Chapter Dive

Baihang and the Eight Personal Credit Programmes: A Credit Leap Forward

“The personal credit era has arrived,” some netizens say.

Published

8 years ago

June 10, 2018

Baihang Credit has received ample coverage in Chinese press recently as it was launched as “the first unified personal-credit information firm” of the PRC. It joins forces with Alibaba, Tencent, and six other big companies in further building on China’s credit-based society. What’s on Weibo provides an overview of the developments that have led to the formation of this powerful credit platform.

Three years after eight commercial firms were granted permission by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) to start their pilot programmes in operating personal credit systems in 2015, none of them have received a license.

Instead, they’ve now become shareholders and active contributors to a new unified platform that has access to an enormous number of personal credit data. At the so-called ‘trust alliance’ (信联) Baihang Credit (百行征信), state level and commercial organizations join forces in further developing China’s credit systems.

How they can share data without harming Chinese recent laws on privacy, however, remains vague.

Some background

An important moment within this development started over twelve years ago (to be precise: on March 20 of 2006), when the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) began operating its own independent Credit Reference Center. The goal of the brand-new center was to set up the reliable credit checking platform which China was still lacking at the time.

At its core, it was tasked with managing a national commercial and consumer credit reporting system, to enable financial institutions to assess borrowers’ creditworthiness.

Screenshot of The Credit Reference Center website.

In November of 2013, during the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Congress, new plans were adopted to also “establish and improve a social credit system to commend honesty and punish dishonesty” (USC 2013), putting more pressure on the formation of a solid credit checking system in China.

Months later, in 2014, the Chinese State Council issued an official notice concerning the construction of a nationwide Social Credit System that was to be rolled out by 2020 (Creemers 2014).

Three Years of the “Credit Leap Forward”

It is perhaps no coincidence that not too long after the formal announcement of these plans, that would lead to a more credit-based Chinese society, the PBOC Credit Center opened its doors to eight Chinese companies to work on trial programmes to prepare for operating their own personal credit information businesses.

At the time, in 2015, the PBOC’s Credit Center had been around for nearly a decade, yet still ‘only’ covered 25% of the Chinese population, leaving ample risks in the control process of Chinese financial services (Yang 2017).

You could say that 2015 was an important year in which competition for China’s multi-billion personal credit investigation market really began, along with the flourishing of China’s Internet population and the growing demand for personal online data information (Jun 2015). A recent Caixin column by Xinhai Liu (刘新海), associate researcher at the Credit Reference Center, even calls the 2015-2018 period the “Credit Great Leap Forward” (“征信大跃进的三年”).

Besides that new personal credit rating tech firms started to pop up, the year 2015 was also the year when misconceptions arose in foreign media regarding these existing credit systems.* ACLU called it “nightmarish,” falsely claiming that all Chinese would be “measured by a score between 350 and 950, which is linked to their national identity card” and that “the government has announced that it will be mandatory by 2020.”

As explained in our recent article about this issue, these discussions – that continue in foreign media to this day – often blur the lines between the national Social Credit system and a number of private programs. (To understand more about the difference between the government’s Social Credit system and the commercial ones, please read the previous article we featured on this topic.)

These misunderstandings partly come from the fact that both the government’s plans on introducing their ‘Social Credit System’ (社会信用体系) and the Central Bank’s endeavors to build a stronger personal credit industry (个人征信行业) were major developments in the period from 2013-2015 up to the present.

The Eight Programmes

With such a strong demand for solid credit rating systems, why have none of the eight approved tech firms received their license, over three years after starting pilot operations?

One of the main problems with commercial services such as the well-known ‘Sesame Credit’ is, according to PBOC spokesperson Wan Cunzhi, that they are all “isolated islands” (“信息孤岛”) of non-shared data, that they are lacking in independence, and that their data management is not strong enough (Yang 2017).

The coming-together of these “islands” solves this problem and forms one solid platform under the ‘Baihang’ label. Which eight companies does this concern? An overview:

1. Sesame Credit (芝麻信用)

This is the best-known commercial personal credit score programme, implemented by Alibaba’s Ant Financial. Sesame Credit already had 520 million users as of 2017.

Sesame Credit example scores explained, from 385 being in the low range to 731 being in the ‘good’ range.

Sesame Credit was launched in 2015. Because it is part of the Alibaba family, Sesame Credit has an enormous amount of data at its disposal, from e-commerce sites to finance products (Taobao, Tianmao, Alipay, etc), through which it compiles users’ own scores, going from 350-950, for those who have opted into the program. The scores are based on a number of things, including people’s payment history, their contacts and network, and online behavior.

2. Tencent Credit (腾讯征信)

Since the Tencent company currently hosts 55% of China’s mobile internet usage on its platforms (Marr 2018), it has also an enormous amount of data at its disposal. Similar to Sesame Credit, Tencent Credit works with a 300-850 score system. It officially launched a trial of its score programme in January of 2018, but then took it down shortly after.

3. Kaola Credit (考拉征信)

Koala Credit is an independent third-party credit company established by the Shenzhen-based Lakara (拉卡拉) financial services company. Koala Credit was launched in May of 2015, around the same time as Sesame Credit launched its program. Lakara has strategic and powerful partnerships with China Unionpay, five major banks, and hundreds of other financial institutions. Lakara and Koala Credit jointly founded a pioneering lab in China that focuses on big data models. The University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is involved in this project (Zhuo et al 2016, 299).

