China World
BBC’s ‘Racism for Sale’ Documentary Triggers Discussions and Censorship on Chinese Social Media
Weibo discussions on ‘Racism for Sale’ documentary: “BBC is maliciously hyping up the issue.”
China Insight
Blame Games & Bad Signs: Nepal–Tibet Floods, Huawei’s Toilet Trouble, “Screwed” Graduates
How the Nepal–Tibet floods are being discussed on Chinese social media. From solidarity and sadness over Gyirong to censorship and anger at Taiwanese, Indian, and Western media.
In this edition:
- Teachers get shamed for their students’ bad grades
- Why the Nepal–Tibet floods sparked arguments about blame, BBC reporting, and Chinese censorship
- Huawei doesn’t appreciate viral toilet humor
- Dads are carrying mattresses into Peking University
- Chinese graduates are getting “screwed” by a million-dollar company
🗞️ QUICK SCROLLS
🧑🏫 A teacher “shame photo” taken at a local education meeting in Liangshan, Sichuan, has sparked nationwide outrage. A group of primary school teachers was forced to pose in front of a giant “SHAME” sign because their classes’ average final exam scores were below 30. “This isn’t merely ‘shame’—it’s outright public humiliation,” one commenter wrote. Liangshan’s education bureau confirmed the photo was real and said it was “puzzled” by the practice; the Leibo County government has apologized and launched an investigation.
Teachers lined up in front of a big screen that says: “Group photo of primary-school teachers whose classes averaged below 30 points in the 2025–2026 end-of-year examinations”
🥬 “Chemical cabbages” (药水白菜) or “formaldehyde cabbages” (甲醛白菜) have been a major topic on Chinese social media after a Chinese investigative vlogger captured workers in Kangbao, Hebei, dipping cabbages into formaldehyde solution before loading them onto trucks. This procedure, which allegedly adds 2–3 extra days of shelf life, is illegal: formaldehyde is a Group 1 carcinogen.
🍫 It’s been a bad week for Mars-owned chocolate brand Dove. A marketing campaign suggesting that a girl received a box of chocolates from a man she was flirting with while her boyfriend was away (“趁男友不在”) drew anger online. Then the brand’s apology also became a massive failure: when it was flagged as 100% AI-generated, Chinese netizens had little sympathy left for the brand.
💸 A “century-old” shark fin soup served by a Shanghai restaurant for no less than 4,800 yuan (US$715) per bowl (!) has gone viral for its exorbitant price and claims that it has been “simmering for more than 100 years,” since the late Qing dynasty. There was plenty of skepticism about the soup, but also disbelief that anyone would spend an ordinary person’s entire monthly living budget on a single bowl of soup.
👩💻 An eighth-grader from Shanghai earned 18,000 yuan (US$2,678) in three days using AI. Despite her limited programming experience, the 13-year-old placed third in a marketing hackathon, where teams had 48 hours to develop and market an entire AI product. She launched a study-companion app called “Being There” (在场) that 92 people bought. Although Chinese media praised her, commenters were critical, suggesting she received help from her mother, an influencer on Douyin.
💍 In an aging society where marriage rates have AGAIN dropped, more and more places are making it easier than ever to tie the knot. Registration services are popping up in…
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.
Eye on Digital China is a reader-supported publication by
Manya Koetse (@manyapan) and powered by What’s on Weibo.
It offers independent analysis of China’s online culture, media, and social trends.
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Keeping Score of History: The Mukden Incident and China’s Basketball Defeat to Japan
The Rise of “Shuaqi-ism,” Taking Starbucks to the Fields, and Pretending to Go to Work
Why Japan Has So Many Surnames, China’s Back-to-School Shifts & Taiwan Pavilion Trouble
Blame Games & Bad Signs: Nepal–Tibet Floods, Huawei’s Toilet Trouble, “Screwed” Graduates
The Power of Ugly: Why Niu Lai Became China’s Unlikeliest Box-Office Hit
China’s CITIC Tower Crash: The Story That Never Trended
“Even Pigs Have AC”: The European Heatwave Through Chinese Eyes
“God Won’t Save Us, but the PLA Will”: Floods, Faith, and Kung Fu Soccer Nostalgia
How Chinese AI Videos Turned Foreigners into Villains
The Power of Ugly: Why Niu Lai Became China’s Unlikeliest Box-Office Hit
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Richard Merlin
June 24, 2022 at 5:02 am
The characters on the blackboard are traditional Chinese characters, which have been replaced by simplified characters on the Chinese mainland since the 1950s but remain in use in Taiwan and Hong Kong. People from mainland China of “Shushu”s age will not write that way.
His accent is typical Taiwan while Lu Ke has a Jiangsu or Zhejiang accent. It would be inconceivable for Lu Ke who makes a living filming in Africa to make such a disgusting, offensive and politically incorrect (in both China and Africa) film to destroy his own business AND himself.
The Chinese people have been extremely sympathetic for the African people. After all, the Chinese have been discriminated against, abused, exploited, and bullied by Western powers like the African people for almost two centuries.
The Chinese government has been sending aid to Africa since the 1950s, totally trillions of dollars even while the Chinese people were suffering from hunger en masse themselves. For emotional reasons and cold calculation, the Chinese government won’t tolerate anything that will undermine its huge investment in Africa.
In conclusion, this appears highly likely to be part of special operations by Taiwan’s intelligence agency to smear the Chinese people and to poison relations between Africa and China at the same time.
Chinese as well as people from all over the world of all political conviction and affiliation should do everything they can to expose and condemn such evil and hideous smearing attempts against all Chinese people.
黑板上写的都是繁体字，这个年纪的大陆人不会写繁体字。卢克的口音是典型的江浙口音。可领着小朋友们喊侮辱性口号的“叔叔”的口音明显是台湾人。卢克再愚蠢，也不会拍那种极具侮辱性的视频自断财路甚至自掘坟墓，而且拍了以后竟然还胆敢留在当地。推测很可能是台湾军情局的杰作 – 一方面败坏中国人的国际形象，同时离间中非关系。全世界的华人中国人无论何种政治信仰，无论身在何处，都应团结起来，揭露声讨谴责这种极其卑劣的、败坏全体中国人华人国际形象的无耻恶行。