ZGBriefs | April 14, 2016

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ZGBriefs is a compilation of news items gathered from published online sources. ChinaSource is not responsible for the content, and inclusion in ZGBriefs does not equal endorsement. Please go here to support ZGBriefs.

Featured Article

Video: A Portrait of Youth and Camaraderie in China (April 5, 2016, The Atlantic)
Xiong Di, this short film by Enric Ribes and Oriol Martínez, is also the Chinese word for “fellas.” It’s a beautiful ode to friendship among young factory workers in China, with themes of love and fresh-faced ambition.

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Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

Two English-language translations of the Charity Law are now available (April 7, 2016, NGO’s in China)
Two unofficial English-language translations of the Charity Law are now available thanks to the hard work of translators and editors at China Development Brief and ChinaLawTranslate.

Chinese labour activist He Xiaobo released on bail (April 8, 2016, The Guardian)
On Friday, the activist announced his conditional release by way of a brief audio message posted online by the advocacy group China Labour Bulletin. “Hello everyone. This is He Xiaobo. I have just arrived home. Thanks to you all for paying attention to me. Thanks for your help. I hope one day we can all meet so I can thank you all in person,” he said.

Video: China’s Connection to the ‘Panama Papers’ (April 8, 2016, China Real Time)
Eight relatives of former and current top Chinese officials are identified as clients of a Panamanian law firm who have set up or invested in companies incorporated in offshore tax havens.

Guangzhou Activists Sentenced to Jail After Backing Hong Kong Protests (April 8, 2016, The New York Times)
Many people on the mainland expressed disdain for the Hong Kong protests, but some, like Mr. Wang and Mr. Xie, who were already prominent, actively expressed their approval.

China Blocks Economist and Time Websites, Apparently Over Xi Jinping Articles (April 8, 2016, The New York Times)
The Economist and Time have joined the list of foreign news websites currently blocked in mainland China. The sites appear to have been censored as a result of recently published cover articles in the magazines critical of the growing power of China’s president, Xi Jinping.

Hong Kong Activist Joshua Wong Launches New Political Party (April 10, 2016, TIME)
The party, which Wong inaugurated on Sunday, is called Demosistō — a crude portmanteau of the Greek word demos, which means people (and is the etymological base for democracy), and the Latin word sistō, or standing.

Taiwan-Born U.S. Navy Officer Accused of Espionage (April 11, 2016, TIME)
The U.S. military has charged a Taiwan-born Navy officer with espionage for allegedly passing military secrets to China or Taiwan, U.S. defense officials said Monday.

China’s Top Lawyer in Hong Kong Says Secession Advocates Could Face Prosecution (April 12, 2016, The New York Times)
The Chinese government’s top lawyer in Hong Kong said on Tuesday that British colonial legislation could be used to prosecute those advocating that the territory secede from China, but he also said that mainland Chinese security agencies have no authority to detain suspects in Hong Kong.

Taiwanese 'forced on to plane to China' by police in Kenya (April 12, 2016, BBC)
Taiwan's foreign ministry said Kenyan police had forced 22 Taiwanese citizens, arrested on suspicion of fraud, to board a plane bound for China on Tuesday, despite protests from John Chen, Taiwan's representative to South Africa.

Beijing Achieves a New Geography in the South China Sea (April 12, 2016, China Real Time)
China’s land reclamation won’t change the legal case in The Hague; semisubmerged reefs don’t become islands even if you build on them. Nevertheless, slow-moving Chinese dredgers have outmaneuvered the world’s most powerful navy.

South China Sea: Beijing tells G7 foreign ministers to keep out of territorial dispute (April 12, 2016, The Guardian)
China is “strongly dissatisfied” with a Group of Seven statement calling for restraint in disputed waters, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, as worries grow in Asia over Beijing’s territorial and military ambitions.

How China’s fishermen are fighting a covert war in the South China Sea (April 12, 2016, The Washington Post)
China is using its vast fishing fleet as the advance guard to press its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, experts say. That is not only putting Beijing on a collision course with its Asian neighbors, but also introducing a degree of unpredictability that raises the risks of periodic crises.