4. Pengyuan Credit (鹏元征信)

Established in 2005, Pengyuan Credit is amongst the oldest personal credit investigation firms of the eight selected by the PBOC. The company states on its website that its main goal since 2005 has been to “create a credit reporting ecosphere on the Internet,” shifting from traditional credit rating systems to online credit rating methods.

5. Sinoway Credit (华道征信)

The Beijing Sinoway Credit was established in 2013 by four large financial companies. As explained by BJReview (2016), Sinoway is among those companies (such as Zhima and Tencent) that accumulate data from their business rather than using traditional algorithms to collect financial and public data. They have exclusive access to enterprise data (Zhuo et al 2016, 299).

6. Qianhai Credit Service (深圳前海征信)

Qiu Han, CEO of Qianhai.

Another company established in 2013, Qianhai Credit is based in Shenzhen. It was launched by financial giant Pingan. The current CEO is the female big data specialist Qiu Han (邱寒).

7. China Chengxin Credit (中诚信征信)

The Beijing-based China Chengxin Credit company was founded in 2005, established by the China Chengxin Credit Management group. The firm provides personal credit information and companies and market research services. As described by the China Money Network, its database is connected to local administrations for industry and commerce, police, courts, telecom service providers to provide comprehensive credit information.

8. Intellicredit (中智诚征信)

Intellicredit is a Beijing-based independent, third-party credit registry. CEO Li Xuan (李萱) has previously expressed the company’s goal to handle any loopholes that let scammers get away with fraud in China’s online financial environment. The company is experienced in credit industries both in China and abroad, and its team has also worked on the establishment of the credit reporting system of the PBOC (Zhuo et al 2016, 299).

Baihang & Allies: An Abundance of Personal Data

The formal launch of Baihang Credit (百行征信), the “first unified personal credit information firm” of China, has become big news in Chinese media, with some calling it a personal credit industry game changer.

Lauch of Baihang Credit, May 23 2018 (photo via Weibo).

Baihang Credit is a joint establishment of the aforementioned eight and the China Internet Finance Association.* It received its license in February of this year. The firm officially opened for business on May 23rd of 2018.

While the China Internet Finance association reportedly holds 36% of the Baihang firm, the other eight shareholders each hold 8% (Zhang & Liu 2018).

^

The eight companies are not just financial investors, but also active contributors and sharers of technology, resources, and data for the Baihang firm. The launch of this joint establishment means that both state-level institutions and commercial enterprises combine their efforts in building a strong personal credit investigation and service platform; the new system now links data collected by these powerful firms such as Tencent to the state-level China Internet Finance Association, which in itself is an initiative by the People’s Bank of China.

Besides basic data including personal information, education level, salaries or employer, companies such as Sesame Credit or Tencent also have access to a rich collection of consumer data, ranging from social media, e-commerce purchases, online travel data, to location, phone records and even social connections.

The eight firms will also play an important role in Baihang’s management. Sesame Credit, Tencent Credit, Qianhai Credit, Sinoway and Koala Credit have all entered the company’s board of directors. The other three companies will join the board of supervisors (Sina Finance 2018). The 57-year-old Zhu Huanqi (朱焕启) will be Baihang’s CEO and president; he previously worked at Huida Asset Management.

The PBOC told Caixin Global that all parts of the eight companies that previously dealt with personal credit ratings will now be incorporated into Baihang. The other parts can continue to operate as data service providers. In the future, Sesame Credit, for example, will continue to research commercial credit services.

Many Questions Linger

While the recent alliance has received ample attention in Chinese media as an important moment in China’s transforming alleged ‘credit-based’ society, many questions still linger.

One Nanjing research institute writes on Weibo: “The joining of these companies means they can share big data. This also means that if a person is behind [in payments] on one platform, they will also have no access to loans on any of the others.”

But is it all about sharing personal financial credit information, or is this about the sharing of other data as well? What are the legal implications of Baihang operations? And to what extent, if at all, will the system link to the upcoming nationwide Social Credit System?

Caixin Global noted that Baihang Credit will face challenges regarding Chinese Cybersecurity Law, which imposes strict limits on ‘secondary uses’ of data beyond its original purpose, and requires individual authorization when personal data is transferred from one institution to another (Sacks 2018; Zhang & Liu 2018).

In this Caixin article, the PBOC’s spokesperson would not elaborate on how Baihang will collect and use personal data. He was only quoted in saying only that contributions to Baihang will be handled “according to market rules.”

“Personal Credit Era has Arrived”

Despite the many articles about Baihang in Chinese media, it has not become a much-discussed topic on social media; netizens discussing Chinese credit systems seem more concerned with the height of their Sesame Credit score.

One Weibo user, however, did write about the Baihang alliance, commenting: “The personal credit era has arrived” (“个人信用时代到来”).

Other people worry about the impact of this alliance, saying: “You’ll see that if you have a negative balance on your bank account, you won’t be able to use the public bathroom anymore.” (Recently, various cities in China are upgrading their public toilets, integrating AI features such as facial recognition for people to receive free toilet paper.)

Some commenters simply call the companies that have joined under Baihang “a pile of trash.”

