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Tag: China

Rising Waters, Drops of Coverage

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Missile strikes by Israel and the United States against nuclear sites in Iran have topped headlines across the world last month. In China, where the story trended on the hot search (热搜) lists of Baidu, WeChat (微信) and RedNote, it also drowned out news of record-breaking floods that displaced more than 400,000 people in Hunan province alone.

Beginning June 18, heavy rains triggered the worst flooding since 1998 in Hunan, inundating entire cities. Similar flooding struck Guangdong province and the municipality of Chongqing. Despite affecting hundreds of millions of Chinese in the region, the domestic disaster struggled for attention as social media feeds filled with news of US missile strikes on Iranian nuclear sites — and warnings from Chinese state media that that American bunker-penetrating bombs would make the world a more dangerous place. (Read more of CMP’s analysis here on the sidelining of flooding coverage last week.)

With floods this past weekend inundating parts of the western province of Guizhou for the second time in the space of a week, the domestic blind spot toward the severe flooding season in China’s media seems now to have eased moderately, with the official Xinhua News Agency reporting in a release shared across multiple outlets that “the flood disaster in Rongjiang County, Guizhou Province, has been tugging at everyone’s hearts.”

Low-lying areas submerged in Guizhou’s Rongjiang County on June 28. SOURCE: Internet | Orange News.

Playing With Fire

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Former Chinese University of Hong Kong assistant professor Simon Shen (沈旭暉), a political scientist who studied at Oxford under Sinologist Rana Mitter and is now a visiting scholar at National Sun Yat-sen University (中山大學) in Taiwan, faces accusations of selling pro-Hong Kong independence materials through his Global Hong Kong Library (國際香港圖書典藏館). 

Political scientist Simon Shen. SOURCE: National Sun Yat-sen University.

Wen Wei Po (文匯報), a paper controlled by China’s central government in Hong Kong, alleged that Shen’s online platform promoted separatist agendas while displaying and selling items from the 2019 protests — disguised (the paper said snidely) as “precious collections” (珍貴藏品).

Pro-Beijing politician Elizabeth Quat Pei-fan (葛珮帆) warned that sharing such content on social media could violate the National Security Law. Barrister Ronny Tong Ka-wah (湯家驊), a non-official member of Hong Kong’s Executive Council, a formal body of advisors to the chief executive, raised the specter of transnational repression, warning that violators anywhere in the world could face police pursuit. At the Bastille Post (巴士的報), columnist Lai Ting Yiu (黎廷瑤) described Shen as “playing with fire.” The Global Hong Kong Library website states it hopes to preserve Hong Kong collections and ensure “the truth will not be revised.” For more on the crucial role of archives in information freedoms, be on the lookout for today’s edition of our companion publication Tian Jian (田間), or read their recent interview with Ian Johnson.

Laying Down the Law

Written by Alex Colville on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Laying Down the Law

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has published its first comprehensive annual report on “internet rule of law development” (网络法治发展), signaling expanded digital control mechanisms for 2025 under the umbrella of what should be more accurately termed “rule by law.” The 278-page document references 2025 as the final year of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan and promotes three separate legal frameworks for building “rule of law” (法治) in cyberspace — indicating the department may push harder to meet these converging deadlines.

“Explore uncharted territories,” reads the motto at DeepSeek. Authorities are making sure those territories are known and controlled.

The CAC explicitly cites “increasing diversity of opinions and groups” online — diversity in this case being a concern to be managed by a control-obsessed leadership — as justification for expanding operations. The report also acknowledges that new developments in artificial intelligence (AI) like the rise and expanding scope of DeepSeek’s popular model require careful management to balance “reform and rule of law, development and security.”

The CAC report focuses on the governance of AI, the body noting that domestic AI models have achieved breakthrough speeds — fondly referred to as “China speeds” (中国速度) — that have “swept the entire network” (席卷全网) and attracted global attention. In the report, officials describe a new phase of digitization driven by AI that transforms “production tools” (生产工具) and “production conditions” (生产条件), requiring updated regulatory frameworks. The administration plans to strengthen oversight of AI-generated content, algorithmic recommendations, and automated decision-making systems while promoting what it calls “beneficial” technological development.

