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China’s internet censorship

China’s internet censorship
The latest news, analysis and opinion on China’s internet censorship. In-depth analysis, industry insights and expert opinion.
last updated:
9 September, 2024
The Cyberspace Administration of China pledges to clean up video content that could be harmful to China’s youth. Photo: Shutterstock
China’s Communist Party

China stamps out AI misuse to preserve national literature and ideology

Beijing seeks to balance AI use to boost the economy while combating deepfakes, digital misinformation and altering of public perception.

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China’s Communist Party

Exclusive | Chinese internet censors ban anti-West firebrand Sima Nan for a year

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China’s Communist Party

Chinese commentator Hu Xijin returns to social media after months of silence

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China’s Communist Party

China takes down fake news about its military, closes social media accounts

Internet watchdog reports targets include false reports of ‘cyberwarfare’ in the South China Sea and other ‘fantasy stories’.

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According to a report released on Monday by the Cyberspace Administration of China, social media accounts have been removed for untrue posts hyping the Chinese military. Photo: Shutterstock
Communist Party politics

‘Confident’ China should relax grip on cultural, information exchange: academic

Too many Chinese scholars fail to properly engage with their overseas peers, leading to worsening decoupling, professor warns.

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Social media

My Take | China’s stock-market frenzy reflects social media’s growing sway over investors

The current investor euphoria has been aroused by the proliferation of upbeat short-video posts on Chinese social media.

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Accidents and disasters in China

Man accused of stabbing Japanese boy jobless with criminal record: Chinese media

Information about the sensitive case is tightly controlled by Chinese police, media and internet censors.

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Chinese paramilitary police officers march past the entrance of the Japanese embassy in Beijing on Thursday. China has expressed “regret and sadness” after a Japanese schoolboy died after being stabbed on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
Communist Party politics

China tightens ideological control with warnings against rock ’n’ roll, internet

New college textbook drawing on speeches of President Xi Jinping is latest move from Beijing to tighten ideological control and national security.

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Video gaming

No ‘feminist propaganda’? Chinese video game Black Myth: Wukong’s censorship row

Gamers were also warned against any reference to ‘isolation’ or ‘quarantine’ – likely a reference to China’s pandemic-era policies that sparked civil unrest.

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China society

My Take | China’s censorship of cyberspace ID criticism risks losing a chance to improve

Chinese law requires new regulations to solicit public feedback, but legitimate concerns about giving netizens a single national ID are being silenced.

A man holds an iPhone as he visits Sina’s Weibo microblogging site in Shanghai on May 29, 2012. Photo: Reuters
China’s Communist Party

China mutes law professor on social media after cybersecurity ID plan criticism

Before the switch-off, Lao Dongyan compared online attacks of her views to the Cultural Revolution’s big character posters.

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Tsinghua University legal expert Lao Dongyan has been muted on Weibo, where she has nearly 800,000 followers. Photo: Baidu
Tencent

Tencent beefs up content on super app WeChat by adding breaking news alerts

The new feature has been made available for testing to a small number of users after a recent system update.

China’s third plenum

A firebrand commentator analysed China’s third plenum. Now he’s gone silent

Firebrand former Global Times chief is absent from Weibo and WeChat after publishing now-deleted piece on China’s economic strategy.

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Cybersecurity

China’s leading apps, including WeChat and Taobao, test proposed cyber ID system

More than 50 apps recently started accepting virtual IDs created under this proposed authentication system for user account registration and login.

Legal experts have expressed concerns over the proposed regulation’s implications on mainland app users’ privacy and government oversight. Photo: Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence

China names and shames agents offering unauthorised local access to ChatGPT

The Cyberspace Administration of China’s action shows its resolve to enforce domestic rules on generative artificial intelligence that were rolled out in August last year.

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The Cyberspace Administration of China’s action against unauthorised ChatGPT access shows its resolve to enforce domestic rules on generative artificial intelligence that were rolled out in August last year. Photo: Shutterstock
US-China relations

US should fund ways to help Chinese get around ‘Great Firewall’, lawmakers hear

Washington is also urged to help Chinese students come to the US: ‘Some of the most sophisticated circumvention users in China are those who have spent significant time overseas.’

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Internet

China’s internet watchdog calls for ‘favourable’ environment ahead of third plenum

Cyberspace Administration of China issues directive ahead of Communist Party meeting, which will determine the course of economic policy.

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Cybersecurity

China cracks down on seeds of cyberbullying after suicides linked to abuse

Online publishers must push awareness of online abuse, censor comments in advance and cut off live broadcasts containing violent information.

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Chinese government ministries and agencies have jointly issued regulations to crack down on cyber abuse, including that internet information providers must not serve anonymous users. Photo: AFP
Cybersecurity

China hits out at keyboard warriors to rectify chaos of ‘smearing’ firms online

China’s internet watchdog closed dozens of social media accounts over dissemination of false and misleading information concerning companies and entrepreneurs.

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WeChat

Chinese super app WeChat requires disclosure of AI-generated content

WeChat’s updated content-moderation policy forms part of a broader industry effort to promote greater transparency of artificial intelligence-generated content.

Tencent

Tencent launches Yuanbao AI chatbot in bid to close gap with Baidu and ByteDance

Yuanbao can be used to analyse and summarise documents, provide questions and answers, and generate texts and images.

Tencent Holdings’ launch of Yuanbao shows its confidence to somehow close the gap with Chinese tech firms’ that have had a head start in building ChatGPT-like services. Photo: Shutterstock
Censorship in China

Pirate e-book site Z-Library hit by China’s Great Firewall, Bilibili account closed

Z-Library denied rumours of temporarily restricted access in China, promising to maintain access and saying it’s open to censoring some titles.

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One of the most popular e-book piracy platforms faces restricted access in China after censorship on domestic social media accounts. Photo: Handout
China’s Communist Party

Chinese police arrest over 1,500 in campaign targeting online rumours

China shuts down 63,000 illegal accounts in crackdown on social media posts with false information about hot-button issues such as pandemic and disasters.

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China’s Communist Party

China steps up crackdown on AI-generated content, ‘troubling phenomena’

Top cyber office has kicked off a new campaign to ‘clean up’ the internet, targeting content that spreads ‘rumours’.

Two Sessions 2024

China vows to revise law to promote patriotism and public defence support

Premier Li Qiang says Beijing will help unity ‘between the military and the government, and between the military and the people’.

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Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, delivers a work report of the NPC Standing Committee at the second plenary meeting of the second session of the 14th NPC. Photo: Xinhua
Internet

Podcasts gain popularity in China as one in five internet users tune in

One in five internet users in China listened to a podcast last year, as the once niche sector gained popularity in 2023, according to a new report by podcast platform Ximalaya.

Podcast hosts earned a combined total of 70 million yuan on Ximalaya last year. Photo: Handout
China technology

Opinion | Why China’s AI leadership ambitions won’t be hampered by censorship

Those who see censorship as an insurmountable obstacle overlook or underestimate the potential of industry-oriented large language models, AI’s importance to Beijing and Chinese firms’ ingenuity.

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My Take

My Take | Unpicking judicial transparency may be worse threat to China than case scrutiny

Security concerns could be the real reason behind Supreme People’s Court announcement it will reduce cases uploaded to public archive.

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