China

TikTok Owner ByteDance Used A News App On Millions Of Phones To Push Pro-China Messages, Ex-Employees Say
Former employees claim the company placed pieces of pro-China content in its now-defunct US news app, TopBuzz, and censored negative stories about the Chinese government. ByteDance says it did no such thing.

TikTok Has Responded To US Lawmakers To Confirm BuzzFeed News' Report That US Users’ Data Was Accessed From China
TikTok's response to Republican senators comes days after an FCC commissioner called on the heads of Apple and Google to pull the app from its stores.

China Destroyed Muslim Culture In This Ancient City — Then Turned It Into Disneyland
The government’s campaign in Kashgar began with CCTV cameras watching people pray. Now it features tourists taking Instagram selfies.

An FCC Commissioner Wants TikTok Removed From App Stores After BuzzFeed News Found American User Data Was Repeatedly Accessed In China
Nine Republican senators have also written to the company's CEO demanding answers.

WeChat Became The Platform For Shanghai Residents To Speak Out About China’s Zero-COVID Policy
“How else does anger travel if not by social media, by group chats and WeChat moments, which disappear after a few days?”

Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China
“I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them,” said an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information, like Americans’ birthdays and phone numbers.

A China Eastern Airlines Flight Carrying 132 People Crashed Into A Mountainside
A rescue mission is underway, but local Chinese media reported that workers have found no sign of survivors so far.

Inside Project Texas, TikTok’s Big Answer To US Lawmakers’ China Fears
TikTok is rebuilding its systems to keep US user data in the US and putting a new US-based team in control. But for now, that team reports to executives in China.

From China To Kazakhstan To Texas: The Great Crypto Migration To The US Is Underway
Bitcoin miners keep picking up their operations and moving to more lucrative destinations. Now, their sights are trained on the US.

People Are So Mad About Chinese Americans Competing For China’s Olympic Team While There Are Entire White Men On The Team Too
“Cry ab it.”

Hugo Boss And Other Big Brands Vowed To Steer Clear Of Forced Labor In China — But These Shipping Records Raise Questions
Amid rising tensions and the approaching Beijing Olympics, the US banned Xinjiang cotton last year. But Hugo Boss still took shipments from Esquel, which gins cotton in Xinjiang.

People Have Fallen In Love With This Herd Of Wild Elephants Looking For A New Habitat In China
More than 150,000 people were evacuated from homes in the elephants' path, but the animals have become local darlings as fans track their progress.

Photos Of The Deadly Flooding In China
Record rainfall fills Zhengzhou's streets and subway stations, leaving at least 25 people dead and thousands stranded and wading in chest deep water.

China Can Lock Up A Million Muslims In Xinjiang At Once
Here is the most complete picture yet of the staggering scale of China’s prisons and detention camps for Muslims in Xinjiang.

A Man Drove His Car Through A Crowd At An Anti–Asian Violence Rally And Yelled “Fuck China”
Authorities are looking for the driver, a white man in his fifties, and are investigating the incident as a hate crime.

The Cop Who Said The Spa Shooter Had A "Bad Day" Previously Posted A Racist Shirt Blaming China For The Pandemic
Capt. Jay Baker shared a photo of a T-shirt he got on Facebook, saying that the coronavirus was imported from "CHY-NA."

We Found The Factories Inside China’s Mass Internment Camps
Observers have long warned of rising forced labor in Xinjiang. Satellite images show factories built just steps away from cell blocks.

A Uighur Woman Who Was At Risk Of Being Forcibly Sent Back To China And Detained Has Arrived Safely In The US
Tursunay Ziyawudun is among a small number of former detainees who have left China and spoken publicly about their experiences in internment camps in the Xinjiang region.

What They Saw: Ex-Prisoners Detail The Horrors Of China's Detention Camps
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been held inside Xinjiang’s camps, but very little is known about life inside. BuzzFeed News spoke to dozens of ex-detainees.

Blanked-Out Spots On China's Maps Helped Us Uncover Xinjiang's Camps
China's Baidu blanked out parts of its mapping platform. We used those locations to find a network of buildings bearing the hallmarks of prisons and internment camps in Xinjiang. Here's how we did it.

China Secretly Built A Vast New Infrastructure To Imprison Muslims
China rounded up so many Muslims in Xinjiang that there wasn’t enough space to hold them. Then the government started building.

Are These Viral TikToks Of Extremely Fashionable People In China The Answer To Pandemic Fashion Week?
This week's newsletter: Everything I know about those compilation videos sourced from Douyin, China's TikTok, that everyone's going crazy for.

A YouTuber Placed Her Adopted Autistic Son From China With A New Family — After Making Content With Him For Years
Myka Stauffer built her YouTube following partly by sharing every step of her journey to adopt a toddler from China. This week, she revealed why he’d gone missing from her videos.

Sen. Ben Sasse Is Being Criticized For "Despicable" Jokes He Made About China In A Graduation Speech
The Nebraska senator blamed "thugs in China" for the coronavirus pandemic and ridiculed psychologists in what some described as a condescending commencement speech to Fremont High School graduates.

This Woman Got A Visit From The Police After Posting A Video About Racism In China
"We’re in their country, so they can still do whatever they wish to us.”

Daniel Dae Kim Has The Coronavirus, And Wants People To Stop Calling It The "China Virus"
"Despite what certain political leaders want to call it, I don’t consider the place where it is from as important as the people who are sick and dying."

Trump Announced New Measures To Fight The Coronavirus And Also Said It Wasn't Racist To Keep Calling It The "China Virus"
As Chinese Americans face increased hate crimes, the president argued, “It’s not racist at all.”

Apple Just Closed All Its Stores Outside Of Its "Greater China" Region
Hourly Apple retail workers will continue to be paid at a "business as usual operations" rate, the company said.

Chinese Diplomats Are Pushing Conspiracy Theories That The Coronavirus Didn't Originate In China
China’s English-language propaganda machine has finally found its way into the American digital feedback loop.

At Least 10 People Were Killed When A Hotel In China Where Coronavirus Patients Were Quarantined Collapsed
Search and rescue efforts are continuing for 23 others.