Welcome to the first full working week of the new year. 2025 also kicks off with a packed to-do list in Beijing. The Covid aftermath, Xi’s continued expansion of power and corrupt cadres: China’s domestic politics continue to simmer in the new year. What are the challenges for Beijing? We give you an overview.
It is a well-known fact that the Chinese internet is scanned for content that the Communist Party does not like. This is done using AI – and moderators. They rarely talk about their job. In an anonymous interview, one of the censors tells us what content is relevant to his work. He also talks about the workload and in which cases he feels guilty about deleted content.
In the Heads section, we introduce the Kay family. The four family members Ursula, David, DeeDee and Freddy have become one of the best-known Western influencer families in China. In November, their channel “Our Chinese Life” won an award on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. The Kays have also long since broken the 100,000 subscriber mark on other platforms such as Bilibili.
Have a wonderful Monday!
It’s rare for someone to talk about their work as an online censor. You are now 25 years old and have been doing the job since 2020. What tasks has your employer have you do?
It mainly involves examining images and texts. The content can be divided into three main areas: political security, violence and offensive content. Gambling, drugs and illegal advertising must also be checked.
How heavy is the workload?
It is actually okay. Strictly speaking, the AI takes over the first review round. The first reviewers then have to review more than 10,000 pieces of content per day, while we quality reviewers have to review at least 40,000 to 50,000 pieces of content per day, as this is relatively easier – after all, the content has already been reviewed once. Initially, I was told to review 60,000 to 70,000 pieces of content a day, but I couldn’t do it.
Which area has the highest moderation priority?
That would clearly be political security.
What is the review standard for political content? For example, which content is permitted and which is not?
The standard is actually the same as for national news reports. What is not allowed to be reported, we cannot approve either. A very clear example is that content concerning high-ranking political officials and their families or addressing the darker chapters in the Communist Party’s history must always be deleted. Another example is June 4th. Every year, when people spread information about the incident, we must always review and delete such content. Especially right before June 4th, we even have to work overtime to handle all the work.
Have you been told why certain topics are politically sensitive? Did you have any questions or were you interested in more details?
The company does not want us to know too many details. In the first filter stage, a lot of content is already filtered out by AI using keywords; this content is not even visible to us as reviewers. I don’t ask questions myself as I already know my way around. If I don’t know something, I use VPNs and search on foreign websites. Sometimes, I find new keywords during manual checks and report them to my supervisor. These words are then added to the AI filters so that future content can be checked and blocked automatically.
You also receive training on specific topics. How did the training on the labor camps in Xinjiang go?
We were shown a documentary and that was it. There were no further explanations or discussions. The company’s goal was not to educate us about the truth, but to prepare us to delete content. As reviewers, we are just cogs in the system. We are only supposed to recognize that a topic is sensitive and delete the content – how we feel about it or what we think is irrelevant.
What other content was covered in the training courses?
There was training about cults, such as “Eastern Lightning” and the like. The training consists of a PPT presentation which we were not allowed to photograph and which the company collected immediately afterwards. This is typical of all our training sessions – they seem very secretive. It seems as if the company has to give us certain information so that we can do our job better, but at the same time, they are afraid that we know too much. They would prefer us to follow the instructions and forget everything immediately. That’s quite contradictory.
You seem to be very open about your work as a moderator. Don’t you think that your work could also be seen as reprehensible?
You can put it that way, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t bear a great moral burden about these things. You shouldn’t carry too much of a moral burden in life. For me, my survival is the top priority. Nothing is more important than my own survival. If I didn’t have this job, I wouldn’t be able to live. And if I couldn’t survive, who would care?
Could you tell us how much you earn as a moderator?
In the beginning, it was 4,300 yuan; after taxes, I had about 4,000 yuan in my pocket. After just over a year, the salary increased to 6,800 yuan gross, leaving around 6,000 yuan after deducting social security and housing funds.
Does this long-term work as a reviewer, which constantly exposes you to so-called “negative” information, have an impact on your psychological or mental health?
No, not at all. If you’re talking about political depression, not that either. To be honest, the only pressure I feel at work comes from the fear of making mistakes. I’m terrified that I might miss something that needs to be censored. I haven’t noticed any negative emotions from my colleagues either. Some colleagues even love Mao Zedong more than anything. For some, it is as if they are helping to stabilize the country and prevent social unrest. From this perspective, why should we be politically depressed or anxious?
Is there anything that makes you feel guilty?