Although Sesame Credit will not receive a license to operate its personal credit investigation business, it is highly probable that users of their credit programme will still be able to enjoy the perks of, among many other things, entering libraries for free or riding rental bikes without deposit with a high score.

“I’ve just arrived in Hangzhou and can do many things for free,” one person wrote: “I feel like my Credit Score is omnipotent.”

Baihang’s recent alliance is about to make Chinese personal credit scores even more omnipotent – the ‘Credit Leap Forward’ is well underway.

By Manya Koetse
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* In an article from December of 2015, for example, The Independent suggested that “China has created a social tool which gives people a score for how good a citizen they are,” describing how “China” had put forward “a concept straight out of a cyberpunk dystopia” named Sesame Credit.

* The Chinese Internet Finance Association, also known as the NIFA (National Internet Finance Association) was established in March of 2015 upon approval by the Chinese State Council and Ministry of Civil Affairs. It is a state-level organization.

References (others linked directly within text)

Creemers, Rogier. 2014. “Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020).” China Copyright and Media, 14 June China https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/ [10.6.18].

Creditchina. 2018. “百行征信入场,8家股东剥离个人征信业务.” CreditChina.gov, 4 June http://www.creditchina.gov.cn/gerenxinyong/gerenxinyongliebiao/201806/t20180604_117132.html [10.6.18].

Huang, Zhiling. 2016. “Six Obstacles to Producing Reliable Big-Data Credit Reports.” BJ Review, 15 December http://www.bjreview.com/Business/201612/t20161212_800074419.html [9.6.18].

Jun, Wang. 2015. “Road to Credit.” Beijing Review, 3 August http://www.bjreview.com.cn/business/txt/2015-08/03/content_698269.htm [9.6.18].

Marr, Bernard. 2018. “Artificial Intelligence (AI) In China: The Amazing Ways Tencent Is Driving It’s Adoption.” Forbes, 4 June https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/06/04/artificial-intelligence-ai-in-china-the-amazing-ways-tencent-is-driving-its-adoption/#5130d54b479a [10.6.18].

Sacks, Samm. 2018. “New China Data Privacy Standard Looks More Far-Reaching than GDPR” CSIS, 29 January https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-china-data-privacy-standard-looks-more-far-reaching-gdpr [9.6.18].

Sina Finance. 2018. “百行征信揭开面纱芝麻信用腾讯征信等五家入董事会.” sina Finance, 4 January http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bank/bank_yhfg/2018-01-05/doc-ifyqinzs8775295.shtml [10.6.18].

USC. 2013. “Decision Of The Central Committee Of The Communist Party Of China On Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening The Reform, November 12, 2013.” USC, 12 November https://china.usc.edu/decision-central-committee-communist-party-china-some-major-issues-concerning-comprehensively [10.9.18].

Yang, Felix. 2017. “Is Xinlian the answer to the Individual Credit Checking System in China?” Kapronasia, 25 Aug https://www.kapronasia.com/china-banking-research-category/item/886-is-xinlian-the-answer-to-the-individual-credit-checking-system-in-china.html [10.6.18].

Zhang, Yuzhe, and Liu Xiao. 2018. “Launch of Unified Platform Boots Private Firms From Personal Credit Business.” Caixin Global, May 28 https://www.caixinglobal.com/2018-05-28/launch-of-unified-platform-boots-private-firms-from-personal-credit-business-101258187.html [10.6.18].

Zhuo Huang, Yang Lei & Shihan Shen. 2016. “China’s personal c>edit reporting system in the internet finance era: challenges and opportunities.” China Economic Journal (9:3): 288-303.

Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us.

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Manya Koetse

Manya Koetse is a sinologist, writer, and public speaker specializing in China’s social trends, digital culture, and online media ecosystems. She founded What’s on Weibo in 2013 and now runs the Eye on Digital China newsletter. Learn more at manyakoetse.com or follow her on X, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

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China Digital

How Chinese AI Videos Turned Foreigners into Villains

How viral AI videos turn racialized outsiders into threats and violent Chinese heroes into defenders of social order, China’s first nationally broadcast AI drama, and why a newspaper is being sold for 50 times its original price.

Published

5 days ago

August 3, 2026

Manya Koetse

Welcome to China Trend Watch (Week 30–33 | 2026), where I bring you the latest trends, memes, and debates driving conversation across Chinese social media. Subscribe here to receive future editions.

Over the past few weeks, a noteworthy amount of AI-related news has been trending on Chinese social media, which is reflected in this week’s edition.

Now that AI has entered every corner of media consumption and online life, related discussions seem to be reaching a new peak. While well-produced AI dramas are receiving more praise, low-effort AI slop is flooding video feeds and increasingly being used to stir controversy and generate clicks, fueling prejudice, hate, and cyber-nationalism. More about that further down in this newsletter.

🗞️ QUICK SCROLLS

🎬 A new AI-generated micro-drama has become all the rage on Chinese social media. While earlier AI dramas were criticized for being sloppy and repetitive, Laid-Off Girl (被裁掉的女孩) is praised for its quality and appealing protagonist, Fang Taozi (方桃子), a small-town woman pursuing her dream of becoming a model in Paris. She is so believable that viewers almost forget they are not watching a live-action production. This marks a real step up in quality for the industry, raising the bar for others. (If you want to get a taste of what it looks like, here’s a YouTube link).

Stills from the popular micro AI drama Laid-Off Girl (被裁掉的女孩).

