For nearly twenty years, Li has been lionized in official state media for her simple act of community spirit, becoming an enduring symbol trotted out whenever reading and literacy are highlighted as a national priority. In 2023, her story became the subject of a short film celebrating community-minded small shop owners across China. This week, Li’s story appeared once again — this time at the very top of the front page of Monday’s People’s Daily — as China launched its first official National Reading Week and held its fifth annual National Reading Conference in Nanchang, Jiangxi province.

“General Secretary Xi Jinping has attached great importance to promoting nationwide reading and building a society of readers, and has on many occasions explained the importance of reading,” the People’s Daily said.

As the Chinese Communist Party makes its latest push to build momentum on literacy with the help of a new reading promotion law that took effect earlier this year, Li and her “Glimmer Bookhouse” are again presented as a glimmer of hope for the printed page in China. But as Chinese turn increasingly away from the printed page and toward video and the mobile screen, the gap between these ambitions and reality has never been wider.

Too Little Too Late?

The latest literacy push has real institutional force behind it. The Regulations on the Promotion of Nationwide Reading (全民阅读促进条例), signed by Premier Li Qiang late last year and effective from February, mandate the setup of reading facilities in new residential developments, require schools at every level to build reading into the curriculum, and establish accessible formats for disabled readers. Explaining the recent push in the state media — including yesterday’s leading piece in the People’s Daily — Article 13 of the law designates the fourth week of April as the annual National Reading Week. Underscoring its political force, the law is administered by China’s National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), an office directly under the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department.

But the market, buffeted by forces the new law cannot easily legislate away, tells a more complicated story.

Writing recently on her Substack newsletter The Subtext Asia, Jo Lusby, former North Asia CEO of Penguin Random House, notes that China’s retail book market is now worth just 88 percent of its pre-pandemic 2019 peak, with sales falling 2.24 percent by value in 2025 alone. Short video and social commerce platforms — led by Douyin, the Chinese precursor to TikTok, and RedNote (小红书) — now command 40.53 percent of book sales by value, up more than 30 percent year on year, while physical bookstores hold a mere 13.65 percent of the market.

The broader picture is a downward trajectory for sales, with publishers doing their best to pivot. “The numbers overall paint a portrait of a sector struggling to find its way amid declining sales; yet there is an undeniable energy in certain sectors of the book market as publishers continue to go where the eyeballs are,” Lusby writes. She adds that while China’s publishing industry has “always occupied a special place in the Chinese official hierarchy,” reporting as it does directly to the Central Propaganda Department, official efforts are likely “too little too late.”

In the pages of the state-run media, however, there is hardly a glimmer of uncertainty. In its front-page tribute Monday to Li Cuili and the act of reading, the People’s Daily headlines the phrase “fragrance of books” (书香) — pointing to Xi’s vision of a “society of readers,” or literally, a “society fragrant with books” (书香社会). It is a quaint and evocative notion, invoking the scent of the printed page and shelves filled, like Li Cuili’s at “Glimmer Bookhouse,” with physical books to be borrowed and spirited away to some quiet corner.

The metaphor is wafting across the sector. Beijing Daily announced yesterday that the theme of the coming week would be “book-scented April days” (書香四月天), and that various organizers are giving away more than 10,000 books — everything from Chinese classics to children’s picture books. A special on China Central Television today profiles the historic Hoshwin Library (和顺图书馆) in Yunnan province, with its 130,000 volumes sealed away in display cases. The special was called: “Nothing carries one further than the scent of books” (最是书香能致远).

But the reality is that the glimmer for the book — and for reading — in China’s future will increasingly, irrevocably, be the glow of the screen.

The post Glimmers for the Printed Page appeared first on China Media Project.

The author’s core argument was that traditional newspapers and magazines in China, which from the early 2000s through the early 2010s carved out a space of relative vibrance, have not just shifted to digital — but have, more importantly, abandoned any pretense of reporting news or doing journalism.

“I have a perspective that may be a bit tougher to hear,” the post read. “That it was the newspapers that first lost their capacity to produce content, and that it was they in fact who took the initiative in abandoning their readers.”

Well worth a read, the post is an excellent complement to several recent stories we have written here at the China Media Project, including Dalia Parete’s look at the collapse of local broadcasters across China, our piece over at Tian Jian (田间), translated here, about the extreme challenges facing journalists in China today, and my own post about the gleeful uptake of AI by official state media, who have little need in a climate saturated by propaganda for the soul-searching one finds among journalists elsewhere in the world.

Despite the fact that this post made no directly correlation between the worsening journalism space and the unbending media and information control policies of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, it was removed from WeChat sometime earlier today, yielding a message that it was in violation of “relevant laws.”

A translation of the first two sections of the WeChat post follow, and we also provide a downloadable PDF down below for those who wish to read the original.

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Since the outset of this year, at least 14 newspapers have announced they are closing shop. Thing about this for just a moment and you realize that notices of this kind are no longer news. By now, we should be long accustomed to the long winter of print. Some point to the frenetic pace of modern life — people are just too unsettled to sit back and read the newspaper. Others say that newspapers have simply been forsaken by the times.

I have a perspective that may be a bit tougher to hear. That it was the newspapers that first lost their capacity to produce content, and that it was they in fact who took the initiative in abandoning their readers.

01

Have you guys noticed that it’s not just newspaper readership that has cratered? It’s also the case that fewer people are watching television. These days, craving news or gossip, we turn first to Weibo, to the push notifications we received from news apps, to Douyin, to WeChat public accounts, or to Toutiao and scores of other such channels.

Print and television media no longer have the news that people need.

According to the Blue Book of Data Journalism (2024), 831 separate news website domains are operated by newspapers in our country, as well as 852 mobile apps and 9,393 WeChat public accounts. The total number of users of new media has passed 10 billion, and total revenue from the new media operations of traditional print newspapers reached 6.22 billion RMB, up 3.4 percent from 2023.

So, we can see that traditional print media have not simply been sitting around and waiting to die. They have been transforming.

The form has changed without a doubt. But to what end? Our mobile screens are filled with “shocking” headlines, with “plot twists” and “flowing tears.” Click in to have a look and you’ll find that the six most basic elements of any news story are nowhere to be found. The headline is just meant to grab your eyeballs (吸引眼球), but the content it incomplete from top to bottom, and at the end nothing is clear — or maybe there’s just borderline content tossed in to log an instant of traffic.

One example from a story I saw just yesterday. The headline: “US Military Official: American Forces Consumed 7.6 Million Cups of Coffee During Strikes on Iran.” The outlet that published it is one of the country’s leading domestic media outlets.

A video report from the official China News Service on Facebook shows the remark from US General Caine about the amount of coffee consumed by the US military amid strikes on Iran.

I couldn’t help but ask myself — what is the point of posting this sort of thing? Is this something that can raise public awareness, or something that can advance social progress?

In the meantime, things of genuine social concern go unreported, and stories from the grassroots go unreported. Most alarmingly, this mode of news that does not look like news (这种新闻不像新闻的模式) has already become the industry mainstream.

02

What is the role of the media? In the view of the West, media are “public instruments,” or a “Fourth Estate.”

You’ll find today that many reports bear bylines like “reporter so-and-so.” But read the entire report and you’ll find yourself asking: Where is this reporter exactly? Perhaps they are scrolling through Weibo or lying in wait in the comment sections, or they are waiting for official notices to come out. Whatever the case, they are anywhere but at the scene where news is happening.

When media no longer have the capacity to verify or produce information, but rather become the frontline consumers of information, the truth jostled about amid the flood and frenzy of public attention and traffic often proves too delicate to withstand it.

Back in January, one case in Taizhou, in Zhejiang province, went through three iterations involving a husband and wife and food safety. First, the pair claimed to have been “poisoned” after eating baby cabbage ordered online. Next, the story was that “the seller wrapped the vegetables in toxic newspaper.” Then, finally, it was that “the husband poisoned his wife.” Finally, the authorities announced that “the couple had colluded to poison themselves and fraudulently claim compensation.”

Early in the story, some outlets ran stories based on the couples’ own account that conclude that “the seller used toxic newspaper to wrap the vegetables.” As the story developed, some media spread the claim, without any clear or credible sourcing, that “the husband had poisoned his wife.” When the truth finally dawned and police disclosed that the couple was suspected of extortion and blackmail, some of the outlets that had leapt on the story from the start quietly pulled their posts offline, draining their last dregs of credibility.