Absolutely. For example, censoring content about COVID-19, the floods in Zhengzhou or Jiang Xue’s essay “Ten Days in Chang’an” made me feel guilty. But these were obvious cases. If I hadn’t deleted them, someone else would have. They were too obvious to let them slide.
How did your feelings of guilt manifest?
They made me want to quit. But then the people around me comforted me by saying, “If you hadn’t done it, someone else would have.” Some of my friends also asked me what I would do if I quit this job. Everyone knows that survival is paramount, while morals and ethics are secondary. I have an ambivalent relationship with this work: on the one hand, it’s a familiar job that ensures my survival, but on the other, it’s … painful. It was tough because I went through some of the same things I had to censor content about.
Do you think you deserve sympathy? If you were to look at your work from an outsider’s perspective, what would you say about censors?
I would say that we certainly deserve compassion. I think there’s a phrase that sums it up well: Responsibility should be proportional to power and position. Ordinary people should not have to carry the burden of too much social responsibility. It’s hard enough for ordinary people to survive without having to shoulder society’s expectations.
The original interview with online reviewer Chen Lijia (pseudonym) was conducted by the diaspora magazine Mang Mang and first published in fall 2024. We have translated authorized excerpts from the original text for you.
Watching a video of the Kay family for the first time feels like a trip back in time to the 80s. In the opening, the four family members Ursula, David, DeeDee, and Freddy already appear in a home video aesthetic that you might remember from “ALF” or “Full House.” The grainy flickering is accompanied by 8-bit keyboard sounds reminiscent of early Atari and Nintendo video games. It would hardly occur to anyone that the short films were made in China’s biggest high-tech metropolis of all places.
But that’s exactly what the “Our Chinese Life” channel is all about: the everyday life of an expat family in present-day Shenzhen. “Family Tries China’s Weirdest Foods,” ‘Is China Cheap?’, or ‘Brit in China: What I Miss About The West’ – the ‘VHS Family’ has been presenting these and other stories in five to ten-minute videos for the past four years. “Ursula and I love retro culture, and when we decided to make videos about our life in China, the food scene here and similar topics, we thought it would be cool to give the project a creative and original touch with an 80s aesthetic,” says family man David. His partner Ursula laughs. “It’s funny because sometimes people think we wear 80s costumes in our videos, but that’s just our natural style.”
The British-Dutch couple have been living in China for almost 14 years. Their first stop was Hangzhou, where Ursula got a job as a fashion designer at a Chinese company. Her partner David had followed her from Sheffield, at that time, without a specific career goal. His last job in the UK was as a musician, and he was even briefly in the British charts with his band Tiny Dancers. However, they never got beyond the status of one-hit wonders. The couple, who had no previous experience of China, found Hangzhou on the Westlake “a magical place, full of mystery and exotic promise – completely different to anything we had experienced before,” recalls David. “We had to struggle a bit to find our way around, which in retrospect was good for us – as individuals and as a couple.”
They also moved to Shenzhen for their careers. Ursula now has her own fashion brand in China’s Silicon Valley. With “CooClaire,” she has devoted herself to “French elegance” – which is still popular in China. David works as a teacher at a Montessori school. Thanks to their video blog, he, who was denied pop star fame in the UK, is now recognized on the street. In November, their channel won an award on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. And they have long since broken the 100,000 subscriber mark on other platforms such as Bilibili.
“It’s always heartwarming to meet people who follow us on our journey,” says Ursula about the attention she also receives on the street. Her children, however, are the true stars of the video blog. “Our viewers love to hear them speak Chinese!” says Ursula. “They find it fascinating how our children have embraced Chinese culture and speak the language like locals. And, of course, the delicious food!”
DeeDee and Freddy were both born in China. The couple made the deliberate decision to raise them here. “We have found that life here works well for us,” says Ursula. Above all, she sees the fact that the children are growing up here speaking three languages as an investment in the future. “Our children are growing up as global citizens, closely connected to a culture that is different from that of their parents. They are multilingual, socially adaptable and open-minded. Living in China also gives them a sense of adventure and the confidence to make friends anywhere in the world.” What’s more, Shenzhen feels extremely safe compared to London, Amsterdam or Berlin – “there is no street crime or rebellious youth cultures. The Chinese people are incredibly friendly and welcoming, so we never have to worry about bullying.”
One huge disadvantage, however, is that schooling for expat children is extremely expensive. “In Shenzhen, expat children are not allowed to attend public schools – even if they were born here, speak fluent Chinese, read and write and have a Chinese birth certificate,” says Ursula. “Due to the strict citizenship rules, we are only left with bilingual private or international schools, both of which are very expensive.” Without a company expat package that covers school fees, rent and flights, the enormous financial burden is almost impossible to bear. For example, the fees for international schools are between 10,000 and 30,000 RMB per month per child. “For a family with two children, that’s over 20,000 RMB per month – for elementary school alone.”
