ZGBriefs | February 11, 2016

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Featured Article

China Says Its Students, Even Those Abroad, Need More ‘Patriotic Education’ (February 10, 2016, The New York Times)
Chinese students, already immersed in classes and textbooks that promote nationalist loyalty to the Communist Party as a bedrock value, must be made even more patriotic and devoted to the party, even when they are studying in universities abroad, according to a new directive sent to education officials.

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Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

Xi Jinping Assuming New Status as China’s ‘Core’ Leader (February 4, 2016, The New York Times)
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has already grasped more power more quickly than his two recent predecessors, and he has shown a taste for audacious decisions and a loathing for dissent. But a new push to praise him as China’s “core” leader, a term resonant with the formidable stature once held by Deng Xiaoping, suggests that his steely quest for dominance is not over.

In China, Books That Make Money, and Enemies (February 4, 2016, The New York Times)
Such books in the United States would be sold next to supermarket tabloids and consumed largely for their entertainment value. In Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, they are forbidden fruit, eagerly snapped up by travelers from mainland China longing for even the smallest nuggets of gossip about their leaders’ private lives.

Women's rights crackdown exposes deepening crisis in Chinese society (February 5, 2016, The Guardian)
“People are saying, ‘If her centre [can be] closed what else might the government do?’ And that is precisely what the government wants: to make people so fearful that they do not even think of trying to challenge or even be seen to challenge the government.”

Chinese Police Confirm Detention of Three Hong Kong Booksellers (February 5, 2016, China Real Time)
Chinese police confirmed Thursday that three Hong Kong booksellers who have been missing since October are being detained on the mainland and are under investigation for “illegal activities,” according to a letter Hong Kong police said they received.

Ministry of Truth: A brief history of televised ‘confessions’ in China (February 8, 2016, Hong Kong Free Press)
However, “Cultural Revolution-style” public shaming has returned in the updated form of televised “confessions” in China.

5 reasons China won't help shut down North Korea's nuclear program (February 9, 2016, Christian Science Monitor)
In Washington, all eyes are on Beijing as Chinese leaders decide how to respond to North Korea's recent satellite launch. Why are they so hesitant to act?

China’s message to dissenters: Flee if you dare (February 9, 2016, USA Today)
Flee China if you dare. But know that, even in foreign lands, your criticism of the Communist Party may be punished if Chinese agents find you and spirit you back to the mainland. That’s the message China’s government is sending to citizens who dare to dissent.

Get Your “Four Comprehensives” On (February 9, 2016, Outside-In)
The Chinese Communist Party is at it again — promoting it’s own awesomeness with an animated rap video (with a side of Beethoven).

Hong Kong's business community is 'freaked out' over China's crackdown (February 9, 2016, The Guardian)
The words were unusual coming from the mouth of a seasoned business figure in the hyper-competitive world of Hong Kong finance. “The middle-class, the professionals, even the accountants: people are just freaked out about what is going on.”

Hong Kong police fire warning shots during Mong Kok fishball 'riot (February 9, 2015, CNN)
A government crackdown on illegal street food vendors turned violent in Hong Kong in the early hours of Tuesday morning, as riot police clashed with protesters in the shopping district of Mong Kok. The disorder erupted following government officials' attempts to evict street vendors who were selling fishballs and other local delicacies during the Lunar New Year holiday.

Religion

Podcast: 30 Minutes towards a Better Understanding of China’s Urban Church (February 5, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
Many people outside of China see the church in China primarily as a persecuted church and as a church with many needs. The reality of the situation for the Chinese church—especially with the emergence of the urban house church—is much more complex.

Religion ban for China Communist Party ex-officials (February 5, 2016, BBC)
Newly published Party rules now say retired officials are also barred from religion and must oppose cults, state media said. The regulations were issued by the Communist Party's powerful Organization Department.

China detains another Protestant pastor: Whiff of the Cultural Revolution? (February 5, 2016, Christian Science Monitor)
US officials call for release of leading pastors detained in China. Pastor Li Guanzhong and his wife were detained Jan. 29, days after the head of China's biggest megachurch was sent to a 'black jail.'   

Radical Revival Falls on China's State-Controlled Churches (February 8, 2016, CBN)
You're about to hear first-hand testimony and see video of an unprecedented Christian revival happening in parts of China. What is unique about this story is how God is moving among communist-controlled government churches.

Happy New Year: 新年快乐 (February 8, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
There are also certain characters and words that are associated with welcoming the New Year and, in many ways, represent the grand themes of Chinese culture. I thought it would be interesting to highlight four of those characters, and compare the traditional understandings of these words with what the Bible teaches about them. It’s a great way to start conversations with Chinese friends and colleagues.

Pastor released from 'black jail' after opposing cross demolitions (February 9, 2016, Christian Today)
Pastor Huang Yizi, from the eastern province of Zhejiang, was formally placed under criminal detention on 12 September 2015 for "endangering national security." […]  Human rights organisation China Aid received confirmation on Friday that Huang had been freed, just under five months after his arrest.

