From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tevernici, and this is The Daily.

Over the past decade, China has placed more and more restrictions on the lives of its citizens,

tightening its hold over what people can do, read, and say.

Today, my colleague Vivian Wong tells the story of a couple caught in that system,

one carrying a dangerous secret, the other left to pick up the pieces.

It's Tuesday, August 29th.

So Vivian, tell me how you came to this story.

So earlier this year, I came across a screenshot of a WeChat message from a woman in China,

and she said, I need help.

I think my husband is a blogger called Program Think.

I'm going to speak out on behalf of him, but I need everyone to pay attention in case something happens to me.

And what does Program Think?

So I had heard of this blog before. It's a Chinese blog, but you had to get outside of China's censored internet,

also known as the Great Firewall, to access it.

And what made it special was that it really boldly talked about Chinese politics and the Chinese government.

At a time when the government had increasingly cracked down on the internet and free speech.

And nobody knew who this author was, which made it almost kind of mythical to its loyal readers.

And then suddenly one day in 2021, the blog went silent.

And for two years, there were basically no clues until earlier this year when this woman appeared and said,

she knew who the blogger was, she was his wife.

And I was really intrigued, of course.

And so I reached out to her.

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