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TRACKING CONTROL

TRACKING CONTROL

We look at the ideological concepts, policies, laws, regulations and formal and informal practices that work to “guide” and constrain the space for media, journalists and digital audiences in China.

Latest | Tracking Control

The Many Faces of the People’s Daily

Jan 6, 2025 | Bertie Lyhne-Gold

First launched as a newspaper in 1946, the flagship media group of the Chinese Communist Party is now a sprawling content empire — relaying everything from the dictates of the leadership to the latest entertainment news. But the Party, as ever, remains at the center.

The Party in the Machine

Nov 27, 2024 | Alex Colville

A new AI tool allowing users to generate text based on the speeches of China’s top leader shows just how difficult it is to create tech that is both cutting-edge and politically compliant.

The Crimes and Punishments of China’s ‘Internet Auditors’

Oct 31, 2024 | Qin Shi

Those who grew up as the “internet generation” have also been reared inside the walls of online censorship — and some have grown up to become censors themselves. How do the people within the system operate its machinery? And what goes on the heads of those working as “screws” within that machine?

From the Archive

Alibaba’s AI Bias Problem

Oct 3, 2025 | Alex Colville

A test of the Chinese tech giant’s trending language model reveals that in some cases, English-language answers are more guided by the leadership’s priorities than Chinese ones.

Historical Revisions on Parade

Sep 4, 2025 | David Bandurski

China’s 80th anniversary WWII celebrations weren’t just about military might—they were about rewriting history to erase America’s wartime role.

China Issues Approved News Source List

Aug 25, 2025 | David Bandurski

Updated roster shows modest growth to 1,456 sources, with expansion focused on provincial and government platforms.

No AI Too Small

Aug 22, 2025 | Alex Colville

The safety test content for an AI-powered children’s toy shows political safety figures heavily in even the most everyday applications of Chinese AI.

Chatbots Silent on Sichuan Protests

Aug 15, 2025 | Alex Colville

China’s AI models are now a crucial part of the Party’s censorship system for sudden-breaking stories and emergencies.

China’s AI Sweep Fizzles

Jul 2, 2025 | Alex Colville

The results are in for China’s “Clear and Bright” campaign targeting artificial intelligence abuses — and bad actors still have ready access to deepfake tools.

DeepSeek’s Democratic Deficit

Jun 24, 2025 | Alex Colville

Governments and companies are underestimating the power of the high-performing AI model as a propaganda tool.

China’s Global AI Firewall

Jun 12, 2025 | Alex Colville

DeepSeek’s latest model is its most restricted yet, particularly for users making politically sensitive queries in Chinese. Is a global split opening in AI?

China’s Slow March Toward Cyber IDs

Jun 4, 2025 | Alex Colville

The government has announced that netizens will require IDs to go on the internet. For now this is voluntary, but there are signs it will not remain that way for long.

Breaking Beijing’s Script

May 7, 2025 | Dalia Parete

In the wake of a deadly boat accident, state media have moved to control the narrative, following a playbook created in 2008. But despite tight message discipline across official outlets, one Shanghai news source broke ranks with a story that raised uncomfortable questions about negligence and ignored safety warnings.

Television in Crisis

Apr 10, 2025 | Xiaobai Yu

As programs in China become propaganda mouthpieces and meaningful content disappears, stations face financial collapse while viewers abandon traditional media entirely. Everyone inside knows the way out of the dilemma — but that door is closed by Beijing’s refusal to loosen control over public discourse.

China’s AI Content Dragnet

Mar 24, 2025 | Alex Colville

Hundreds of gigabytes of data from an unsecured server expose how China is using artificial intelligence to automate the surveillance of online discourse, with a sophisticated classification system prioritizing military, social, and political content.

Rehabilitating DeepSeek

Mar 4, 2025 | Alex Colville

With DeepSeek-R1 making waves around the world, tech companies are rushing to deploy the model. Some are struggling to remove pro-CCP biases, while others aren’t even bothering.

How AI is Tested for Loyalty

Feb 18, 2025 | Alex Colville

Chinese developers are using mock civil service exams and Communist Party ideology to train artificial intelligence – and that could shape how these models talk to the world.