From Death to Life: Follow Up to "The Journey of My Second Pregnancy" (February 9, 2016, Chinese Church Voices)
Xiaolin, a believer in Jesus, found herself in just such a position. The following article, published in the online journal Territory, chronicles her journey of doubt and faith through this process. She shares how the unexpected and life-threatening complications she faced through the journey opened her eyes to deeper levels of her own sin and brokenness, bringing her to an ultimate place of surrender.

The Ache (February 10, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
And I still miss China. Thirty years of my life were overseas among Chinese—in a vastly different world; how could anyone assume that I would feel totally settled back to life here after only one year?

Society / Life

My Secret Life as a Forbidden Second Child in China (February 4, 2016, Foreign Policy)
The country's draconian birth control policies have lifted, but the millions of children born outside the system live on in the shadows,

Video: Chinese New Year: Why many will travel home for good (February 4, 2016, BBC)
China's industrial landscape is changing. The factories, once the centrepiece of the economy, are relocating to countries where wages are lower and, in addition, many migrants now see increasing opportunities in the smaller towns and cities closer to their homes. So, many migrants are packing their bags for the last time and deciding that, after travelling home this year, that is where they will stay.

Video: Chinese New Year: 'The largest annual human migration' (February 5, 2016, BBC)
Chinese New Year sees the largest annual human migration in the world as millions of people in China make the journey home. For many it's the only chance they get to visit their families all year.

Beauty and the East: China’s Plastic Surgery Boom (February 5, 2016, China Real Time)
According to a new report from HSBC, China’s social media and selfie obsessions are creating a new Chinese vanity craze and a market for cosmetic surgery, with sales to Chinese consumers poised to double to 800 billion yuan ($122 billion) by 2019, up from 400 billion yuan in 2014.

30,000 North Korean children living in limbo in China (February 5, 2016, The Guardian)
Up to 30,000 children born to North Korean mothers who have fled the regime are living in China without access to schooling, health care or citizenship, MPs have heard.

China blasts: Tianjin report finds 123 people responsible (February 5, 2016, BBC)
More than 120 people, including senior officials, were responsible for deadly blasts in the Chinese city of Tianjin last August, investigators have said.

'Armani Communist' divides China (February 6, 2016, BBC)
When Liu Bo attended a regional communist party event as the official ambassador of local students it wasn't his youthful demeanour which made the biggest impression.

Stay at home dads (February 8, 2016, The World of Chinese)
The stay-at-home dad concept became quite popular four years ago with the TV drama Marriage Battle, which tells the story of three couples in which the wives work and the husbands stay at home.

Chinese Who Violated One-Child Policy Remain Wary of Relaxed Rules (February 8, 2016, The New York Times)
Some provinces have announced that while paying a fine will no longer be a precondition for obtaining a hukou, families who violated the old rules will still be required to pay fines for children they had when the rules were in effect.

Chinese Lunar New Year: a time for hope and family (February 8, 2016, Christian Science Monitor)
The Chinese New Year officially began on Monday. This year marks the year of the monkey, an animal characterized as intelligent, witty, curious, and playful.

The changing face of urban China: Shanghai demolition sites – in pictures (February 9: 2016, The Guardian)
Graham Fink has been documenting the demolition sites of Shanghai for five years, trying to capture the state of flux during this period of rapid urbanisation.

Invisible Bridges: Life Along the Chinese-Russian Border (February 9, 2016, The New Yorker)
Over the past two centuries, there have been periodic tensions between Russia and China, including some serious border conflicts, and historically Russia has usually held the upper hand. But nowadays, at the personal level, Monteleone notices a different dynamic.

Taiwan Earthquake Investigators Arrest Developer of Collapsed Building (February 9, 2016, The New York Times)
The police have arrested the builder of a 17-story apartment complex that collapsed in a predawn earthquake on Saturday here in southwestern Taiwan, the city government announced Tuesday afternoon.

Economics / Trade / Business

Slip Sliding Away: China’s Capital Outflow Quandary (February 5, 2016, China Real Time)
As China’s foreign exchange hoard drops by hundred-billion-dollar chunks, a key question for economists and investors is what China’s bottom line is and what Beijing can do to defend it. China’s net foreign-exchange reserves have fallen by over $600 billion from their mid-2014 peak of $3.99 trillion as Beijing intervenes to prop up its weakening currency.

Education

Chinese Students Are Flooding U.S. Christian High Schools (February 8, 2016, Foreign Policy)
Because of restrictions on foreign student enrollment in U.S. public high schools, Chinese secondary students headed Stateside overwhelmingly attend private institutions. And Chinese parents don’t seem to care if that institution has a Christian underpinning.

Wanted in China: More Male Teachers, to Make Boys Men (February 6, 2016, The New York Times)
Worried that a shortage of male teachers has produced a generation of timid, self-centered and effeminate boys, Chinese educators are working to reinforce traditional gender roles and values in the classroom.

Health / Environment

Pollution in China: A Doctor's Perspective (February 9, 2016, The Beijinger Blog)
As a physician who sees quite a few expats living and working in Beijing, I am often asked what the health risks are, and what can be done to mitigate them.

