iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

Just when you think you’ve seen all the possible bad propaganda, this is what one Chinese embassy thought made a good ‘before and after’ comparison to show China’s progress. 😳

1101

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

Sigh. My kid came home from school and said they’d watched a video about Taiwan today, with a military theme. Sounds like the healthy sort of programming that children should be watching in class. Not.

260

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

All the people you’d expect to be upset about the Nobel Peace Prize going to an opponent of Maduro in Venezuela are indeed in tears today.

040

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

An under-appreciated benefit of the USB port: it bypasses the need for a plug adaptor in foreign countries. 👍🏻

031

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Sorry, but are we meant to think staged “Messianic leader surrounded by sycophants awkwardly feigning affection and trying to touch the hem of his garments” style propaganda is good? Is that the message here?

160

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Retired Chinese people when the local coffee shop closes: Hmm, maybe I should have bought at least one drink over the years I used to sit inside it all day for free. (Not)

030

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

They could make the statue look like him in his final moments as a workaround.

210

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

Attention is always on Uyghurs and Tibetans, but there are 55 minorities in 🇨🇳 and many of them are seeing language decline. I know a Zhuang woman who can’t speak Zhuang and recently met several Miao people who don’t know their language. Manchu is all but extinct. Why do these never get talked about?

020

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Yikes. A news story that exposes not one but three troubling issues: 1, toxic substances being discarded in public; 2, hospitals refusing to help people in need; 3, unregulated sales of toxic substances on the Internet. 🤦‍♂️ mp.weixin.qq.com/s/vKMGMDRW0N...

mp.weixin.qq.com

330

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 13/09/2025

Maybe displaying his body like Mao for people to file past.

000

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

A lot of people upset about the killing of Charlie Kirk are busy identifying co-conspirators based on nothing but furtive eye glances and baseball cap adjustments in the news footage. So their reaction to a murder is to help get other innocent people murdered in retaliation. Makes sense.

020

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

X is exactly how I expected it to be this morning, lol. Insults, squabbles, hypocrisy and conspiracy theories. Nothing changes.

020

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Woke up to see that MAGA has found its Horst Wessel.

100

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Why does everything have to involve everyone now? So a woman got mad at a guy because she didn’t get a baseball. In the old days that would have been between him and her. You don’t have to wade in.

100

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

This is your view through your sniper rifle. You get one shot before the other two are rushed to safety. Who’s your target? 😏

220

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Kim Jong-Un is a “top leader” of the world now?

000

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Not content with removing term limits, Xi is now pursuing immortality so he can rule forever. 😂 😱

120

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Hard to reconcile China releasing thousands of doves in the name of peace with kids watching this at school and my kid coming home to tell me they did army drills and played rifle games at school today. Mixed messaging to say the least.

0124

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Confirmed: My coworker’s 3 year old daughter is watching the parade at kindergarten. Sigh.

010

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

What wound you think if schools in your country cancelled classes so the kids could watch a military parade and listen to speeches by the Dear Leader? It’s happening today in China, from Grade 1 up. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if kindergartens are showing it too.

220

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

A new school year, but Xi Jinping Thought remains on the curriculum.

130

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Buddhist scriptures are also mentioned, which surely affects the enrollment of boys in Tibetan seminaries. It seems clear there’s a policy to cut off religion at the current generation by effectively blocking religious content for minors.

150

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

I’m an atheist anyway and will be keeping my kid away from religion by choice, just find it noticeable how kids aren’t even permitted to step inside and look, which seems a step removed from 参加 (participating). From what I’ve found online it seems Uyghurs are a big target of this too.

150

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

I sense there has been a silent edict to more strictly enforce keeping children away from religion recently. Twice at different temples in different cities my kid has been told to get out of the worship halls. Not even allowed to look as a tourist. Also seen more signs like 禁止未成年人进入 or 未成年人不得参加宗教活动.

160

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

Tbf, there are plenty of transnational reserves already in the world. Brazil and Argentina both have NPs around the Iguazu Falls. China and Russia have bordering NPs that protect Amur leopards and Siberian tigers. Kenya and Tanzania have an NP and national reserve in the Serengeti. And many others.

010

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 31/08/2025

Just been to my friend’s dad’s compound in south Jiading. Christ. I hope he doesn’t pay a management fee because no maintenance is being done. 🐈 and 🐕 shit everywhere. Paint peeling. 🌳 overgrown. 🗑️ overflowing and stinking. Potholes in the road. Paving slabs missing. The other side of Shanghai.