The root cause here is that media have become like headless flies that buzz off toward the stench of traffic.

When media no longer provide [the public] with exclusives, no longer offer depth, no longer offer truth, what can possibly induce readers to stay? If media have been abandoned, they have only themselves to blame.

For those who wish to read on, we are posting a full archived version of the post below.

The post How China’s Press Abandoned Its Readers appeared first on China Media Project.

Off screen, however, there has been an unexpected plot twist. One of the drama’s main characters, the military commander “Yan Zheng” — spoiler alert, he is secretly the Marquis of Wu’an — may be too soft for some stiff-jawed critics back in China. 

On March 27, three days before the show’s finale, an official social media account operated by the People’s Liberation Army Daily (解放军報) voiced shock and awe at the drama’s emasculated visual aesthetic. Some of the characters, it said, were “excessively softened and deliberately refined, with some even wearing rouge and powder.” 

Why did a media outlet operated by China’s powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), the command center of the country’s defense apparatus, feel the need to launch an amphibious assault on popular streaming content? 

The problem was chiefly “Yan Zheng,” the nickname for the military general Xie Zheng, played by actor Zhang Linghe (張凌赫). General Xie should be the embodiment of boots-on-the-ground battlefield decisiveness. And yet, every time he appears on screen for a dramatic moment of courage, he is as impeccably made up as a K-pop star. Even deep into the slaughter of the battlefield, his skin is flawless. 

This odd twist on battle readiness has earned this fictional military man the fond — or furious, depending on your preferences — nickname: “General Foundation” (粉底液将军). 

For its part, the PLA Daily was not laughing. The drama had crossed the unseen battle line of military machismo. “Literary and artistic creation may certainly pursue aesthetic diversity,” wrote the PLA social account, “Junzhengping” (鈞正平), “but ‘beautifying’ the image of soldiers means losing not only authenticity, but also undermining the spirit of masculinity.”

For the People’s Liberation Army, “General Foundation” is more than just a pretty face. He is a dangerous image of military decadence and defacement just as the Party-run institution is buffeted by wave upon wave of scandals. Since Xi Jinping launched his sweeping anti-corruption campaign in 2012, the military has been a primary target. The crackdown reached the upper ranks of the PLA in 2023, when it brought down several senior commanders of China’s elite Rocket Force, the force responsible for China’s nuclear and conventional missile arsenal.” 

More recently, a scandal has toppled Zhang Youxia (张又侠), the country’s most senior general, long known as a close ally of Xi Jinping. Under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law,” Zhang is accused of undermining the “CMC chairman responsibility system” — suggesting serious breaches of the Party’s command structure. All told, the PLA’s culture of corruption has seriously damaged the institution’s authority and credibility. The fact that the “Junzhengping” account, which generally limits its posts to more important military matters, has goose-stepped into the aesthetics of streaming entertainment suggests even minor blemishes are regarded as an obstacle to the PLA’s efforts to save face.

The “Junzhengping” post clearly advocated for more muscular propaganda, as though the country’s defense depended upon it. “These rouge-and-powder ‘generals’ in period costume dramas cannot bear the social responsibility of cultivating masculine spirit,” it said. 

China has never had a free creative environment. Under Chinese law, all television dramas must be reviewed by the National Radio and Television Administration before broadcast. Content touching on politics, the military, diplomacy, ethnicity, religion, and related areas must also obtain sign-off from the relevant authorities. 

Whether costume romance dramas routinely pass through PLA review is unclear. What is clear is that since 2021, the Party has maintained specific lists of restrictions for all media, including a ban on so-called “effeminate” (娘炮), or niangpao, aesthetics — a term describing men whose appearance and mannerisms are deemed inconsistent with mainstream masculinity, and one considered highly vulgar and derogatory in Chinese.

“Is the invasion of Taiwan all sorted out already? I suppose there’s plenty of free time to be watching women’s historical romance dramas, huh?” —Comment to “Junzhengping” by a Chinese web user.

Elsewhere, the aptly named “Zhejiang Propaganda”  (浙江宣傳), a social media account under the provincial propaganda office of Zhejiang, complained that programs like Pursuit of Jade might spoil the nation’s youth — that stories and images that “blatantly violate historical context” would have “an adverse impact on the aesthetic and cultural values of young people.” The account, which Hong Kong’s Ming Pao reported was founded by Zhejiang’s deputy ministry of propaganda, Wang Gang (王綱), expressed concern that “values are giving way to lookism” (价值观在向颜值观让步).

Following the PLA Daily social post, the “General Foundation” meme trended on Weibo for more than 24 hours, as furious fans offered return fire. “Is the invasion of Taiwan all sorted out already?” one user asked snidely. “I suppose there’s plenty of free time to be watching women’s historical romance dramas, huh?”

Some users noted, however, that China’s official broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV), had actually praised Pursuit of Jade, and that Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮), a spokesperson at the Taiwan Affairs Office, had commended the drama for “fully demonstrating that Chinese culture is the shared root and belonging of both sides of the strait.”

In the end, the post appeared to most effectively expose the PLA’s own sense of vulnerability and insecurity, conveyed poignantly in its closing appeal: “We call for more works filled with masculine spirit, so that this toughness and sense of responsibility can become the most solid foundation of the spirit of our era.”

The post No Foundation for the PLA appeared first on China Media Project.

In a twist that would almost certainly perplex professional journalists elsewhere in the world, this talk about authenticity in portrayals of China unfolded at a forum uncritically proclaiming the virtues of artificial intelligence for media production. Understand the context, however, and this alliance of AI and untruth makes perfect sense, throwing into sharp relief AI’s emerging role in both domestic media control and global propaganda and disinformation.

The theme of this year’s Internet Media Forum, co-organized by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and held in Henan province on March 28–29, was the “2026 Digital Intelligence Empowerment: Positive Energy Production and Dissemination Conference.” That is a mouthful, but the concept is simple enough: AI has the power to revolutionize the Chinese Communist Party’s demand that journalism and media serve its interests by emphasizing positives and suppressing critical coverage.

Across much of the world, the rise of artificial intelligence has prompted fierce and often anguished debate about the future of the media, and the role of the journalist. When is AI a “strategic ally” for the truth-seeking journalist? How can we balance the valuable aspects of AI with its myriad dangers? How can we make sure that substantive, relevant and even hard-hitting journalism — so critical for democracy — can be discovered amid the inundation of synthetic text, image and video?

In a recent report adding to a rising tide of output on the subject, the Center for News, Technology and Innovation (CNTI) weighed in earlier this month. “For newsrooms, the use of generative AI tools offers benefits for productivity and innovation,” the report said coolly. “At the same time, it risks inaccuracies, ethical issues and undermining public trust.” At a recent press talk in Vietnam on AI and the “crisis of trust” in news facing media, hosted by the Embassies of Canada, Norway, New Zealand, and Switzerland in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program, UNDP representative Ramla Khalidi returned to basics: “The most important thing in journalism, for me, is trust. When trust is lost, you are no longer a voice that can be relied upon.”

In China, where media are defined as tools to manufacture public trust in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the state, such concerns are not even secondary. If there are journalists in China wringing their hands over the impact of AI on professional reporting or public trust, those conversations are happening privately, and quietly. The whole notion of the public interest as fundamental to journalism has been eclipsed under the leadership of Xi Jinping by the most robust application of press controls seen at any time in the reform era since the late 1970s. The possible exception is the three years immediately following the Tiananmen Massacre, which gave rise to the concept of “public opinion guidance” — a policy that to this day delivers on the firm conviction that the CCP must control news and public discourse to maintain the stability of the regime.

In one of his earliest actions as the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping in 2013 introduced an internal Party directive called “Document 9” that expressly opposed the idea of public interest journalism, which it panned as “the West’s idea of journalism.” “The ultimate goal of advocating the West’s view of the media is to hawk the principle of abstract and absolute freedom of press, oppose the Party’s leadership in the media, and gouge an opening through which to infiltrate our ideology,” the directive said.

Later that same year, as Xi cracked down aggressively on more independent voices on Chinese social media — the now mostly forgotten “Big Vs” — the Party introduced the concept of “transmitting positive energy to society” (传播社会正能量). If the role of the press in China had become more ambiguous through the 2000s, amid a precarious but determined movement of journalistic professionalism, it had now become clear again. Its place was to serve the larger goals of the Party and the nation, not of the public.

