ZGBriefs | December 17, 2015

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Featured Article

China to ease restrictions on living in cities for millions (December 12, 2015, The Guardian)
Beijing announces loosening of ‘hukou’ system governing access to public services, making it easier for workers from countryside to move to urban areas.

Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

China’s Case Against a Civil Rights Lawyer, in Seven Social Media Posts (December 14, 2015, The New York Times)
The prosecution built its case on seven social media posts that Mr. Pu wrote on Weibo between 2011 and 2014, according to a document carrying the letterhead of the Beijing Mo Shaoping Law Firm, which represents him.

Smile for the Cameras: China Plays Rough at Trial of Lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (December 14, 2015, China Real Time)
Security was bound to be tight outside the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, where Mr. Pu was fighting charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” and “picking quarrels” in the capital’s biggest political trial in two years. But the aggression directed by police and plainclothes thugs against diplomats, journalists and the lawyer’s supporters was unusually brassy — in keeping with the Chinese government’s increasingly defiant stance on questions of human rights.

Video: China Navy to BBC: 'Stay away from islands' (December 14, 2015, BBC)
The islands are difficult to reach, but BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes flew in a small civilian aircraft into China's self-declared security zone, 140 miles off the coast of the Philippines.

U.S. Navy Commander Implies China Has Eroded Safety of South China Sea (December 15, 2015, The New York Times)
A senior American naval commander has implicitly accused China of creating “so-called military zones” close to artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea, declaring that such actions are eroding the security of one of the world’s busiest waterways.

The CCP’s “positive energy” obsession (December 15, 2015, China Media Project)
“Positive energy,” or zhengnengliang (正能量), is now at the very heart of political discourse in the Xi Jinping era, having direct implications for media and Internet control, and extending to international diplomacy and other areas as well.

China's Xi Jinping says internet users must be free to speak their minds (December 16, 2015, The Guardian)
Chinese citizens should have the right to speak their minds on the internet, president Xi Jinping has claimed, just two days after a prominent free speech advocate was put on trial for sending seven tweets.

Suspect in Xinjiang Mine Attack Spoke of Jihad, Chinese News Reports Say (December 16, 2015, The New York Times)
China’s state-run news media has identified several people who the police say carried out a deadly knife attack in September at a coal mine in the northwestern Xinjiang region, releasing a televised confession this week in which one of the suspects said he had been carrying out jihad.

Padded cells and soft spoons await China graft suspects (December 16, 2015, Reuters)
Padded cells to prevent suicide and soft spoons that cannot be made into weapons await officials suspected of corruption in one holding center in southwestern China, in unusual images of China's graft fight carried by a state-run newspaper this week.

Religion

[Photo Gallery:] Chinese Christmas Art (December 24, 2012, China Hope Live)

The Life That Is Truly Life (December 8, 2015, ChinaSource Quarterly)
My prayer our for brothers and sisters in China is that they would pursue the true life God created us to live. May we together seek to set aside all desire to rely on ourselves instead of God, to play the owner instead of the steward, to seek happiness in wealth instead of in Christ, and to find our security in earthly things rather than in heavenly treasure.

A Faithful Steward’s Freedom (December 8, 2015, ChinaSource Quarterly)
Pollard and other faithful stewards of God are like the cloud of witnesses surrounding us. We are to lay aside all the encumbrances that so easily entangle us and work diligently until all God’s creatures have freedom and exalt him with resounding praises.

The Church in Yunnan Province (December 8, 2015, ChinaSource Quarterly)
A small church of twenty-plus members in Yunnan province collected ￥246.50 RMB (about $36 USD) during a recent Sunday offering as their relief fund for one of our national partners who has a ministry team in the recent earthquake epicenter in Yushu, Qinghai province. While this may not sound like much, let me tell you more about this faithful little church.

Being a Good and Faithful Steward in China (December 9, 2015, From the West Courtyard)
The Good and Faithful Steward blog and social media platform, designed and maintained by a team of Christians in China, has built a growing community of followers since it went online last May.

