2026-11-06
On November 6, a netizen released a sensitive word extraction tool for the WeChat Input Method, extracting 13,362 sensitive words. These include a large number of satirical nicknames related to Xi Jinping, as well as terms like June Fourth and the anti-extradition movement. The poster stated that the word list is built into the installation package, and once triggered, it prevents word formation, predictive text, or memory storage.
2026-11-06
The topic of Xi Jinping voting trended on Weibo. After the People's Daily forwarded it, the comment section showed that the platform had enabled comment filtering. Netizens found that Weibo's AI smart search showed an interruption in thinking for this topic, responding that it was temporarily unable to answer.
2026-11-05
Recently, a netizen first asked Doubao about football history, subtly inquiring whether a coaching style that maintains absolute authority over a team for a long time and causes massive turmoil is dictatorial, but received no clear answer. After asking directly, the netizen received a prompt stating, 'This content is suspected of violating Doubao's usage policy.'
2026-11-02
On November 2, a Bilibili blogger posted a video explaining the idiom 'Xi yan bu cha'. Screenshots show it reached 135,000 views, but with zero comments or bullet comments, as the comment section was disabled.
2026-11-01
On November 1, a netizen posted an item on Xianyu titled "Does anyone want to know what Mbappe said?" The platform removed the item and deducted 100 'Xianqi' points, citing politically sensitive information. Three seconds later, the user's 'Xianqi' score dropped to 0, all their items were deleted, and their account was permanently restricted from posting, purchasing, commenting, and private messaging.
2026-10-31
On October 31, rapper Pharaoh released his new album 'A Young Person's Life'. Netizens interpreted the first characters of the lyrics in the song 'October' as a homophonic reference to 'Long Live the Cultural Revolution'. Pharaoh responded that he had no such intention and it was purely a coincidence. To avoid a negative listening experience, he muted the relevant lyrics; in the latest screenshot of the lyrics, '革职掉玉帝' (Dismiss the Jade Emperor) has been replaced with asterisks.
2026-10-30
On October 30, Havana continued to post on X, using German Nazi history to warn against extreme nationalism and criticizing the use of "patriotism" as a requirement to conduct political censorship on others as the beginning of anti-democracy.
2026-10-30
On October 30, a netizen posted that after sharing a photo on WeChat Moments of a "Bushuila" drink featuring a portrait of Kylian Mbappé, all social functions of their account were temporarily restricted four minutes later.
2026-10-30
On October 30, The Diplomat published a commentary noting that after Kylian Mbappé referred to Mao Zedong as a dictator, he, Real Madrid, and La Liga issued successive apologies. This demonstrates that commercial pressure from the Chinese market is constraining overseas speech, and companies may be proactively enforcing political boundaries.
2026-10-29
Recently, the comments section for a post on the Dongqiudi app titled "Ballon d'Or 17th Place: Vinícius" was closed. Netizens explained that this was due to the two characters "Winnie" (Vinícius's nickname in Chinese), with some lamenting that even cartoons cannot be mentioned now.
2026-10-29
On October 29, the official website of the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music published an article introducing the theme class meetings held from September to October. The former Drama Department incorporated online speech and conduct into disciplinary education, covering all 16 classes, with complete records and photos of the class meetings archived.
2026-10-28
After the controversy over Mbappé's remarks, a netizen posted on WeChat Moments a photo of a "Hydrate" drink printed with Mbappé's face along with a doctored image captioned "Party enemy Mbappé," with the caption "has become a swan song." After the post went up, friends could not see it; 22 minutes later the user reposted a screenshot, and it was blocked again more than two hours later.
2026-10-28
On October 28, the Weibo topic "Mbappe's apology not posted on his 135 million follower IG" reached the top 4 on the trending list. Netizens joked that Instagram is banned in China, so even if he had posted it, no one would see it.
2026-10-27
On October 27, after Mbappé sparked controversy by calling Mao Zedong a "Chinese dictator," Dongpeng Beverage Group and its brand "Bu Shui La" issued a statement announcing the immediate termination of all cooperation with Mbappé, stating zero tolerance for hurting national sentiments.
2026-10-27
On October 27, a Chinese netizen posted on X, using Mbappé's joke about the Chinese leader as an example to ask whether one could also joke about Napoleon; a foreign netizen left a highly upvoted reply in the comments saying that anyone can be joked about, and that this is called freedom of speech.