China’s Medical Diplomacy (April 13, 2015, US-China Perception Monitor)
Pending government approval, a group of 35 doctors and nurses based in Shanghai will soon become the nation’s first medical team to join the World Health Organization’s emergency response system, specializing in disaster relief.

Three Cheers for China’s Cyber-Volunteers (April 13, 2016, China Media Project)
The Party’s sense of “positive energy,” which can be shared and transmitted with a touch of the fingertip, is progressive and accumulative — as though the nation’s future might be supercharged through the sheer will of a collective sociability that acquiesces to the Party’s status as an unfailing source of national power and prestige. The more “positive energy” is shared, the better off we all become. A Ponzi scheme of modern propaganda.

Police Remove Bail Conditions on 5 Chinese Feminists Detained Last Year (April 13, 2016, The New York Times)
The Chinese police lifted bail conditions on Wednesday for five feminists who were detained in Beijing last year on the eve of International Women’s Day for planning to distribute leaflets warning of sexual harassment on public transit, according to the women and their lawyers.

Religion

Hong Kong pastor prosecuted on mainland for printing Christian books (April 6, 2016, UCA News)
The Rev. Ng Wah disappeared in July and was arrested on the Chinese mainland, said Constant Kim, a friend and member of the Christian Church of Chinese Ministry that Ng had set up. "It is political persecution. Some extreme leftist officials in Guangzhou did this," said Kim, adding that he had been told of Ng's fate by an "authoritative source" in mainland China.

Zhou Ma's Vision (April 8, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
Last week we interviewed Kerry Schottelkorb, Director of Advancement for Christian Action Asia, about his organizations work with disabled orphans in China. Here is the story of one of the orphans they have cared for.

China releases key mega-church pastor (April 8, 2016, Portland Press Herald)
Chinese authorities have released the pastor of the country’s largest Protestant mega-church after he was detained for more than two months following protests against the government’s removal of crosses from churches, a church worker said Friday. Despite gaining his freedom, Joseph Gu Yuese has been confined to his home since his March 31 release and barred from meeting or communicating with others without permission, according to a U.S.-based Christian group.

Tearing Down the Walls (April 12, 2016, Chinese Church Voices)
In other words, they want the walls to come down. In this article, originally published in the mainland online journal Territory, the writer uses this new regulation as a starting point for a discussion of the walls that we build in our hearts and how only through the cross can we tear them down.

3 Questions: Dr. Brent Fulton: China's Urban Christians | FAQ (April 13, 2016, From the West Courtyard) 
Published at the end of last year, Brent Fulton’s book China’s Urban Christians: A Light that Cannot be Hidden looks at both the generational and geographical shifts taking place within the Chinese church. Here Brent responds to some frequently asked questions about the book.

Society / Life

Soul-searching in China as bystanders ignore woman being attacked in hotel (April 8, 2016, The Guardian)
Video of the incident in Beijing is viewed millions of times and sparks debate about why witnesses to such violence so often turn a blind eye.

Video: Emotional advert about China's 'leftover women' goes viral (April 8, 2016, BBC)
An advertisement centred around "leftover women" in China has gone viral, provoking an emotional debate about single women in the country. The issue of unmarried females, often stigmatised as "sheng nu" or leftover women, has long been a topic of concern in a society that prioritises marriage and motherhood for women.

The Viral Lipstick "Challenge" in China Shows How Absurd the Body Pressures Have Become (April 8, 2016, mic.com)
Enter China's latest "trend," which has seen girls all over the country uploading pictures of themselves applying lipstick with their arm twisted behind their heads to prove they have small faces.

Stephen Hawking Debuts With a Big Bang on Chinese Social Media (April 12, 2016, China Real Time)
The account amassed more than a million followers in its first six hours. In that time, Mr. Hawking’s first message was reposted more than 200,000 times, garnering more than 180,000 comments and 380,000 likes.

Shanghai Citizens May Soon Have Their Credit Scores Lowered for Not Visiting Their Parents (April 12, 2016, TIME)
For citizens of Shanghai, not visiting their elderly parents will soon have a somewhat strange consequence — a lowering of their personal credit scores. The eastern Chinese city’s government announced the new set of rules — which will come into force on May 1 — in a news conference last week, Chinese news outlet Caixin reported Monday.