After Four Years Away: The Joys and Challenges of Re-entering China (December 11, 2015, From the West Courtyard)
I was away for four years and have just returned full-time this past August. In my four years away, it seems that the pace of change has only accelerated. Since I left in 2011, a whole new section of the city has been built where fields existed previously. Hundreds of tall buildings went up in that section of the city in just a few years. The city to which I returned is not the same as the one I left in 2011.

A winter of darkness for religions in China (December 11, 2015, Asia News)
The Ministry of Religious Affairs (more precisely: the State Administration for Religious Affairs, SARA), has announced on its website that it is preparing a national summit on religions, which will discuss the revision of norms governing the control of faiths. Many Christians interviewed by AsiaNews fear that this will only further plunge the life of communities into darkness as they struggle against a swelling tide of increasingly severe restrictions.

A Writer Turns to Christ (December 15, 2015, Chinese Church Voices)
Last month, the Chinese writer and public intellectual Ran Yunfei announced via WeChat that he had become a Christian, following in the footsteps of his wife and daughter who had come to faith earlier.

China releases four pastors and two lawyers from 'black jail' (December 15, 2015, Christian Today)
Six people, including four church pastors, have been released from detention in Zhejiang province on the east coast of China, China Aid has confirmed. […]  The six were church leaders Zhou Jian, Huang Xiaoyuan, Cheng Chaohua and Wang Yunxian, and two legal assistants, Liu Peng and Fang Xiangui, who worked for human rights lawyer Zhang Kai. He is yet to be released.

Second Interview With the Wenzhou Pastor: After the Demolition Comes the “Transformations” (December 15, 2015, China Change)
Paster L, I interviewed you in late July at the height of the Chinese government’s cross-removal campaign. The campaign of demolishing churches and removing crosses had lasted a year and half by then, and several large churches were destroyed. One estimate had it that up to 1,500 crosses were dismantled across Zhejiang Province. But since August and September, there hasn’t been much news about cross removals. Has it stopped?  

Society / Life

Why millions of Chinese are becoming official (December 10, 2015, BBC)
China will give official status to all of its "unregistered" citizens, many of them children born illegally under the one-child system, in plans announced this week. If implemented at local level, this could change the lives of 13 million Chinese, who will now be allowed access to crucial services like education and health that they were previously excluded from.

Amid China’s Smog Worries, One More: Counterfeit Masks (December 10, 2015, The New York Times)
The customs authorities in Shanghai have seized nearly 120,000 counterfeit surgical masks, the official China News Service reported on Thursday. Such masks have become an increasingly common sight in China in recent years, with more people wearing them in an effort to protect themselves from pollution.

A Restaurant in China Has Been Charging Diners a Fee to Breathe Unpolluted Air (December 14, 2015, TIME)
A restaurant in the Chinese city of Zhangjiagang has been caught charging customers a “clean-air fee” after it installed an air-filtering system in response to the blankets of thick smog that have shrouded the city in recent weeks.

Lack of Clear Policy Direction on Two-Child Rule Leaves Nation Guessing (December 14, 2015, China File)
Regional family-planning officials say the lack of clarity on when the new two-child rule will come into effect has put them in legal limbo, unable to issue birth permits to couples who conceive a second child before the new policy kicks in, leading to “illegal births” even after the policy shift.

Mass Layoffs in China’s Coal Country Threaten Unrest (December 16, 2015, The New York Times)
The elimination of about 40 percent of the work force at 42 mines in four cities is the biggest reduction in jobs that anyone could recall in this steadily declining rust belt near the Russian border.

Fake Tu Youyou Nobel Prize Speech Makes the Rounds on China’s Internet (December 16, 2015, China Real Time)
A speech purportedly given by Tu Youyou, China’s first Nobel laureate in science, has gone viral on the Chinese Internet over the past week. Where it originated, not even China’s state-run media has been able to ascertain.