Today, it is virtually impossible to talk about the truth in China in any way other than that bandied about on the stage at the 2026 Internet Media Forum. “Authenticity” is fundamentally about positivity. And this means that discussions in China about the impact of AI in the media revolve almost exclusively around its production-related advantages.

A series of thematic sessions held alongside the main forum in Zhengzhou is a case in point. Discussions treated propaganda and corporate public relations as a seamless continuum, discussing how official and corporate messaging can “go viral” by adding a more human touch to narratives. The session brought together participants including Chang’an Avenue Insider (长安街知事), a public account under the capital’s state-run Beijing Daily, the new media department of the CCP’s People’s Daily, and Weibo’s executive editor-in-chief.

On Monday, a commentary at People’s Daily Online drove the point home, suggesting that AI could be effective in “adding warmth” to positive energy — in other words, that propaganda could be made to feel more human and relatable. The piece, published the day after the forum closed, described AI as having “deeply penetrated the full chain of content planning, newsgathering, editing and distribution” in mainstream media. Once again, there was not the merest frisson of concern. The integration of AI with content meant for public consumption, and of course public opinion guidance, was celebrated as a milestone.

During panel discussions at the forum, the People’s Daily Online commentary noted, keywords like “professionalism,” “staying grounded,” “seizing trends,” and “innovation” were on everyone’s tongues. Even the deeply human concept of “empathy” (同理心), which has entered into sharply different discussions of journalism in the West, made an appearance. All of these are qualities with the potential to ground journalism in the human experience, and form the connective tissue between journalism and the public it is meant to serve. In this context, however, they are production techniques and rhetorical devices to be achieved with helping hand of artificial intelligence.

It was no accident that posters and images of the Zhengzhou forum came with the usual heavy dose of robot imagery. AI robots took to the stage alongside dancing child performers, the pairing an oddly dissonant state message about the humanity of AI. China’s dream of an army of compliant Edgar Snows, all reporting empathetically on the elevated humanity of the Party, cannot be far off.

The post AI for Human Propaganda appeared first on China Media Project.

Announcing the closure of two of its local channels this month, the top state-run broadcasting group in the municipality of Chongqing spoke of “optimizing and integrating media resources” and “adapting to new trends in media convergence.” In practice, this meant shutting down channels the government considers redundant and shifting resources — money, staff, and content — away from traditional broadcast and onto the internet and digital products. The announcement, released by China’s main broadcasting authority, SARFT, makes clear that Chongqing is following directives from the government and national work conferences. This isn’t a local editorial choice but a centrally directed plan.

Chongqing is not an isolated case. It is part of a nationwide wave of broadcast closures that has been accelerating since 2023, when SARFT launched its campaign to “streamline and specialize” China’s radio and television landscape. According to the Chinese industry tracker website Shexiangren Wang (摄像人网), at least 51 TV channels were shut down across China in 2024, and in 2025 that number jumped to at least 75, hitting provincial-level broadcasters in Shanghai, Gansu, Shaanxi, Jiangxi, Xinjiang, and Hunan, among others. Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, became the first provincial capital in the country to be reduced to a single television channel in 2025. A separate report from SARFT’s research center confirmed that 79 channels and frequencies were formally eliminated in 2024.

Part of the story is how uncompetitive local channels have become, owing both to technological change and to institutional inertia: CCP-run media tend to be inflexible and formulaic, shaped by the bureaucratic structures that govern them. Shexiangren Wang notes that education channels offered little beyond policy meetings. TV shopping, with its long-duration pitches and infrequent purchases, could not match the speed and scale of e-commerce — what Shexiangren Wang called the “short, fast, and flat” model of online retail. Movie and drama channels, meanwhile, were stuck with aging content and shrinking advertising revenue. The closures have targeted public channels, education channels, shopping channels, and movie and drama channels — categories the government considers redundant or uncompetitive with internet platforms, all outpaced by digital offerings delivering the same content faster and on demand.

The campaign of attrition at local broadcasters does not seem to be slowing down. The Shexiangren Wang report indicates that Guangdong, Sichuan, and Shenzhen are all expected to close or merge additional channels in 2026. The broader pattern is clear: the government is shrinking traditional broadcast — meaning fewer channels and fewer editorial voices — while redirecting money, talent, and content toward digital offerings.

Rather than a simple retreat from broadcast, the closures reflect a deliberate reorientation. The Chongqing announcement calls on the group to “fortify the main position of internet communication” (筑牢互联网传播主阵地) — language drawn from a broader Party framework that treats media platforms as ideological territory to be held and defended. It also calls for “systematically transforming mainstream media” (推进主流媒体系统性变革) — a phrase that carries specific weight in the Chinese context, where “mainstream media” refers to Party-run outlets tasked with setting the public agenda and shaping opinion. A 2025 People’s Daily article used the same language to describe Party media’s role as the frontline of ideological control, calling on mainstream state outlets to “advance onto the internet main battlefield” (挺进互联网主战场) as a “main force” (主力军).

The imperative is to remake those outlets into something citizens will actually use. That is a hard sell in a media landscape dominated by platforms like Bilibili, a video site built on user-generated entertainment, and Xiaohongshu, known outside China as RedNote, a lifestyle and social commerce platform where hundreds of millions of users go for content that is personal, playful, and not entirely oriented around the ideological goals of the party-state.

Rather than a simple retreat from broadcast, the closures reflect a deliberate reorientation.

While real success in the media market will likely remain a challenge, the authorities seem encouraged by the numbers for new state-led digital offerings. Provincial state media app downloads grew by an average of nearly 35 percent in 2024 — 34.9 percent in downloads and 45.2 percent in registered users — according to SARFT’s research center’s annual report. Platforms like Mango TV (芒果TV), a video streaming platform under the state-run Hunan Broadcasting System; Elephant News (大象新闻), an app-based news product from Henan’s provincial broadcaster; and Touch News (触电新闻), the digital product from Guangdong’s provincial broadcaster, each crossed 100 million downloads, with 28 provincial apps surpassing 10 million.

The closures and the digital push are, in the end, two sides of the same coin: a leaner broadcast sector that costs less to maintain, and a rebuilt online presence the Party hopes will keep it not just relevant, but dominant, where the public’s attention has shifted.

One issue conspicuously absent from the official framing of these closures is what happens to the people who worked there. The announcements speak of “optimizing resources,” but say nothing about how employees at Chongqing Economic Radio or the Fashion Shopping Channel — the outlets impacted by the most recent restructuring in Chongqing — might have been affected. Precise figures on job losses across the sector are difficult to come by. Official announcements are silent on the question, and broadcasters do not typically publish staff counts. The data that does exist points in one direction. Beijing’s broadcast sector alone shed more than 2,600 jobs in 2024, according to an annual statistical report from its city-level broadcast authority. The nationwide toll, across more than 125 channels closed in 2024 and 2025, is almost certainly substantial.

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To learn more about the trend of local “media convergence” in China and the remaking of the infrastructure of “international communication” (国际传播), or “external propaganda” (外宣), download our CENTRALIZATION+ paper below, produced with funding from the Swedish Psychological Defense Agency (MPF).

The post The Great Broadcasting Retreat appeared first on China Media Project.

On February 1, public security officers in the western city of Chengdu detained both Liu and his colleague Wu Yingjiao (巫英蛟) as they were traveling separately — Liu en route to Beijing, and Wu in Hebei. The next day, Chengdu police formally announced that the journalists each faced criminal charges of false accusation (诬告陷害罪) and illegal business operations (非法经营罪) stemming from a report on WeChat alleging that local officials in Sichuan had broken a previous agreement with investors in a construction project, seizing control of the assets.

The police actions triggered a wave of public attention in China — and a countervailing wave of online censorship. China Digital Times reported that 21 articles dealing with the case were added to its deleted-content archive in the five days following the detentions, nearly double the total number of deleted articles added to CDT’s archive on all topics in December last year. The detentions backfired, as one blogger predicted they would. Writing in a post that was subsequently deleted, Xu Peng (徐鹏) observed that few people had actually read Liu’s article before it was taken down — but that the arrests had spread awareness of the case “at home and abroad,” leaving officials with a mess of their own making. “In the end, public opinion spiraled far beyond their control,” Xu wrote, “and the whole plan backfired.”