2026-10-14
On October 14, Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Chen Binhua responded to Kevin Tsai's attendance at Puma Shen's campaign event, saying that it respects and safeguards Taiwan compatriots' "legitimate" freedom of speech, but warned that no one can cash in on mainland dividends while colluding with "Taiwan independence" and being "two-faced."
2026-10-13
On October 13, the X account Wall Country Waha (@GFWfrog) posted that the South Park Chinese wiki is no longer accessible in mainland China, that it could still be opened normally three or four months ago, and that this is related to the show's mockery of the Chinese Communist Party; the post included a screenshot of a South Park episode page featuring an image of Xi Jinping.
2026-10-13
On October 13, the X account GFWfrog (@GFWfrog) posted that the Chinese Wikipedia of The Simpsons (simpsons.fandom.com/zh) has been blocked in mainland China; the attached ITDOG speed-test screenshot showed timeouts at nodes in every province across the country.
2026-10-13
On October 13, the X account Wall Country Waha (@GFWfrog) posted that the Family Guy wiki (familyguy.fandom.com) has been blocked in mainland China; the attached ITDOG speed-test screenshot showed that nodes in every province across the country timed out.
2026-10-07
On October 7, Chapman To recalled on Facebook his experience of being blacklisted in 2014 for supporting the Sunflower Movement, saying that over the past 12 years he has never gone without a meal — now he wears a Patek Philippe, drives a Porsche 911 to buy groceries, and calls out “Long live freedom.”
2026-10-05
In an interview, Shen Bo said that it is perfectly normal in a democratic society for Kevin Tsai to want to hear different voices, and added that if he had the opportunity to be interviewed exclusively by Kevin Tsai, he would be very willing to do so.
2026-10-02
On October 2, Taiwanese singer Hebe Tien said "you have to be very careful what you say now" during a livestream promoting her new album Where to Go, lamenting that it is "so painful."
2026-10
Peking University News subsequently published a report on Steinmeier's visit, detailing his activities such as playing table tennis with students and faculty and receiving a signed racket, but made no mention of his speech quoting Cai Yuanpei's principle of 'freedom of thought and inclusiveness.'
2026-09-25
During on-site reporting, the reporter was obstructed by suspected CCP personnel, including having their camera lens blocked by umbrellas, being physically blocked from filming, and even receiving threatening gestures. The reporter felt threatened.
2026-09-07
The Economist published an article analyzing the current state of speech censorship in China, pointing out that articles discussing the boundaries of expression are being deleted, society has fallen into a state of high self-censorship, and the CCP is using this to consolidate control.
2026-09-08
According to a September 2026 video by Toronto Fang Lian, in the early stage of the Internet firewall system's construction, the only hardware contractors were Sugon under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Huawei, and Huawei has long been involved in building the CCP's internet censorship and surveillance system.
2026-09-07
After The Economist published an article on September 7, 2026 pointing out that China's speech environment has fallen into a deep freeze, this article exploring cultural censorship and the boundaries of expression was deleted across the entire Chinese internet.
2026-09
Silicon Valley attorney Zhu says his WeChat account, which he had used for more than 10 years, was permanently banned, with the platform citing reports against it and multiple violations as the reason.
2026-07-21
The Hunan Library issued an announcement on its official WeChat account stating that due to recent incidents where readers used public Wi-Fi to circumvent the Great Firewall and access prohibited overseas websites, posing serious cybersecurity risks, it has temporarily shut down its wireless network for rectification and exposed the mobile phone numbers of some readers.
2026-07-11
On July 11, 2026, a cybersecurity account disclosed screenshots of documents showing that Chinese listed cybersecurity company RenZixing established a VPN intelligence database, conducting deep traffic screening and feature tagging on more than thirty circumvention tools including Mist, Lantern, and others.
2026-07-02
Lam Wing-kee, founder of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay Books, passed away in Taiwan on July 2 due to cancer at the age of 70. Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te posted a tribute, praising his witness to the value of freedom of speech.
2026-07
At a book fair in Hangzhou, a member of the public openly said that a book of Xi Jinping's quotations was only fit for use as toilet paper, and was subsequently taken away by security guards.