Economics / Trade / Business

5 Things to Know About Labor Unrest in China (December 14, 2015, China Real Time)

What's Driving The Electric Car Trend In China? (December 14, 2015, NPR)
Increased electric car sales are good for a country with a big pollution problem. Until recently only a few clean cars were on the road. The sales are also a bright spot for China's economy.

Closing Down a China WFOE: You Can Run But You Can’t Hide (Part 1) (December 15, 2015, China Law Blog)
Simply abandoning a WFOE is a major mistake that will have long term and personal repercussions and subject the management and shareholders of the WFOE to severe sanctions within China.

Video: China’s Falling Yuan Explained in 60 Seconds (December 16, 2015, China Real Time)
The WSJ’s Ken Brown explains why the People’s Bank of China signaled its intention to let the yuan track several currencies instead of tying it to the U.S. dollar.

China central bank sees economic growth slowing to 6.8 percent in 2016 (December 16, 2015, Reuters)
China's annual economic growth is likely to slow to 6.8 percent next year from an expected 6.9 percent this year, the People's Bank of China said in a working paper published on Wednesday.

Health / Environment

Is China a Leader or Laggard on Climate Change? — A ChinaFile Conversation (December 9, 2015, China File)
As ongoing climate talks wind down at COP21 this week, participants in and observers of the summit in Paris wrote in to share their assessment of the message coming from the official delegation from China, currently the world’s largest emitter of the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change.

Video: Why are Chinese fishermen destroying coral reefs in the South China Sea? (December 15, 2015, BBC)
I'd been told that Chinese fishermen were deliberately destroying reefs near a group of Philippine-controlled atolls in the Spratly Islands but I was not convinced.

The Children of China's Cancer Slum: Drug Costs Putting Young Lives at Risk (December 15, 2015, Bloomberg)
Surging health-care costs are turning into one of the biggest threats to the world’s second largest economy and its consumers. About $115 billion will be spent on pharmaceuticals in China this year. As patients struggle to pay, international drug companies face slower growth in the country and government pressure to curb prices. For families, their biggest adversary isn’t only the disease, but the prohibitive cost of care. 

History / Culture

A collection: Everyday life in Hong Kong in 1955 (December 13, 2015, Everyday Life in Mao’s China)

Arts / Entertainment / Media

Top 10 movies of 2015 (December 8, 2015, The World of Chinese)

Alibaba to pay $266m for HK's South China Morning Post (December 14, 2015, BBC)
Chinese internet giant Alibaba will pay HK$2.06bn ($266m; £175m) for Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post. The newspaper group revealed the sale price in a statement filed to the Hong Kong stock exchange. The deal was announced on Friday. Besides the English-language newspaper, Alibaba will also own sister publications, websites, and magazines.

Language / Language Learning

Launching Hacking Chinese: A Practical Guide to Learning Mandarin (December 14, 2015, Hacking Chinese)
This course is the result of thousands of hours of work and just like the Hacking Chinese website, it is about how to learn Chinese in a better way.

Articles for Researchers

Presentation: The Definition of Religion for the Social Scientific Study of Religion in China and Beyond, by Dr. Fenggang Yang. (Perdue University)

China, Egypt imprison record numbers of journalists (December 15, 2015, Committee to Protect Journalists)
A quarter of those jailed globally are in China, the world’s worst offender for the second year in a row; the 49 journalists in prison there are a record for that country.

Resources

Complete Series Now Available! Assignment: China — USCI Series On American Reporting On China (USC US-China Institute)
How do we know what we know about China? The images most Americans hold of China were shaped by news coverage. Our multipart documentary series Assignment: China focuses on the journalists who have described the remarkable changes in China since the 1940s. Two of the most influential moments in this history were the Nixon visit in 1972 and the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989.

Image credit: migrant workers, by Joann Pittman, via Flickr