Chinese Scions’ Song: My Daddy’s Rich and My Lamborghini’s Good-Looking (April 12, 2016, The New York Times)
China’s rapid economic rise has turned peasants into billionaires. Many wealthy Chinese are increasingly eager to stow their families, and their riches, in the West, where rule of law, clean air and good schools offer peace of mind, especially for those looking to escape scrutiny from the Communist Party and an anti-corruption campaign that has sent hundreds of the rich and powerful to jail.

China wedding feud in Guangxi erupts into street battle (April 12, 2016, BBC)
A feud between rival families holding weddings on the same day in a southern Chinese village erupted into a four-hour street battle, report local media. The violence broke out in the Guangxi region on Sunday when one wedding procession tried to pass under an archway built for the other family.

Video: Counting the cost of China’s left-behind children (April 12, 2016, BBC)
So it should come as no surprise that the social dislocation accompanying this economic upheaval is of a degree that Charles Dickens couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams. And nothing highlights the human cost quite like the issue of China's left behind children.

'Their eyes glow green': the furry marauders haunting Chinese village (April 12, 2016, The Guardian)
Tanghekou farmers are losing ducks and chickens to raiding raccoon dogs and foxes – and some blame a Buddhist ritual.

Decline and fall: the broken dreams of a Chinese coal-mining city struggling to address industrial overcapacity (April 12, 2016, South China Morning Post)
In the first of a three-part series, Zhou Xin explores broken dreams in one coal-mining city as it struggles to address excessive industrial capacity and overdevelopment.

British university teacher Hilary St John Bower killed in China (April 13, 2016, BBC)
Hilary St John Bower, who was an English teacher at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, was found dead on the Chinese mainland. Police would not say if there was a "criminal element" in the death of Mr Bower, 60, who had been reported missing by his girlfriend.

Economics / Trade / Business

China Stanches Flow of Money Out of the Country, Data Suggests (April 7, 2016, The New York Times)
Doubts remain about Beijing’s ability to rev up slowing growth and patch up its frayed financial system. But new data suggests China has stanched, at least for now, the flow of money that had been pouring out of the country.

Can China Innovate? (April 11, 2016, China Law Blog)
Let the conversation unspool itself long enough, and you almost always find the group talking about deep culture, educational institutions, and hierarchy in China. Inevitably, the response lands on the role of government and its capability to actually incubate innovative industries.

Pork Shortage in China Leads to Soaring Prices, Rush to Import (April 12, 2016, The Wall Street Journal)
Too few pigs are headed to markets in pork-loving China, leading to soaring domestic prices and a rush of pork imports from the U.S. and elsewhere to fill the gap.

Health / Environment

Will China save its last undammed river? (April 10, 2016, Christian Science Monitor)
Opponents of plans to build five dams on the Nu say they scent victory after more than a decade battling the project.  

China pollution: Over 80% of rural water in north-east 'undrinkable' (April 12, 2016, BBC)
More than 80% of rural wells in China's north-east contain water unsafe for drinking, water ministry officials say. But they insisted that the water being supplied to urban areas across the country was still safe.

Chinese Demand for Rosewood Has Turned Thailand’s Forests Into Virtual War Zones (April 12, 2016, TIME)
Richly hued, cherry-brown rosewood is one of the world’s most valuable timbers. Native across much of Indochina, a cubic meter can fetch $5,000 in Cambodia or 10 times that amount once smuggled into China, where the demand for Ming- and Qing-style rosewood furniture is enormous.

Hebei deploys pollution monitoring drones (April 12, 2016, China Daily)
Three unmanned aerial vehicles have been deployed by Hebei's Environment Monitoring Station to help cut down on pollution in the province. The UAVs, two with fixed-wings and one with multi-rotors, will take aerial photographs of suspect factories and workshops to provide evidence of possible polluting activities.

