Yi-Ling Liu

Yi-Ling Liu, author and researcher of the Chinese internet, explores how users navigate freedom and censorship behind the Great Firewall. She discusses the origins of internet utopianism, grassroots communities and coded evasion tactics. Conversations cover moderation labor, online nationalism, cross-border social media exchanges, and why technological centralization pushed both US and Chinese internets toward similar tribal outcomes.

Yi-Ling Liu, China analyst and author of The Wall Dancers, reflects on growing up between Hong Kong, the US and Beijing. She explores how China built a separate internet, the rise of WeChat as a super-app and surveillance tool, and digital activism from feminist and LGBTQ+ communities. She also traces entrepreneurial shifts from Jack Ma to AI founders and how users creatively navigate censorship.

Yi-Ling Liu, writer and editor who covers AI and Chinese society and author of The Wall Dancers. She unpacks how China’s vast censorship apparatus shapes online creativity. Short scenes on content moderation, underground communities like Blued, feminist activism, platform-regulator dynamics, and how Chinese culture migrates onto U.S. feeds.

Yi-Ling Liu, journalist and author of The Wall Dancers, maps Chinese online life through vivid personal stories. She explores the metaphor of “dancing in shackles,” early netizen optimism, hip hop and sci‑fi’s rise and co‑optation, feminist activism and crackdowns, and how censorship and moderation became human and industrial. Short scenes show creativity and constraint colliding in China’s digital sphere.

Yi-Ling Liu, writer on tech and censorship in China and author of The Wall Dancers, explains how China’s Great Firewall shapes everyday online life. She recounts creative workarounds by Chinese internet users, the rise and fall of queer platforms like Blued, and what American netizens should learn from another internet ecosystem. Short, surprising, and sharply observed.