Intellectuals · Full chronicle and history

Recently, netizens in many places posted on social media platforms that they had received calls from 12340, the national social sentiment and public opinion survey hotline, where staff asked about their satisfaction with local public security and their daily living conditions.

After legal scholar Xu Zhangrun was punished for his speech and forced to leave academic research, he turned to writing poetry. His latest collection of poems from the past four years, "Fallen in Battle: The War Between Heaven and Earth," has been evaluated by Ding Dong regarding his experiences.

Economist Yao Yang, Dean of the Dishui Lake Advanced School of Finance at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said in a video posted on "Yao Yang Shuo" that about 100 million people in China actually pay individual income tax, that an annual income of 100,000 to 120,000 yuan puts one in the top 10% by income, and that an annual income of about 300,000 yuan puts one in the top 1%. The bottom 10% of earners account for only 0.4% of all income and have negative net wealth, and around 600 million people nationwide still earn less than 1,000 yuan per month.

On October 17, a Douyin blogger complained that young people are told to abandon the “student mindset” as soon as they enter society, asking why honest people should reflect on themselves after being taken advantage of, and saying that those who cheat and deceive are the ones who should truly reflect. The post struck a chord with netizens, who left comments in共鸣.

A netizen inside the Great Firewall shared records of fines imposed on their family by the Chinese Communist Party. The fines covered a wide range of items, and the specific items were not detailed in the tweet.

On October 2, YouTube creator Bumingbai Podcast released an episode, gathering letters from eleven listeners to discuss various experiences of feeling inferior while living in China.

On September 17, a netizen uploaded an AI short film to Douyin in which a young person runs desperately while carrying a basket on their back containing their parents, only to be criticized for falling behind, sparking widespread resonance and discussion among netizens about the heavy burden of family.

After Black Sea shipping routes were disrupted, China turned to South and North America for emergency spot purchases of grain, with international grain traders charging an extra $42.5 per ton.

China's total retail sales of consumer goods rose 0.6% year-on-year in July; retail sales of automobiles fell 13.2% year-on-year from January to July.

In May 2026, China's total retail sales of consumer goods fell 0.6% year-on-year, marking the first monthly decline since December 2022, with sharp drops in sales of automobiles, home appliances, building materials and other categories.

In May 2026, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China fell by 0.6% year-on-year.

In 2019, Gao Xiaosong joined the Chinese Communist Party-led Jiusan Society, saying he had finally joined the intellectual family he had long aspired to.

When the author was in elementary school in Shanghai, a school worker who had barely spoken for five years was actually a principal-level senior intellectual who had been purged elsewhere; after Mao Zedong's death in 1976, this person was rehabilitated and took up the post of principal.

In 1968, Jiang Qing announced Liu Shaoqi as a major special agent and traitor when receiving the Peking Opera Troupe. During the Cultural Revolution, numerous political figures and intellectuals suffered brutal persecution.

On May 16, 1966, the "May 16 Notification" was issued and the Cultural Revolution began. Intellectuals at schools of all levels were struck, and Lao She, Fu Lei and others were persecuted to death.

During the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Mao Zedong quoted the Zuo Zhuan idiom "If the skin is gone, what can the hair attach to," comparing intellectuals to hair clinging to the skin of the proletariat, and declared that intellectuals had lost the qualifications for independent survival.

Beginning in 1957, the Anti-Rightist Campaign was launched, resulting in the purge of numerous members of democratic parties and intra-party dissidents.

In the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Chinese Communist Party labeled some individuals as rightists because intellectuals had voiced their opinions, and the people involved and their families subsequently suffered long-term political and social consequences.

After 1949, a large number of Chinese social elites left China; related accounts regard this as the starting point of the subsequent changes in social structure.