Liu Hu and Wu Yingjiao were released on bail on February 16, just two weeks before the prize results appeared. “I believe everyone will welcome this ‘follow-up police report,’” wrote rights defense lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) on social media. “Best wishes to you both: get some proper rest and have a good New Year.”

This recent brush with the authorities was not Liu Hu’s first. He had previously been detained in 2013 on defamation charges after publicly naming officials he accused of corruption; those charges were eventually dropped.

It was against that backdrop that Liu launched the Journalists Home News Prize in 2019, reviving a name with deep roots in Chinese journalism. “Journalists Home” (记者的家) began as a BBS forum in 2000, a gathering place for reporters during an era of relative openness, when forms of journalism like investigative reporting were flourishing in a relative sense. The prize started with four categories, a public service award added in 2021. Now in its seventh year, it has become what one longtime participant called “possibly the best cross-platform journalism prize on the Chinese mainland.”

That the seventh edition appeared at all — published after delays caused by what Liu described only as ‘an unmentionable mishap’ (不可描述的意外) — is a reminder of the tug-and-pull that persists in China’s media environment, where idealistic professionals can actively seek out space for their work despite immense risks. This year’s jury added four additional commendations beyond the original slate, citing an unusually strong field — an expansion requiring an additional 50,000 yuan in prize money. Southern Weekly (南方周末), a commercial newspaper under Guangdong’s CCP-run Nanfang Daily Group, and the independent WeChat-based platform Aquarius Era (水瓶纪元) emerged as the strongest performers across categories, each taking two prizes.

The nonfiction grand prize went to Luo Ting (罗婷) for “Rape in the Bridal Chamber” (婚房里的强奸案), published in April 2025 in “Everyday People” (每日人物), a WeChat public account run by People (人物) magazine under Beijing Boya Tianxia Media Culture Development, a company majority owned by entrepreneur Rong Bo (荣波) . The piece reconstructed an engagement rape case in Shanxi province, tracing not only the assault itself but the months of family negotiation and legal maneuvering that followed. The story exposed what the jury described as “the brutal landscape of China’s county-town marriage market.”

The public service grand prize recognized Xie Chan’s (谢婵) return to Wuhan on the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdown, published by Aquarius Era. The report revisited journalists, artists, volunteers and ordinary citizens to recover recollections of the early chaos and grassroots mutual aid — memories the jury described as filling a gap in the collective memory of a national disaster.

The major social event reporting prize went to Han Qian (韩谦) of Southern Weekly for a multi-year series (archived) on the practice of residential surveillance at a designated location (指定居所监视居住), or RSDL, a legally defined but widely criticized form of residential surveillance that critics say has been systematically abused as a tool of extrajudicial interrogation. Han’s reporting helped transform an arcane legal debate into a public issue and was credited with contributing pressure that preceded new regulations jointly issued by the Supreme Procuratorate — China’s top prosecutorial authority — and the Ministry of Public Security.

The outstanding media professional grand prize honored Zhou Zhimin (周智敏), a senior reporter at Shanghai Television (上海广播电视台), for a 24-minute video investigation into a school dormitory fire in Henan province that killed 13 primary school students in January 2024. Though authorities had quickly promised a public accounting, 16 months passed in silence. Zhou’s report, published in December 2025, pushed the story back into the spotlight, and within nine days the investigation results were released through Xinhua and CCTV, with the related trial opened to the public. Shanghai Television is the broadcast arm of the municipal-level Shanghai Media Group (SMG), run by the local CCP leadership through the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

The best commentary prize recognized Peng Yuanwen (彭远文), a former CCTV producer, for more than thirty articles arguing for higher rural pension benefits — a campaign the jury said had helped build momentum toward what is now a growing policy consensus on one of China’s most urgent social questions.

One key lesson to emerge from these latest awards is that the efforts of Chinese journalists — even at state-run outlets, which accounted for half the prizes awarded — must not be overlooked. The awards and the work they recognize, which have appeared despite intense pressure at every level of China’s media control system, are a testament to that persistence.

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Before relocating to the United States, Zhu Rikun was for decades deeply involved in China’s independent film exhibition and production scene. He helped to organize the inaugural “China Documentary Exchange Week” (中国纪录片交流周) in 2003, and co-founded an independent film forum called, “The Human Way, the Cinematic Way” (人之道, 影之道), the forerunner of what would later become the Beijing Independent Film Festival (北京独立影像展). 

Zhu’s own independent documentary, The Questioning (查房), captures the moment police interrogated him in a hotel room. And this work also helps to explain why the inaugural IndieChina festival he founded in New York became a target of transnational suppression by Chinese authorities.

In reporting on the recent fate of IndieChina, media outlets have uniformly used the term “independent film festival” to describe this and other organized film screenings that have faced similar situations. When we look more closely at the various groups now trying to organize Chinese-language film screenings abroad, however, it becomes clear that the ecosystem of the “independent Chinese-language film screening” is much broader — and that the category itself is being pulled in different directions by the very different realities facing each event and the groups involved. 

Through interviews with multiple independent Chinese-language screening groups in Europe, this reporter attempts to give readers a day-to-day sense of the circumstances facing acts of independent screening (独立放映).

Part One: Before the Screening 

The independent Chinese-language screening groups currently active in Europe have emerged largely within the past five years. This is because a large number of Chinese people with an interest in film — and some with prior screening experience — emigrated to Europe during this period, making these groups a byproduct of the latest wave of emigration. Films, like the people who love them, literally ran (润) to Europe. Intertwined with the Covid-19 pandemic, China’s “dynamic zero-Covid” policy and the aftershocks of the anti-lockdown protests rippled out to Europe, and the stimulation of those external events prompted many of these new arrivals to start thinking about doing something here.

Tang Mingxuan (唐明轩) had accumulated rich experience in independent film screening back in China, co-founding a film collective focused on sexuality and gender, and his professional background was also in film. When he arrived in Europe, he brought with him the operating model and programming approach of that earlier collective, and on this foundation built a new screening group in his adopted city.

Many people share a background similar to that of Tang Mingxuan, though Jiang Bu (蒋不) is perhaps a more typical example. Jiang was active in Chinese civil society even before he entered university, and he later studied at the Beijing Film Academy. Shaped partly by his experience in grassroots organizing and partly by his dissatisfaction with the atmosphere on campus, he always gravitated toward the kind of independent documentaries made by figures like Ai Weiwei (艾未未), Hu Jie (胡杰), and Ai Xiaoming (艾晓明). “For me around 2011, I genuinely believed that you could use this kind of work, making independent documentaries, to have an impact on Chinese society, what people called ‘the surrounding gaze transforming China.’ I thought it was a path for public intellectuals and artists to engage with reality and take part in public action.”

There are also many people who came to Europe with little or no screening experience, and essentially had to learn from scratch how to host a film screening. Chen Zhe (陈哲), one of the founders of “Xinfeng” (信风), had only the vaguest sense of what “independent screening” meant before trying to organize screenings locally, and had never attended a screening event before leaving China. Wei Wenxi (韦文熙) and Lin Aili (林艾历) had each been involved to varying degrees in screening activities before moving abroad, but both only encountered the finer details of organizing screenings after arriving in Europe.

Despite his lack of experience, Chen Zhe still took that first step into organizing film screenings. As he describes his thinking at the time: “This is something that someone should be doing — and since it seems like no one is doing it, we might as well do it ourselves.” There were then a few Chinese-language works that he felt were really decent and were being screened and attracting some attention across Europe. He felt that naturally these films could be screened privately in homes or living rooms — but they also deserved to be seen in cinemas, where people could sit down together and even discuss them. 

As Chen Zhe found that some European cities had cinematic screenings and his city did not, he felt that making it happen was his “inescapable responsibility” (责无旁贷). Seizing that opportunity, he and the other founders organized several screenings, which served as the seed from which “Xinfeng” later developed.

Lin Aili’s motivation for founding “79 Square Meters” (79平米) was similar to Chen Zhe’s. In Northern Europe, where Lin now lives, the cultural environment is relatively homogeneous, and opportunities to see Chinese-language films are rare. As contentious issues such as China’s “zero-Covid” policy sparked considerable discussion within the local Chinese community, she hoped to use Chinese-language films to bring people together for conversation — and so “79 Square Meters” held its first screening.

