Issue 11: October – December 2025

Highlights

• Protest increased markedly in 2025. CDM logged 1,363 dissent events in the fourth quarter of 2025, an 8 percent year-on-year increase. CDM counted 5,343 events in total during 2025, a 44 percent rise over the 3,704 events documented in 2024. In the fourth quarter of 2025, workers led more than half of protest events (54 percent), followed by property owners (22 percent), and rural residents (14 percent). The remainder were led by diverse groups such as victims of injury and their families, small business owners, investors, retirees, consumers, students, petitioners, and activists. The top provinces for protest events were Guangdong (16 percent), followed by Henan, Hunan, Shaanxi, and Zhejiang. CDM has logged a total of 14,347 cases of dissent since data collection began in June 2022.
• Wage protests reach new peak. Labor protests over unpaid wages have risen before each Lunar New Year since 2023. During the four months before the 2026 holiday, CDM documented a 60 percent increase in such events compared to the same period a year ago. This new peak reflects a slowing Chinese economy and the rising number of firms that are unable to pay workers their due wages.
• Widespread censorship of protest on Douyin. A CDM analysis of 2,970 Douyin posts about protest in China published from June to December 2025 found that two-thirds had been deleted. The highest rates of censorship are associated with posts about offline protests by petitioners, or by victims of injury and their families; posts about protests in Beijing or Xinjiang; and posts depicting authorities detaining or using violence against protesters.