Beyond domestic control, the CAC emphasizes China’s ambition to shape international cyberspace governance rules. The report calls for more assertive participation in global internet governance forums and bilateral negotiations on data flows, emerging technologies, and telecommunications services. Officials plan to leverage platforms like the World Internet Conference (WIC), held each year in Zhejiang, and China-Africa internet cooperation forums like the 2024 China-Africa Internet Development and Cooperation Forum to promote Chinese governance models internationally, while deepening enforcement cooperation with other nations on cross-border cybercrime and digital security issues.

China’s America Moment

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Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard and US Marines to quell protests in Los Angeles against his immigration policies became a major story across Chinese media last week. Op-eds filled with images of turbulence interpreted the news as pointing toward imminent “civil war,” words used in several reports. Pursuing their long-term goal of discrediting the US political system, Chinese state media are now pushing at a door the Trump administration has opened wide.

Scenes of aggressive police action in LA are reported by Hong Kong’s government-run Ta Kung Pao.

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that its journalists had been injured while covering the protests. The article purported to deliver the will of the protesters, quoting them as saying they were “hard-working local community residents who wanted to express their opinions peacefully.” The report reached second-place on the Baidu search engine’s list of hottest news topics on June 9. The same day, another trending post from a prominent self-media account predicted that the events in California were a “prelude” to deeper conflict. “America’s ‘civil war’ has begun” (美国”内战”开始了), the author declared, calling the unrest “the first large-scale street conflict of the Trump 2.0 era” and comparing downtown Los Angeles to “a Middle Eastern war zone.” The post received close to 1.6 million reads.

In Hong Kong, media similarly mirrored these narratives of American decline. The online news outlet HK01 and state-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao (大公报) both framed the conflict as a consequence of long-term social divides within the US, with HK01 warning that without resolution, America would “eventually fall into the abyss.”

For more on Chinese media portrayals of protests in the United States, and our perspective at CMP on how Trump administration actions have been a huge assist for China’s external propaganda efforts, read “A Trump Card for China’s Media.”

Cave Cleanup

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Cave Cleanup

A viral social media video exposing a garbage-filled karst cave in the scenic area of Zhangjiajie in Hunan province triggered China’s characteristic “swatting at flies” (打苍蝇) media response — with outlets like Shanghai-based Guancha (观察者网) and The Beijing News (新京报) tackling local environmental negligence after years of feckless silence. The polluted cave in Cili County (慈利县), created by illegal waste discharge from three livestock farms now under investigation, contained 2.7 tons of refuse including water bottles dating to 2015, suggesting years of contamination that went unchecked. The Beijing News questioned how authorities had failed to notice the waste dumping, which had gathered despite constant complaints from residents over unstable water quality. Back in March, facing citizen pressure, the local government issued perfunctory cleanup notices but ignored the underlying causes. Action was only forced last month, when heavy rains caused sewage overflows. What might make a real difference? Active local media.

Romance Lockdown

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According to reporting by Taiwan’s Central News Agency, scores of writers in China have been arrested or fined for publishing on the Taiwan-based adult fiction website Haitang Literature (海棠文學城), which allows authors to earn money through subscriptions and tips. More than 50 writers of “danmei” (耽美) — romantic fiction featuring male-male relationships typically written by women — have been detained since June 2024 in what critics call “remote fishing” (遠洋捕撈). This refers to the practice by the authorities of crossing jurisdictions to make arrests. Police in Anhui province initially targeted high-earning Chinese authors on the platform, while recent arrests in Lanzhou focused mostly on young writers, many university students, who made just a few thousand yuan through their online writings. Several writers implicated in the crackdown posted on Weibo about depression and suicidal thoughts before their accounts were deleted. CNA reports that lawyers in Beijing and Shanghai have formed pro bono legal aid teams to assist detained authors. So far, no coverage of this story has appeared in the media inside China.

Weaponizing Audits

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Last month several figures in Hong Kong’s media spoke out about an apparent new tactic being used to curtail the activities of independent media and journalists. Since November 2023, at least six outlets and around twenty journalists have faced tax audits spanning seven years, with demands totaling over HK$1.7 million, or more than 200,000 dollars. The targeted outlets include InMedia (獨立媒體), The Witness (法庭線), ReNews, Boomhead, Hong Kong Peanuts (香港花生), and the Hong Kong Free Press.

