Chapter Dive
Dialogues Across Time: Remembering War in a New China
“We are not friends, and have never been,” is a line that went viral recently in light of the heightened focus on war in Chinese media and popular culture.
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“Comrade, are you from the new China?”
A man in a blood-stained 1940s PLA uniform sits in the grass beside a modern Chinese soldier in full combat gear, staring at him with quiet intensity. When told he is indeed from the “new China,” the old soldier leans closer and asks: “So… did we win?”
“We did,” the soldier replies, reaching for his phone to show China’s victory over Japan. But before he can reveal the proof, the old soldier has already transformed — his body bursting into a cloud of red dust from which dozens of pigeons rise into the sky
This short video was posted on Douyin earlier in August by a creator and ex-serviceman named “Comrade Pang Gangqi” (@彭港琦同志), together with “Combat Team’s A Sheng” (@战斗班阿生), a former firefighter. They are part of a growing nationalist circle of online creators producing videos with military and patriotic themes, often incorporating AI elements to stage imagined encounters where wartime fighters get to see modern-day China.
A recurring motif in these videos is that today’s soldiers “free” the spirits of those who fought in the 1930s and 1940s—either by telling them of China’s victory or by taking up their flag to continue the struggle.
Using AI, they merge past & present, tagging their content with the hashtag “Dialogue with New China Across Time” (跨时空对话新中国) (see some of the videos here).
Although the exact content of the videos vary, the format rarely does: WWII soldiers meet present-day servicemen or ordinary citizens and find release in the knowledge that their sacrifice helped build a prosperous China.
While it is unclear whether some of these creators post entirely independently or with official backing, their videos nonetheless became part of the state propaganda apparatus this month when major outlets — such as People’s Daily and Global Times — reposted them and promoted related hashtags onto Weibo’s hot lists.
One such hashtag, “Netizens Use AI to Talk Across Time and Space with Revolutionary Martyrs” (#网友用AI与先烈跨时空对话#), is just one among dozens of war-related topics dominating Chinese social media over the past two weeks.
This summer, memories of World War II—more specifically, the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), known in China as the War of Resistance Against Japan (抗日战争)—have occupied a central place in online narratives. Discussion peaked on August 15, the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender announcement.
The year’s weight in China’s collective memory is reflected not only in state media narratives but also in popular culture and online discourse.
The last time that the war was so ubiquitous on Chinese social media was probably in 2015, when the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II in Asia was commemorated with a parade at Tiananmen as the first national, large-scale public commemoration of China’s role in the Second world War (Mitter 2020, 3).
Over the past two weekends, overnight drills for another major Tiananmen Square commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII went viral. Spectacular videos of the military parade were widely shared by state media ahead of the official event scheduled for September 3, 2025, the day Japan formally surrendered. Around 22,000 people took part in the initial rehearsal, and the upcoming parade will be livestreamed to millions of viewers.
Further fueling online discussions about wartime history are two major new Chinese blockbusters centered on the Japanese invasion of China.
Although the Second Sino-Japanese War has long played a significant role in Chinese popular culture, it is rare—if not unprecedented—for two major WWII films to see an overlap in theatrical release. Over the past two weeks, both films have trended on Chinese social media, focusing on some of the most gruesome episodes of Japan’s full-scale aggression against China.
Nanjing Photo Studio: Painful Proof of a Massacre
Dead to Rights (official English title) or Nanjing Photo Studio (南京照相馆) revolves around the Nanjing Atrocities, commonly referred to in China as the Nanjing Massacre (南京大屠杀, Nánjīng Dàtúshā).
On December 13, 1937, after weeks of intense fighting in Shanghai, Japanese troops invaded Nanjing, then China’s capital, and over several weeks unleashed unprecedented violence: massacring civilians, including children and the elderly, raping women, looting, and burning the city. During those winter weeks of 1937–1938, an estimated 300,000 Chinese people were killed.
Nanjing Photo Studio, directed by Shen Ao (沈嚣), follows a group of young Chinese civilians and soldiers who seek refuge in a photography studio during the Japanese invasion and brutal occupation of Nanjing.
