Wikileaks and Assange – the view from Taiwan
This is pretty much EXACTLY how it happened, courtesy of Taiwan’s NMA TV
China media giant Tencent gags anti-censorship website FreeWeChat
The Chinese telecoms giant Tencent is trying to muzzle a service that offers an uncensored view of what users of the Chinese social media platform WeChat, which has 1.3 billion users, are posting.
The FreeWeChat platform.com is operated by China-based anti-censorship organisation GreatFire.org (a 2016 Index Freedom of Expression award-winner) which tracks censored and uncensored posts from WeChat.
FreeWeChat works by identifying WeChat posts that contain certain “sensitive” keywords and archives and monitors them all to see whether they are subsequently deleted from the social platform.
Typical words that cause content to be flagged include the so-called three Ts: Tiananmen, Taiwan and Tibet. If a monitored post subsequently disappears, FreeWeChat marks it as “censored” or “user deleted” depending on who has removed it – WeChat or the user themselves.
FreeWeChat is an invaluable resource for shedding light on the workings of China’s censorship regime. In the time FreeWeChat has been operating, it has allowed more than 700,000 censored WeChat posts to remain available for both Chinese users and others with an interest in censorship in the country.
Now, the very existence of FreeWeChat is now under threat, and Index has teamed up with other human rights groups to try and stop it being taken down.
The first threat to FreeWeChat came on 12 June 2025 when Tencent, the Chinese media company which runs WeChat, engaged Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Group IB to send a letter to Vultr, the USA-based cloud hosting provider of the FreeWeChat.com website. The letter, according to sources close to GreatFire, asserted trademark claims, without citing any activity that violated US laws.
Tencent claimed that FreeWeChat was infringing intellectual property rights by using the WeChat trademark and wording as well as “displaying articles which are censored/blocked by WeChat official channels and features an app download QR code in order to access more ‘banned’ WeChat content.”
The letter called on Vultr to suspend the freewechat.com website. On receipt of the letter, Vultr suspended the server and asked for a response from GreatFire on Tencent’s allegations.
GreatFire said: “We responded promptly, raising both process (did Vultr have any evidence that Group IB was actually an authorised agent of Tencent?) and substantive (our use of the name WeChat on a website tracking censorship on WeChat does not infringe on those marks) concerns.”
A subsequent letter from Group IB to Vultr doubled down on Tencent’s complaints, saying that FreeWeChat’s use of the logo was not permitted because it was not an informative website but was instead “clearly acting as WeChat by promoting content forbidden by the platform”.
It went on to argue that FreeWeChat is not only infringing Tencent’s trademarks but also its copyright. It also said that FreeWeChat was breaking US cybersquatting and competition laws.
Index on Censorship became involved in the case earlier in the summer, helping GreatFire respond to the allegations. In July we sent Vultr a letter co-signed by 17 human rights, free expression, press freedom, and digital rights organisations, reiterating concerns that Tencent was weaponising Vultr’s trust and safety process against public interest actors.
In early August Vultr’s lawyers assured Index on Censorship that the company was “committed to resolving all disputes, including this one, in an efficient and equitable manner”.
However, on 28 November, Vultr issued GreatFire with a formal 30-day notification of termination of services, a threat to the service’s very existence. For now, the freewechat.com site is still live as GreatFire has moved FreeWeChat to a second hosting provider. Yet how long it will remain live remains unclear. GreatFire says it is unsure whether the new provider has been contacted by Group IB or Tencent. It seems certain it will be.
A GreatFire spokesperson said, “We don’t want this to happen again to our projects. It’s difficult enough for us to fight the Chinese censorship apparatus. Even though we have come out on the losing end of this dispute, we hope that by sharing our story, we will dissuade other bad actors from taking a similar approach in the future.”
You can read more details of the case and how to support GreatFire here.
Beijing is punishing Japan – and its own young people – by pulling the plug on pop concerts
As the chief executive of Index, it’ll be of no surprise to anyone that I’ve attended my share of protests. What may be more surprising is that the largest of them all, by a long way, was in Beijing. In late summer 2012, nationalist fury against Japan erupted over the disputed ownership of islands off Taiwan’s coast.
Japanese restaurants and cars were vandalised, Chinese flags adorned offices, and central Beijing filled with thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of protesters outside the Japanese Embassy. I found myself on the outskirts of the protest, mesmerised. For the record, I wasn’t participating, merely passing through.