The motivations of these various “screeners” (放映员) may differ, but all have faced a common dilemma: Is film screening an end in itself, or a means to other goals? For Jiang Bu and his group, on-the-ground activism in Paris had gradually ebbed after China’s lockdown policies ended, and they wanted to create a space that was less overtly activist in orientation — one that could reach a broader audience and then engage like-minded people for possible future action. “No Change of Term” (不换届) was their attempt to integrate activism with everyday routines.

Shen Jingping (沈静平) prefers to position their group as a “cultural salon” focused primarily on queer and feminist issues within Chinese-speaking communities, treating film screening as one among many possible activities. Shen might organize events around specific holidays or commemorations — for example, if there is a suitable film around Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, they might screen the film. They also direct more resources toward independent filmmakers, reserving their limited screening opportunities for works that rarely get to meet audiences directly.

Among those interviewed for this article, Wei Wenxi is the one most inclined to see film screening as an end in itself. As a film lover, he felt keenly after arrival in Europe that Chinese-language films — and particularly independent films — were too seldom screened. So he joined multiple film screening groups in the hope of somehow making a contribution. He also found the process of curating screenings genuinely interesting. The groups he has been involved with range from those with an issue-oriented or activist focus, like those described above, to ones that are more commercially oriented and already better integrated with the film industry.

Part Two: The Screening Takes Shape

Each of these groups has forged its own distinctive form of “independent screening,” shaped by differing motivations, experience levels, missions, curatorial tastes, and strategies — and each has left its distinctive trace both on and off screen.

The screening groups run by Shen Jingping and Tang Mingxuan are both based in Western Europe, where Chinese communities are larger and local residents speak more complex languages and dialects. Given this relatively diverse and fluid audience composition, Shen and Tang must carefully anticipate on-site conditions, especially when making decisions about subtitling. “79 Square Meters,” located in Northern Europe, has a more fixed audience, and attendance at each screening is more predictable. The relationship between the group and its audience is often closer than in other independent screening contexts.

As Chen Zhe found that some European cities had cinematic screenings and his city did not, he felt that making it happen was his “inescapable responsibility.”

Compared to other groups, “No Change of Term” has a clearer activist character, and so leans toward screening independent documentaries on topics such as Uyghurs, Tibetans, and broader Chinese human rights issues. But because it also wants to lower the threshold for audience comprehension and engagement with discussion, it will sometimes choose works that are more art-oriented, even if the public or political dimension of these works is less explicit.

Choices about screening venues more directly reflect the realities — sometimes actively chosen, sometimes passively determined — that distinguish one independent screening operation from another. Screenings can take place in cinemas or in various kinds of cultural spaces. The cost of a venue, the group’s budget, the terms of cooperation with the venue, the kinds of interaction the space allows — all of these factors can be either constraints or motivations shaping a group’s choices.

By disposition and background, Jiang Bu is drawn to a more “guerrilla” (游击式)  mode of screening. “If the content of a film suits that kind of format, we could grab twenty iPads and watch the whole thing in a subway car,” he says. But he also acknowledges that other members of “No Change of Term” had persuaded him on the reasons why screenings in proper cinemas still matter: “The reason we show these films is precisely because they never had a chance to be formally screened in China. We want people to sit down together and enjoy them fully.”

“79 Square Meters” has a strong preference for independent cultural spaces. In Lin Aili’s view, their group is more grassroots, and the potential audience in their city is not large enough to sustain the costs of cinema screenings. “I know that in Berlin or Paris, they screen Asian films in cinemas quite often. But we don’t really like that kind of formal setting. We want a place where people can have a drink and chat and get to know each other. I prefer a more intimate, community-oriented screening model.” “Xinfeng” also gravitates toward such spaces, though it does not rule out cinema screenings. As relative newcomers on the screening scene, however, they want to develop a better understanding of the diverse venues available locally, and so they are ready to seek out more possibilities as they arise.

Despite the variety of films screened, the diversity of audiences, and the range of venues, nearly all of these independent screening groups place a premium on the post-screening discussion. Jiang Bu goes so far as to say that for “No Change of Term,” the post-screening discussion is the real point. In many cases, it matters less which film they screen. Even when they use a cinema that charges by the hour, and the relative cost is high, their post-screening discussions can run for an hour or even 90 minutes. And precisely because the content of those discussions tends to be more sensitive, they almost never announce their post-screening guests in advance, nor do they publish summaries of the discussions. 

The post-screening discussions hosted by other groups typically last somewhere from 30 minutes to an hour. When inviting particular guests to speak, “Xinfeng takes concrete measures to verify the reliability of their experiences and what they plan to share in advance, providing audiences with a foundation of mutual trust when more sensitive topics are to be discussed.

Part Three: Beyond the Screening

Independent screening groups also face pervasive challenges. For these mostly volunteer-run operations, the relatively heavy demands on funding and members’ time are a significant burden. In response, some groups have tried to broaden their range of activities. Over the past five years, many independent screening groups have emerged across Europe, but a considerable number have also gone quiet or ceased to be active. Their rise and fall is inseparable from these constraints.

For Jiang Bu, with his extensive experience in organizing, it is a constant challenge, amid these various constraints, deciding  how to allocate work among members and coordinate progress. Most of the core members of “No Change of Term” live in Paris and have no immediate plans to leave, so the team is relatively stable and built on a foundation of mutual trust. Even so, it can be a challenge to align the varying areas of interest among members. “Personally, I’d like more different voices to be part of film selection decisions,” says Jiang. “But some members aren’t necessarily engaged at the selection stage — and sometimes even after a film has been circulated, only a handful of people will have watched it.” Still, he says, almost everyone shows up for every event, and are actively involved in the on-site work like ticketing and hosting. “I don’t see this as a problem or a failure of duty, but it’s true that different people have different understandings of their role,” Jiang says. “Some tend to see themselves as volunteers or on-site crew.”

Wei Wenxi has witnessed firsthand what Jiang Bu describes, but from a different vantage point. Based on his observations, some groups have a relatively clear leadership and management structure, with core members who hold more authority and decision-making power. When a screening plan prompts audience complaints on social media, some core members may respond hastily without internal consultation, creating unnecessary pressure that then spills over to ordinary members. Given this kind of hierarchical organizational structure, larger conflicts can erupt. Some volunteers have even publicly posted criticisms after leaving a screening group. Different positions within the hierarchy may determine why members interpret the same situation so disparately.

Funding is the lifeblood that sustains any screening organization. Venues can be costly, and screening in a cinema raises costs dramatically. Most films also require a one-time licensing fee for each screening from agents and distributors, even if a “friendly rate” discount is sometimes available in consideration of a group’s independent status. And this is before factoring in the cost of subtitle production, poster design, miscellaneous expenses, and of course the production of DCPs — or digital cinema packages, the standard format used worldwide for digital cinema projection. Although these groups largely depend on the spare time available to members, all of the groups interviewed for this article said they try, within their means, to provide some form of compensation to members and volunteers who contribute their time and labor.

The most direct way to break even is to charge audiences a registration fee. But if ticket prices are set too high and attendance is poor, not only does the organization absorb significant losses, but the event fails also to achieve the very purpose that motivated the screening in the first place — getting people to sit down together, watch a film, discuss it, and connect.

External grants are a realistic and viable option, but funding typically comes with conditions attached. “No Change of Term” is among the more actively grant-seeking organizations interviewed, but Jiang Bu acknowledges that funding can sometimes become a constraint.  “We mainly apply for grants in the human rights field, and funders have corresponding expectations for projects,” he says. “For example, [they demand] that the films screened directly address Chinese human rights issues. That practical constraint has also shaped our current curatorial preferences.”

Chen Zhe’s attitude is thoroughly pragmatic — “cook according to the rice you have,” as he puts it. Unable to price tickets on par with mainstream cinemas, his group has tried to explore more flexible licensing arrangements, such as sharing revenue with rights holders based on actual ticket sales, rather than paying a flat licensing fee upfront. But Chen also stresses that lack of spare time among core members is the greater constraint on “Xinfeng,” more crucial than financial shortfalls. Planning and executing a screening requires a burst of effort over a short period, and he and the other core members all have their own primary jobs. With no new members currently joining, they cannot maintain year-round programming and can only hold events during seasons when members are relatively free.

