaries were more direct. Former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post Wang Xiangwei wrote over the weekend that the “extraordinary shouting match” in the Oval Office “provides another sharp insight into the American psyche and its naked hegemonic thinking.” A commentary last week in the People’s Daily Online was headlined, “The West’s profit-driven playbook resurfaces in Ukraine,” and it argued that American efforts to extract mineral resources from Ukraine “[resemble] the Scramble for Africa from the late 19th to the early 20th century. […] History seems to repeat itself, though the plunderers change.” And an article in Nanfang Daily on Saturday concluded, “Trump’s actions are not about creating peace or helping Ukraine, but about reaping greater benefits.”

Public debate began when the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports released its 2025 budget, revealing that it had allocated 48.148 million yuan (over $6.6 million U.S.) to support the training expenses of Olympic freestyle skier Eileen Gu (Gu Ailing) and figure skater Beverly Zhu (Zhu Yi). The now-censored Caixin article noted that the bulk of those funds would go to Gu, and that Beijing’s sports bureau had provided a similar amount (47.379 million yuan) to Gu in 2023. Some bloggers and commenters expressed surprise at the large amount; suggested that taxpayers’ money might be better spent on education, health-care, or sports access for the general public; and questioned the wisdom of such exorbitant support for two Chinese-American athletes perceived to have “parachuted in from abroad” (外国空降, wàiguó kōngjiàng).

An article from the WeChat account Sports Talk included screenshots of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports budget, photos of the athletes, and information on their past performances, injuries, upcoming competitions, and more. The Sports Talk article was later deleted across multiple platforms, including Tencent, NetEase, Caixin, Sohu, and China.com. A now-censored article by Ni Ren, published to the WeChat account Black Noise, discussed the phenomenon of sports stars “parachuting in from abroad” and noted that 47 million yuan sum spent annually on Gu Ailing is roughly equivalent to Zhejiang’s annual 50 million yuan investment to expand preschool education to the province’s rural and underdeveloped areas. Another censored WeChat article, from social-commentary and social-satire WeChat account Senior Professor Ye, half-jokingly posed the question: “Does Eileen Gu Need to Hand Over Her Business Income to China? If So, How Much?” The author mentioned Gu’s many lucrative commercial endorsements, and cited examples of Chinese athletes such as Yao Ming, Li Na, and Zhu Ting, who paid the Chinese government a percentage of their income after choosing to turn professional and work outside of the Chinese system. Lastly, an article from WeChat account Narwhal Studio focused on the fact that, after the public backlash, the Beijing municipal government altered its original statement by deleting Gu and Zhu’s names and replacing them with the vague formulation “for the training and support of our city’s outstanding athletes.” If the city believed in these two athletes enough to give them 100 million yuan over the course of two years, the author asked, why is it so embarrassed about it now? The author also expressed concern that the incident might result in government authorities being less forthcoming about budget details in the future.

CDT Chinese editors have archived a selection of comments from Weibo users about Beijing’s financial support of Eileen Gu, widespread online censorship of the subject, and debate about the expense of pursuing Olympic gold via athletes who just “parachute in.” “As soon as winter rolls around, Beijing becomes ‘Beiping,’ Xi’an becomes ‘Chang’an,’ and Eileen Gu becomes Chinese,” wrote one online wag, referencing the names of two ancient Chinese capitals and hinting at Beijing’s high hopes for an Olympic gold from Gu in the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics to be held in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. The Weibo comments are translated below:

风雨飘零任平生：They spent nearly 100 million yuan on two people. Why are they so afraid the taxpayers will find out?

清风不问流年Ta：If the ‘beasts of burden’ found out about this, they might not be willing to keep ‘pulling the millstone’ for them.

@飞呀飞_777：(responding to an image posted by another user) Smart! A link would have been harmonized, but an image will last longer. Only you forgot to include a name with the image.

风雨飘零任平生：(replying to @飞呀飞_777) Some names won’t make it past the censors, so the only way to mention her name is by using the hashtag #Gu Ailing (#谷爱玲)!

全球证券市场：From Caixin: Eileen Gu’s training expenses are 47.07 million yuan. Based on the total amount of funds invested in the Olympics, that works out to an average cost of $100 million U.S. dollars per Olympic gold medal.

粉龙星人：I’m not against spending money on athletes, but I wish that taxpayers’ money would be spent on athletes within the Chinese system. Has she become a naturalized Chinese citizen? Is she part of the Chinese athletic system?

User 7739243963：I’m waiting for this post to be deleted.

北冥小咸鱼 ：I wonder if this post will be deleted.

论衡1998：I am not against spending money on athletes, but the money should come from the free market. No one objects to or complains about Messi’s high income.

思想部队：Eileen Gu has a budget of 47 million yuan—how will she spend it? No wonder she’s willing to represent China in competition. Damn … for that price, who among us wouldn’t be?

大鼻子虎鲸：I always figured that the cooperation deal with Eileen Gu’s team was that the Chinese side would resolve the citizenship issue to facilitate her being able to compete for China, and that Gu’s team would be responsible for her training expenses and winning the gold, thus enhancing her reputation and gaining endorsements—a win-win for both sides. But I never expected that the Chinese side was footing the bill for Gu’s training. Is it right for a local government to spend 47 million yuan annually in taxpayers’ money, in exchange for a gold medal of dubious global importance? How can her team be so stingy, when they’ve got so much money and fame on their side?

九九渝：Are gold medals still … that important? [Chinese]

One such essay, written by Ericaliga, a Chinese Weibo user living overseas, drew many thought-provoking comments from Weibo readers. The author begins by describing her mixed feelings about the ease with which American “TikTok refugees” are able to access Xiaohongshu, and the generally warm welcome extended to them on that platform—in marked contrast, the author notes, to the hostility and prejudice often encountered online and offline by Chinese citizens living in the U.S. or other Western countries. On the other hand, the author recognizes that the influx of Americans on Xiaohongshu benefits many Chinese citizens who have limited opportunities to live or work abroad, to study English, or to interact with people of different nationalities and ethnicities. A partial translation of Ericaliga’s essay appears below, followed by a compilation of Weibo comments about the essay.

The flood of TikTok refugees on Xiaohongshu makes many overseas Chinese uncomfortable, because we know very well what would happen if we were to do the same thing in reverse—if we were to show up on IG, say, and post a short video saying "Hello, Americans! I’m from Changsha. Ask me anything!" We know all too well what kind of response we’d get.

The likeliest response: no one would pay any attention to you.
But if someone did pay attention to you, it would probably take one of two forms:
If you’re a woman, it’s “Hey hottie you wanna taste some 🍆?”
If you’re a man, it’s “Go back to your country!”