Moving away is not an option for them – although they have considered it again and again over the years, life here is too much fun, as the Kay family videos impressively show. “As our channel is a family project, we attach great importance to creating a healthy balance between filming and spending time together away from the camera,” says Ursula. “It’s important to us that the children enjoy the process, which is why we make sure it feels more like fun than work.” Her goal is to post a video every week. Currently, however, the channel is just one of several side projects in her Chinese life. “For example, we also have a small zoo at home!” laughs Ursula. “Our family currently looks after four cats, a dog, twelve guinea pigs, five birds, a rat, a gecko and some small fish.”
Music also continues to play a big role for David. “I’ve been working with my friend Edo from the Chinese band Pet Conspiracy for a few years now. Our band is called Feardrops. But due to work, family commitments and other factors, we can’t perform as often as we’d like,” he said. In addition to studio work, David also occasionally performs as a DJ – but here, too, things have been rather slow of late. “Covid has hit the club scene hard, and friends in the industry say it’s unlikely to return to the same level in the pre-Covid era – people have simply found new and often cheaper ways to party.”
Speaking of Covid – have they ever taken on more serious topics and wanted to cover the darker side of Chinese life? “Our channel is a family vlog that focuses on our life in China,” David replies. “If people are looking for political commentary, then they should probably look at other channels, of which there are many.” He is aware of the accusations that posts casting a positive light on life in China are instantly interpreted by some as a defense of the Chinese system.
“There is a small group of people online who believe that by making positive videos about China, we have effectively become a mouthpiece for the government, but that is absurd and cynical. We’re not about sitting on a podium and criticizing other cultures or instigating political debates. That’s fine if people want to do that, and I find those kinds of debates and discussions very interesting, but that’s just not what we do. We just make videos to show people what life is really like for us in China.” Fabian Peltsch
It’s in the starting blocks: The year of the snake – the wooden snake to be precise – begins on January 29. Plenty of lucky charms and other merchandise are already available. The Chinese Central Bank, for example, has issued a series of commemorative coins and banknotes.
Welcome to the first full working week of the new year. 2025 also kicks off with a packed to-do list in Beijing. The Covid aftermath, Xi’s continued expansion of power and corrupt cadres: China’s domestic politics continue to simmer in the new year. What are the challenges for Beijing? We give you an overview.
It is a well-known fact that the Chinese internet is scanned for content that the Communist Party does not like. This is done using AI – and moderators. They rarely talk about their job. In an anonymous interview, one of the censors tells us what content is relevant to his work. He also talks about the workload and in which cases he feels guilty about deleted content.
In the Heads section, we introduce the Kay family. The four family members Ursula, David, DeeDee and Freddy have become one of the best-known Western influencer families in China. In November, their channel “Our Chinese Life” won an award on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. The Kays have also long since broken the 100,000 subscriber mark on other platforms such as Bilibili.
Have a wonderful Monday!
It’s rare for someone to talk about their work as an online censor. You are now 25 years old and have been doing the job since 2020. What tasks has your employer have you do?
It mainly involves examining images and texts. The content can be divided into three main areas: political security, violence and offensive content. Gambling, drugs and illegal advertising must also be checked.
How heavy is the workload?
It is actually okay. Strictly speaking, the AI takes over the first review round. The first reviewers then have to review more than 10,000 pieces of content per day, while we quality reviewers have to review at least 40,000 to 50,000 pieces of content per day, as this is relatively easier – after all, the content has already been reviewed once. Initially, I was told to review 60,000 to 70,000 pieces of content a day, but I couldn’t do it.
Which area has the highest moderation priority?
That would clearly be political security.
What is the review standard for political content? For example, which content is permitted and which is not?
The standard is actually the same as for national news reports. What is not allowed to be reported, we cannot approve either. A very clear example is that content concerning high-ranking political officials and their families or addressing the darker chapters in the Communist Party’s history must always be deleted. Another example is June 4th. Every year, when people spread information about the incident, we must always review and delete such content. Especially right before June 4th, we even have to work overtime to handle all the work.
Have you been told why certain topics are politically sensitive? Did you have any questions or were you interested in more details?