📺 China’s national TV has now also aired its very first AI drama. While AI dramas mostly belonged to the realm of unofficial short-form online productions, the phenomenon has now made the leap to longer productions broadcast on national satellite television. Anhui TV is airing the Ming-dynasty drama The Tale of Peach Blossom Pool (桃花潭记), promoted as China’s first fully AI-produced medium-length drama centered on cultural heritage.

📱 China’s cheap & easy SIM-card era has ended. There was a time when you could get a SIM at any street corner in a Chinese city. That changed over a decade ago when real-name registration became strictly enforced. Now, as of 1 August, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom will sell cards online only through their own apps and websites, cutting off all third-party internet sellers who have been the go-to source for cheap data plans. The move is meant to curb third-party SIM cards ending up in grey-market chains, being used for bulk account registration and telecom fraud. But most people just fear that plans are becoming less affordable.

🚇 “Half an hour queuing for a ten-minute ride” was a common complaint after Shenzhen Metro tightened its security checks on July 20. Much to the dismay of commuters, the stricter checks led to long lines, as all carry-on items must now pass through an X-ray machine, while every passenger is also subject to a handheld body scan. Some wondered why, in an era of AI-powered image screening, security couldn’t be handled more efficiently. Shenzhen is hosting the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting later this year, in November.

☀️ Summer childcare worries have been trending, as even dual-income families are reportedly struggling to arrange childcare during the school holidays. Summer programs often last only a month and still require pick-ups during hot afternoons, while private tutors sometimes charge around 200 yuan per hour ($30). More Chinese parents have therefore turned to hiring university students, offering 3,500 to 4,000 yuan per month ($520–$590) to look after their children during the summer break.

👁️ EXPLAINER

How Chinese AI Videos Turn Foreigners Into Villains

“I’m American! You can’t do anything to me!” says a young white man, moments before a strong Chinese man kicks him and throws him to the ground in a single move. A crowd of Chinese aunties standing nearby applauds as the foreigner hits the ground. “Don’t think we’re still the Chinese people of the past,” the Chinese man says. “You don’t want to mess with the Chinese people of today.”

This is just one example among hundreds of similar short videos flooding Chinese social media these days. Featuring various kinds of anti-foreign and racist content, they depict foreigners as threats to China’s social, moral, and national order. Strong, confident Chinese people confront, violently beat, and humiliate them in defense of their country.

Stills from AI videos showing Chinese men beating up misbehaving foreigners.

These videos, which often last between ten seconds and half a minute, are posted by online creators across platforms such as WeChat, Kuaishou, and Douyin. Many of these creators run content-farming accounts devoted entirely to this type of content, which attracts many likes and reactions: the videos are short, visually striking, emotionally powerful, and play into existing prejudices and racialized thinking.

Racist and anti-foreign content is nothing new on Chinese social media and dates back to the earliest days of China’s online video platforms. But the age of AI has brought new dynamics to such content. Last fall, Joshua Dummer reported in Foreign Policy on the growing popularity of AI-generated anti-Black videos presented as cautionary tales about Chinese women becoming involved with African men.

This time, it’s different.

The latest wave of anti-foreign content goes beyond gender dynamics and focuses more broadly on the negative influence foreigners supposedly have on Chinese people and society. Foreigners disrupt orderly Chinese public spaces or threaten the safety of Chinese women, security personnel, or lower-status workers, after which a morally upright Chinese person restores order through violence.

Four Types of Videos

In the dozens of AI videos I’ve analyzed, roughly four categories can be discerned, with different groups of foreigners performing different “narrative jobs.”
(See examples of these videos on my X here, or find them on Bluesky)

1️⃣ The Uncivilized Outsider

Roughly 40% of the videos show foreigners engaging in “uncivilized” behavior and disrupting China’s cleanliness, etiquette, and public order. In these scenes, foreigners are portrayed as dirty, smelly, and disorderly.

One example shows an entire plane of Chinese passengers holding handkerchiefs over their noses because of the smell from an Indian man’s bare feet. He refuses to comply with the flight attendant’s instructions, after which a strong Chinese man approaches and slaps him in the face.

AI video: An Indian passenger disrupts a Chinese flight with smelly feet.

Other examples include foreigners attempting to urinate in the street, occupying multiple seats on public transport, putting their bare feet up on a high-speed train, or otherwise disregarding public etiquette.

These videos predominantly feature Indian characters, but to a lesser extent also white/Western and Filipino characters.

2️⃣ The Entitled Foreign Bully

Roughly 30% of the videos depict foreigners as arrogant, entitled, and aggressive bullies who believe their nationality places them above Chinese rules.

Examples include foreign men and women skipping queues by invoking their foreign status or showing disrespect toward China’s vulnerable elderly or lower-status workers, until a Chinese person teaches them to “respect China’s rules.”

AI video: A Western woman is hit by a shop owner for using her foreign status as a reason to cut the line.

These videos mostly feature white people, but sometimes also Black, Indian, or Japanese characters.

AI video: entitled Indian man gets curry thrown in the face by waiter.

One scene shows an Indian man demanding that the Chinese waiter serving him curry kneel before him, after which the waiter scolds him and throws the curry in his face.

3️⃣ The Sexual and Demographic Threat

Roughly 20% of the videos fall into the category described in Foreign Policy last October, in which foreign men are portrayed as sexual and demographic intruders.