Unlike the TikTok refugees on Xiaohongshu who can get loads of attention, interactions, and friendly comments just for speaking their own language, posting short videos devoid of content, and revealing their real identities online.

For overseas Chinese, the phenomenon feels like a slap in the face, like you’ve spent all day working so much harder than white people do, and then suddenly some white people show up and say, "Hey, look how easy our lives are!"

[…] How could I not be annoyed? How could I not feel frustrated?

[…] But in the midst of that frustration and annoyance, there was also a glimmer of self-awareness, something I’d like to share with other overseas Chinese who, like me, feel uncomfortable with the phenomenon [of Tiktok refugees flocking to Xiaohongshu].

All of the feelings and experiences I mentioned above come from a position of privilege—the privilege we have compared to most other Chinese people.

Among a population of 1.4 billion Chinese people, 1.17 billion have never been abroad. And for reasons of which we’re all aware, we’ve never had a robust online platform for real-time communication with overseas internet users. (Those platforms that did exist briefly are now dead and gone.)

Hatred between people arises on both sides from a mutual lack of communication. The only mainstream information channel that remains is the media, which invariably magnifies the other party’s flaws. Those who only speak one language do not see the real news, nor do they have a genuine understanding of the real world.

The influx of TikTok refugees, at least for now, is providing the majority of Chinese people—those who have never been abroad or communicated with actual foreigners—with a glimpse of a different world.

[…] As Chinese people living overseas, we will continue to face our own identity struggles. And while the irony of white people so breezily setting up Xiaohongshu accounts makes us undeniably uncomfortable, we must also recognize that for most of our compatriots, it is a great thing to be able to open a window onto the world, to have opportunities to communicate with others, and to have a place to practice their English. [Chinese]

CDT Chinese editors have compiled some of the many Weibo comments in response to Ericaliga’s post:

茹我所愿好好生活: If this were an essay, it would get perfect marks for critical thinking.

修仙鲤鱼: Sure, I’ve seen some posts about language hegemony when I was scrolling through. But I can’t deny that those [overseas] posts gave me a rare glimpse at other corners of the world. I saw posts about American policewomen, and about birds from different countries. I also think it’s a bit ironic that this time around, people so quickly became aware of the underlying power dynamics of language. But then why are they so insensitive to language that’s insulting to women, and why do they attack those who point out the problem?

走过漫长的深冬: I really like a comment I saw here on Hongshu: "There’s a crack in the invisible Berlin Wall, and Li Hua finally received an answer to his letters." [Li Hua, who adores English and often writes letters to his foreign pen pals, is a stock character from the English-language essay section of the gaokao, China’s national university entrance exam.]

行云不问: I think they’ll leave as quickly as they came. After all, Xiaohongshu isn’t TikTok.

Ericaliga: Right, the censorship department probably isn’t as efficient as usual because Chinese New Year’s coming up! ☺️ I’m guessing they’ll be back at work as soon as New Year is over.

wendy_lands: replying to @Ericaliga: It’s because they can’t afford to hire [enough] censors, so they rely on automated censorship. On all the major platforms, there’s always a lot of content in slang or coded language that manages to slip through.

居里壹壹: A lot of them might just be toadying up to white folks, but even more of them are genuinely curious about the real lives of ordinary folks “outside the wall.”

狗叠我想抽你鼙鼓: Yeah, I also just found out that there are a lot of ordinary Americans who have to work two jobs just to make ends meet.

我有的是力气和力气：I feel like it’s the "the wall" that creates these barriers and inequalities.

neverpark: I totally agree!

HA_Be-happy: I’m annoyed that TikTok refugees can sign up for accounts as easily as breathing, with nothing more than a short intro video and an overseas IP address, and just randomly post jokes and memes. Yet again, the space for Chinese content creators is shrinking. But it’s nice to see people using translation software to communicate in broken Chinese, and to see a Black lady who was praised for her beautiful voice and then quickly learned to sing a song in Hokkien dialect. And I think the “cat tax” is totally adorable. Last night at 1:00 a.m., I was still listening to refugees live-chatting in various languages ​​about better ways to use Chinese-language software. After TikTok was banned [sic], this strange trend caught everyone off guard. Although we know this friendly window won’t stay open long, at least it gives us a glimpse of what it would be like to live in a utopia where we’re all one big family.

卧槽什么鬼xx: We all know this isn’t going to end well, so let’s enjoy this “global-village moment” while we can.

碎碎念的饼饼: Well said! I’ve already seen some sexual harassment in response to posts by white women, but on the whole, I’m still really glad to see people on both ends of the internet being able to communicate in a friendly way and finally understand that we are all just human!

明天就搬去科孚岛_: After being “walled off” for so many years, suddenly we’re able to see people of all different skin colors sharing the same social media platform. Most are just curious and want to gawk at other people’s lives. This kind of curiosity is actually quite sad. Shouldn’t everyone be entitled to the same right of access?

Cleo阿直: Sometimes I’m really shocked by certain Chinese people’s naive sense of “collective honor.” Browsing the comment sections of a few TikTok refugees who asked if this platform is queer-friendly, I saw that the top comments basically said it was quite welcoming: "Most people here are queer-friendly," "Just be careful not to be too direct,” and "You can also type in the ‘le’ tag …” Omg, as if “le” weren’t already a product of being banned so much that it shrunk down from lesbian→les→le, but now it’s become some sort of queer-friendly signpost. Everyone’s forgotten that history, and now it’s just this tiny, discordant note. It’s like when guests visit your home and you forget about the pain of being beaten by your parents every day. At times like these, I sigh and think, “Yeah, Chinese people are the best.”

奈liang良: It makes me miserable that anyone would even type the words “Be careful not to be too direct.”

蛋水混合物: Actually, I think the saddest thing about those comments is that some aren’t pretending—that’s really what they think. Internalized homophobia has led them to truly believe that just because it’s not illegal to be queer here, it’s a welcoming environment.

喜欢卡西利亚斯是一种人生态度: I think some of those comments are just ridiculous. It’s like, “Oh, the foreigners are here now, so we’d better whitewash the bad stuff and pretend to be welcoming.”

真把自己睡进坟场了: We’re awfully good at self-censorship. [Chinese]

[Wang’s girlfriend] Jia Jia first raised the alert in a social media post saying Wang had gone missing. The post said that after Wang was told they weren’t staying in Bangkok, he shared his location with her and they kept texting on WeChat until they lost contact near the border. Jia Jia contacted the Shanghai police and Chinese consular offices in Thailand, before travelling to Thailand herself. Her posts were shared by Chinese celebrities, and a related hashtag saw more than half a billion engagements on Weibo.

