Authorities say a proposed national Internet ID system will protect user data. Critics fear control not privacy is the real appeal.
“Weak spot” (软肋, ruǎn lèi)
When bundles of joy become hostages in social control. Netizens contemplate the reproductive risk of “weak spot” children being leveraged against them by the state.
Yang Zili and the paranoid regime
Xiao Shu in this piece comparing the 2001 incarceration of fellow Chinese journalist, Yang Zili, and his colleagues today from the Transition Institute, explores the deeper psychological cause driving the country’s “stability-obsessed regime”: a paranoia so institutionalized that it drives state power compulsively. A must read.


