Great Firewall

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

When a police officer fired bullets at masked protesters in Hong Kong on Monday morning, the scene went viral online across the city and mainland China. What happened was not in dispute, but their perceptions were wildly different. While Hongkongers were outraged and questioned the officer’s use of live ammunition, viewers in the mainland put the blame squarely on the protesters, including the 21-year-old student who was shot. “The police officer was firing to save his life from the cockroach. He did nothing wrong,” said a top comment on the Weibo social media site popular among mainland Chinese users. The divergence highlights the wide divide in public opinion between mainland China and the

Chinese Twitter users are looking for a protester in Shanghai who livestreamed herself splashing ink on a poster of Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday. “I oppose the tyranny of Xi Jinping’s dictatorship!” said the woman while live-streaming the protest near the HNA building in the financial district of Lujiazui on Twitter. Chinese Twitter users later identified the protester as Dong Yaoqiong, believed to be an employee of a property agency. Some social media users questioned whether she was well when she filmed her livestream. Her Twitter page has become unavailable, though cached versions of the account showing her tweets are still accessible. Inkstone was unable to independently ve