[…] In a video filmed on his flight home, published by Chinese media, Wang said he’d been to Thailand in 2018 for work and therefore thought this latest invitation was a normal shoot. He described being sent across the border into Myanmar, and pushed into a car by armed men. He was taken to a building where at least 50 others were also being held, he said, and they were all forced to have their heads shaved and undergo training for working scams.

[…] No arrests have been announced in relation to Wang’s disappearance. Thai and Chinese officials are reportedly working together to coordinate searches for other missing citizens.

[…] On Thursday last week, reports emerged of two other Chinese nationals – male model Yang Zeqi, and 21-year-old woman Wu Jiaqi – who had gone missing in similar circumstances. Yang flew to Bangkok on 20 December for a purported film audition, but was also driven to the border. In his last known contact, Yang told his mother in a video call he was safe, but had visible injuries to his eyes, according to Chinese media. The whereabouts and welfare of Wu are unknown. Thai police are investigating both cases. [Source]

On Weibo, netizens rushed to the profile of actor/director/producer Wu Jing to plead that he rescue the remaining Chinese victims held in Myanmar’s scam centers. Wu directed and starred as the protagonist of the Wolf Warrior film series, which portrayed daring evacuations of Chinese citizens from dangerous conflict zones abroad and promoted the idea that a strong Chinese state will always save its citizens in need. Some netizens joked that he should quickly produce “Wolf Warrior 3: Escape from Myawaddy” (an infamous scam compound on the Burmese-Thai border). Since Wu did not reply, netizens also bombarded his wife’s Weibo account.

Weibo user @稀薄20 created an initiative titled "Stars Come Home Plan" to document information related to victims trapped in Myanmar. By Saturday, it had collected information on more than 1,500 victims who had disappeared between 2019 and January of this year. Those who contributed to the initiative described how their friends and relatives were lured abroad with high-paying job offers and other false promises, then kidnapped and violently prevented from escaping. CDT Chinese editors compiled some reactions to the initiative from Weibo users:

韭五55: Please approve [my entry]. I need to fill in my brother’s information. His name is Xiaowu. He landed in Thailand on October 29, and I lost contact with him on October 31.

奇怪的它它它: Wu Jing must be under a lot of pressure.

星若HE: This is no longer just a scam, it’s terrorism!!!

青春红豆泡脚: Hello, I need to register. My younger brother was scammed in Myawaddy. My old man has terminal cancer and his days are numbered. I am pretty worried. Thank you. [Chinese]

Some netizens turned their anger toward Chinese authorities for not doing enough to bring fraudsters to justice. One WeChat post outlining various reasons for the continuation of large-scale scam operations in places like Myanmar cited the existence of loopholes in telecommunications and financial management, which allow foreign scam operations to use money laundered in RMB and tens of thousands of Chinese SIM cards while bypassing real-name registration rules. In another WeChat post, popular science commentator Xiang Dongliang questioned the efficacy of those rules, and argued that fraudsters would not be able to maintain their criminal operations without the collusion of certain “traitors” within the Chinese telecom, banking, and online media sectors:

Are these traitors impossible to catch, or do we not want to catch them?

[…] In order to cooperate with the fight against telecom fraud, the public has sacrificed much of its right to privacy and endured many inconveniences. But have our esteemed telecom operators, banking systems, and the internet platforms that control so much of our personal information truly put forth an equal and reciprocal effort?

Judging from the results, I personally find it very hard to believe that they made much of an effort. [Chinese]

The latest issue of Global China Pulse highlights various aspects of the scam industry in Southeast Asia. One piece focuses on the failure of properly identifying and supporting victims trapped in scam compounds, and another amplifies the voices of over a dozen victims. At the press conference following his rescue last week, actor Wang Xing complied with the orders of a Thai official by stating, “Thailand is safe, and I will come back again.” But as the South China Morning Post reported, the search term “How do I cancel my Thailand trip?” soon yielded over 380,000 posts on Xiaohongshu.

The employment situation was stable overall. The surveyed national urban unemployment rate for November was 5%, holding steady from the previous month at a lower level than earlier in the year. The surveyed unemployment rate of migrant workers with rural household registration was 4.4%, down 0.3% from the previous month, and the youth unemployment rate also fell.

“Major economic indicators showed a significant rebound during the fourth quarter, public confidence has been effectively boosted, and there’s a striking increase in positive changes. Looking at the year overall, the principal targets for economic and social development are on track for success.” [Chinese]

When state broadcaster CCTV shared the good news on Weibo, a skeptical backlash led it to hide most of the comments. Several of the handful still visible consisted only of the two characters “关注” (guānzhù, or "Following"). CDT Chinese editors selected comments from elsewhere on Weibo and X on the economic data and the stifling of public reactions:

星云_StarC1oud: [quoting the notice at the top of the comments section] “The following comments were selected by the author”

我是穿越来的吗: Tell me which part of that headline is true! Don’t exaggerate!

boboo2k16: Everything’s always excellent, never just pretty good.

Mr·MAJ: What a shambles.

leryex: Wages down, achievements zero.

两三片雪山前: A thousand-plus comments, and only single digits visible. So stable!

Harumi四号机: Open the comments, let us have a go at singing its praises, too.

一谦四益Shawn: If the economy’s that good, they should raise interest rates.

傻乎乎真好玩: A stirring ode to a golden age.

芋雨鱼玉的郁了: The whole country is filled with an air of optimism. [From a widely mocked People’s Daily Online headline in February, which soon became a sensitive term.]

杏杳杏: If I believe you, will you guarantee my salary won’t be cut next year?

山色树影斑驳: Production down, demand down, employment feeble, markets waning, quality excrement.

SILLIN: Quick, raise interest rates to stop the economy overheating.

好想吃碗仔翅: In a place this great, there’ll definitely be a lot of people marrying and having at least two children. [A reference to official efforts to reverse population decline by encouraging marriage and childrearing.]

笨狗社会生存指南: A masterclass in shamelessness.

Stunninged: This unemployed graduate wants to downvote, but can’t find the button.

Wuyu_666666: Good luck with the collapse. [Chinese]

At 5:00 p.m. on December 7, 2022, China lifted its lockdown.
The virus simply “disappeared,” and with it, the “zero-COVID” policy.
Now two years have passed, and it all feels like a dream.
[…] Hopefully such tragedies never happen again… but one can only hope. [Chinese]

In the comment section under the original article, a number of people posted remembrances of the White Paper Movement, the late 2022 anti-lockdown protests that took place in cities across China. The protests, which at times veered into anti-Xi Jinping demonstrations, are extremely politically sensitive. The Chinese government blamed “hostile [foreign] forces” for instigating the protests, a charge protesters scoffed at. Dozens of protesters were arrested, with many reporting mistreatment in police custody. Positive remembrances of the protests are often censored on WeChat. In February 2024, Chen Pinlin, a documentarian who released a film about the protests on Youtube, was arrested by Shanghai police and charged with “picking quarrels and provoking troubles,” a "pocket crime" often used to silence dissent.

