CDT presents a monthly series of censored content that has been added to our “404 Deleted Content Archive.” Each month, we publish a summary of content blocked or deleted (often yielding the message “404: content not found”) from Chinese platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, Douyin (TikTok’s counterpart in the Chinese market), Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Bilibili, Zhihu, Douban, and others. Although this content archived by CDT Chinese editors represents only a small fraction of the online content that disappears each day from the Chinese internet, it provides valuable insight into which topics are considered “sensitive” over time by the Party-state, cyberspace authorities, and platform censors. Our fully searchable Chinese-language “404 Deleted Content Archive,” currently contains 2,520 deleted articles, essays, and other pieces of content. The entry for each deleted item includes the author/social media account name, the original publishing platform, the subject matter, the date of deletion, and more information.
Below is a list of key topics and some related deleted articles from CDT’s summary of deleted content for April 2026. Between April 1-30, CDT Chinese added 28 new articles, primarily from WeChat, to the archive. (Note that the dates refer to when an article was published on the CDT website, not when it was deleted from Chinese social-media platforms.) Topics targeted for deletion in April included:
Online pushback to MSS claims that “hostile foreign forces” are paying Chinese online influencers to incite slackerism (“lying down”) among Chinese youth
The trial and guilty plea of Xu Jiayin, founder of collapsed property developer Evergrande
The erosion of campus media, epitomized by the purging of the archives of Beijing Normal University’s long-running journal “Capital Scholar”
A woman in Shenzhen was strip-searched and detained for five days by police after she complained about a man smoking at a bus stop
Feminist blogger March vulcanus announces WeChat account closure
A man reportedly attacked passersby with a knife in Shenyang, Liaoning province, killing as many as six people and injuring a dozen others, but there was no official statement issued
Beijing’s population of people aged 20-29 has declined from 4 million to just over 2 million in the last decade
Online pushback to MSS claims that “hostile foreign forces” are paying Chinese online influencers to incite slackerism (“lying down”) among Chinese youth
In late April, the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) published an article accusing unnamed “foreign organizations” of trying to brainwash Chinese youth into “lying flat” (also “lying down” or “slacking off”), a meme-fueled lifestyle trend that eschews the rat race for a simpler, slower-paced, less ambitious life. The piece was met with intense backlash online, as comments sections on Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Zhihu filled with responses challenging the framing and factuality of the MSS article, and pointing out that the slackerist movement is being driven by domestic socioeconomic forces such as high unemployment, unrelenting competition, excessive overtime and “996” schedules, weak labor-law enforcement, and declining social mobility.
CDT Chinese editors archived several deleted articles on the topic, and noted that many online comments were censored, and that Weibo appeared to have banned the hashtag #Lying Flat once again. CDT also documented the closure of WeChat account 野柚的显微镜 (yě yòu de xiǎnwēijìng, “wild pomelo microscope”) after it published an article criticizing the MSS for “reopening the wound” of the death of educational influencer Zhang Xuefeng. One Zhihu comment, later deleted, made this point: “It’s not ‘lying flat,’ it’s ‘being flattened.’ The phrase ‘lying flat’ is just a modern incarnation of ‘let them eat cake.’ I’m allowed to call myself a slacker if I want, because it’s an outward expression of my optimistic attitude, but when state media or commercial media accuse young people of slacking off, it’s an insult.”
A deleted article from Peng Yuanwen, a veteran journalist who has reported extensively on rural issues and farmers’ pensions, offered a different perspective by asking “why even 70-year-old rural residents can’t afford to slack off.” Peng notes that many impoverished older migrant workers can’t afford to retire, yet face age-related hiring discrimination, prompting some to dye their hair to look younger or use forged documents to conceal their age. He discusses a proposal that would allow migrant laborers to continue working after the current cut-off age of 60, and argues that while it is a step in the right direction, raising rural pensions across the board would be more helpful. Another deleted piece, from WeChat account Youthology, cites statistics that bear out widespread age discrimination against workers over the age of 35, and the double burden of gender and age discrimination that affects women.