Tang Mingxuan’s group has built a strong relationship of mutual trust with its venue, and so can use the space for free. The rights holders they have worked with do not always proactively charge licensing fees either, which means they can offer free admission to audiences. They have also tried collaborating with queer and feminist groups, selling self-made merchandise at screenings in hopes of covering other expenses.

Planning and executing a screening requires a burst of effort over a short period.

One distinctive feature of independent film screening, compared to other forms of activism, is that the entire screening network is tightly interconnected. To know what films are available to screen and how to reach rights holders, these organizations are pushed to build connections within the field and share information. Networks extend not only within Europe but also across Eurasia and across the Atlantic.

Jiang Bu, as someone who was active in China’s independent film community, carries with him a web of personal relationships that plays a vital role in “No Change of Term’s” day-to-day operations — allowing the group to reach out to a large number of filmmakers and secure screening opportunities. Once one screening organization successfully navigates all the steps to bring a film to the screen, that success story spreads rapidly through the network to other organizations and groups, ultimately allowing more audiences in Europe to see the film.

Among the longer-term plans at “No Change of Term” is to provide more material support for these informal connections. They are working to build an archive cataloguing the Chinese-language independent films available for screening, with an entry and description for each film as well as information on how to contact rights holders. Drawing on this archive, any independent screening organization or group could quickly find out what is available to screen and how to obtain a license. And their ambitions go further still. They hope to provide new screening groups with technical assistance and some financial support, enabling those groups to carry out low-cost screenings adapted to local conditions. This might ultimately achieve a vibrant Chinese-language independent screening network globally.

This vision at “No Change of Term” is one that Chen Zhe arrived at independently. For Chen, his original motivation for doing screenings was simply that no one was showing “the films I wanted to see.” Starting from this simple fact, he has a straightforward view of who should be screening films. Anyone can do it, he says, and everyone should be doing it together. “There are a lot of local community groups now, and I hope more of them, not necessarily independent screening groups per se, will start showing films so that we can all share the risk.” A dispersed, decentralized screening network is more in keeping with his tastes.

Coda: The Aftershocks of IndieChina

Precisely because of the tightly networked, cross-regional nature of independent screening, some of the people interviewed had been watching as Zhu Rikun, now outside of China, built IndieChina from the ground up — and had witnessed the festival’s eventual collapse. Jiang Bu, Chen Zhe, and Lin Aili all experienced this process firsthand; Jiang Bu in particular has had more personal contact with Zhu Rikun. After Zhu Rikun announced the cancellation of IndieChina, Jiang Bu offered him direct assistance, including helping him reach out to the media for coverage.

Each person’s circumstances and past experiences also shape how they interpret what happened to IndieChina. When Lin Aili first heard the news, she was very surprised. The entire IndieChina project had seemed so substantial, with such a long preparation period. If the Chinese authorities had truly wanted to interfere, she felt they could have done so much earlier, not just days before the festival was about to open. Jiang Bu, who has more understanding of the details with IndieChina, found the whole affair even more bewildering. “There have been all kinds of Chinese-language independent film festivals in New York before, and none of them have faced suppression this serious,” he says. “Many of the directors and staff members who were harassed in China are spread across multiple provinces, which means this was a coordinated cross-provincial operation.”

“They’ve really treated this thing as if it were some kind of existential threat,” he says of the Chinese authorities. 

The “aftershocks” of the incident have gradually spread to screening organizations on the European side of the Atlantic. “Xinfeng” had at one point considered screening some of the films selected for IndieChina, and had planned to reach out to Zhu Rikun after the festival concluded. That possibility is now out of reach. Some independent filmmakers have also declined screening invitations from “No Change of Term,” citing the risk of spillover from the New York incident.

For Lin Aili and Shen Jingping, however, the incident has only strengthened their determination to screen more films. Lin Aili notes that “79 Square Meters” is focused primarily on women’s and queer issues. While there is some tension with state controls, it is not necessarily highly sensitive, and she believes that as long as they manage risk carefully and keep a low profile, they will not face similar suppression. For her, what happened to IndieChina is actually more of an inspiration to keep going.

Amid the daily grind and the occasional shock of extremes like IndieChina, there is the lingering knowledge that each time the screen lights up could be the last. Though each group faces its own challenges, all remain hopeful about the future. They navigate the murky terrain of everyday operations in search of more sustainable models, hoping to continue bringing Chinese-language films to local audiences. Their hopeful call, never stated outright but conveyed in unison through their actions, is simple: may we all meet again before the opening credits roll. 

Note: The organization names “79 Square Meters” (79平米) and “Xinfeng” (信风), and the personal names Lin Aili (林艾历), Wei Wenxi (韦文熙), Tang Mingxuan (唐明轩), Shen Jingping (沈静平), and Chen Zhe (陈哲) are all pseudonyms. To protect the safety and privacy of those interviewed, some details — including times, locations, and personal backgrounds — have been lightly obscured where this does not affect factual accuracy.

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The academy, which is directly under the Fujian provincial government and conducts research to improve public security mechanisms, proposes a new method for detecting an abnormal build-up of people into “potential mass incidents” (潜在群体性事件) — referring to an oft-used official bureaucratic euphemism for collective protests, riots, demonstrations, strikes, and other forms of organized public unrest. The academy’s new method uses AI that is fed data from sound sensors, cameras and official reports. The AI system flags an incident as soon as it starts to develop, giving the police advance warning. If the system overlooks an incident, it reviews the video footage and recordings to improve detection in future. This is machine learning in the service of AI-based surveillance.

This patent is just the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the past year, institutions across China, both private and state-owned, have proposed variations of the same system: taking big data from China’s extensive surveillance system — including input from street cameras and satellites, noise sensors, social media posts, as well as reports from social services — and feeding it into AI models to aid predictive policing. This is part of the government’s vision of a fusion of human and machine response, making for a more robust domestic security system. 

The trend does not bode well for the most vulnerable sections of Chinese society.

Hue and CrAI

In 2024, premier Li Qiang introduced the country’s flagship domestic AI policy (“the AI+ initiative”), aiming to expand AI use in every sector of the economy and society. His Government Work Report noted that AI could swiftly modernize “social governance” (社会治理), a broad official concept encompassing the mechanisms the state uses to monitor, manage, and contain social unrest. Since the start of 2025, multiple Chinese institutions have pursued AI systems that serve this purpose, with many capitalizing on information sourced by China’s “grid workers,” (网格员) — typically paid community-level workers who monitor assigned neighborhood grids and report information and incidents to local authorities, their reports uploaded in real time through a dedicated app.

A variety of companies are working out how to empower this system through AI. Huawei, for example, has filed a patent that lets a neural network pinpoint the exact location of photographs taken and uploaded by grid workers, and can even turn the locations depicted in the photos into a 3D model. A research unit under the Jiangxi provincial government has laid out an AI-driven vision of urban management, predicting any incidents through data uploaded by grid workers on portable “smart terminals.”   

Using AI to improve the information flows between grid workers and government reflects Xi’s vision of enlisting ordinary citizens in grassroots stability maintenance, part of the concept of the “Fengqiao Experience” — a Maoist-era model of grassroots conflict resolution that Xi has actively revived. In August 2025, the State Council stated that the “AI+ initiative” would include building a “pluralistic co-governance” security system, where AI and humans worked together for a stronger national security system, including through “early warning systems.” Rather than representing a technological break with the past, AI in this context may serve primarily to entrench governance ideas that are six decades old.

While some institutions are making use of Chinese AI models for these projects, Western ones are also being considered. In August 2025 Guizhou Normal University suggested using OpenAI’s GPT models as a “core reasoning tool” in a system to predict “social governance incidents” based on reports of an individual’s “personality traits,” “long-term emotional states” or “degree of exposure to negative cultural influences.” The patent does not specify how data on “negative cultural influences” would be collected, though any such system would depend on extensive pre-existing surveillance infrastructure. While OpenAI has banned individual Chinese users from accessing its products since 2024, businesses in China can still access OpenAI models through Microsoft Azure. 

Open-source models are another option. A private company in Shenzhen has proposed using a model from Meta’s Llama family to monitor social media for “negative sentiment” in a tool to detect urban safety risks. Llama is open-source, allowing anyone to download the model for free. The patent cites monitoring natural disasters and urban infrastructure as the primary use case, but the system’s architecture would be equally applicable to monitoring political unrest. However the increasing efficiency of home-grown Chinese models, alongside risking data leaks by entrusting information to Western AI models, makes utilizing a local model more likely: there are multiple references to DeepSeek, Baidu’s Ernie models, or iFlytek’s Spark models.

