China Censorship Monitor and News Feed

Who said what, and what went missing.

Chinese news from many outlets in one dataset, each row labeled by the type of outlet that published it, plus the public hot lists of Weibo 微博, Baidu 百度, Zhihu 知乎, Toutiao 今日头条 and Bilibili 哔哩哔哩. When a topic drops off one of those five lists while it is still hot, we recheck it, flag it and show the evidence for each flag. Douyin 抖音 and Kuaishou 快手 are in the default hot lists but come in as hot-list rows with no deletion check. Kuaishou is paused by default.

What you get

News rows labeled by outlet type	Every news row has a source_type: State media, Party-gov, Commercial platform, Overseas independent, Dissident or Censorship tracker. Aggregator reposts are credited to the original outlet. The label describes the outlet. It says nothing about whether a story is true.
Stories grouped across outlets	Rows about the same story share a topic_id, so you can put state media and overseas coverage of one story side by side.
Hot-list rows	Weibo 微博 hot search, Baidu 百度 hot search, Zhihu 知乎 hot list, Toutiao 今日头条 hot board and Bilibili 哔哩哔哩 hot search, with rank, heat, peak_rank and rank_trail for each topic. Douyin 抖音 and Kuaishou 快手 are in the default hot lists but come in as hot-list rows with no deletion check. Kuaishou is paused by default.
Deletion flags with evidence (optional Deletion Watch add-on)	Off by default; set deletionWatch to true. Topics that leave those five lists while hot are flagged Likely censored by default; Censored only with a dead link, removal notice or close tracker match. Topics that come back are marked Returned. We show the evidence for each flag. Weaker signals are filtered out before they reach your dataset.
Chinese feed and English feed views	The same rows in two dataset views. The English feed shows headline_en, excerpt_en and summary_en, which are machine translations or generated text. English is added only where a translation is available, and right now most rows are not translated; those rows keep the Chinese and show translation_status: translation_pending.
Price	$8 per 1,000 results ($0.008 per row). No start fee. Optional Deletion Watch add-on: $0.05 per Likely censored or Censored flag (from Nov 11, 2026). keywords, alertSummary and emitOnlyNew are free.

Quick start

1. Open https://apify.com/china.unofficial/china-news-feed in Apify Console. Pick the hot lists and source types you want, or keep the defaults.
2. Check Max billed rows (maxItems). The Console pre-fills 30. If Max billed rows is left empty, the cap is 200 new rows. A 30-row run costs at most $0.24. Use the default timeout (600 s) for complete, deduplicated results.
3. Run it. When it finishes, open the dataset in the Flagged stories, English feed or Chinese feed view and export it as CSV, JSON or Excel.

Default run settings are a 600-second timeout and 1024 MB of memory. A run can return fewer rows than maxItems, or none, if it hits its time limit or the sources don't have enough new rows after filtering. Held rows arrive on your next run, and you're billed only for rows delivered.

Statuses

Status (status)	Label	What it takes
likely_censored	Likely censored / 【疑似被审查】	The default label. The topic dropped off abruptly while hot and was still gone at the 10-minute recheck.
censored	Censored / 【已被审查】	Still gone after 1 hour, and only with a dead link (the topic URL returns 404/410), a platform removal notice such as Weibo's 「根据相关法律法规」 notice, a Zhihu 4041 error, or a close match to a specific China Digital Times (CDT) item. provisional stays true until the 24-hour recheck.
returned	Returned	The topic was flagged and then came back. We keep it visible rather than quietly deleting the flag.

Deletion watch covers the Weibo 微博, Baidu 百度, Zhihu 知乎, Toutiao 今日头条 and Bilibili 哔哩哔哩 hot lists. Douyin 抖音 and Kuaishou 快手 are in the default hot lists but come in as hot-list rows with no deletion check. Kuaishou is paused by default. Platforms curate their hot lists, so a topic can leave for commercial or editorial reasons. So the rule is: Likely censored by default; Censored only with a dead link, removal notice or close tracker match. We show the evidence for each flag.

English translations and run status

Each English row has a translation status: ok, translation_pending or failed. A pending row shows "Translation pending; original shown" with the Chinese headline in place of the English one.