CDT has translated a selection of the WeChat comments that touched on the protests:

胸口碎大石：If those protesters hadn’t taken to the streets, there’s no telling whether we would’ve “opened up” that soon.
王刚：I hope you keep on writing—and that you remind us not to forget the trials we’ve endured! Thank you.
一叶飘红：Since the end of COVID, university campuses have still not reopened to the public.
流动酒席厨帮哥：If not for those brave college students, the lockdowns would have gone on interminably. [Chinese]

李庄：One after another. How can we solve this? It calls for reflection. @JintangPeople’sProcuratorate, @JintangPeople’sCourt, @GuangdongProvincialHighPeople’sCourt, @ChengduMunicipalIntermediatePeople’sCourt, @XingtaiIntermediatePeople’sCourt, @XingtaiXinduDistrictCourt, @JinanMunicipalPeople’sProcuratorate, @LixiaProcuratorate

亿苇杭之：For the past few years we’ve mocked “Imperialist America” every day … and now?

老汉彭于晏：In America the free, every day’s a shooting spree.

炸号的尾鱼读者：I can’t remember where I read this but, “Society has become a pressure cooker, one spark and it will explode.”

游泳池里喝咖啡：Reflection? In your dreams.

月下叟11：How can you say there’s been no reflection? Haven’t you noticed all those new surveillance cameras? Or all those added police patrols?

二郎神VS悟空：It happens extremely infrequently, seeing as there are over one billion people.

九运A：According to netizens, there have been 20 incidents this year. From 2018-2023, there were only between four and six per year, which means the frequency of these events has increased by four or five times. I’m afraid we can’t just shrug these off as isolated incidents.

木可南只有一个：Social strife has intensified, and there’s no release valve for all that pent-up resentment.

月朗风清五柳庄：Government spokespeople always claim these are just isolated incidents. 

树格拉底：The “lords” stay safe, as always.

用户7845796031：Instead of solving problems, they get rid of the people [who point them out]! Just look at those poor depositors at Henan’s rural banks: they were given “red health codes” [a zero COVID–era restriction that forced the bearer into lockdown], beaten up, and even locked away. It’s been 800 days  and they still haven’t been allowed to withdraw a single penny.

口音很重吗：Ordinary people just trying to get by have become isolated, lonely islands, wracked with anxiety and despair. As our voices are silenced and the root causes of problems ignored, all we’re left with are these “cold statistics” [death tolls] in the news.

乾隆开挖机：The killer worked 16 hours a day in a factory and they owed him back wages, so he took his revenge on society. His last will and testament is so “sensitive” you’re not even allowed to read it.

少嘴臭我：When the economy’s bad, social conflict surfaces. When the economy’s good, everything’s fine. Public safety doesn’t come from “strike hard” campaigns.

云端的树懒：The angry and downtrodden turn their knives on those even weaker. [Chinese]

The Jiangsu stabbing, like the Zhuhai ramming attack, was attributed to the economic woes of the attacker by terse police statements. The motive of the Hunan attacker remains unclear. Steven Tsang, head of the SOAS China Institute in London, told The Financial Times: “The thing that seems to stand out is that people are resorting to such mass violence because they seem to feel that they don’t have much to lose.” 

Just as after the Zhuhai massacre, authorities have studiously censored footage of the Jiangsu attacks and suppressed public mourning for the victims. Discussion of the elementary school ramming attack in Hunan has also been strictly censored. Hashtags reading “Crash at a school entrance in Hunan Changde” were censored and replaced with a hashtag used by official media that read, “Changde crash perpetrator arrested.” Authorities have also strictly censored serious reflections on the attacks. At Reuters, Brenda Goh reported on the public reactions to the attack, as well as official efforts to suppress them:

Qu Weiguo, a Fudan University professor, said the recent cases of “indiscriminate revenge against society” in China had some common features: disadvantaged suspects, many with mental health issues, who believed that they had been treated unfairly and who felt they had no other way to be heard.

“It is important to establish a social safety net and a psychological counseling mechanism, but in order to minimize such cases, the most effective way is to open public channels that can monitor and expose the use of power,” Qu posted on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.

The short essay had been removed by the censors by Sunday afternoon. [Source]

At the Wall Street Journal, Yoko Kubota interviewed CDT’s Eric Liu on the censorship that has accompanied the attacks: 

“In China, one of the original motives for tight controls on the internet is to clamp down on anyone voicing doubts about the Chinese government’s ability to govern,” said Eric Liu, an analyst at China Digital Times, a website tracking Chinese censorship.

“No matter what happens, only the official narrative is allowed to be discussed, otherwise it will be taken down,” said Liu, a former censor for Weibo, China’s X-like platform.

[…] In recent weeks, the Communist Party’s censors have been sending reporting guidance on such attacks to government-run media, requiring their reporting to align with police statements, people familiar with the matter said.

“The information of the perpetrators that hasn’t been disclosed by the authorities, such as financial situation and marital status, shouldn’t be reported to speculate on their intention, or to relate to other incidents or broader social issues,” according to an official instruction seen by The Wall Street Journal. [Source]

The spate of killings has drawn the attention of China’s top leadership. After the Zhuhai attack, Xi Jinping issued a rare directive ordering local authorities to prevent conflicts from escalating before they explode. After this morning’s ramming attack in Hunan, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate held a meeting after which it promised to “strictly and swiftly punish major vicious crimes,” and then ordered procuratorates to study the spirit of Xi Jinping’s instructions on the Zhuhai attack. 

The suspect in the attack, a 44-year-old Chinese man, has been taken into custody by police. Although the man’s motives remain unclear, many observers suspect that anti-Japanese hatred may have been to blame. The stabbing occurred on September 18, the anniversary of the 1931 “Mukden Incident” that served as a pretext for the Japanese Imperial Army’s invasion of Manchuria. Every year, the date is marked by an uptick in anti-Japanese rhetoric on Chinese television, in school classrooms, and in various state-media outlets.

CDT is publishing a series of posts about online Chinese reactions to anti-Japanese xenophobia and violence. The first post explored the initial public outcry following the stabbing of the boy in Shenzhen, and featured translations of two essays on the topic. This second post features translated netizen comments from Weibo, and selected excerpts from four now-censored articles and essays.