These videos often show Chinese women following foreign partners to Africa or India, only to end up living a nightmare of poverty, abuse, or infidelity. Some explicitly warn Chinese women not to marry foreigners.

AI video: A Chinese woman is first shown in a happy relationship with her African partner, and then shown in a state of desperation after she moved to Africa with him.

There are also many videos showing Chinese men as heroic protectors of women being harassed by foreign men. One recurring scenario shows a Black man harassing a Chinese woman in a shopping street before being beaten by a Chinese man who comes to her defense.

AI video: Chinese man saves Chinese woman from getting harassed by a foreigner.

Although these videos mainly feature Black African men, with Africa portrayed as a kind of dystopia, some also include white or Indian men.

4️⃣ The Undesirable/Dangerous Migrant

About 10% of the videos take place at airport immigration or border control, showing foreigners arriving without money, carrying drugs, or seeking to exploit Chinese hospitality.

One example shows Indian men arriving at the Chinese border and claiming that they want to “enjoy Chinese women.” They are refused entry after an official questions them about their finances.

AI video: Indians denied at the border.

The endgame is always the same: they are denied entry and sent back to their country. These stories predominantly feature Indian characters.

💡 To get a rough idea of which racialized groups appear most often, I analyzed a sample of 35 videos collected from my timeline: approximately 39% featured Indian characters, 28% White/Western characters, 24% Black/African characters, 6% Filipino characters, and 3% Japanese characters.

Reversed Humiliation

The xenophobic AI slop that we’re seeing is about more than just “foreigners behaving badly.” Besides the videos showing Chinese women moving to Africa, the basic formula running through most of them is:

Foreigners cross moral or social boundaries and violate rules → they victimize Chinese people or otherwise bring humiliation or inconvenience to others → forceful intervention by a morally upright Chinese person → punishment and restored order.

These videos do two things.

➡️ One important effect is that they produce a sense of “Chineseness” by constructing a threatening “Other” that is never Chinese (even though the foreigners all look different, they are never ethnically Chinese). In doing so, Chinese national identity is defined through contrast with how bad the Other is.

The foreign villain is deceptive, uncivilized, backward, and disruptive—a threat to women, public order, and social stability—whereas the Chinese characters are morally superior, embodying loyalty, civility, modernity, collective responsibility, and the protection of social and historical continuity. The foreigner therefore does more than play the villain: his imagined identity helps define who the Chinese are and what contemporary China is.

➡️ Another effect is that these videos offer a form of catharsis in China’s “new era.” They coincide with increasingly prominent narratives about China’s exceptional rise, its emerging superpower status, and the “decline of the West.” At the same time, they evoke the painful history of 19th China and the “century of humiliation”—a period portrayed in contemporary education as one in which foreign powers aggressively and violently imposed their rules on a weak China.

These AI fantasies symbolically reverse that history. The videos show that Chinese people are no longer passive victims, but strong and assertive defenders who fight back against foreigners who disrespect them or exploit Chinese hospitality. Through violence presented as morally justified, historical humiliation is transformed into national victory: China is no longer subjected to rules imposed by outsiders, but has become the country that sets the rules and possesses the strength to enforce them.

The Many Faces of Chinese Digital Nationalism

This recent trend shows that digital nationalism in China has many faces, and that this one in particular is not actively boosted by state media nor supported by official voices.

The timing of these videos does not just mark a new era of Chinese digital nationalism; it also coincides with a new wave of China tourism and a travel boom, with trips to China by foreign nationals rising sharply since the Covid era amid more lenient visa policies. This includes an increase in visas issued to Indians at a time when Indian and Chinese authorities have been working to normalize bilateral relations.

Earlier in July, Chinese newspaper The Paper published an article pushing back against growing online hostility toward Indians in China, arguing that individual misconduct should be addressed without stereotyping an entire nationality or turning it into xenophobic outrage. In a noteworthy move, the full article was republished on the website of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi—showing Chinese authorities pushing back against these trends and defending Indians to Chinese netizens.

At the same time, this is perhaps also a case of lead by example. An AI-animated video released by state media outlet China Daily which depicted the Philippines as a “ragged monkey” has also made international headlines recently, with the imagery called racist and unacceptable.

Even though the authorities might not be happy about the flood of racist or xenophobic AI videos at a time when state media are promoting just how welcoming China is to foreigners, official videos such as these can also fan the flames and provide examples for grassroots creators to draw on.

🔗 SEEN ELSEWHERE

🔹 Fresh “feet juice,” anyone? Chinese female cosplayers recently caused a stir at an anime convention in Guangzhou by selling cups of lemon water from the tubs in which they were soaking their feet. Read via SCMP.

🔹 China saw a new series of cyber crackdowns in July, including one targeting so-called companion bots—AI characters created to offer consumers emotional support as virtual friends. Having to bid farewell to these companions in light of the new ban has been really tough for users, with some even trying to “rescue” their virtual friends by downloading them. Read via Ginger River Review.

🔹 Earlier this year, Amsterdam-based cybersecurity researcher and journalist Marc Hofer came across a futuristic-looking dashboard that turned out to be an unsecured Zhangjiakou police dashboard, offering a rare window into how Chinese local authorities track foreigners by collecting and aggregating vast amounts of private data. Read via The New York Times.