The story centers on Ah Chang, a postman (played by Liu Haoran 刘昊然) who assumes the role of a photo developer for the Japanese army to survive. When a Japanese military photographer requests him to develop film, Ah Chang and the others uncover the horrific atrocities happening beyond the studio walls, capturing war crimes through their own darkroom.
Dead to Rights/Nanjing Photo Studio Film promotion material
Although the photo studio storyline is fictional, the film is inspired by the real story of a Nanjing teenager named Luo Jin (罗瑾), who was only 15 or 16 years old in 1937–1938.
At the time, he worked as a clerk at the Huadong Photo Studio when a Japanese officer brought in two rolls of film for development. As Luo processed them, he discovered shocking images of Japanese soldiers looting and killing Chinese civilians. Luo secretly made a duplicate set of the atrocity photos and preserved them in a small booklet, which remained hidden until the end of the war. These photographs later served as “Evidence No. 1” (京字第一号证据) at the Nanjing Tribunal (Berry 2011, 117).
Dead to Rights premiered in late July, and this week it was announced that its theatrical run would be extended until September 24 (#南京照相馆密钥延期#). The film currently holds an 8.7 rating on Douban, where many commenters not only praise the production but also express strong anti-Japanese sentiments.
Dead to Rights is by no means the first film centered on the Nanjing atrocities. The first major feature film about the Nanjing Massacre was released in 1987: Massacre in Nanjing (屠城血证), directed by Luo Guanqun (罗冠群). That film also included a subplot about a photo studio owner who secretly developed photographs of atrocities and ultimately sacrificed his life to smuggle the evidence out.
As Michael Berry has noted in his discussion of the film, much of the Chinese discourse on the Nanjing atrocities has revolved around the need to “prove” that the massacre actually happened. Evidence—particularly photographs—plays a central role because since the 1970s, Japanese revisionists have actively disputed or outright denied what occurred in Nanjing.
Some deny the death toll of 300,000, claiming that as few as 10,000 perished, while others argue the entire event was fabricated. The emphasis on death tolls, photographs, and “evidence” has thus become a persistent thread in Chinese narratives about Nanjing, aimed simultaneously at domestic audiences, Japanese revisionists, and the international community.
Regarding the 1987 film, Berry wrote in 2011:
📰✍️ “The true tragedy of the film is that just as the characters struggle to prove that the massacre actually happened, so Massacre in Nanjing (..) is still struggling with the same issues—only now the film itself replaces the photographs as the chosen vehicle.”
This observation remains strikingly relevant for a movie made nearly forty years later, as so much discussion of the atrocities still focuses on the evidence—above all, the photographs—and how they were preserved to show the world the unimaginable violence and destruction that occurred in Nanjing.
Never Forget “731”
The second film fueling online discussion this month is 731 (七三一), directed by Zhao Linshan (赵林山), which focuses on the atrocities committed by Japan’s biological warfare Unit 731.
The film has already had a lot of online buzz and some anger over its original preview date of July 31st being postponed (delayed due to failure to obtain official approval, allegedly due to some gruesome scenes); but it is now officially scheduled for nationwide release on September 18.
That premiere date of September 18 carries great symbolic significance, as it marks the 94th anniversary of the Mukden Incident in 1931. That event—an explosion that damaged a section of Japanese railway—triggered Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and, rather than July 7, 1937, is regarded by many Chinese historians and officials as the true starting point of the Second Sino-Japanese War, making it a 14-year battle that merged into World War II after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
Japan’s bacteriological activities that are at the center of this story are a particularly grim part of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese had a number of military units specialized in biological weapon research, of which Unit 731, based in Harbin, was the most notorious.
Established in 1936, the unit consisted of 150 different buildings and a staff of 3,000 that conducted research using both animals and imprisoned human subjects.
It is estimated that around 10,000 people in China and Manchuria died in these experiments. Apart from the research conducted in the units, the Japanese were also involved in ‘field tests’ that included large-scale contamination of water and food supplies. There were outbreaks of plague, cholera, and typhus due to aerial spraying and the dropping of bombs that consisted of infected fleas (Klietmann & Ruoff 2001; Koetse 2012).
Two film posters for 731, one announcing the original release date and the other the new release date (September 18).