The Hong Kong skyline from Victoria Peak. SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons.

Tax authorities made errors and “strange, unreasonable claims,” including auditing one outlet for a year before it was established and asking a journalist to pay profits tax for a nonexistent company registration number. Inspections also extend to family members, including both parents of journalists’ association chief Selina Cheng (鄭嘉如). Hong Kong Peanuts host To Kwan-hang (陶君行) revealed that virtually all hosts, including Wong Ho-ming (黃浩銘) and Chow Ka-fat (周嘉發), received audit demands.

While the Inland Revenue Department (IRD), the territory’s tax collection authority, maintains that the “industry or background of a taxpayer has no bearing on such reviews,” the unified actions appear to be a form of bureaucratic censorship designed to exhaust the operations of independent media. Similar tactics have been used by authoritarian governments in Russia and Turkey, where punitive tax audits and financial sanctions have sought to control press activities. The approach would mark a new development in Hong Kong’s media landscape.

For many in the Hong Kong indie media space, the IRD’s insistence that they were “randomly selected” for a probe is difficult to swallow. “I can count all of Hong Kong’s non-government aligned digital media outlets on two hands,” Hong Kong Free Press founder Tom Grundy told Lingua Sinica. “Most are under tax audit simultaneously.” Grundy emphasizes that his outlet has insisted throughout its ten-year history on “meticulous record-keeping,” but notes that handling the audit “has diverted resources, manpower and funds away from journalism.”

The IRD audit of the Hong Kong Free Press comes one year after the outlet was selected — “randomly,” it was told — for a rare inspection from the Companies Registry, the city’s official business registration and company records authority. “We’re so lucky, perhaps we should put some numbers on the lottery,” Grundy said.

Illegal Surrogacy Operation Uncovered

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Elephant News (大象新聞), a platform operated by Henan Broadcasting System, has collaborated with anti-human trafficking activist Shangguan Zhengyi (上官正義) to expose an illegal surrogacy lab in Changsha, Hunan province.

Their undercover investigation revealed a makeshift facility equipped with wards, operating theaters and a laboratory. Among the nine women found at the site was a 41-year-old deaf-mute woman from Shanxi province who communicated via sign language that she had received 280,000 yuan ($38,600) for serving as a surrogate mother. The circumstances suggest possible coercion, as she indicated being brought to the facility by “outside people” (外面的人) and seemed uncertain how long she had been there. Reporters documented vehicles delivering more than 17 women to the facility over two days.

Elephant News has reported the case to authorities, and related hashtags including “Underground surrogacy handlers show strong counter-surveillance awareness,” have trended on Weibo.

Telling China’s Story in Paris

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Founded in 2015 by Chen Shiming (陳世明), a restaurant owner turned media entrepreneur, France-based Mandarin TV (歐視TV) — rebranded in 2021 from “French Chinese TV” (法國華人衛視) — makes little effort to disguise its ambition to serve the agenda of the Chinese state. The outlet describes its mission as “spreading China’s voice, telling China’s story well” (傳播中國聲音，講好中國故事) — language that mirrors the goal for external propaganda set out by Xi Jinping in August 2013, less than two years before Chen’s media outfit set up shop in Paris’s 8th Arrondissement.

In interviews with Chinese media, Chen has said he hopes his station can counteract what he says are deeply biased views toward China in France, his home for the past four decades. “I want to show the real China to the French,” he told the Yueqing Daily (樂清日報), a county-level CCP-run newspaper in coastal Zhejiang province. The real China for Chen is apparently reflected by the country’s strictly controlled state-run media. As Chen himself acknowledged in a 2021 interview, the channel openly collaborates with central CCP media like China Central Television (中央電視臺) and China Radio International (中國國際廣播電臺), both under the China Media Group conglomerate directed by the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department. The channel has also cooperated with regional state broadcasters like Wenzhou TV (溫州電視臺).

Founded by through Chen’s C-MEDIA Group (歐洲中誼文化傳媒集團), and claiming to be the only Chinese-language television station authorized by France’s media regulator Arcom, the station broadcasts 24-hour content, almost entirely from its Chinese state partners. The same state content, including from CCTV and Xinhua News Agency, fills its YouTube channel.

Mandarin TV founder Chen Shiming (left). SOURCE: Mandarin TV.