Gridlocked

How would these inventions impact society? The systems described in these patents would likely fall hardest on the most vulnerable members of Chinese society. The algorithms are programmed around catch-all risk categories commonly associated with violent or disorderly behavior, with little apparent regard for individual circumstances. Guizhou’s risk monitoring system for assessing the danger levels of an individual include a “criminal record, drug abuse record, serious mental illness” as well as tense relationships with family members. It is not clear how the algorithm would make allowances for those, say, who have a criminal record through minor offences as opposed to a major one, or whose family relationships are tense due to living with abusive parents or spouses. 

It is also a chance to exert greater control over a system that has persistently caused trouble for local authorities. The Southwestern University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing has created a risk monitoring system specifically targeted at petitioners, individuals who are seeking redress for a wrong done to them either by a local cadre or peer. Petitioners are frequently driven to increasingly desperate acts after years spent navigating a grievance system that rarely produces results — a dynamic that authorities have long treated as a public order problem rather than a governance failure. 

The invention would see sensors and cameras placed in spaces where citizens meet officials, flagging a warning to police based on detecting heightened emotion through noise sensors and facial recognition software. But the algorithm is also programmed to take “Life Observations” into account. Subjects are considered high risk if they have spread inflammatory comments on social media over three times in one month, not had steady employment for over a year or do not have any social security, are homeless or reported as “not going out [of the house] for a long time (≥ 7 days).” 

Taken together, these patents sketch an emerging architecture for how AI is being enlisted to strengthen China’s domestic security systems. Whether all of these systems will be fully deployed remains an open question. What is clear is that AI is being systematically integrated into China’s grassroots surveillance infrastructure — whether or not these patents ever reach full deployment.

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But this year, in a magical twist, these fuzi featured the smirking face of the bully from House Slytherin who harassed Harry and Hermione in the halls of Hogwarts. 

Why Malfoy? 

In an article on Wednesday, the state-run Global Times explained that the trend comes from a simple play on the magical surname. “Malfoy” has been rendered phonetically in China as Ma Er Fu (马尔福), in which the first character, mǎ (马) means “horse” — this year’s new zodiac sign. The third character, Fu (福), or “fortune,” comes after the character Er (尔) for “thus.” So Malfoy means something like “fortune through the horse.” 

The trend reached its peak on social media as the actor Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy in the Potter films, shared the meme on his Instagram Stories feed. Weibo promptly exploded with excitement under the hashtag “Malfoy himself is in on the meme”  (#马尔福本人也在玩梗). The phenomenon even caught the attention of major Western media outlets, with both the BBC and CNN reporting on China’s unexpected Harry Potter obsession.

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In recent years, the pressure facing Chinese journalists has intensified considerably. When reporters in multiple regions cover stories such as mass incidents or the debt problems facing local governments, they are now routinely required to remove or revise reports, or to hand over their interview materials. Local propaganda offices continue to strengthen their review of news coverage, prompting frontline reporters to resort to self-censorship simply to survive professionally. Internet regulatory agencies have also increased real-time monitoring of news platforms and self-media accounts — independently operated accounts on social media platforms like WeChat that remain subject to strict licensing and content regulations. Reports involving social issues are often required to undergo a process of “pre-publication review” (先审後发). 

There is little to celebrate. And yet, every year in China, November 8 marks Journalists’ Day — established in 2000 as one of the country’s professional holidays. On the surface Journalists’ Day remains a festival celebrating the news industry, but it has more accurately become a collective moment of silence, reminding everyone that the boundary between recording the truth and erasing it has become hopelessly blurred.

In consultation with Tian Jian, the sources interviewed for this story opted for pseudonyms out of consideration of personal and professional risk. They include Xiao Hong (小紅), Pan Hong (潘虹), Ying Ping (應平), “U” and “N” — all current or former journalists living in China. The overseas media observers interviewed for this story, who maintain connections inside China, also chose to remain anonymous.

News Reports That Disappeared

On the eve of China’s 2025 Journalists’ Day, the WeChat account “Shijia” (十驾) published an article by veteran journalist Li Wei’ao (李微敖) called “A Journalist’s Work Is Definitely Not ‘Waiting for Notices’ or ‘Reading Bulletins’ — My 23rd China Press Day.” Li revealed in his article that he had published a total of 43 news reports in the 12 months to 2025 Journalists’ Day, of which 10 were deleted or taken down shortly after publication. Some of the pieces, he said, survived for just a few hours. The “disappeared” (被消失) content mostly involved socially sensitive issues such as official corruption, internal state-owned enterprise investigations, sexual assault scandals, and reports of religious figures under investigation. News censorship, Li pointed out, has become not merely part of the editorial process, but the core force determining the fate of reports. 

Li’s Journalists’ Day reflection, which was eventually removed from WeChat, can now be viewed in the archive at China Digital Times. 

Li’s WeChat post added that the disappearance of nearly a quarter of his articles revealed not just intensified censorship, but the impossible position of Chinese journalists, who are now completely trapped between their professional duty and institutional red lines. For reporters working within the system, articles serving a public watchdog function — what in the past was sometimes grudgingly accepted as acts of constructive “supervision by public opinion” (舆论监督) — are routinely deemed to have crossed the line. For those working outside the system, publication has become a roll of the dice. That the truth can be instantly erased is an occupational constant, a fact that made China’s 2025 Journalists’ Day particularly somber.

Wang Miaoling, a Beijing journalist interviewed recently by Tian Jian, said that on-site reporting has become a high-risk activity. “In some areas, police appear directly at news scenes, demanding deletion of footage when they see cameras, asking which organization you’re from,” she said. Such intervention has long become routine, with many reporters having to assess, as Wang says, “whether they can safely return” before setting out.

Wang says “disappeared reports” like those mentioned by Li Wei’ao in his post are not at all uncommon. They are, she says, a mirror of the news environment. “What journalists fear most now isn’t writing incorrectly — it is writing correctly yet still finding it impossible to publish,” she says. “This situation leads many to simply stop asking questions and stop recording reality. What can’t be published you just hand on to your friends in the foreign media.”

Zhao Renyi, a Beijing media research scholar, told Tian Jian that Wang Miaoling’s experience reflects structural changes in the current news environment. “In China, the method of censorship is no longer just about deleting articles,” he said, “but about making journalists self-restrain psychologically through layers of accountability and institutional punishment.” Though many young journalists still harbor ideals when entering the profession, they quickly learn how to avoid risks. “When Press Day becomes a day for wishing ‘safety’ rather than a moment for recognizing professionalism, the meaning of press freedom has been rewritten,” Zhao says. 

Institutionalized News Censorship

Xiao Hong, another reporter working at The Beijing News, told Tian Jian that many news organizations no longer encourage investigative reporting. “In July 2024, after investigative reporter Han Futao and two other reporters jointly investigated and published a story about [industrial] oil tankers transporting [edible] oils, the higher-ups were really unhappy,” she said. “Now all similar reports must go through several layers of approval. We all know which topics can’t be touched — and even if we do touch them, they can’t be published. Now when we receive complaints [from citizens about public interest issues], even with evidence, we don’t write about them.”

The story to which Xiao refers was published in The Beijing News on July 2, 2024. It revealed that oil transport trucks carrying toxic coal-to-oil (CTL) products were transporting soybean oil without cleaning the oil tanks between loads. After the report was published, it attracted widespread attention in China and internationally. The coverage forced officials to intervene and announce an investigation. As public opinion simmered, however, the Weibo account of journalist Han Futao (韩福涛), who had led reporting of the story, suddenly vanished. Searches for the account turned up a message that read: “User does not exist.” Many netizens left messages expressing concern for Han’s personal safety and questioning the platform’s reasons for blocking his account.

Compounding the pressure experienced at news reporting outlets, institutional-level review has also tightened considerably. Over the past decade, the system of news censorship in China has become a comprehensive system reaching down to the local level.

For local reporters, the sources of risk lie not only in direct obstruction at the scene, but also in dual pressure of information censorship and self-censorship. Reports on many public events are compressed into official “bulletins” (通报) [from the local authorities] that convey uniform information and tone, and under this system the media have gradually lost their role carrying out on-site reporting. Reporters working at institutional media (体制内记者) face a tug-of-war between “performance indicators” [that assess how frequently they publish] and the “risk of deletion.” Meanwhile, writers outside the institutional media system — trying their luck on platforms like WeChat — find viable publishing channels increasingly tightening.