Under the Knife: China’s Rethinking the C-Section (April 13, 2016, China Real Time)
China’s love affair with the C-section is fading with the advent of the country’s two-child policy. According to the state-run China Daily, hospitals are reporting fewer caesarean deliveries.

Science / Technology

A Week Behind The Great Firewall Of China (April 8, 2016, Fast Company)
Off I went to Beijing—and into the parallel universe that is the Chinese Internet. Behind the filters that collectively make up the so-called Great Firewall, I would be unable to access huge swaths of the rest of the web, and restricted to (mostly native) apps and software and websites approved and monitored by the Chinese government. And I would find that, thanks to China's homegrown digital ecosystem, life behind the firewall wasn't exactly the exercise in deprivation that I'd expected.

Chinese Love Affair with Cars, and Tesla (April 13, 2016, China File)
The world’s most populous nation (currently at 1.38 billion people and climbing) has transformed itself from the Bicycle Kingdom of my youth into a People’s Republic of Cars.

History / Culture

Ideology and Orthodox Authority (April 10, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
What we see in this passage is that the tension in China between ideology and orthodox authority is nothing new; it’s not unique to Communist China. The state never has and will not allow competing ideologies to challenge its authority.

Back to their Grand Splendor (April 10, 2016, Shanghai Daily)
A former Catholic seminary in Xujiahui that later housed Xuhui District government offices has been restored to its former Gothic grandeur and opened to the public as an historic site.

A barefoot doctor teaches about family planning in Beijing in 1973 (April 11, 2016, Everyday Life in Mao’s China)

A Revolutionary Discovery in China (April 21, 2016, The New York Review of Books)
As Beijing prepared to host the 2008 Olympics, a small drama was unfolding in Hong Kong. Two years earlier, middlemen had come into possession of a batch of waterlogged manuscripts that had been unearthed by tomb robbers in south-central China. The documents had been smuggled to Hong Kong and were lying in a vault, waiting for a buyer.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles The Start of My Shanghai Bob’s Story (Asian Jewish Life)
My experiences have given me a deeper insight into the many Jewish lives impacted worldwide by the Holocaust shared by my late partner Harry Fischman who was a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. And while this isn’t the story I am telling here, Harry Fischman was to be my 2nd B’Sheret. This is the story of my Shanghai Bob.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

Will China Ever Have Its Own Cinematic Superhero? (April 6, 2016, China File)
Superhero narratives require two elements: action and ideology. Action is what superheroes do: they strive and fight. Ideology is why they do it. While Chinese films have mastered delivering the action the country’s swelling audience loves, they fall far short of knowing how to pull off ideology.

When Yao Ming Was the Center of the World (April 8, 2016, The New Yorker)
Within the vague hierarchies of American identity politics, a Chinese player was not the same as an Asian-American one—but, in the early two-thousands, “Linsanity” seemed as inconceivable as a black President. Yao would have to do.

Why does the Western media hate the GFW so much? (April 11, 2016, Global Times)
The Great Firewall should be designed to make China become more powerful rather than isolated and fragile. We cannot count on it for every external intrigue. But it can earn us time to empower ourselves with soft power and strength.

Field of Dreams: China Aims to Become ‘Top-Quality Soccer Power’ by 2050 (April 12, 2016, China Real Time)
When will China’s long-suffering soccer fans witness the glorious rejuvenation of their national team from the muddle of mediocrity? By 2050 perhaps, if government planners have their way.

Travel / Food

We analyzed the names of almost every Chinese restaurant in America. This is what we learned (April 8, 2016, The Washington Post)
Still, we wanted to quantify exactly what the vernacular of American Chinese restaurant names sounds like. To do that, we needed a database containing all of the country's Chinese restaurants. And we were able to get it — or something pretty close to it — from Yelp.

A Laowai’s Guide To Chuanr (April 12, 2016, The World of Chinese)
But what exactly is on the stick that you purchased for three kuai and is being grilled or cooked in the ever mysterious bubbling broth of the Chuanr stand (麻辣烫 or 关东煮)?

Links for Researchers

What China’s judicial reform white paper says about its vision for its judiciary (April 12, 2016, Supreme People’s Court Monitor)

Image credit: by V.T. Polywada, via Flickr