The company does not want us to know too many details. In the first filter stage, a lot of content is already filtered out by AI using keywords; this content is not even visible to us as reviewers. I don’t ask questions myself as I already know my way around. If I don’t know something, I use VPNs and search on foreign websites. Sometimes, I find new keywords during manual checks and report them to my supervisor. These words are then added to the AI filters so that future content can be checked and blocked automatically.
You also receive training on specific topics. How did the training on the labor camps in Xinjiang go?
We were shown a documentary and that was it. There were no further explanations or discussions. The company’s goal was not to educate us about the truth, but to prepare us to delete content. As reviewers, we are just cogs in the system. We are only supposed to recognize that a topic is sensitive and delete the content – how we feel about it or what we think is irrelevant.
What other content was covered in the training courses?
There was training about cults, such as “Eastern Lightning” and the like. The training consists of a PPT presentation which we were not allowed to photograph and which the company collected immediately afterwards. This is typical of all our training sessions – they seem very secretive. It seems as if the company has to give us certain information so that we can do our job better, but at the same time, they are afraid that we know too much. They would prefer us to follow the instructions and forget everything immediately. That’s quite contradictory.
You seem to be very open about your work as a moderator. Don’t you think that your work could also be seen as reprehensible?
You can put it that way, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t bear a great moral burden about these things. You shouldn’t carry too much of a moral burden in life. For me, my survival is the top priority. Nothing is more important than my own survival. If I didn’t have this job, I wouldn’t be able to live. And if I couldn’t survive, who would care?
Could you tell us how much you earn as a moderator?
In the beginning, it was 4,300 yuan; after taxes, I had about 4,000 yuan in my pocket. After just over a year, the salary increased to 6,800 yuan gross, leaving around 6,000 yuan after deducting social security and housing funds.
Does this long-term work as a reviewer, which constantly exposes you to so-called “negative” information, have an impact on your psychological or mental health?
No, not at all. If you’re talking about political depression, not that either. To be honest, the only pressure I feel at work comes from the fear of making mistakes. I’m terrified that I might miss something that needs to be censored. I haven’t noticed any negative emotions from my colleagues either. Some colleagues even love Mao Zedong more than anything. For some, it is as if they are helping to stabilize the country and prevent social unrest. From this perspective, why should we be politically depressed or anxious?
Is there anything that makes you feel guilty?
Absolutely. For example, censoring content about COVID-19, the floods in Zhengzhou or Jiang Xue’s essay “Ten Days in Chang’an” made me feel guilty. But these were obvious cases. If I hadn’t deleted them, someone else would have. They were too obvious to let them slide.
How did your feelings of guilt manifest?
They made me want to quit. But then the people around me comforted me by saying, “If you hadn’t done it, someone else would have.” Some of my friends also asked me what I would do if I quit this job. Everyone knows that survival is paramount, while morals and ethics are secondary. I have an ambivalent relationship with this work: on the one hand, it’s a familiar job that ensures my survival, but on the other, it’s … painful. It was tough because I went through some of the same things I had to censor content about.
Do you think you deserve sympathy? If you were to look at your work from an outsider’s perspective, what would you say about censors?
I would say that we certainly deserve compassion. I think there’s a phrase that sums it up well: Responsibility should be proportional to power and position. Ordinary people should not have to carry the burden of too much social responsibility. It’s hard enough for ordinary people to survive without having to shoulder society’s expectations.
The original interview with online reviewer Chen Lijia (pseudonym) was conducted by the diaspora magazine Mang Mang and first published in fall 2024. We have translated authorized excerpts from the original text for you.
Watching a video of the Kay family for the first time feels like a trip back in time to the 80s. In the opening, the four family members Ursula, David, DeeDee, and Freddy already appear in a home video aesthetic that you might remember from “ALF” or “Full House.” The grainy flickering is accompanied by 8-bit keyboard sounds reminiscent of early Atari and Nintendo video games. It would hardly occur to anyone that the short films were made in China’s biggest high-tech metropolis of all places.
But that’s exactly what the “Our Chinese Life” channel is all about: the everyday life of an expat family in present-day Shenzhen. “Family Tries China’s Weirdest Foods,” ‘Is China Cheap?’, or ‘Brit in China: What I Miss About The West’ – the ‘VHS Family’ has been presenting these and other stories in five to ten-minute videos for the past four years. “Ursula and I love retro culture, and when we decided to make videos about our life in China, the food scene here and similar topics, we thought it would be cool to give the project a creative and original touch with an 80s aesthetic,” says family man David. His partner Ursula laughs. “It’s funny because sometimes people think we wear 80s costumes in our videos, but that’s just our natural style.”