DeepSeeking Truth

Feb 10, 2025 | Alex Colville

When it comes to assessing the risks of DeepSeek, are we asking the wrong questions? Governments, journalists, and coders need to know that it’s a much more sophisticated propaganda tool than we all thought.

China Unveils New MCN Rules

Jan 13, 2025 | David Bandurski

In proposed new oversight measures, the top cyberspace authorities place political as well as professional constraints on the multi-channel networks that manage social media influencers.

China Opens ICC to Rebrand Xinjiang

Jan 10, 2025 | Alex Colville

Xinjiang has finally unveiled its own International Communication Center, tasked with clearing the air of accusations of human rights abuse. But it’s just one move in a broader propaganda push to rehabilitate the region’s poisoned image.

The Many Faces of the People’s Daily

Jan 6, 2025 | Bertie Lyhne-Gold

First launched as a newspaper in 1946, the flagship media group of the Chinese Communist Party is now a sprawling content empire — relaying everything from the dictates of the leadership to the latest entertainment news. But the Party, as ever, remains at the center.

The Party in the Machine

Nov 27, 2024 | Alex Colville

A new AI tool allowing users to generate text based on the speeches of China’s top leader shows just how difficult it is to create tech that is both cutting-edge and politically compliant.

The Crimes and Punishments of China’s ‘Internet Auditors’

Oct 31, 2024 | Qin Shi

Those who grew up as the “internet generation” have also been reared inside the walls of online censorship — and some have grown up to become censors themselves. How do the people within the system operate its machinery? And what goes on the heads of those working as “screws” within that machine?

After a Savage Attack, Brutal Silence

Sep 24, 2024 | Alex Colville

The killing last week of a Japanese schoolboy in south China is the latest in a pattern of anti-Japanese hate — but the hard lessons of the tragedy are lost on the country’s media.

Responding to AI Risks

Sep 11, 2024 | Alex Colville

This summer, China’s top political body floated the creation of a safety and regulation system for AI. A new document released this week by the country’s cyberspace regulators offers the first clues of what that might look like.

Decline and Fall

Aug 22, 2024 | Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

The latest findings from Hong Kong’s Press Freedom Index don’t look good, but they do shed light on how the city’s media environment is changing four years into an ongoing crackdown.

Xi’s Ten-Year Bid to Remake China’s Media

Jul 24, 2024 | David Bandurski

Outside China, the idea of “media convergence,” the joining together of communication technologies on handheld devices, is now so much a way of life that few even talk about it. But for China’s leadership it is a concept with era-defining significance — having far-reaching consequences for the current and future exercise of power.

Code of Silence

Jul 19, 2024 | Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

As the Wall Street Journal fires the head of Hong Kong’s biggest press union, sources tell us this is only the tip of the iceberg — across the board, international media are pressuring their Hong Kong employees to keep away from the group, or risk losing their jobs.

Talking Tiananmen with a Chinese Chatbot

Jun 4, 2024 | Alex Colville

Chinese developers hope to build the AI of the future. What, if anything, will it have to say about the past?

Sparking Compliant AI

May 24, 2024 | Alex Colville

China is eager to show the world that it can lead in generative AI technology. But one of its first challenges is chillingly unique — how to make its industry-leading chatbots speak like the Communist Party.

Red Renaissance

May 6, 2024 | David Bandurski

China’s leadership is actively pushing culture throughout the country’s vast rural hinterland, including through hundreds of thousands of “rural bookrooms.” But the overriding goal is to push the Party’s continued dominance at China’s grassroots — to the detriment of real cultural development.

Blank Slates for the Two Sessions

Mar 21, 2024 | Alex Colville

During political meetings in Beijing earlier this month, China made a show of its openness to foreign journalists. A closer look at its efforts to cultivate invited guests, particularly from the Global South, suggests what the government really wants is to have less experienced China reporters who arrive as tabula rasa — ready to be imprinted with the government’s message.

Enforcing the CCP’s Media Leadership

Jan 9, 2024 | David Bandurski

At this year’s gathering of top propaganda officials in China, held last week, the emphasis was once again on the CCP’s dominance of the message — in the media, propaganda, and culture more broadly. The prominent use of a new Xi Jinping catchphrase made clearer than ever who is in charge of the national narrative.