The 731 movie, produced by Changchun Film Group in collaboration with the Propaganda Departments of Shandong, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Harbin, will focus on ordinary people becoming victims of the Unit 731 experiments, and carries a strong message on its poster: “Never forget” (绝不遗忘).
Similarly, some of the film posters for Dead to Rights show a big slogan saying: “Remember history, never forget national humiliation” (铭记历史 勿忘国耻).
“We Are Not Friends”
Emotional AI videos, WWII blockbusters, and spectacular rehearsals for an unprecedented victory parade — what to make of this summer’s national remembrance of the Second Sino-Japanese War?
There are a few things I’ve noted while following the media campaigns and online responses to WWII discussions on Chinese social media these weeks.
🔹 War memory as nationalism. The memory of war, as an important part of popular culture, is being used as a vehicle for China’s new nationalism. This is not unique to China — it can also be seen in other countries, most famously in the US. But the focal points of remembrance shift with the times, as do the main messages surrounding these narratives. Right now, it is increasingly clear that painful war memories are being tied to positive messages about China’s bright future and its role as a great power, moving the emphasis from collective suffering to collective victory.
🔹 From national to transnational memory. There is an increasing emphasis on “letting the world know” (让全世界知道那段历史真相) about the Second Sino-Japanese War, especially gruesome chapters such as the Nanjing Atrocities and Unit 731. This reflects frustration that, in the West, the Sino-Japanese War is often taught as “China’s war with Japan” rather than part of the global conflict. As China’s international role grows, so does the drive to reframe these memories as part of world history.
🔹 From memory to justice. Hand in hand with the focus on collective suffering, victory, and China’s role in the Second World War, there is also a strong emphasis on past injustices and future justice. These narratives are closely tied to Japan’s official handling of the postwar era, as well as the ongoing denialism and revisionism among Japanese right-wing politicians and netizens.
Playing into all of these elements — nationalism, transnational memories of the Sino-Japanese War, and the search for justice — is actually a third Chinese WWII movie this summer titled Dongji Island (东极岛).
Dongji Island premiered in cinemas on August 8 and is based on the 1942 Lisbon Maru Incident. The Lisbon Maru was a Japanese cargo ship carrying — in terrible conditions — 1,816 British POWs from Hong Kong to Japan for forced labor. En route, the ship was torpedoed by a US submarine near the waters of Dongji Island, Zhejiang.
As the vessel slowly sank, the Japanese left the ship but sealed the prisoners inside the holds to die. Even those who managed to escape and jump into the sea came under Japanese gunfire. Despite this, Zhoushan fishermen risked their lives in small boats to rescue about 384 British prisoners of war. In total, 828 POWs died.
Chinese and international film poster of Dongji Island.
In a recent interview, the film’s director Fei Zhenxiang (费振翔) said: “Some Japanese even claim that it was they who rescued the British soldiers. History should be verified, so that the whole world knows the truth!”
China’s current heightened focus on the Second Sino-Japanese War right now is not exactly improving Sino-Japanese relations.
“We are not friends, and have never been” (我们不是朋友，一直都不是) is a line delivered by Liu Haoran in Nanjing Photo Studio while speaking to his Japanese enemy (in Japanese: 私たちは友達じゃない,絶対に).
The line has since gone viral, taken up by countless netizens who use it not just as a reckoning with history but also as a nationalist slogan and an expression of anti-Japanese sentiment.
It is clear that while China’s past is increasingly being remembered by bringing past fighters and present-day citizens together through the power of cinema and AI, and grand parades, the distance between Chinese and Japanese only seems to grow.
As long as the ways the war is remembered remains worlds apart, history will never bring them closer.
– By Manya Koetse
References:
Berry, Michael. 2011. “A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film.” United Kingdom: Columbia University Press.
Klietmann, Wolfgang F. and Kathryn L. Ruoff. 2001. “Bioterrorism: Implications for the Clinical Microbiologist.” American Society for Microbiology 14(2): 364–381.
Koetse, Manya. 2012. The ‘Magic’ of Memory – Chinese and Japanese Re-Remembrances of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Mphil Thesis, Leiden University.
Mitter, Rana. 2020. “China;s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
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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.
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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©2026 Eye on Digital China/Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.
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.
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.
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