Bitter Winter

No Christian Couplets for Spring Festival

In China, the New Year has brought nothing new: The Chinese Communist Party is still enforcing political propaganda on believers, even going so far as to insist that Party-worshiping couplets are hung in their private residences. Chinese couplets – a form of Chinese poetry – is a tradition spanning generations when people write their wishes, often on red paper, and hang them on the gates of their homes. Spring Festival couplets are the most common and traditional form to celebrate the Chinese New Year. ...
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Comprehensive Crackdowns for “Social Stability”

Bitter Winter has acquired an 18-page-long internal document issued by the authorities of a city in Liaoning in May 2018. The document details the methods by which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to “maintain social stability.” Entitled Implementation Suggestions for 2018 Social Stability Maintenance Tasks for the Leading Group for Maintaining Social Stability, it calls for faster development of “Sharp Eyes” Project, promotion of the “Fengqiao Experience,” and the completion of a digitization system. ...
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All Out Effort to Hide China’s Persecution of Religion

On January 30, 2019, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China released their annual report on the working conditions for foreign reporters living in China. The report showed that the journalism environment had worsened in 2018. Reporters stationed in China to gather news had been obstructed, followed, and forced to delete data. Their communication devices had been monitored and wiretapped, and the e-mail passwords of some had been hacked. Some reporters were even deported. Of the foreign reporters in China who were surveyed, more than 40% believed that the reporting environment in China had worsened, compared to 29% in 2016. ...
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