Policing Pessimism, and Everything Else

Dec 14, 2023 | David Bandurski

The latest notice from China’s top cyberspace control body is clear about just one thing — the absurdity that ensues when an authoritarian system tries to be specific about everything it wants to erase, and everything it doesn’t.

The Vicious Cycle of Rumor in China

Dec 7, 2023 | David Bandurski

Internet control authorities in China routinely portray “online rumors” as a threat to public well-being. But the real concern, which has nothing to do with factualness or accuracy, is that they might be harmful to the Party’s well-being — a fact that inflates the value of rumors, including truly false information.

China’s Press Under Xi Jinping Thought

Nov 22, 2023 | David Bandurski

State media coverage of a ceremony yesterday to honor the recipients of China’s most prestigious journalism awards makes clear that the most prized asset in China’s press is control.

Good Reporters Tell Good Stories

Nov 16, 2023 | Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

According to the long-running theme of Journalists’ Day festivities under Xi Jinping, “good journalists tell good stories.” So what makes a good story in China today?

The Tyranny of Full Openness

Oct 20, 2023 | CMP Staff

A new measure could be on the horizon requiring all influential self-media accounts in China to publicly display the identities of the people behind them, which some fear could have a chilling effect on one of the country’s more vibrant information spaces.

Positive Energy Gets Positive Reinforcement

Aug 29, 2023 | Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

The results are in: what were the most “positive” articles, pictures, and videos in China over the past year? “Positive energy” (正能量) has been a priority for Chinese media for years, but the 550 pieces showcased from 2022 highlight their current top priority and reveal how “positive energy” isn’t always positive.

Ideas Worth Stopping

Aug 13, 2023 | Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

The cancelation of a TEDx speaking event in Guangzhou has invited debate over whether the move was about curbing “foreign influence” or a simple legal infraction. A new regulation released before the weekend suggests it might be both — and one more ripple in a growing nationwide campaign.

Onstage and Online, It’s the Party’s Rules

Jul 25, 2023 | David Bandurski

As the pandemic raged, live online performances took off in China, filling the offline gap and giving post-90s audiences a much-needed outlet. Now, say the authorities, it’s time to retune — and reassert control over a growing market.

13 Unlucky Rules for Cyberspace

Jul 13, 2023 | David Bandurski

New regulations for independent content creators in China are a reminder of how political priorities in the oversight of digital platforms undermine regulatory action that might protect the public.

How to Please China’s Audience of One

Jul 7, 2023 | David Bandurski

These days, Chinese media must be loud and clear in declaring their political loyalty to Xi Jinping and the CCP. The annual “social responsibility reporting” process, in which media tout their most praiseworthy acts of praise, is a sickening gaze into a political system that has lost the ability to see itself clearly.

The ‘Everything App’ for China’s Journalists

Jul 4, 2023 | CMP Staff

In the latest effort to centralize and tighten control over the ideological education of journalists, Chinese authorities are introducing a customized training platform with more than 220 separate courses in the Marxist View of Journalism.

Legislating Love for the Ruling Party

Jun 30, 2023 | Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

China’s new draft law on “enhancing patriotic education” looks to add to the leadership’s legislative toolbox for repression and ideological control.

A Tale of Two Junkets

Jun 5, 2023 | Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

Tours organized for foreign journalists in China by propaganda officials and organizations like the All-China Journalists Association may be deployed with slightly more subtlety than those for domestic “news workers.” But the goal is the same — to guide coverage in ways favorable to the leadership.

How a Massacre Shaped China’s Media

Jun 2, 2023 | David Bandurski

When it comes to media and information control policies, all Chinese live today with the legacy of the Tiananmen Massacre. We look back on a brief moment before the brutal crackdown when China’s press stood with those clamoring for change.

Comedy, Under the Watchful Eye of the State

May 18, 2023 | David Bandurski

As the ostensibly independent China Association of Performing Arts disciplined comedian Li Haoshi this week, it offered a glimpse into how China uses professional associations as proxies through which to exercise political and ideological control.