CDT editors have collected and translated some of the comments from Weibo users about the attack:

ichbinX1m1ng: This is the result of an educational system that “teaches hatred.” It’s truly shameful.

runner6: Put yourself in their shoes and just imagine what the reaction in China would be if one of our elementary school students going to school in Japan were stabbed to death by a Japanese person. It seems like many people care more about political posturing, nationality, history, and hatred than they do about human life. This shows that we’re still a long way from being civilized.

所念皆星河2019: What did that little boy ever do wrong? This is what comes of a lifetime of “patriotic” education—it produces cowards who are only capable of preying on the weak.

糖醋_小排_: Can we still proclaim to the world that we’re a peace-loving country?

晓磊的基金生活: If there had been some soul-searching after the Suzhou stabbing, things might not have come to this … There are many things we need to reflect on, particularly how the current public opinion climate has given rise to incidents like this. Who should take the blame?

Peng笔生辉: Even Ms. Hu Youping’s bravery and sacrifice are not enough to halt the violence of these populist dregs of society. As Lu Xun wrote: “When a man of courage is outraged, he draws his sword against an oppressor stronger than he. When a coward is outraged, he draws his sword against a man weaker than he. Among a race of hopeless cowards, there must be ‘heroes’ who specialize in browbeating children.” What cowards!

T半颗心T: Where’s the difference between killing an innocent Japanese child and [wartime] Japanese militarism and fascism? Some people and “big-V” online influencers point to “national sentiment” as an excuse, but we Chinese people of conscience aren’t beasts and would never take our anger out on a child. [Chinese]

CDT has also compiled some of the best excerpts from among the outpouring of soul-searching articles and essays on WeChat about the Shenzhen attack. All of the four articles referenced below have been deleted by platform censors.

From a censored article by WeChat account Narwhal Workshop, criticizing the vague initial coverage and ambiguously worded police report:

This “spiral of incitement” will in no way benefit China’s socioeconomic development. Some of my friends believe that these frequent attacks on Japanese children will only accelerate the withdrawal of Japanese companies from China, which seems a reasonable inference. When such tragedies occur, ambiguity only makes things worse.

From a censored article by WeChat account Da Leng, discussing how the stabbing has impacted Shenzhen’s reputation as one of China’s most tolerant, diverse, and open cities:

How Shenzhen responds to this tragic, shameful, and extreme incident will show whether this city—whose fortunes are rooted in China’s “reform and opening”—is still willing to continue that process of opening up, and whether it still values human life, dignity, and freedom.

From a censored article by WeChat account Shenzhen Visitor, echoing the apologies from many Shenzhen residents who left flowers at the school or condolences online:

I want to tell that Japanese boy that we are sorry.

From a censored article by the tech-focused WeChat account Planetary Business Review, reflecting on Shenzhen’s history as a bastion of reform and opening, with Japanese companies being some of the city’s earliest investors:

After the incident, some reporters took photos of the crime scene outside the school walls. Some of the paving stones on the sidewalk were noticeably pale, bleached white from repeated washing [to clean off the bloodstains].

There was no hiding how bad things had become. “China has made a habit of plumbing new depths in recent years, but this does seem to be a new low,” Mark Dreyer told Nikkei Asia, adding, “Both the scale of the defeat and that it was against its historical rival Japan makes this a particularly galling result.” Former China captain Fan Zhiyi said, “If it weren’t far from here, I would have really jumped into the Huangpu river,” adding, “We can accept that you lose to Japan, but it’s really bad to let the opponents score so easily.” Even Global Times included this damning quote in its report on the match: “Li Boqing, a traditional storyteller, offered a pointed remark: ‘If we had forfeited the match and lost 0-3 by default, we could have saved travel expenses and invested in youth training instead, while also preserving a better goal difference. In World Cup qualifiers, sometimes a single goal difference can determine whether a team advances.’” Chris Lau from CNN shared several netizen comments lamenting the Chinese team’s poor performance: 

“This is humiliating,” one China fan wrote on social media platform Weibo, where the defeat has become a trending topic, garnering more than 460 million views by Friday morning.

[…] “This is the most shameful day for Chinese football,” another fan wrote on Weibo after the defeat, calling it “a day that will always sting Chinese fans” and “a pain that can never be erased.”

Another angry fan called for the team to be dismissed, writing: “It’s hopeless… It should be abandoned!” [Source]

CCTV refused to broadcast the match against Japan, which netizens took as a sign that even state media anticipated that the Chinese team would take a beating. CDT Chinese provided a roundup of the online reactions to the match, including veiled references to censorship and appreciation that criticism of China was nonetheless permitted in at least the domain of football:

The national team’s crushing defeat triggered heated debate on social media. The Weibo hashtag “China 0-7 Japan” trended, reaching 600 million views. Comment sections were awash in netizen mockery: “I finally understand why CCTV didn’t broadcast it,” “Everyone figured they’d lose but didn’t think they’d lose so badly,” and “90 minutes of play and we still don’t know what the Japanese goalkeeper looks like.”

Some netizens also took solace in the fact that the national team remains a fair target for criticism: “The Chinese men’s football team is the only thing with the word ‘China’ in it that you can viciously criticize without being ripped for it,” and “At least the team can still go abroad, the matches aren’t fixed, and we can still complain about them.”

While people were scrambling to exercise their “limited right to free speech” through criticizing the team, others pointed out a sad truth: it’s only in places that allow live broadcasts that we’re able to see this huge gap [between the success of the Chinese and Japanese football systems]. So what do you think about “how much does China lose to Japan in mixed cooking oil, healthcare, education, the funeral industry, food safety, official integrity, social security, retirement care, justice, and people’s livelihoods?” [Chinese]

Ahead of China’s match against Saudi Arabia, South China Morning Post’s Lars Hamer reported, Weibo was awash with comments mocking the Chinese team. Users wrote, “The national football team have lost this match because of the rain. Let’s think of the reason first,” and “I think even if the opposition [had only] a goalkeeper, the national team still would not score.” The People’s Daily published an article criticizing the coach, writing: “China’s head coach Ivankovic’s on-the-spot decision-making is to blame. A useless general will waste three armies.” Netizens on Weibo and Twitter “maliciously” forwarded the article and insinuated that this criticism could apply to Xi Jinping, the “general” who has pointed the way on Chinese football. Others also criticized the People’s Daily for using the coach as a scapegoat for the structural issues that also account for China’s footballing failures:

北境开出租: Which general are you talking about?

桌上的绿植: This header could be used anywhere.

风魔三叔: Let’s not talk about the structural issues at all.

littlezhix1: An incompetent general has wasted an entire army. Who is this referring to?

wnda976470: Winnie is to blame for pointing in the wrong direction.