🔹 People in China can now get paid US$15 to US$700 to license their faces for AI-generated entertainment productions. As the AI boom drives demand for an ever-wider range of human faces, Chinese companies have found a solution: buying the legal rights to people’s faces. Read via Rest of World.

🀄 ONLINE PHRASE OF THE WEEK

洛阳纸贵 Luòyáng zhǐ guì

Lit.:Paper has become expensive in Luoyang
Meaning:Flying off the shelves / selling like hotcakes

Who thought print media could still go viral in this digital age?

Just a few months ago, Chinese mathematician Wang Hong (王虹, b. 1991) from Guangxi became the first woman to win the top prize at China’s most prestigious math congress for her work on the three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture. On July 23, she was awarded the Fields Medal, also dubbed the “Nobel Prize of mathematics,” one of the highest and most prestigious international honors a mathematician can receive.

Together with fellow math talent Deng Yu (邓煜), she became one of the first two Chinese citizens to be awarded the Fields Medal and is only the third woman ever to win the prize.

After her win on July 23, the provincial Party newspaper Guangxi Daily (广西日报) featured her on its front page with a long article about her story and the headline “Wang’s Conjecture” (王的猜想, Wáng de Cāixiǎng). The article was praised for its “great title,” as it literally refers to her research but can also be read as “the conjecture of the king” (王 Wáng also means king), hinting at Wang’s ascension to the throne of mathematics.

Because of its unusual headline and prominent coverage—and because the Fields Medal wins were seen as confirmation of China’s status as a “strong mathematics country” (数学强国, shùxué qiángguó), especially since both mathematicians were educated in China until adulthood—the article went viral, turning that issue of Guangxi Daily into a must-have item.

This popular demand for physical copies created what Chinese commentators called a case of 洛阳纸贵 (luòyáng zhǐ guì), “paper has become expensive in Luoyang”—a classical idiom for a text so popular that it drives up the price of paper.

The idiom originated during the Western Jin dynasty (265–316 CE), when a work by writer Zuo Si (左思) became so popular that people across Luoyang rushed to make handwritten copies of it. The work’s popularity supposedly drove up the price of paper, giving rise to the expression 洛阳纸贵. It’s now an idiom used for written work that is in high demand.

Although a single copy of Guangxi Daily costs 1.35 yuan (about $0.19), the print edition’s resale price on e-commerce platforms initially jumped to 65 yuan ($9.60), with the going price now around 38 yuan ($5.60).

On apps like Xiaohongshu, showing off your own copy of the “Wang’s Conjecture” Guangxi Daily newspaper became a way for users to “check in” and show their support for Wang, Guangxi, and China’s mathematical talent. In doing so, Wang’s win unexpectedly also created one of the most viral moments in Chinese print media in a long time.

That’s a wrap! Thanks to Miranda Barnes, who contributed to topics discussed in this edition. Also thanks to Ed Sander for sending in some of the videos that have helped me in my research of the main topic.

Eye on Digital China, by Manya Koetse, is co-published on Substack and What’s on Weibo. Both feature the same new content — so you can read and subscribe wherever you prefer. Substack offers community features, while What’s on Weibo provides full archive access.

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Chapter Dive

China’s CITIC Tower Crash: The Story That Never Trended

How information surrounding the CITIC Tower crash was managed, from a five-day media blackout to a sixth-day official narrative.

Published

1 month ago

July 2, 2026

Manya Koetse

🔎 Originally published in Eye on Digital China.
My premium newsletter covering the stories, memes, debates, and viral moments shaping online conversations in China. Subscribe here to receive future editions.

The story that never went trending was undoubtedly the biggest story of the week. On June 26, an incident at the Beijing landmark CITIC Tower (aka China Zun 中国尊) in the Chaoyang central business district sparked disbelief online. At 5:55 pm local time, a small plane, a Sunward SA60L Aurora, crashed into the tower, after which wreckage from the small aircraft fell to the street below (video).

For those who immediately responded to the incident on social media, it seemed unimaginable that this had happened in the capital. Beijing is one of the most heavily defended airspace zones in China. Since May of this year, recreational drones are also banned in Beijing, with outdoor flights requiring prior approval from authorities.

“A small plane hit CITIC Tower??? How could something like this happen? What happened to the air defense capabilities in our core restricted zone???“ one Weibo commenter wrote on Friday night.

After videos and images of the incident spread, online discussions were swiftly and thoroughly censored. That same day, while media outlets around the world began reporting on the crash, it did not appear among the top 50 trending topics on Chinese platforms—in fact, it wasn’t reported anywhere at all. As related keywords and hashtags were taken offline, it quickly became clear that this was the “6.26 Incident That Shall Not Be Mentioned.”

Even the next day, when Chaoyang authorities issued a brief official notice, republished by state media, the name of the tower was never mentioned, just that “a single-engine, two-seat light sport aircraft collided with a high-rise building during flight,” and that an investigation was underway. The one person on board, the pilot, died in the crash. Thirteen others were injured.

Later, flight tracking data revealed that the aircraft had taken off from Shifosi Airport, northeast of Beijing, and had come close to a Hainan Airlines passenger jet, forcing at least two commercial flights to abort their landings.

For the five days following the incident, little to no official information was available on the highly unusual incident. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities reportedly ordered a nationwide suspension of most general aviation activities, including recreational flying.

