Censorship

Uncle Roger, who rose to fame by roasting a BBC rice-making video, deleted a video about dumplings because it featured an outspoken critic of China’s government.  Now, social media users have lashed out at the internet celebrity, whose real name is Nigel Ng, saying he “sacrificed his morality” to cater to his Chinese fans. The video, called “Uncle Roger Reviews Ugliest Dumpling Ever,” was in collaboration with YouTuber Mike Chen, who often criticizes Chinese government policies.  The video criticizes a dumpling recipe and does not contain any political commentary.  Just 24 hours after posting it on Monday, Ng had removed the clip and posted an apology to Weibo – China’s Twitter – saying the

Banned in China but popular among the country’s elite, American-owned social media site Instagram is a ‘gold mine’ for international brands to reach the country’s luxury shoppers, according to experts. Launched in 2010, Instagram is part of a long list of websites and apps banned by the Chinese government. Facebook, Google and Twitter were blocked, followed a few years later in 2014 by Instagram. In its place, Chinese-owned social media sites have sprung up, gaining millions of followers for a local audience. But experts believe that many international brands are missing out on the vast captive audience of some of the richest, most sophisticated customers in the country, as Instagram has ris

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Inkstone Explains unravels the ideas and context behind the headlines to help you understand news about China. Information is increasingly created, shared and consumed on a handful of social media platforms, a trend that has placed greater scrutiny on the owners and executives behind these tech behemoths, at least in the United States. As they have become more powerful globally, social media giants are trying to walk the tightrope by avoiding perceptions of censorship while corralling the spread of misinformation. In China, however, content censorship is part of the game and is widely accepted as a cost of doing business. WeChat, an app used ubiquitously throughou

Every Tuesday and Thursday, China Trends takes the pulse of the Chinese social media to keep you in the loop of what the world’s biggest internet population is talking about. Period drama get canceled China delisted two of the most popular period dramas from streaming platforms on Monday, creating new concerns about media censorship in the country.  Story of Yanxi Palace and Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace were pulled from the streaming platform iQiyi and Tencent and the two companies did not provide any official reason or statement.  Both affected shows are set in the 18th century during the Qing dynasty (1644 to 1912). They tell tales of love and struggles between Emperor Qianlong and his

Chinese state media has claimed that Australian intelligence agents raided the homes of Chinese journalists based in Australia as the escalating diplomatic spat between Beijing and Canberra widened into the media sphere.  The reports about the alleged June 24 searches were published hours after China’s foreign ministry confirmed that Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist working for Chinese state broadcaster CGTN, was detained on suspicion of “endangering China’s national security.” Cheng has been detained since August 14. Two other Australian journalists – Bill Birtles from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Michael Smith from the Australian Financial Review (AFR) – fled China

When French economist Thomas Piketty published his acclaimed Capital in the 21st Century in 2013, it was an immediate hit upon release in China, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. The nearly 700-page book, an analysis and critique of modern capitalism and inequality, even won praise from President Xi Jinping. In a 2015 speech he used its findings on surging inequality in the United States and Europe to claim that Marxist political economy was as relevant as ever. But Piketty’s new book Capital and Ideology, which expands on the theme of inequality, looks increasingly unlikely to have the same success after falling foul of China’s censors. Published outside China last year, it has yet

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Inkstone Explains unravels the ideas and context behind the headlines to help you understand news about China. In response to growing worries in the US over foreign meddling in elections, American social media companies have taken upon themselves to identify accounts run by foreign governments. YouTube in 2018 began adding labels to state-owned media. Facebook followed suit several months before the 2020 presidential elections, while Twitter has taken the extra step of limiting the spread of posts made by outlets and people affiliated with a foreign government. But blanket labeling of Chinese media as “state-affiliated,” as Twitter does, glosses over the important

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Inkstone Explains unravels the ideas and context behind the headlines to help you understand news about China. When the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV played a travel documentary starring David Beckham in May, viewers were treated to an eye-opening experience – sort of. As a shirtless Beckham recalled how he put his career ahead of his family, what viewers saw was the English soccer star’s head floating on a blurry blob of what would have been his exposed torso, abs and all. His body tattoos were all pixelated. The defaced Beckham was the result of a censorship rule in China that since 2018 prohibits broadcasters from showing tattooed celebrities on TV.  But as t

A former lawyer and citizen journalist who reported on the coronavirus outbreak from central China has been formally arrested on public disturbance charges in Shanghai, her father has confirmed. The family was notified on Friday of Zhang Zhan’s arrest for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a catch-all charge often used by the authorities to detain dissidents in China.  Prosecutors approved the arrest in Shanghai’s Pudong district. According to the official notice given to her parents, Zhang, 37, was in police custody in the district. “I’m very worried about her health and the detention conditions, and her mother is heartbroken,” Zhang’s 63-year-old father, who declined to g

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Inkstone Explains unravels the ideas and context behind the headlines to help you understand news about China. Stretching along the entire border of mainland China is an invisible barrier, dubbed the Great Firewall, that keeps out information that the Chinese authorities deem inappropriate. Sites such as Facebook, Google, Twitter – and Inkstone – are inaccessible in the mainland thanks to this metaphorical wall. The list of banned websites is ever expanding. While software to bypass the wall exists, the sophisticated system of censorship has become a powerful tool for the ruling Chinese Communist Party to strengthen its rule by limiting what China’s 900 million in