China's first Zika virus case confirmed, reports say (February 10, 2016, BBC)
A 34-year-old man who recently travelled to South America has become China's first confirmed case of Zika virus infection, reports state media. China's National Health and Family Planning Commission said the man was from Ganxian county in the eastern province of Jiangxi, Xinhua said.

Science / Technology

Report: China bolsters state hacking powers (February 4, 2016, Christian Science Monitor)
At a time when Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the spotlight for inking a landmark deal with the US barring economic espionage, a new report released Wednesday shows that he may be giving his security and intelligence agencies a larger role in helping Beijing hack foreign companies.

Hackers in China attack 20m accounts on Alibaba's Taobao shopping site (February 4, 2016, The Guardian)
Hackers in China attempted to access more than 20m active accounts on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s Taobao e-commerce website using Alibaba’s own cloud computing service, according to a state media report posted on the internet regulator’s website.

History / Culture

Old Coast, New Coast: Hong Kong (January 18, 2016, Hakai Magazine)
Victoria Peak has long been a prime spot from which to witness Hong Kong’s dizzying evolution.

A collection: The opening of the Xinjiang-Lanzhou Railroad in 1964 (February 6, 2016, Everyday life in Mao’s China)

5 Things to Know About the Chinese New Year (February 8, 2016, TIME)

Top 10 Chinese myths (February 8, 2016, The Guardian)
To celebrate the Chinese new year, Moon Princess author Barbara Laban, shares her favourite mythological stories from China, from Sun Wukong the monkey king to how the Chinese zodiac began.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

Best in Show, China (Roads and Kingdoms)
Under a cluster of red canopies, small tables were set up, equipment unloaded, electric fans and hairdryers plugged in. A golden retriever, a chow chow, and a miniature schnauzer each stood, patient and unflappable, as groomers pored over them with brushes, scissors, sprays and blowers.

CCTV’s New Year Gala Draws Critique: More Monkey, Less Propaganda (February 8, 2016, China Real Time)
Every year, more than 700 million Chinese people turn on their televisions to watch the state broadcaster usher in the Lunar New Year with comedy sketches, star performances and disturbingly flexible acrobats. This year, many Chinese viewers say the program put them to sleep.

Bangladesh show covers up Tibetan art after China complains (February 8, 2016, AFP)
One of Bangladesh's biggest art shows has covered up an exhibit by Tibetan artists after the Chinese embassy in Dhaka said it was "offended" by the artwork, an organiser said Monday. A photographic exhibit entitled "Last Words", featuring the letters of five Tibetans who self-immolated in protest at Chinese rule, was covered with white sheets at the Dhaka Art Summit, an AFP correspondent said.

The rap battle for China (February 9, 2016, The World of Chinese)
Hip hop, like many other imported American cultural art forms, is slowly bumping and grinding it’s way through China, propagated by the internet and a keen interest in localizing the aggressive aesthetic of this uniquely American art form.

The rap battle for China, cont’d (February 10, 2016, The World of Chinese)
One of the challenges of rapping in Mandarin is the difficulty of the rhythmic syncopation—the stretching and contracting of rhythm—that makes English rap such an attractive listening experience.

Travel / Food

Sauced: American Cooking in China (February 6, 2016, Sinica Podcast)
Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined this week by Howie Southworth and Greg Matza, creators of the independent video series Sauced in Translation, a reality show that journeys into the wilder parts of China in search of local Chinese specialities that can be repurposed into classic American dishes.

To Win Chinese New Year, You Must Master Snacks (February 7, 2016, Small Town Laowai)
After the main celebration, it’s essentially one long open house with people popping in for an hour or two for the Chun Jie visit.

Taste of China 2016: The Top Food That Fueled WSJ’s China Bureau (February 5, 2016, China Real Time)
The following are bureau favorites from restaurants and street corners in Beijing and elsewhere.

Bungee Jumping in Ningbo (February 8, 2016, Sapore di Cina)
Among my family and friends, I’m known as the adventurous one, and I usually tell my mother my crazy stories without her prior knowledge to save her from a heart attack. This was one of those times – when I went bungee jumping in China.

Language / Language Learning

Learn Chinese faster by leaving your comfort zone (February 4, 2016, Hacking Chinese)
Leaving your comfort zone more often will enable you to learn Chinese faster compared to simply slogging along at a comfortable pace, especially at the intermediate and advanced levels. For beginners, almost everything you do that involves Mandarin will be outside your comfort zone, so there’s not that much need to encourage you there.

Links for Researchers

Leo Strauss and the Rebirth of Classics in China, by Xiaofeng Liu (Winter 2016, The Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy)

US–China rivalry: does Asia have to choose? (February 9, 2016, East Asia Forum)
Can America preserve the US-led regional order by resisting China’s challenge to replace it with ‘a new model of great-power relations’? That depends a lot on how much support the United States can expect from its friends and allies in the region. That is why President Obama has invited ASEAN leaders to a special summit at Sunnylands in California next week.

Image credit: Joann Pittman, via Flickr