Why the CITIC Tower Incident Triggered an Information Blackout

But why has the censorship surrounding this incident been so intense, leading online censors to scrub all footage and discussion of it from the internet?

This has to do with the nature of the incident.

It is not uncommon for major incidents to be heavily censored, especially when the details surrounding them are still unfolding. But this kind of information “blackout” generally occurs only when incidents are considered particularly sensitive, and the regular toolkits used to manage and control information are no longer deemed sufficient.

Some examples include:

▪️The 2011 Wenzhou Train Crash, which happened at a time when the prestige and reliability of China’s high-speed rail system was celebrated as a flagship national project.

▪️The 2013 Tiananmen SUV ‘Suicide Attack’, which happened in a tightly guarded, already politically sensitive public space and the symbolic heart of the state.

▪️The 2022 Anti-Party Protest Banner at Sitong Bridge, which happened just before the opening of the 20th Party Congress that confirmed Xi Jinping’s unprecedented third term.

▪️The 2024 Beishan Park Stabbings of American Tourists, which happened just as China’s inbound tourism was beginning to recover in the post-COVID era and “China is safe” narratives were playing an increasingly important role in official messaging.

All of these incidents are different in nature, but what they have in common is not just that they are examples of bad news being suppressed, but that they reflect a specific pattern in which news that is bad for the Party-state is suppressed. In their own ways, these incidents—and the discussions and speculation surrounding them—challenge one or more foundational narratives about the competence of China’s leadership, its modernization, its security, its stability, and its capacity to maintain social order.

📌 The 6.26 CITIC Tower incident is particularly sensitive because it touches on several of these core narratives. It immediately opened the door to a flood of politically sensitive questions: How could this happen in the capital? Were the authorities really in control? Were the security systems adequate? Was it a deliberate attack? This all directly contradicts the logic of “Safe China” (平安中国), a grand strategy for governance in the Xi era that seeks to project an image of a closely monitored society in which risks are anticipated and prevented through the integration of efficient public security, surveillance, and Party leadership (see Trevaskes & Lin 2024)¹. A small aircraft striking Beijing’s tallest building—located in one of the country’s most tightly controlled airspaces—challenges precisely this claimed capacity to maintain order, guarantee security, and keep China safe.

📌 Another reason why incidents like the 6.26 one are censored so heavily is that they have the potential to snowball or even trigger copycat behavior. What begins as an isolated accident can quickly evolve into broader discussions about political dissatisfaction, which might spiral into social unrest – and protecting domestic stability is central to the Party-state’s legitimacy and maintenance of power.

📌 A third factor is the symbolic significance of the location. Unlike an ordinary office building, the CITIC Tower is a symbol of Beijing’s cosmopolitan skyline and of China’s economic rise and state-led modernization. Situated in the heart of the capital’s central business district, next to CCTV headquarters and visible across much of the city, it is one of Beijing’s most recognizable landmarks. An incident involving such a building inevitably carries far greater symbolic weight than one occurring in a less prominent location.

⮕ Taken together, these factors make the 6.26 incident unusually sensitive in political, social, and symbolic terms. It is not just a random aviation accident; it touches upon national security, state competence, political control, social stability, and the protection of one of the country’s most symbolic urban spaces. Rather than threatening a single Party narrative, as some of the other aforementioned incidents did, it threatens several at once. This helps explain why it was treated not as an ordinary censored event, but as one requiring an almost complete information blackout.

A Familiar Censorship Playbook

Although these top-censored news incidents are all unique, they follow a similar whack-a-mole-style playbook in suppressing discussion of these events, even though they had only just happened.²

The main playbook is always more or less the same: Sensitive incident occurs → News disappears from front pages and trending search lists → Popular videos and images are taken offline → Incident-specific keywords and hashtags are scrubbed → Censorship expands to generic category-level terms (such as “Beijing,” “Chaoyang District,” or “small plane”) that could lead users back to the incident) → State media remain silent while shifting attention to other news.

(This week, the distraction might have been an otherwise arguably uninteresting controversy involving Chinese singer Han Hong.)³

Offline, the same pattern often plays out through physical scene control: bystanders are asked to delete their footage, journalists are kept away from the scene, or even entire street signs are removed (as happened after the protests on Wulumiqi Road and following the Sitong Bridge protest).

Meanwhile, selected commentary from permitted voices is sometimes allowed to appear online—for example, from former Global Times editor Hu Xijin—although even those posts are not immune from later deletion, as happened following the Beishan Park stabbings. This is often the first step in shaping the official narrative.

A brief authoritative news report may then be released, often ending with a statement that “the incident is under investigation,” which also buys time. Sometimes, however, no meaningful official explanation ever follows. After the 2022 China Eastern MU5735 crash, for example, authorities never released a full public investigation report, even though reports emerging in 2026 claimed the crash, which killed all 132 people on board, was deliberate.

Nevertheless, an official narrative and investigation outcome do usually follow. The 2013 Tiananmen attack, for example, was officially labeled a premeditated terrorist attack orchestrated by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), with Chinese authorities presenting it as evidence that Xinjiang-linked militancy had become part of a broader international terrorist threat. In doing so, the incident was reframed from a local security failure into part of a global fight against terrorism.