When some sources are down, the run's status message says: "Some sources, story matching and English translations are temporarily unavailable in this run."

Two fields worth knowing

• fetch: how this row is refreshed, either scheduled (each run, the default) or hourly.
• via: the third-party copy a hot-list row came from, or null.

Ready-made setups

Copy one of these into the JSON tab of the input, then click Save as a new task so you can rerun or schedule it. Each one keeps Emit only new rows on, so a daily run bills only rows you haven't received yet.

Deletion Watch daily: turns on the Deletion Watch add-on for the five deletion-watched hot lists plus censorship trackers, capped at 50 rows (at most $0.40 a run in base rows, plus $0.05 per Likely censored or Censored flag from Nov 11, 2026).

{"hotLists": ["weibo", "baidu", "zhihu", "toutiao", "bilibili"], "sourceTypes": ["Censorship tracker"], "maxItems": 50, "maxItemsPerSource": 10, "emitOnlyNew": true, "deletionWatch": true, "clusterBudgetSeconds": 60, "sourceWallCapSecs": 30}

Top 50 in English: every outlet type plus the top 20 of each deletion-watched hot list, capped at 50 rows. Open the English feed view. Rows without a translation yet show the Chinese headline and translation_status: translation_pending.

{"hotLists": ["weibo", "baidu", "zhihu", "toutiao", "bilibili"], "maxItems": 50, "maxItemsPerSource": 10, "maxHotRank": 20, "emitOnlyNew": true, "clusterBudgetSeconds": 60, "sourceWallCapSecs": 30}

Weibo 微博 only: the Weibo 微博 hot search list and its deletion flags, no news rows.

{"hotLists": ["weibo"], "sourceTypes": [], "maxItems": 50, "maxHotRank": 50, "emitOnlyNew": true, "clusterBudgetSeconds": 60, "sourceWallCapSecs": 30}

Run it every day

1. Save the input as a task (Save as a new task).
2. Open Schedules in Apify Console, click Create new, and pick a daily time, for example 0 8 * * * in your time zone.
3. Add the task to the schedule and save. Keep the default 600-second timeout.

Run one schedule per task at a time. Two overlapping runs can deliver the same row twice.

Deletion Watch (optional add-on)

Set deletionWatch to true to add deletion flags to your run. It is off by default. With it off, you get the news and hot-list feed at the base price, with no deletion fields.

With it on, topics that leave the Weibo 微博, Baidu 百度, Zhihu 知乎, Toutiao 今日头条 or Bilibili 哔哩哔哩 hot lists while still hot are rechecked and flagged:

• Likely censored is the default label. The topic dropped off abruptly and was still gone at the recheck.
• Censored is used only with a dead link, a platform removal notice or a close tracker match.
• Returned means the topic came back. These rows carry no add-on charge. In the dataset, status is returned and the label field reads "Restored" (【已恢复】).

We show the evidence for each flag. Weaker signals are filtered out before they reach your dataset. Platforms curate their hot lists, so a topic can also leave for commercial or editorial reasons.

Price: each Likely censored or Censored flag costs $0.05 (event deletion-watch-row) on top of the $0.008 row price, starting Nov 11, 2026 (Apify's 14-day notice for a new paid event). Until then, flag rows are billed at the row price only. Returned rows and plain rows carry no add-on charge. If the deletion check can't finish in a run, that run charges no add-on. Flag rows count toward maxItems, and with Deletion Watch on they come first within your row limit.

Set alertSummary to true (free, requires deletionWatch) to get an ALERT record in the run's key-value store listing this run's new Censored and Likely censored rows.

Get an alert on Likely censored flags

Turn on deletionWatch first; without it, runs have no flag rows.

Apify alerts fire per run, not per row, so the alert checks the finished run's dataset for flag rows (status is likely_censored, censored or returned).

Slack or email, no code

1. Open your saved task and go to Integrations.
2. Add Slack (or Email) and choose the event Run succeeded.
3. In the message, link the run's dataset in the Flagged stories view. Every finished run sends a message, and you open the view to see whether there are new Likely censored rows.