The trial and guilty plea of Xu Jiayin, founder of collapsed property developer Evergrande
In a trial in Shenzhen in mid-April, Xu Jiayin (Hui Ka Yan, in Cantonese), the founder of collapsed real-estate conglomerate China Evergrande Group, pleaded guilty to eight charges including the misuse of funds, fraudulent fundraising, and illegally taking public deposits. Xu, whose verdict and sentencing will take place at a later date, could face life imprisonment.
Intense public interest in the trial led to a resurgence of social media content about the financial woes, unfinished projects, and questionable business practices of the real-estate sector in China. CDT Chinese editors archived four deleted posts on the topic: two were about property developer and SOHO founder Pan Shiyi, now based in New York, who broke several years of social media silence to post some thoughts on the “Ponzi scheme” nature of the Chinese property market. The other two censored pieces voiced strong suspicions that Xu Jiayin and Evergrande were aided and abetted by many other powerful interests, but that this will be swept under the rug. “Where Did Evergrande’s 2.4 Trillion Yuan Go?” from WeChat account 装看见 (Zhuāng kànjiàn, “Pretending to see”) argues that Evergrande’s colossal debt of 2.4 trillion yuan didn’t just materialize overnight, and dissects the era that made such excess possible.
In another now-deleted article, “Xu Jiayin Pleads Guilty, but Did He Really Manage To Dig That 2.4 Trillion Yuan Pit All by Himself?” current-affairs commentator Xu Peng highlights the stark contrast between a small group of politically well-connected individuals who struck it rich during China’s property-development heyday, and the millions of ordinary citizens who accumulated unprecedented levels of mortgage debt, or even lost their life savings due to unfinished housing projects, cratering real-estate prices, and other knock-on effects of the Evergrande collapse:
The charges against Xu—illegally taking public deposits, fraudulent fundraising, illegal lending, illegal use of funds, fraudulent issuance of securities, violations regarding the disclosure of pertinent information, embezzlement, and corporate bribery—are primarily economic crimes, which frankly are unlikely to result in a death sentence. At most, he might be sentenced to life in prison.
[…] But if you dig a little deeper, you will find that this matter is far from simple.
An individual can steer the direction of a company, but no single person could possibly pile up 2.4 trillion yuan ($350 billion U.S.) in debt all by himself.
Lurking behind the scenes are too many uncomfortable truths that can never be fully examined.
Perhaps many years from now, when people look back on this chapter, they will call it “the most insane period in Chinese real-estate history.” [Source]
The erosion of campus media, epitomized by the purging of the online archives of “Capital Scholar,” Beijing Normal University’s long-running student media outlet
In April, Beijing Normal University student media outlet 京师学人 (Jīngshī Xuérén, “Capital Scholar”) had its WeChat public account deregistered and its archive of over 600 articles purged. It was but the latest blow in a decade-long erosion of campus media due to numerous political and commercial pressures, the decline of journalism as a profession, the rise of short video and algorithmic content recommendations, and changes to campus life that were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
CDT English has published a two-part translation of an essay about the history of “Capital Scholar” and what it reveals about campus journalism as a whole. “The Decade-long Death of a Campus Media Outlet,” from WeChat public account “Swimming Across by Moonlight,” describes 2016-2018 as the heyday of campus reporting, 2019-2022 as a period of tightening controls, 2023-2025 as “suffocation,” and 2026 as “cancellation.” A portion of CDT’s Part One translation is excerpted below:
Space always disappears from the edges inward.
In 2020, a certain well-known disaster [the start of the COVID pandemic] accelerated this process. The campus installed a system of turnstiles, and entry and exit became subject to approval. The Beijing Municipal Education Commission advanced a policy of “semi-closed campuses” for colleges and universities, with “no leaving campus unless necessary,” and no one from off-campus was allowed to enter. Many campuses adopted strict entrance-control measures, requiring students and faculty to show ID to enter or exit, and it became almost impossible to conduct newsgathering off-campus.
Newsgathering grew increasingly difficult for that campus outlet. Outsiders couldn’t come onto the campus, and moving from one campus to another required prior approval. Their office space was repurposed, and regular meetings drifted from place to place like an unmoored boat. The poems, quotes, and headlines of celebrated articles that had adorned the walls disappeared under a new coat of paint.