Finally, arrests often follow, and people are held accountable. At the same time, those accused of “spreading rumors” online may also face consequences, while foreign media are often criticized for biased reporting or double standards. These counterattacks further reinforce the official narrative while simultaneously shifting attention away from the original incident.

How AI Chatbots Are Part of the Censorship Ecosystem

For the 6.26 incident, the main narrative for the first five days after it happened was that nothing really happened. Even Hu Xijin posted nothing about the incident.

On Weibo, the hashtag “The Story Behind the CITIC Tower Crash Incident” (#中信集团大厦被撞事件始末#) was taken offline, along with many others.

Five days after the crash, Weibo’s Qwen-3 chatbot (powered by Alibaba) claimed it knew nothing about any incident involving CITIC Tower.

The Weibo chatbot responds to a question about the CITIC Tower incident, saying it knows nothing (July 1st).

Six days after the incident, on July 2nd, DeepSeek’s chatbot went a step further. Rather than simply claiming no information was available, it described reports about the crash as fake news, stating that there were no official records or media coverage and that such rumors originated on “overseas social media platforms.” Kimi refused to answer questions about the incident altogether, while Baidu’s ERNIE Bot said it had no information about the incident and warned users not to believe or spread unverified rumors.

The 6.26 CITIC Tower incident illustrates a broader development in China’s online information ecosystem. A great deal has changed since the 2011 Wenzhou train crash. Social media control has become far more sophisticated—not only through better automated filtering, but also through platform regulation, agenda-setting, distraction strategies, and increasingly coordinated narrative management.

Now, AI chatbots have become part of that ecosystem.

Integrated AI assistants (LLM-powered chatbots embedded in platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and other Chinese apps since 2025) are not merely additional tools subject to censorship. They have become an integral part of the online information environment and increasingly play a role in the handling of sensitive incidents.

Unlike Grok on X, these AI assistants are deeply integrated into the user experience and actively encourage people to ask questions, search for information, and receive summaries of ongoing events and controversies. What makes them particularly powerful from the perspective of propaganda and information control is that they can centralize official narratives at the platform level. Previously, that role was distributed across state media, government accounts, and other official actors.

Because these chatbots do not present themselves as state media or government authorities, they can appear more neutral and objective. Users may perceive them simply as AI-generated summaries with less media bias and greater factual accuracy.⁴ In the case of the 6.26 incident, they effectively conveyed a state-ordered message to social media users: that really, nothing happened, and that if something happened, it must be fake news.

“A Public Security Incident Caused by Personal Factors”

On July 2nd, Beijing Chaoyang’s verified official account issued a second short statement via its WeChat channel. This time, providing more details about what had happened on June 26.

According to the statement, the pilot was 66-year-old Mr. Liu (刘), a Beijing resident who was self-employed and lived alone. He obtained a sport pilot license in 2021 and a private pilot license in 2024.

Authorities said Liu deliberately deviated from his flight route, subsequently lost contact with the airport, and then intentionally crashed into the building, killing himself. They added that he had suffered from depression in recent years and that his diary contained multiple references to wanting to “end his life.” The incident was officially described as “a public security incident caused by personal factors” (个人原因造成的危害公共安全案件).

It is noteworthy that such a short statement includes details about the pilot’s age, marital status, pilot licenses, mental health, and even diary entries, yet provides virtually no information about the building itself, the security response, or the broader circumstances of the incident. The statement never mentions the CITIC Tower by name, referring only to “a high-rise building near the East Third Ring Road.” It likewise omits any mention of the aircraft entering restricted airspace, the reported disruption to commercial air traffic, or the obvious questions the incident raises about security failures.

On Weibo, the statement was widely shared, but comment sections beneath those posts remained either hidden or only contained a selection of replies.

And so, six days after the incident, there is a slight opening in the media blackout—just enough to establish the official narrative. This framing reduces a wide range of sensitive questions to the story of one troubled individual. It is not about broader questions of public safety or governance, but about a lonely man’s suicide; it is not about the Party-state, but about personal circumstances; it minimizes a news event that received maximum attention and turns a possible mass attack into an isolated incident. And so the message subtly shifts from “nothing happened” to “it’s time to move on.” The playbook is complete. It’s almost as if nothing really happened.

By Manya Koetse

With contributions by Miranda Barnes

See: Susan Trevaskes and Delia Lin, “Integrating Stability Maintenance into Comprehensive Governance: The Burgeoning ‘Safe China’ Behemoth,” Modern China 50, no. 6 (2024): 671–701. https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004241254709.
Some might say the 2015 Tianjin explosions also belong here, but that disaster was so large and witnessed by so many people that, while the official narrative was tightly controlled, it did not receive the same near-total information blackout.
This controversy involved Han Hong (韩红), a popular Chinese singer and philanthropist, who recently urged Beijing audiences in the local dialect to show up at the box office for the underperforming latest Feng Xiaogang film Catch the Spy (《抓特务》), for which she is the music producer. She used the colloquial expression zǒu ge miànr (走个面儿, roughly “show your face”), and was accused of inappropriately putting moral pressure on people to buy tickets, which also led to criticism of her charity work. She made the remarks at a June 17 premiere, and it didn’t become a dominant story until eleven days later.
See also: Yan Li, “The Impact of Automated Journalism on Media Bias, Accuracy, and Public Trust: Evidence from Young Chinese News Consumers,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 13 (2026): 688. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06612-6.