The British-Dutch couple have been living in China for almost 14 years. Their first stop was Hangzhou, where Ursula got a job as a fashion designer at a Chinese company. Her partner David had followed her from Sheffield, at that time, without a specific career goal. His last job in the UK was as a musician, and he was even briefly in the British charts with his band Tiny Dancers. However, they never got beyond the status of one-hit wonders. The couple, who had no previous experience of China, found Hangzhou on the Westlake “a magical place, full of mystery and exotic promise – completely different to anything we had experienced before,” recalls David. “We had to struggle a bit to find our way around, which in retrospect was good for us – as individuals and as a couple.”
They also moved to Shenzhen for their careers. Ursula now has her own fashion brand in China’s Silicon Valley. With “CooClaire,” she has devoted herself to “French elegance” – which is still popular in China. David works as a teacher at a Montessori school. Thanks to their video blog, he, who was denied pop star fame in the UK, is now recognized on the street. In November, their channel won an award on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. And they have long since broken the 100,000 subscriber mark on other platforms such as Bilibili.
“It’s always heartwarming to meet people who follow us on our journey,” says Ursula about the attention she also receives on the street. Her children, however, are the true stars of the video blog. “Our viewers love to hear them speak Chinese!” says Ursula. “They find it fascinating how our children have embraced Chinese culture and speak the language like locals. And, of course, the delicious food!”
DeeDee and Freddy were both born in China. The couple made the deliberate decision to raise them here. “We have found that life here works well for us,” says Ursula. Above all, she sees the fact that the children are growing up here speaking three languages as an investment in the future. “Our children are growing up as global citizens, closely connected to a culture that is different from that of their parents. They are multilingual, socially adaptable and open-minded. Living in China also gives them a sense of adventure and the confidence to make friends anywhere in the world.” What’s more, Shenzhen feels extremely safe compared to London, Amsterdam or Berlin – “there is no street crime or rebellious youth cultures. The Chinese people are incredibly friendly and welcoming, so we never have to worry about bullying.”
One huge disadvantage, however, is that schooling for expat children is extremely expensive. “In Shenzhen, expat children are not allowed to attend public schools – even if they were born here, speak fluent Chinese, read and write and have a Chinese birth certificate,” says Ursula. “Due to the strict citizenship rules, we are only left with bilingual private or international schools, both of which are very expensive.” Without a company expat package that covers school fees, rent and flights, the enormous financial burden is almost impossible to bear. For example, the fees for international schools are between 10,000 and 30,000 RMB per month per child. “For a family with two children, that’s over 20,000 RMB per month – for elementary school alone.”
Moving away is not an option for them – although they have considered it again and again over the years, life here is too much fun, as the Kay family videos impressively show. “As our channel is a family project, we attach great importance to creating a healthy balance between filming and spending time together away from the camera,” says Ursula. “It’s important to us that the children enjoy the process, which is why we make sure it feels more like fun than work.” Her goal is to post a video every week. Currently, however, the channel is just one of several side projects in her Chinese life. “For example, we also have a small zoo at home!” laughs Ursula. “Our family currently looks after four cats, a dog, twelve guinea pigs, five birds, a rat, a gecko and some small fish.”
Music also continues to play a big role for David. “I’ve been working with my friend Edo from the Chinese band Pet Conspiracy for a few years now. Our band is called Feardrops. But due to work, family commitments and other factors, we can’t perform as often as we’d like,” he said. In addition to studio work, David also occasionally performs as a DJ – but here, too, things have been rather slow of late. “Covid has hit the club scene hard, and friends in the industry say it’s unlikely to return to the same level in the pre-Covid era – people have simply found new and often cheaper ways to party.”
Speaking of Covid – have they ever taken on more serious topics and wanted to cover the darker side of Chinese life? “Our channel is a family vlog that focuses on our life in China,” David replies. “If people are looking for political commentary, then they should probably look at other channels, of which there are many.” He is aware of the accusations that posts casting a positive light on life in China are instantly interpreted by some as a defense of the Chinese system.
“There is a small group of people online who believe that by making positive videos about China, we have effectively become a mouthpiece for the government, but that is absurd and cynical. We’re not about sitting on a podium and criticizing other cultures or instigating political debates. That’s fine if people want to do that, and I find those kinds of debates and discussions very interesting, but that’s just not what we do. We just make videos to show people what life is really like for us in China.” Fabian Peltsch
It’s in the starting blocks: The year of the snake – the wooden snake to be precise – begins on January 29. Plenty of lucky charms and other merchandise are already available. The Chinese Central Bank, for example, has issued a series of commemorative coins and banknotes.