Extinguishing a Scandal at Zhengzhou University

May 10, 2023 | David Bandurski

A post going viral late Tuesday night on Weibo could be seen as proof of the crucial role social media can play in exposing wrongdoing by those in positions of power. But its subsequent treatment in the media more broadly is a lesson in how authorities in China effectively exercise controls on public opinion.

A New Era for China’s Readers

Apr 25, 2023 | CMP Staff

Xi Jinping has been lauded in the official press as a deep reader who wants to create an atmosphere of love for books in China. But the latest numbers from the country’s publishing industry suggest a climate of political hypersensitivity is killing book titles before they ever reach the shelves.

Bringing AI to the Party

Apr 14, 2023 | David Bandurski

China’s release this week of new draft rules governing the generation of AI content, coming just months after the launch of ChatGPT, might give the impression leaders are scrambling to catch up. But for years now, the Chinese Communist Party has planned to power up AI innovations — even as it contains them.

China’s Propaganda Machine is Calling

Feb 16, 2023 | CMP Staff

Earlier this week, the Ministry of Human Resources posted its 2023 call for the hiring of positions within the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department and its subsidiary departments. Could this be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for?

Cai Qi Leads Propaganda Ministers Conference

Jan 5, 2023 | CMP Staff

Cai Qi, the Politburo Standing Committee member in charge of ideology, led a national meeting of propaganda ministers in Beijing this week. The national strategy for media and ideology boils down to this simple formula: unquestioning obedience to Xi Jinping.

Reporting Achievements

Dec 19, 2022 | David Bandurski

“History illuminates the future, and the journey has no end,” Xinhua chief Fu Hua wrote in the soaring conclusion to a recent piece on his news agency’s obedience to Xi Jinping. But when history conveys no real lessons, when its primary business is to construct models of achievement and greatness, what it reveals instead is the rottenness at the core of the politics that have wrought it.

The Good Journalist

Nov 8, 2022 | CMP Staff

Media across China are commemorating the country’s official Journalists’ Day today, celebrating the role of the reporter. But in today’s China, what separates the good from the bad?

Eliminating Unformed Threats

Sep 16, 2022 | Raphael Chan

A China Media Project study of the online information-related patents filed by one of China’s largest state-owned military technology suppliers sheds light on the government’s efforts to secure cyberspace before damaging public opinion emerges.

China’s Quiet Fury Over Xinjiang

Sep 2, 2022 | David Bandurski

We have been told that China is furious over the UN report on human rights in Xinjiang. But the revealing fact is that so far Chinese media have spoken only to the rest of the world — and virtually zero mention of the report can be found inside the country.

Don’t You Dare Say “WeChat”

Jul 27, 2022 | Stella Chen

Facing strict curbs on social media, Chinese users have long used creative wordplay such as homonyms and intentionally misspelled words to tiptoe around censorship. Now, as platforms enforce their own word restrictions to hold on to traffic and hold off rivals, content creators have a whole new set of words to avoid. And for some, frustrations are mounting.

Rewarding Compliance

Jul 21, 2022 | David Bandurski

This month China announced its preliminary selections for the China Press Awards, the “highest award for outstanding national journalism.” Under the country’s tightly-controlled media system, what exactly amounts to excellence?

“Clear and Bright” for the CCP Congress

Jul 19, 2022 | CMP Staff

Announcing a two-month “special action” to clean up content on social media, short video platforms, and streaming services, Chinese authorities say the goal is to protect the country’s youth. But official statements earlier this year point to one clear purpose — paving the way for quieting dissent ahead of the CCP’s 20th National Congress.

Hijacking Digital Literacy

Jul 13, 2022 | David Bandurski

In much of the world, digital literacy centers on giving citizens the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to be safe and empowered in cyberspace. In China, related initiatives are enmeshed with the far more basic goal of ideological and political control.

CNKI’s Security Problem

Jul 6, 2022 | Stella Chen

A national security review of China’s leading academic research database, announced last month by cyberspace authorities, is not so much about sensitive content as about the potential sensitivities of public access.

Xinhua’s Innovative Party Man

Jun 8, 2022 | David Bandurski

The newly appointed president of China’s top official newswire is about loyalty to the CCP through and through. But some say he also wants to innovate, breaking new ground and doing the “propaganda that cannot be seen.”