KofReadPoetry: Whoever points out the direction for Chinese football should stand up and take responsibility. [Chinese]

Meanwhile, corruption issues within China’s footballing world continue to surface. In August, Xinhua announced that the former vice president of the Chinese Football Association has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. CCTV also stated that the former director of the competition department at the Chinese Football Association, Huang Song, was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for taking bribes, and a former executive committee member of the football association, Gu Jianming, was sentenced to six years imprisonment for bribery. This week, the Associated Press reported, China’s Football Association banned 34 people for life after the latest corruption investigation.

一夜之秋-葵：This sort of live broadcast is unsuitable for CCTV, because they can’t control every detail. 

囧迪啃西瓜：The CCTV commentary is unworthy of such an open and diverse opening ceremony. 

哈博小镜：In the future it’ll be on tape delay, with propaganda filler waiting on stand-by.

雨籁44：Even though I’m not personally a fan of these “artistic” scenes, it’s fucking idiotic that those commentators at CCTV just fell silent. That type of thing is for the people to debate amongst ourselves. For a mainstream outlet to be rendered speechless by the presence of a minority group is a glaringly obvious sign of their disapproval. 

钰珏_佛狱恶女：Ha, I feel like the commentators and director of the CCTV-5 broadcast were scared silent on that one. 

一方城堡_喀纳斯：Broadcasting is tough. Last Olympics, they were silent because they couldn’t understand what was going on. This time they understood, but were too afraid to speak. 

它了了：This is what comes of an unrehearsed broadcast. CCTV didn’t know which parts to cut out.

一根芦苇的意志：LGBT, feminism, anti-discrimination … that’s a vastly different culture from ours, and the Chinese internet doesn’t know what to make of it. 

消失的脑细胞阿巴巴：That scene should’ve been cut—it’s illegal in China. 

首都一橘：If it weren’t part of the Paris Olympics, this never would have been shown on [Chinese] TV. [Chinese]

A hashtag pointing out CCTV’s silence was censored by Weibo. Some Chinese nationalists attempted to defend the silence by claiming that other nations’ broadcasts also fell silent. These claims were rebutted by netizens in Japan, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom—as revealed by Weibo’s IP-location reveal feature—who reported that broadcasts in their countries had not fallen silent. Other aspects of the ceremony were also considered “sensitive” in China. The pre-recorded performance by Lady Gaga, who has 24 tattoos, could be said to be doubly sensitive: the singer has been banned in China since meeting the Dalai Lama in 2021, and Chinese television stations are forbidden from featuring “actors with tattoos.” 

Foreign media depicting LGBTQ+ themes is often censored in China. The 2022 release of the American sitcom “Friends” on Chinese streaming platforms was marred by widespread online complaints that scenes featuring LGBTQ+ content had been cut. Some content related to heterosexual sex was also altered or edited out: for example, a reference to “multiple orgasms” was changed to a quip about women “having endless gossip.” In 2019, Chinese censors likewise removed all references to Queen frontman Freddy Mercury’s sexual orientation and AIDS-related death from the biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” (Earlier this year, Weibo censors did tolerate quiet but spirited celebrations of Taiwanese drag queen Nymphia Wind’s victory in the American reality television show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”) 

The removal of foreign media mirrors a domestic crackdown on queerness, which has sometimes been euphemized as a “westernized lifestyle.” In 2023, the landmark Beijing LGBT Center closed its doors with little explanation beyond “force majeure.” It was but one of many LGBT centers to close over the past few years. State pressure on LGBT institutions may not comport with Chinese public opinion, which is notoriously difficult (but not impossible) to measure. A recent survey by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that 53% of Chinese respondents said that they support the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, with 98% agreeing or somewhat agreeing that LGBTQ students should be protected from bullying. 

Despite state-imposed discrimination, some LGBTQ+ couples are proudly raising children in China, according to reporting from Sue-lin Wong and Jason Lee for Reuters: 

People are mostly curious about their unconventional family, said [An Hui, who shares triplets conceived through a human egg donor and a surrogate mother with his partner,] adding that it was not always the case in China where gay couples have long battled conservative Confucian values.

“I’m lucky because I was born in China during a period of rapid change. Today’s society is far more tolerant,” the investment manager told Reuters at his office in Shenzhen’s financial district.

[…] “The best word to describe the attitude of the Chinese government is ‘ignore’,” said Peng.

“It’s hard to gauge their exact attitude. They don’t outright object to the LGBT community because that would really go against international attitudes on this issue,” Peng added. [Source]

离离幺幺77qiqi：Here’s a quick translation: “gradually” means “boiling frogs.” 

璃梦之兔：Trying to desensitize us, huh? 

三眼仔想睡觉：Sure, why not?. Sixty-five is the perfect age for applying one’s talents and making a mark on the world. 

香芹又青了：The post-90’s generation has been well and truly screwed. No allocated jobs. No allocated housing. Not to mention a three-child policy in a country with over 1.4 billion people. College graduates can’t find work. Only a tiny fraction of people manage to pass the civil service exam. It’s a terrible time to extend the retirement age to 65 years old. Given their physical condition, many of the post-90’s generation won’t make it to 65. 

L520missing：It’s uncertain whether we’ll even live to 60. 

行易灿烂：I love my country, but does my country truly love me?

贪睡大宝贝：Look on the bright side: those who never marry or have children won’t have to worry about dying at home alone without anyone noticing—at least their employer will realize they’ve gone missing. 

觉世：And yet you still ask why we don’t want to get married or have kids! 

咋咋Liu：Aren’t people being fired by tech companies at 35 [for being “too old”]? Tell me—what are we supposed to do for the remaining 30 years of our lives? 

日本大臣：When I was born, you complained I was one child too many. When I had one child, you complained I should have had more. When I tried to find a job, you complained I was too old. When I tried to retire, you said I was too young. —With sincere thanks from all of us 65-year-olds hobbling to work on our canes

西瓜脆脆鲨-：Other than “iron rice bowls” [state-owned industries], who keeps workers on until they’re 65? This is nuts. 

眠眠眠猫：Got it. Get “optimized” at 35. Hibernate 30 years without eating, drinking, or spending. Turn 65, then scrape by on your pension until you die. 

小微子vvv：Shouldn’t they ask the public what it thinks about such a big change? Or maybe put it to a vote?