Such unrest might seem curious in a nation where the government tightly controls dissent, but these demonstrations were not only permitted, they were actively encouraged. Apparently, attendees were bussed in from neighbouring regions, given free transport and daily allowances.
Anti-Japanese sentiment is never far away in China. Switch on the TV and you’ll likely come across a show about Japanese atrocities during World War II or something similar, as I reported here. And in 2012, such sentiment was politically expedient. Authorities weaponised it to divert attention from domestic grievances.
It’s a different story today. There are no mass street protests to be seen, even though tensions have once again flared between China and Japan. Last month, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said that a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan could pose an existential threat to Japan and justify a military response. The comments enraged many in China. But these days the Chinese economy is too fragile to risk unrest spiralling. Leaders need only recall how the 2022 Urumchi fire protests rapidly morphed into nationwide criticism of Beijing’s rule, to fear their effects.
Still, Beijing is punishing Japan for Takaichi’s words. They’ve asked her to retract them and she’s refused, so now the knives are out. The “wolf warriors” have re-emerged, spouting anti-Japan vitriol online. Major Chinese travel companies have stopped selling tours to Japan. Screenings of Japanese films have been paused, cultural exchange events cancelled. Perhaps the most dramatic retaliation has been against Japanese singers. Multiple concerts have been shut down. In Shanghai last Friday, Maki Otsuki, best known for singing the theme tune to the Japanese anime series One Piece, had the lights and sound cut mid-performance. A video shows her stunned as staff remove her microphone and lead her offstage. The following night, pop icon Ayumi Hamasaki posted an apology to fans after her show was axed minutes before it was due to begin. She shared photos of herself and her dancers performing in an empty venue (see photo above). Other organisers report similar cancellations.
The throngs of young Chinese who are big fans of Japanese culture feel put out and have taken to social media to say as much. They can see that a Japanese politician shouldn’t have to parrot Beijing lines in order for musicians to finish a concert in the country. Though who knows where that rage will go?
The so-called trial of Jimmy Lai
The Jimmy Lai trial wrapped up last week, without a verdict. When this will come is anyone’s guess. One of the three judges, Esther Toh, said it would be announced “in good time”.
For a man who has been wrongly imprisoned for more than 1,700 days, is in his late 70s, and has serious health conditions, “in good time” is gratingly noncommittal. Of course it’s likely intentional, a way to further punish him and his family. But there’s more to it. When it comes to Lai language has always been used to obfuscate, frustrate and discredit. Hong Kong authorities, the CCP and their allies frequently twist words, calling him and his supporters traitors and other slurs. They can be bold in their denigrations – and they can be seemingly subtle.
“I’ve lost count of the number of times the Chinese / Hong Kong authorities or CCP State media have called me a “so-called human rights lawyer” leading a “so-called legal team.”,” said one of Lai’s lawyers, Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, this week on X. Gallagher made this comment following the release of a new report, titled “The Use of ‘So-called’ as a Propaganda Device in China”. By academics Linette Lim and Alexander Dukalsis (the latter an Index contributor), it looks at how China’s state-run media increasingly use inverted commas and the words so-called when talking about an idea or person that they wish to discredit.
It’s not a new trend nor is it unique to China, as the authors note (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used these linguistic tools too). Still, it’s growing in use there. Articles on Taiwan and Hong Kong will typically employ such language, as do ones on the USA. In fact the authors were struck by how many articles tried to delegitimise the USA and believe it’s “partly in response to more hawkish US policy towards China in recent years and partly accelerated by Xi Jinping’s increased domestic control and repression”.
The report is a helpful addition when considering how information is controlled under Xi Jinping, as was James Palmer’s piece in Foreign Policy last week labelled “A guide to Censorship in China”, which was based on his many years living and working there. In it Palmer describes the censorship machine as “messy”. While people can cover most sensitive topics in China, and Palmer says it’s relatively uncommon for authorities to outright refuse to publish something, the process is unpredictable, exhausting, artistically damaging and at times high stakes, putting many off. “In better times, publishers are willing to take risks, but those better times are a long way away,” wrote Palmer.
Better times do sadly feel very distant, though I’d imagine if pressed the CCP would say they’ll arrive “in good time”.