030

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Spoke to two other Miao people who also can’t speak their native language. One was a woman in her 40s, the other a young man in his early 20s who couldn’t even tell me how to say ‘hello’. “My parents didn’t teach me.” I asked “Don’t you learn it at school?”, knowing the answer ofc, and he said no.

130

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

The Miao were once the most rebellious group in China, so much so that Uyghurs (!) were once sent to put down one of their uprisings. They fought the Ming and the Qing multiple times to resist forced assimilation. Clearly they have now given up on that.

140

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

My tour guide on holiday is a Miao woman. She was impressed by my kid’s multilingualism. “Surely Miao kids are bilingual?” my wife asked. “No, kids rarely speak their minority languages these days, only Mandarin.” She wasn’t being political about it, just casually said it like it should be obvious.

140

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

In 2012 when foreign media was regularly reporting on China’s poor air quality, China used to get upset about the negativity. It even banned a documentary about smog in 2015 called ‘Under the Dome’. Now it wants you to remember so it can make a positive comparison. Interesting to observe the shift.

060

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

“A lot of” rather than “most”.

000

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Tbf, plenty of the Chinese coverage of this also emphasized the poor economy and struggles of the young to find work.

110

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Being able to link to a Chinese article on the same topic often shuts them up, makes them realize their ignorance and that there’s a whole Chinese media landscape they don’t read, and also shows them that the BBC has credibility as the story is corroborated by a source they can’t really dispute.

010

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

It’s a good thing that a lot of western news stories have origins in Chinese media, Stephen. It helps to fight accusations of propaganda. I saw people calling this ‘pay to work’ article “typical made-up BS by the BBC”. Clearly they don’t know that it’s also been reported on in China.

200

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

As a regular user of the em-dash, I was very confused to see people using this as an identifier of AI writing.

120

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

People are even getting too lazy to reply to Twitter messages now. I see people just “@Grok” and get the bot to write back. Attention spans were already bad, but now people can’t even be bothered to write a paragraph (although it can be funny when Grok doesn’t say what they wanted it to say, lol).

110

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

I feel like a lot of westerners don’t realize that a lot of western reporting on 🇨🇳 actually originates in 🇨🇳, esp about social phenomena. I see people say “CNN lies!” or “BBC propaganda!” about stories that are basically translations of viral Chinese news. Shows how little people read Chinese media.

1243

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

I’ve seen this discussed. The line now is ‘Tibetan’ is okay because ‘Tibet’ still refers to the historic area and culture, while ‘Xizang’ is only for the modern AR. It didn’t escape my attention that it took a while for this to be addressed, so clearly there was a decision made that filtered down.

010

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

It coincided with the 50th anniversary of China-Brazil diplomatic relations.

010

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

The Laos one is about how the railway from China has helped Laos. The Brazil one he clearly filmed on holiday and covered all sorts. You can judge from this picture that China was obviously a focus.

210

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Of course that’s what he’d say. Not sure what his excuse is for not speaking Portuguese in his Brazil documentary or Lao in his Laos documentary though.

110

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

I can’t think of a more cringe title than this play on ‘Seven Years in Tibet’, a film that remains banned in China. 🙈 Btw, I assume Andy learnt Tibetan and did all his pre-approved interviews in it, given it’s the official language there and he always insists reporters speak the local language?

3181

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Only one fish is following the duck. The others are following the fish in front of them.

72992

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

An earthquake that caused a tsunami and now a volcanic eruption in Russia? Putin has clearly lost the Mandate of Heaven and needs to go.

071

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Jason Smith—comfortably one of the dumbest laowai propagandists out there—suddenly discovers he hates censorship after all. Begs the question why he goes to bat for a government that pretty much pioneered internet clampdowns then.

050

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

Not all men are to be able to afford their own hookers. A charity that helps disadvantaged men pay for sex is doing vital work!

030

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Not unique to Andy, but I really loathe the popular idea that “respect is earned”. It implies one party is superior and the lesser party has to win them over. Respect is not earned, it’s given by default. We begin from a position of mutual respect. It can be lost thereafter, but we start as equals.

070

ciainchina.bsky.social @ciainchina.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

I just love how he frames it as his language being “too spicy”—implying he used some naughty words too hot for TV—because clearly he’s a) too cowardly to admit he actually altered the content and b) he wants people to think he’s tough and talks tough. What a loser. 😂

020