Lingeron_z：Have you asked the public to weigh in? “Serve the people” is a joke of cosmic proportions. [Chinese]

Although China’s retirement age is relatively low, changes to it and other benefits for the elderly are highly contentious. Last year, municipal efforts to reform medical insurance policies in Wuhan, Dalian, and Guangzhou inspired protests by senior citizens that were nicknamed the “White Hair Movement” in reference to the youth-dominated “White Paper Movement” in 2022. Earlier this year, mass ridicule greeted a suggestion from a former Party leader that those between the ages of 60-70 be reclassified as “the youthful elderly” and continue working. The state, though, is forging through these concerns. A piece on the reforms suggested by the Third Plenum published by the Party-run tabloid Global Times hailed “the development of the ‘silver-hair economy’ and supporting the creation of diverse jobs tailored to elderly people.”

龙标遥寄：Leisure activities are for the rich. Nobody here’s got any money, so nobody here cares.

索伦和肖恩的外公：Times are tough. Who’s got time to pay attention to anything besides their own survival?

xiaofaye_62500：National pride can’t fill your belly.

九月飞花哟：Where’s a job for my son? That’s what I care about.

阿锋111：The economy’s bad, and they can’t even guarantee food safety. Who cares about stuff like [the Olympics]?

事如春meng：All that money and they still don’t invest in food safety.

试着跟它们讲讲理：If we win 100 gold medals, will you give me back my moped? I’ve still got to work as a courier. [Chinese]

Much netizen ire focused on the news that the Chinese delegation will be bringing its own air conditioning units to Paris. In an effort to make the games more environmentally friendly, Paris Olympic organizers did not install air conditioning units in the Olympic Village. A number of countries—including the United States—have rebelled against the measure, citing concerns about how excessive heat might affect their team members’ sleep quality and athletic performances. Many on Weibo remain unconvinced that it is necessary. “At Paris’ current temperature, your parents would curse you out for turning on the AC if it was China,” one commentator said. Others, referencing Xi Jinping’s call for Chinese youth to “eat bitterness,” sarcastically asked, “Where’s all the rhetoric about the virtues of hard work and enduring hardship now?”

State broadcaster CCTV itself became a target of mockery over the size of the reporting team— numbering over 2,000 journalists—that it is sending to Paris. “Why is CCTV sending so many reporters?” asked one Weibo user. “Are they trying to scare the French silly?” “There will be more journalists than athletes,” pointed out another. One Weibo comment simply dismissed CCTV as irrelevant: “I haven’t watched CCTV in 32 years.” 

But perhaps the greatest pall hanging over China’s Olympic team is an alleged doping scandal that has implicated its top swimmers. In April, The New York Times reported that 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for the same performance enhancing drug, trimetazidine, in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics, which were held in 2021. The positive tests were not disclosed at the time. No swimmers were punished by the World Anti-Doping Agency, World Aquatics, or China’s domestic anti-doping body or swimming regulator. The FBI and the U.S. Justice Department are now investigating the positive tests and allegations of a cover-up. Eleven of the swimmers who tested positive are competing in this year’s Olympics. Previous doping allegations against Chinese athletes have been used to fuel nationalist pride. In 2012, after gold-medalist swimmer Ye Shiwen was accused of doping, China’s official media blamed it on “Western pettiness” and anti-Chinese bias. When famed Olympic swimmer Sun Yang was accused of doping in 2018, state media ran extensive critical coverage of the investigation and social media platforms allowed users to post hundreds of thousands of comments supportive of Sun. (After his eight-year ban in 2020, however, censors issued a directive sharply curtailing coverage.) As David Pierson of The New York Times reported, this time around, Chinese censors are enforcing a much stricter ban on discussion of the doping allegations: 

Even as the issue is being debated widely abroad, including in Congress last week, Chinese domestic media coverage has been limited to a handful of terse official statements. Censors have meticulously scrubbed and limited online discussions of the dispute — a level of censorship experts say is rare outside the most politically sensitive topics.

[…] “There is basically zero media coverage of this in China, which is very different from before when other Chinese athletes have been accused of doping,” said Haozhou Pu, an associate professor at the University of Dayton who studies sports in China.

[…] Xiao Qiang, an expert on Chinese censorship at the University of California, Berkeley, said that the level of censorship around the current dispute over the 23 swimmers is similar to what would be applied to discussions around far more sensitive subjects. Such topics include the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters, and elections in Taiwan, the de facto independent island democracy claimed by Beijing, Mr. Xiao said.

He noted that this also appeared to be the first time censors have imposed a blanket ban on online comments criticizing athletes accused of doping. Before, comments expressing disapproval of athletes sometimes slipped through the cracks, such as with Mr. Sun, a polarizing figure whom some Chinese internet users considered arrogant and deserving of his subsequent ban for doping. [Source]

Some bloggers have drawn oblique connections between the doping scandal and China’s ongoing food scandal. Early this month, a bombshell exposé from the Party-run outlet Beijing News revealed that fuel tanker-trunks had been used to transport cooking oil without being washed or sterilized between transports. The news has snowballed into China’s largest food safety scandal since the 2008 tainted milk and baby-formula scandal. The food safety scandal became conflated with the doping scandal when a chef for the Chinese Olympic ping-pong team revealed that the athletes eat only pork flown in from special state-run farms that do not use “lean-meat powder,” common slang for a class of growth stimulants for pigs that can also double as performance enhancing drugs for humans. The WeChat blog “Planetary Business Review” (星球商业评论, xīngqiú shāngyè pínglùn) expressed the hope that they, too, might have the opportunity to eat food unadulterated by contaminants:

A few days ago, the ping-pong team traveled to Chengdu for a group training session before the Olympics. A chef in charge of the athletes’ meals said that all of their pork is flown in from elsewhere “because you can’t eat the local pork.”

Why can’t they eat pork from Chengdu, the birthplace of twice-cooked pork, Dongpo pork [Ed. note: it is actually from Jiangsu], and the Chenghua pig? The chef never explained, but the news that Chengdu pork cannot be consumed has received considerable media attention. 

Everyone knows that the “relevant organs” have issued a ban on feeding “lean-meat powder” to pigs. It is also a banned substance that the World Anti-Doping Agency makes a point of screening for. Years back, news broke that China’s General Administration of Sport set up its own network of meat providers. The pork from those specialty farms costs 20 yuan more per pound than the usual market price.

There’s nothing left to say, beyond this: I, too, want to eat that pork. [Chinese]

The attack followed June’s non-fatal stabbings of four American teachers in a park in Jilin province, and a knife attack in May at a hospital in Yunnan province that left two people dead and 21 injured. Initial online reactions to the Suzhou stabbings were mixed, with many commentators and ordinary netizens expressing shock at the attack and sympathy for the victims, while some ultra-nationalist social media accounts used the incident to spread anti-Japanese hate-speech and baseless conspiracy theories about Japanese “spy-training” schools. Despite a long-standing tolerance of such xenophobic content, Chinese social media giants Tencent, Netease, Weibo, Douyin, and others announced a belated crackdown on extreme nationalism and hate-speech online, deleting hundreds of anti-Japanese posts and banning some ultranationalist accounts.

