China World
Is China Resisting the West? (Asia Carousel Live Event)
Where will the rise of China take the country in the 21st century? Will China confirm to the Western world order, or will it create a new world order? What is the ‘China dream’ (中国梦)? These questions will be addressed at today’s Asia Carousel at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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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Diandian GUO
June 9, 2016 at 2:47 pm
Since when “resisting the west” equals “developing into a worrisome regime”? Such linkage actually deems “not resisting the west” as moral and the opposite immoral.
I am against authoritarianism, whether it means direct intrusion in individual lives, or the monopoly over defining “authoritarianism” and its moral implications.
I always believe the presumption that “China has a big state and small society” is almost a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. The more scholars and media emphasize the “big state” of China, the less chance for the social forces to be discovered, nurtured and released. Even if when social forces are studied, they are studied with semi-autonomy: the public is only active when confronting and resisting the state, as if pure public initiation is non-existent or impossible. The more we look this way, the more we believe that China has a hopeless big state which suppresses an equally hopeless society.
It is not that there exists no autonomy in Chinese society. But they are often dismissed or ignored. What is needed is that more study be done on those initiatives from society, which are not necessarily taken to de-construct, but to construct from ground up. That way, we could avoid endless condemnation that is unlikely to cause change, and find some hope that can lead to some solutions.