As physical spaces were being sealed off, layer by layer, the boundaries of speech were silently closing in as well. Pitch approval and interviews were increasingly hard to obtain, and one after another, the corners in which raising questions had once been possible disappeared. [Source]
A woman in Shenzhen was strip-searched and detained for five days by police after she complained about a man smoking at a bus stop
In April, CDT editors archived at least three censored articles about an incident in Shenzhen in which police retaliated against a woman who complained about a man smoking at a bus stop. After the woman asked the man to stop smoking, the conflict escalated into an argument, the woman extinguished the man’s cigarette by flinging a beverage at it, and the man responded by picking up the bottle of liquid and throwing it in her face. Both parties contacted the police, and the woman was brought into the police station, made to change clothes, subjected to a strip search, and berated by officers who seemed sympathetic to the smoker and intent on humiliating the complainant. The woman, a blogger, later published a detailed account of the incident online, sparking debate about police misconduct, the rights of non-smokers, Shenzhen’s new anti-smoking regulations, and even the role of China’s tobacco monopoly and the tobacco tax.
The first archived post, from WeChat account La Jeunesse, is titled “Shenzhen, Please Don’t Condone This Intimidation of 1.1 Billion Non-smokers.” The author is highly critical of the illegal strip-search conducted by the police, and argues that Shenzhen’s new regulations against smoking in certain public areas (which just went into effect last month) cover bus stops and deserve to be vigorously enforced, and that concerned citizens have a role in supervising this enforcement.
The second archived piece is a long article from WeChat account A Cup of Starlight, No Sugar, which takes the police to task for violating the law and advises readers on how to defend their rights in such a situation. The author mentions that in addition to being strip-searched, the woman was held in administrative detention for five days—during which time she was constantly monitored, even while using the restroom—and coerced into signing a settlement agreement, whereas the man received no punishment at all. Posing the question, “Is the cost of upholding justice really so high?” the author writes:
When law-abiding citizens face onerous consequences such as detention and personal humiliation when they attempt to dissuade others from engaging in illegal or uncivilized behavior, it seriously undermines their sense of justice and social responsibility. In the future, who will be willing to take the initiative to stop uncivilized behavior and maintain public order?
Law enforcement officers’ abuse of power and disregard for legal provisions not only damages public trust in law enforcement, but also undermines the very authority of the law, thus eroding the public’s faith that they live in a society governed by the rule of law. [Chinese]
The incident also drew attention to the health effects of smoking and second-hand smoke, to the privileged position of the state tobacco monopoly, and to tobacco taxes and what they actually fund. A now-deleted article from journalist Peng Yuanwen (whose latest WeChat account also appears to have been suspended, possibly as a result of publishing this article) argues that the state doesn’t really have an incentive to crack down on smoking, because tobacco tax revenues are so lucrative and needed to fund the national government pension system. Peng refutes the often-used argument that “China’s tobacco tax funds our national defense”—because China’s state tobacco monopoly contributes 1.54 trillion yuan (nearly $227 billion U.S.) to the treasury each year, close to the amount of China’s national defense budget—by pointing out that this is also the amount the government spends annually on pensions for public-sector employees (1.58 trillion yuan in 2024). Peng notes that a draft national smoking-control regulation explicitly banning smoking at outdoor public-transit stops was submitted for review in November 2014 but is still pending, over eleven years later. This regulatory paralysis is offered as the deeper reason public opinion sided so strongly with the woman who threw her drink at a man smoking at a Shenzhen bus stop: people are fed up with the government’s failure to act, and when official power does nothing, the public sympathizes with individuals taking matters into their own hands. The piece closes on a humorous note: the next time a smoker claims his habit contributes to national defense, the author writes, tell him his tobacco taxes are actually subsidizing the generous pensions of government employees, while his own parents in the countryside are living on paltry rural pensions of less than 200 yuan ($30) a month. The tone of Peng’s and other censored articles were notably different from coverage in Chinese state media: a March 26 piece in China Daily featured the rather misleading headline, “Smoking dispute resolved amicably in Shenzhen.”
Feminist blogger March vulcanus announces WeChat account closure
Feminist blogger 三月vulcanus (Sānyuè vulcanus, “March vulcanus”) announced that she would abandon her current WeChat account 三月云 (Sānyuè yún, “March Cloud”) after a series of temporary suspensions. A new account, 三月云烟 (Sānyuè yúnyān, “March Clouds and Smoke”) has been set up, but remains inactive apart from a single-line greeting. The account’s reincarnation comes in the context of sustained pressure on online feminist voices, including a mass ban on the eve of this year’s March 8 International Women’s Day.
