The world thought a $62 million van Gogh painting belonged to Chinese movie tycoon Wang Zhongjun, but paper trails and door knockings led @PekingMike @QianIsabelle @vwang3 and I to the now-jailed influential billionaire Xiao Jianhua. nytimes.com/2023/05/29/wor…twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Last year, Xiao was sentenced to 13 years. Before his fall, he was a trusted financier for family members of Chinese political elites. Corporate documents obtained by @nytimes reveal for the first time a hidden offshore network worth more than $5 billion. nyti.ms/3WBKEDVtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Mar 21, 2023 • 11 tweets • 8 min read
EXCLUSIVE: Using satellite images of the Chinese balloon discovered by AI firm @synthetaic and analysis of the balloon's altitude, we are able to track its movement hours after launch from China's Hainan island and follow its journey to North America.
👇 nytimes.com/interactive/20…
.@Synthetaic's imagery analysis platform RAIC unearthed a dozen photos of the balloon from millions of square miles of satellite imagery based on a sketch drawn by the company's founder @CoreyJaskolski. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Dec 19, 2022 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Twitter users were drowned with spam when they searched for information about the historic anti-lockdown protests in China. Through data analysis and interviews with people behind bots, we found that much of the spam is linked to commercial bot networks. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
We searched on Twitter for 16 cities and reviewed the results for spam. When we did the searches in simplified Chinese, bots were active throughout, for Chinese cities with or without protests as well as for foreign cities. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Nov 30, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Days later, videos of demonstrations are still visible on the Chinese internet. We looked into how they stretch China's censorship to its limits. “Once the anger spills on to the street it becomes much harder to censor.”
READ⬇️ nytimes.com/2022/11/30/bus…@paulmozur@JohnLiuNN Videos filmed from different angles of the same event and tactics including using filters, recording videos of videos and editing several videos together can trip up censorship algorithms, according to internet freedom researcher Xiao Qiang and and a former censor.
Since Dr. Li Wenliang’s death in February 2020, a fuller picture of his last days has remained elusive. We interviewed a doctor who witnessed Dr. Li’s resuscitation and we reviewed his medical records. Now we can fill in some gaps about Dr. Li's death. nytimes.com/video/world/as…
Dr. Li alerted others about Covid-19 in late 2019 and was soon reprimanded by authorities. He then contracted the virus and died from it. We found no evidence his medical care was compromised. Eight U.S.-based Chinese medical experts reviewed Dr. Li’s medical records for us.