2026-06-16
On June 16, 2026, Guoji Beisheng released the "Cross-Border VPN Identification System for Universities – Product White Paper," claiming that by using bidirectional traffic monitoring and deep learning models, it achieves real-time detection, evidence collection, and violation profiling of circumventing the Great Firewall behavior.
2026-06
When sharing overseas about shaking hands with Xi Jinping, KMT Chairperson Cheng Li-wun described his hands as "soft as clouds." The related remarks and the word "clouds" were subsequently thoroughly scrubbed (404ed) across the mainland Chinese internet.
2026-04
In an interview on the French web show The Bridge (hosted by his Real Madrid teammate Tchouaméni), Mbappé was asked about the funniest meme of himself. He said it was the one where someone put his face onto a photo of “a Chinese dictator,” adding that he often sends it to friends while playing video games. The show later edited in a composite image of him and Mao Zedong. Multiple media outlets report that the interview was recorded in April this year, and clips spread on platforms such as Reddit and X starting October 26.
2026-03-31
Taiwan's Shilin District Court issued a ruling in the case in which Wang Zhian sued Hu Zhongxin, accusing him of being CCP overseas propaganda and a double agent. The judge dismissed all of Wang Zhian's claims, finding that the statements in question constituted opinion expression and political commentary based on facts, and were protected by freedom of speech.
2024-07-30
In late July 2024, Lao Dongyan, a professor at Tsinghua University's Law School, published an article openly questioning the network number and network certificate system that the Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration of China plan to introduce, arguing that it is essentially the normalization of Health Kit surveillance. The article was swiftly wiped out across the entire internet.
2021-08-04
Voice of the Strait published a post stating that Taiwanese people live in a different environment, so their everyday vocabulary cannot be required to be identical to that of mainland China, and said that Little S's use of the term "national player" is perfectly normal in Taiwan.
2021-06-09
On June 9, 2021, Biden signed an executive order revoking Trump’s bans on WeChat and TikTok, instead directing the Commerce Department to conduct security reviews of related Chinese apps.
2020-08-06
On August 6, 2020, Trump signed an executive order banning U.S. companies and individuals from engaging in WeChat-related transactions with Tencent 45 days later.
2014-05-27
At the end of May 2014, all Google websites became inaccessible in China and have never been unblocked since. Foreign websites shifted from a blacklist system to a de facto whitelist system.
2010-03-23
After Operation Aurora and multiple clashes and war of words with the Chinese government over search result filtering, Google officially announced its withdrawal from the Chinese mainland market.
2010
Facing strict internet censorship and political pressure, Google chose to exit the Chinese market in 2010.
2009-03
Around the 20th anniversary of the 2009 June Fourth incident, China blocked overseas platforms such as Google, YouTube and Facebook.
2009
Following the July 5 Xinjiang riots in 2009, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were permanently blocked in China.
2006-01-26
On January 26, 2006 (January 25 US time), Google launched the Chinese version of its search engine Google.cn, filtering search results in accordance with the rules of the Chinese authorities, and noted in the footer that some results were not displayed.
2006-01-25
Around January 25, 2006, Google launched a specially tailored google.cn with filtering. Google said that completely denying search to one fifth of the world's population would be a more serious violation of its mission.
2004-09-13
Yitaohutu Forum, one of China's largest campus forums, was shut down by Peking University because it was flooded with political commentary and active discussions about the Sun Zhigang case.
2002-08-31
On August 29, 2002, Google was blocked in China for two weeks, regarded as the first major test of Great Firewall technology.
1999-06
In June 1999, under the leadership of Harbin Institute of Technology professor Fang Binxing, the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China was established, aiming to technically block Chinese people from accessing overseas networks, and becoming the origin of the Great Firewall.
1999-01-20
Shanghai software engineer Lin Hai was sentenced to two years in prison for providing 30,000 collected Chinese email addresses to the overseas anti-communist digital journal "VIP Reference," becoming the first person in China to be imprisoned for internet-related activities.
1996-09
According to foreign media reports from around September 1996, China blocked about 100 overseas websites in one fell swoop, including overseas news websites and anti-communist websites. This is the earliest verifiable record of internet censorship.
1996-02-01
Premier Li Peng signed the interim regulations, which explicitly stipulated that China's connection to the international internet must go through official channels, laying the foundation for the Great Firewall.