CDT published a full translation of March vulcanus’ now-censored farewell letter, a portion of which is excerpted below:
I received another seven-day suspension from March 21 to March 28. During that time, not only was I unable to post or reply, but it was impossible to follow me, and my account didn’t even appear in search results.
What’s even more ridiculous is that, if I paste a screenshot of the platform ban notice in here, it won’t let me publish this post either.
At the same time, they carried out massive and unwarranted deletion and suppression of my posts. I’ve published 147 in total, but how many can you see on my main page? Only 36.
There’s not even a fraction left.
[…] What does the future hold? How will I keep on writing my posts? How will I keep sharing them? I’m still not sure if there’ll come a day when I’m back to full strength, and I can’t make any promises. But in this moment, I also realize: women will always find a way. [Source]
A man reportedly attacked passersby with a knife in Shenyang, Liaoning province, killing as many as six people and injuring a dozen others, but there was no official statement issued
There was heavy online censorship of reports, videos, and comments about an April 4 stabbing spree in a busy commercial district in Shenyang, Liaoning province that may have killed between four to six people and injured a dozen others. No official statement was issued, but the attack was reported on by Hong Kong, Japanese, and some other overseas media. People who claim to have witnessed the attack said it seemed to be indiscriminate, and reported seeing dead and injured people lying on the ground. Some reports said the killer jumped from a building, while others said he may have been arrested by police. Given the lack of an official statement or local media reporting on the attack, it is impossible to say how many were killed and injured, what happened to the perpetrator, or what may have motivated him.
CDT Chinese editors archived one very short deleted article from WeChat account Eggbot about the Shenyang attack, and observed online censorship of sensitive word pairs combining the term “indiscriminate attack” with references to the locations of recent reported attacks in Shenyang, Beijing, Fangshan, and Chengdu, respectively.
There continues to be frequent online censorship of reports and debate about indiscriminate “revenge on society” attacks, which are sometimes referred to in Chinese as “Xianzhong attacks,” after 17th-century rebel Zhang Xianzhong, who led a ferocious peasant rebellion during the Ming-Qing transition period. In 2021, CDT flagged “Xianzhong” as one of the most censored words of the year; in 2024, CDT editors chose the victims of such indiscriminate attacks as our “People of the Year.” In October of 2025, there was public outcry after authorities in Shiyan, Hubei province delayed releasing a statement about a “Xianzhong” attack in which a man drove his car into a crowd of schoolchildren and parents, injuring about two dozen, some seriously. Local and national media declined to report on the attack, and the Shiyan Evening News attempted to deflect responsibility by claiming “Our hands are tied, too.” This drew a flood of angry responses from the online public, one of whom retorted: “‘Our hands are tied, too.’ Oh, isn’t that nice! Then what’s the point of you?”
Beijing’s population of people of young people from ages 20-29 has fallen from 4 million to just over 2 million in the last decade
One of the last censored articles to be added to the CDT archive in April was a piece from WeChat account Fuchengmen Courtyard No. 6, titled “Beijing’s Young Population Falls by Half in Ten Years: Why Is This City Unable to Retain Young People?” Commenting on the dramatic decline of Beijing’s young adult population from roughly 4.6 million in 2015 to under 2.5 million in 2024, the author argues that Beijing has lost its competitive edge in attracting young talent primarily due to a slowdown in tech startup activity and private sector growth, combined with prohibitively high housing costs that put home ownership out of reach for the capital’s young workers. Some of the blame also falls on Beijing’s notoriously rigid household registration (hukou) system, which grants only about 6,000 talent-track hukou slots annually (compared to Shanghai’s roughly 300,000), thus incentivizing talented young professionals to relocate to more welcoming cities such as Shenzhen, Hangzhou, or Chengdu. If these trends continue, the author warns, Beijing’s young population could fall below one million by 2030, threatening the city’s economic primacy. The piece calls for loosening hukou restrictions for private-sector workers and recalibrating the city’s governance approach to be more welcoming to young people.