Only when there is a flag (webhook)

1. In your task, go to Integrations → Webhook, event Run succeeded, and point it at your endpoint (Zapier, Make, n8n or your own server).
2. Leave the default payload. It includes resource.defaultDatasetId.
3. In your endpoint, read the rows with GET https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/{defaultDatasetId}/items?fields=status,label,title,title_en,list,peak_rank,provisional and your Apify API token.
4. Keep rows where status is likely_censored and send those to Slack or email. Add censored if you also want the confirmed tier.

A Likely censored flag means the topic dropped off abruptly while hot and was still gone at the 10-minute recheck. Platforms also curate their lists for commercial or editorial reasons, so treat it as a lead and check the evidence on the row.

Pricing

• $8 per 1,000 results, which is $0.008 per row.
• Pay per event: one billed event per dataset row. No start fee.
• Deletion Watch add-on (opt-in, off by default): $0.05 per Likely censored or Censored flag row, on top of the row price, from Nov 11, 2026. Returned rows have no add-on charge. A 1,000-row run with the watch on typically carries about 49 flags, about $10.45 in total.
• keywords, alertSummary and emitOnlyNew are free.
• 30 rows cost $0.24. 50 rows cost $0.40.
• Emit only new rows (emitOnlyNew) is on by default, so rows you already received aren't billed again. A flag comes back as a new row when its status changes, for example from Likely censored to Censored, or to Returned. Run one at a time to avoid repeats.

FAQ

Why "Likely censored" rather than "Censored"? Likely censored is the default label. A flag becomes Censored only with a dead link, a platform removal notice (such as a Weibo notice or a Zhihu 4041 error) or a close match to a specific CDT item.

Can a Censored flag change? Yes. It stays provisional until the 24-hour recheck. If the topic comes back, its status becomes returned.

Does a source label mean a story is true or false? No. source_type describes the outlet, not the story.

Am I charged for deletion flags? Only if you turn on Deletion Watch (deletionWatch: true, off by default). From Nov 11, 2026, each Likely censored or Censored flag costs $0.05 on top of the $0.008 row price; Returned rows cost only the row price. Flags count toward maxItems.

Why did I get fewer rows than Max billed rows? The run hit its time limit, or the sources didn't have enough new rows after filtering. Held rows arrive on your next run, and you pay only for rows delivered.

Can I filter by date, keyword or language? By keyword, yes: keywords (free) keeps rows whose title, summary or source matches any keyword, case-insensitive. There is no date-range or language input. To get only what's new, schedule it with Emit only new rows left on. You can narrow a run with hotLists, sourceTypes, newsSources and maxHotRank.

Is every row in English? No. English headlines and excerpts are machine translations added only where available. Right now most rows ship in Chinese only, with translation_status: translation_pending. Check names and slang against headline_original.

Which platforms does the deletion watch cover? Weibo 微博, Baidu 百度, Zhihu 知乎, Toutiao 今日头条 and Bilibili 哔哩哔哩 hot lists. Douyin 抖音 and Kuaishou 快手 are in the default hot lists but come in as hot-list rows with no deletion check. Kuaishou is paused by default.

How do I get Weibo hot search (微博热搜) in English? Run the Actor with hotLists set to weibo, leave the news inputs empty and set maxHotRank (for example 30). Each row carries the Chinese topic, rank, heat and link, plus a machine English translation where one is available. The public task "Weibo hot search in English" has these settings ready.

How do I track topics deleted from Chinese hot lists? Turn on Deletion Watch (deletionWatch: true) and schedule the Actor, for example hourly, with Emit only new rows on. Topics that drop off a hot list abruptly come back as flag rows labeled Likely censored, with first seen, last seen, rank and evidence. Most drop-offs are normal rotation, so read the evidence field.

Can I get China news in English only? Use newsSources to pick the English-language outlets (China Daily, CGTN, Global Times, Sixth Tone, HKFP and others). The public task "China news in English" lists them.

Do I need a Weibo, Baidu or Zhihu account? No. Everything is collected from public, logged-out pages.

Changelog

Oct 28, 2026: Deletion flags are now an opt-in add-on. Deletion Watch is off by default, so existing runs and tasks no longer get flag rows unless you set deletionWatch to true. Set it to keep them. The $0.05 per flag price starts Nov 11, 2026. The base price is unchanged.

See CHANGELOG.md and the Changelog tab on this page.

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