As transparency around information has declined in recent years in China, the more comprehensive reporting of the facts often depends entirely on the courage and luck of the individual journalist. Ying Ping, a veteran Beijing media professional, told Tian Jian that direct news censorship and interference have driven a sharp decline in the number of working investigative reporters in the past decade. “In today’s journalism world, the number of investigative reporters has plummeted from over a thousand at its peak to just a few dozen, mainly concentrated in super tier-one cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen,” he says. “Most investigative reporters at media outlets in second-tier cities have either changed careers, turning to advertising or publishing self-media.” 

Ying recalls that back in 2008, after the poisoned milk scandal was exposed by Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post, a commercial daily under the state-run Shanghai United Media Group (SUMG), the newspaper received a call from the propaganda department wanting to track down investigative reporter Jian Guangzhou (简光洲), who was behind the report. Jian had revealed how infants who had consumed milk powder manufactured by Hebei’s Sanlu Group were being sickened with kidney stones. The milk powder was found to contain the industrial chemical melamine. “Back then you could still publish investigative reports,” says Ying. “Who dares pursue an exposé now?”

Political Review Makes Reporting High-Risk Work

Institutional mechanisms of political review in the media have become a routine part of the risk newspapers bear. Multiple senior reporters who have worked at official media such as Guangming Daily and the People’s Daily told Tian Jian that over the past decade, any topics involving local debt, urban village redevelopment, corporate layoffs, and financial risks must be approved by higher-level propaganda departments prior to publication. “Given the complexity of approval procedures, most editors now simply give up on such reports,” said one journalist. “When the propaganda department makes a phone call saying not to write about it, you can’t write.” Three decades ago, they said, the understood rule was the “three-seven split” (三七開), meaning three parts over the line could stand with seven parts in bounds. Today, the rule is the “one-nine split” — leaving almost no space for anything that crosses the line.

Pan Hong, a former Guangming Daily reporter, told Tian Jian: “Guangming Daily cannot publish so-called negative energy articles — not even one. Many young reporters are children of bureau-level officials within the system. Without needing to be told, their articles are almost all praise. They have long ago lost all basic sense of the journalist’s professional duty.” 

In central-level party media, she said, the core of censorship has shifted from scrutiny of content to the signaling of allegiance. “Guangming Daily is managed on behalf of the Central Propaganda Department, and the department head can directly call the president or editor-in-chief,” Pan says. “Censoring us isn’t just about content, it’s about your degree of loyalty.”

To avoid risk, some newspapers have simply ceased in-depth investigation of economic and social issues, filling the space instead by republishing official reports or propaganda pieces from other papers. Liu Hao, a reporter and editor who once worked at a metropolitan newspaper in the south, told Tian Jian: “We used to report on local official corruption or environmental pollution. Now all such news must go through the province’s prescribed approval procedures and are mostly shelved. Many reporters have turned to corporate public relations or commercial outlets.” 

“Journalism has become a dangerous profession,” they said. 

Foreign correspondents in China also complain about the journalism environment in China, which has become a society full of risks for reporters. U, a foreign journalist based in China, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of repercussions, told Tian Jian that he was once approached by government officials who said he would find it difficult to renew his visa if he filed reports critical of the Chinese government. “Coverage by Chinese reporters is censored, and as foreign journalists we are unable to run ‘sensitive’ news stories [without repercussions],” he said. “Even if our colleagues outside publish articles [that are critical], we will ultimately be used to settle accounts.”

Wang Haitao (汪海濤), a scholar of press freedom and digital control, told Tian Jian that as censorship has tightened, the risks for journalists have risen. “I recently discussed this topic with some former investigative reporters from Zhejiang Television,” he said. “TV reporters are now far more cautious than in the past — footage cannot show police on duty without their caps, you can’t capture scenes of [police] pulling and tugging with passersby, and even background music cannot use songs from Hong Kong or Taiwan.”

“Journalism has become a dangerous profession.”

Wang pointed out that these points of sensitivity generate pressure in on-the-scene reporting — censorship no longer existing just in the newsroom but permeating every shot and every word choice. “Censorship now is more like air,” he said. “Journalists know which footage shouldn’t be filmed, which words can’t be written.” This institutionalized contraction, says Wang, forces journalistic professionalism to give way to political security. “When journalism loses the ability to affect reality,” he said, “its social role is fundamentally altered.”

Journalism Students Also Required to Self-Censor

Zhou Bin (周斌), a veteran journalist who previously taught at journalism programs in China, told Tian Jian that a university where he once worked conducted a confidential survey in 2024 of journalism students and media interns, with a sample of about 1,500 respondents. “The results showed that most respondents acknowledged they would consider avoiding sensitive content when writing about social or political issues,” he said, adding that “this tendency becomes more pronounced after entering the workforce.”

This, says Zhou, reflects a critical gap. “Although this is not a strict industry survey, it does reflect the disconnect between journalism education and field practice,” he said. “Students in school still emphasize objectivity and fairness, but once they intern, they are required to learn self-censorship. Once this mentality forms, it’s very difficult to change after entering media within the system in the future.”

At the local level, the propaganda system’s “mechanism of political responsibility” (政治責任制) has been strengthened. J, a former management-level editor at Beijing Youth Daily, disclosed to Tian Jian that the propaganda department regularly convenes “guidance analysis meetings” (导向分析会) that serve as internal disciplinary sessions to enforce. These sessions trace accountability to individuals for “incorrect” reports, and require media to “not hype, not elaborate, not guide emotions” (不炒作、不延伸、不引导情绪). 

“Once when I was on duty, because of wording problems in a headline, both the editor and the responsible reporter were summoned for talks, suspended for inspection, and had three months of bonuses deducted,” J said.

Gradual Loss of Public Oversight Role

News risks not only affect media but also transform interactions between media and the public. N, a freelance writer from Jiangsu province’s capital city of Nanjing, says that they must maintain extreme caution at the drafting stage to ensure their reports can survive. “Before we publish, we review the text ourselves first, checking for ‘sensitive words,’” said N. “Now even writing about livelihood news and falling housing prices requires caution.” N cited such topics as conflicts over urban management, workers’ demands for unpaid wages, and disputes over property — all generally not published any longer in local media. 

“Sometimes after an article is written, no one dares accept it, and no one dares publish it,” N adds. 

When it comes to the internet, the automation of censorship technology makes the application of controls on information more covert. Since 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China has launched nearly constant “Clear and Bright” actions,  which include “cracking down on irregular news gathering and editing” (打击违规新闻采编), “rectifying false news on self-media” (整治自媒体假新闻), and “preventing negative speculation” (防範负面炒作). According to official reports on these actions, more than 800 million pieces of “irregular information” had been cumulatively cleared by the end of 2024, and around two million accounts had been blocked. This level of account oversight means that journalists writing for self-media do not have latitude to test the boundaries.

Between platform algorithms and professional guidelines and restrictions, the space that remains online and offline for pursuing stories has been severely contracted. The process for official government credentialing of journalists has also been strengthened. According to documents from the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), the agency linked to the Central Propaganda Department in charge of news and publishing, and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, press cards — which journalists technically require to conduct reporting — are subject to annual verification and are uniformly re-issued on a five-year basis.  

At the same time, journalists are obliged to take part in assessments of their knowledge of political theory including “Xi Jinping Thought on Journalism” (习近平新闻思想) and the “Marxist View of Journalism,” both of which essentially put the Party at the center of the media and journalism. These institutionalized requirements place professional journalists within what is essentially a system of political loyalty assessment.

The risks of reporting the news, observers say, are no longer simply about direct legal and political restrictions, but about the contraction of the entire public space in China. As pressure from local governments and corporate public opinion departments ratchets up, making local reporting and industry reporting nearly impossible, media can no longer serve a public oversight role. Instead, they have become cogs in the machine of propaganda and image management.

For many journalists, says Li Jia (李嘉), a former lecturer at Communication University of China (CUC), departure from the profession is a logical and necessary choice given this state of affairs: “The boundary between inside and outside the system is narrowing, and journalists are all thinking of ways to survive. The best way is just to leave the media industry.”

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