In China and Japan, there were numerous tributes to Hu Youping’s heroism: the Japanese embassy in Beijing lowered its flag to half-mast and posted condolence messages on Weibo and X; Tianjin Radio and Television Tower had a light display in Hu’s honor; citizens left bouquets of flowers at the site of the attack; and the city of Suzhou awarded Hu the posthumous title of “Role Model of Righteousness and Courage.” Popular Chinese news outlets Southern Weekend and Phoenix News ran profiles of Hu, featuring photos from her social media accounts and providing more detail about her life, work, interests, and personal history. In a previously cited post, Foreign Policy’s James Palmer noted that Hu’s personal story and journey—in so many ways emblematic of the Chinese working class as a whole—seem to have a moral gravitas that serves as a counterweight to expressions of xenophobic nationalism: “She has become a hero online, celebrated by both the public and the government. The moral effect of her story has been genuinely powerful in quelling nationalist sentiment.”

CDT editors have archived numerous recent articles and essays about the Suzhou stabbings and the need to curb xenophobic anti-Japanese online content, as well as several compilation posts of netizen comments praising Hu Youping for her bravery and sacrifice. The following are some translated comments from Weibo users, posted in the week after the attack:

心若无著何时著: In protecting the lives of innocent children, she also upheld the dignity of the Chinese people.

井姐闲置: Japan has lowered its flags to half-mast—a sign of the greatest respect for Ms. Hu Youping. May she rest in peace!

穿袈裟的CEOzjh: Ms. Hu’s righteous act represents the brave and kind-hearted majority of the Chinese people.

马塞洛里: May Ms. Hu rest in peace, may China and Japan maintain peace and friendship, and may violent thugs be severely punished!

犀地的世界: Remembering history does not mean perpetuating hatred. This is something that citizens of both countries would do well to remember. On the path to maturity and self-confidence, China must not continue to nurture old hatreds. We must also show the Japanese people that when it comes to human life and safety, most ordinary Chinese and Japanese citizens share common values—values which cannot be destroyed by a small minority of extreme nationalists. 

不哭不哭的男子汉: Respect for life transcends national boundaries. [Chinese]

In late June, many visitors to Li Wenliang’s Wailing Wall—the comment section below COVID whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang’s final Weibo post—also offered tributes to Hu Youping. Some contrasted her fundamental decency and humanity with xenophobic online vitriol both before and after the Suzhou attack:

乌拉Amen: Some people cheer for the slaughter of women and children, while others use their own flesh and blood to block the sharpened blade. It seems like everything is different, and yet nothing has changed.

Amyhongwei: Hello, Dr. Li. Has anyone told you yet about Ms. Hu Youping’s brave deeds? She has gone to your world now. Like you, she is an outstanding “ordinary” person. Will you have the chance to meet her? With nothing more than her ordinary flesh and blood, she has touched the hearts of countless people. Kind people were moved to shed tears of compassion for her, just like we did for you, the night you left us.

Dr_Efan: I went to the bus stop today to offer flowers to Ms. Hu. I hope you’re both doing well over there. You are heroes.

盛装老去: Good morning, Dr. Li! Ms. Hu Youping from Suzhou sacrificed her life to protect some children. You and she are proof that there’s still some vestige of kindness and compassion in our society.

多福酱: Dr. Li, today an auntie from Suzhou was stabbed to death by a “Boxer.” [Chinese]

Before Chinese social media platforms announced their crackdowns on extreme anti-Japanese content, there was some censorship of more progressive online voices, including the deletion of several essays criticizing inadequate media coverage of the Suzhou attack, debunking conspiracy theories about Japanese schools, and suggesting links between online ultranationalist content and offline attacks against foreigners in China. CDT editors have archived four of these censored articles. “While There Are Still Japanese Schools, Please Cherish Them,” a now-deleted article by prolific WeChat blogger and former print journalist Zhang Feng, discusses some questions about the stabbing, debunks some of the conspiracy theories about Japanese schools in China, and notes past anti-Japanese incidents in Suzhou, including the case of a young Chinese woman who was detained and interrogated by police simply for wearing a Japanese kimono. A second censored article from Zhang Feng, written in response to a piece in the Suzhou Daily that claimed Hu Youping’s “family members [proactively] contacted journalists,” discusses the worrisome ramifications of journalistic passivity when covering such important stories.

A censored article from the WeChat account iSee, titled “Japanese Schools, Spy Schools?,” also debunks some of the wilder rumors about Japanese schools in China, and explains that the curricula at these schools are designed for Japanese students who wish to later apply to Japanese universities—much like the curricula at American, British, and other accredited international schools in China. Also censored was a Weibo article by Xia Xingfan (“Shedding Tears to Commemorate the Heroism of Ms. Hu Youping of Suzhou, Jiangsu”) which contrasted online expressions of sympathy and mourning with some of the worst ultranationalist posts from before and after the stabbings: 

It’s not as if there were no harbingers to presage the tragedy in Suzhou. In recent years, false rumors about Japanese schools have been rampant on social media and short video platforms. Certain bloggers and broadcasters are keen to spread falsehoods about Japanese schools, with some making up short skits based on these rumors or even lurking outside Japanese schools for hours on end. Such distorted and slanderous content has been allowed to run rampant for too long. Everyone who participated in this or fanned the flames of hatred ought to be held responsible for Hu Youping’s death. [Chinese]

It remains to be seen whether Chinese platforms’ crackdown on anti-Japanese hate-speech is in earnest, or whether it is mere lip-service. Alex Colville of China Media Project noted that just one day after the Tencent announcement, China’s flagship state broadcaster CCTV was back to form, promoting another story that seemed guaranteed to whip up anti-Japanese sentiment and fan the flames of historical enmity in China:

But the most important indication that China’s soul-searching over extreme nationalism is a momentary ripple in the ongoing pattern of state-driven nationalist sentiment comes in the continued coverage in the country’s state media.

On June 30, the day after Tencent’s pledge to strike out against those “inciting confrontation between China and Japan (煽动中日对立), China’s flagship state broadcaster CCTV promoted a story on Weibo about Japan’s use of counterfeit currency to destabilize China’s economy ahead of its invasion in the 1930s. While the broadcast report was not particularly sensational in its approach, it drove forward a theme familiar to media consumers in China — that the indignities committed by Japan nearly a century ago are clear and present for all Chinese today. 

[…] Social media platforms may be feeling the heat over the recent outpouring of extreme nationalism. But the real lesson here is one of moral confusion — that nationalism is to be encouraged until it embarrasses the leadership. [Source]