China Digital Times

''China Digital Times'' (CDT; ) is a California-based 501(c)(3) organization that runs a bilingual news website covering China. The site focuses on news items which are blocked, deleted or suppressed by China's state censors.

History

The website was started by Xiao Qiang of University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism in fall 2003. Xiao has asserted that Chinese internet users are using digital tools to create new autonomous forms of political expression and dissent, "changing the rules of the game between state and society".

According to Freedom House, researchers at ''China Digital Times'' have reportedly identified over 800 filtered terms, including "Cultural Revolution" and "propaganda department". The types of words, phrases and web addresses censored by the government include names of Chinese high-level leadership; protest and dissident movements; politically sensitive events, places and people; and foreign websites and organizations blocked at network level, along with pornography and other content.

For many years, the site has leaked propaganda from the State Council Information Office, which oversees news websites in China.

The site also publishes the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a wiki-based directory of Chinese Internet language. The project is named after the Grass Mud Horse (''cǎo ní mǎ'' ()), a pun on the phrase '' cào nǐ mā'' (), literally, " fuck your mother", and which is one of the Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures. The publication has also covered the backlash against increased censorship from China's independent media, and employees of state media.

In 2009, it published a set of documents leaked by a Baidu employee which revealed events, people and places that were deemed politically sensitive.

In 2013, ''China Digital Times'' published an English-language e-book, ''Decoding the Chinese Internet: A Glossary of Political Slang,'' which contains Chinese Internet language that criticizes the government.

Staff and operations

Sophie Beach is the Executive Editor of its English site, and her writing about China has appeared in publications including the ''Los Angeles Times'', the '' Asian Wall Street Journal'', the ''South China Morning Post'' and ''The Nation'' magazine. The Translations Editor is Anne Henochowicz, an alumna of the Penn Kemble Democracy Forum Fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy. She has written for other publications including ''Foreign Policy'', ''The China Beat'', and the ''Cairo Review of Global Affairs''.

''China Digital Times'' provides content about China for ''The World Post'', a partnership between ''The Huffington Post'' and the Berggruen Institute. The ''China Digital Times'' website is run by students of the university, with help from contributors from around the world. ''China Digital Times'' has historically been a recipient of funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, though funding was frozen in 2025 after Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency cut funding to the NED.

Response by the Chinese government

A popular section on the ''China Digital Times'' site is 'Minitrue', which is short for 'Ministry of Truth'. The sections covers official government directives to media organizations, requiring them to censor or tone down postings on sensitive matters. In 2014, ''China Digital Times'' published an article which states that China's censors demanded that article about a crackdown on terrorism be “prominently displayed” on the homepages of online news sites.

References

External links

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* {{ProPublicaNonprofitExplorer, 455274376

Year of establishment missing
Chinese-language websites
American news websites
501(c)(3) organizations
Non-profit organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area
Internet censorship in China