ZGBriefs | July 14, 2016

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

China's Christian Future (August 2016, First Things)
When I became a Christian, I learned to recognize myself as a sinner. In doing so, I developed a sensitivity to sin that helps me recognize evil and injustice when I see them. As I point out the tyranny of the Communist regime, I reflect on and judge myself. This interior work of repentance for my own sins has transformed my fight against totalitarianism. No longer am I merely pointing out faults in the world. I also recognize them in myself.

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Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

Chinese agents acted like triads, says bookseller in abduction row (July 8, 2016, The Guardian)
Lam Wing-kee, one of five Hong Kong booksellers who disappeared, says he made forced confessions to mainland police and is considering fleeing to Taiwan.

Inside China’s Secret 23-Day Detention of a Foreign Nonprofit Chief (July 9, 2016, The New York Times)
His ordeal, which he described for the first time in an interview with The New York Times, offers an unusually clear view into the suspicion directed toward foreign nongovernmental organizations by the Chinese security apparatus and the lengths to which it goes to police such groups.

Mystery, concern spread with release of young Chinese activist (July 11, 2016, Asia Times)
Four days after the release on bail of a young Chinese activist after more than a year in detention, she still has not been seen publicly, her lawyer has been arrested and her husband doubts that she is the one behind posts on her social media.

Tiananmen Protest Museum in Hong Kong Shuts Its Doors, for Now (July 12, 2016, The New York Times)
The museum operators said in the statement said that over the past two years, they experienced “continued legal harassment” aimed at limiting the number of visitors. They said they were searching for a new site but had not found a location in time to prevent closing the museum, at least temporarily.

Reading the “Nine-Dash” Line (July 12, 2016, China Media Project)
How exactly has the “nine-dash line” played in the Party’s flagship newspaper over the breadth of the PRC’s history? In fact, the phrase “nine-dash line” has appeared just 15 times in the entire history of the newspaper, and in just six separate articles.

Quit bugging me: China censors beetle named after President Xi (July 12, 2016, The Guardian)
Chinese censors have stamped down on any online references to a new beetle species named after the country’s president, Xi Jinping, according to reports, and to the dismay of the loyal academic who discovered it.

After the Ruling — What's Next in the South China Sea? (July 12, 2016, Asia Society)
In order to distill the significance of Tuesday's ruling, Asia Blog turned to experts in the Asia Society community for their thoughts:

South China Sea ruling was aimed at easing tension – but may just stoke conflict (July 12, 2016, The Guardian)
The possible trigger for such an escalation is China’s refusal to accept the authority and jurisdiction of the UN court, and its instant rejection of its findings, despite the fact Beijing is a signatory of the UN’s convention on the law of the sea, which the court oversees, and is a permanent member of the UN security council.

Chinese Official On Tribunal Ruling: 'It's Nothing But A Scrap Of Paper' (July 13, 2016, NPR)
After an international tribunal invalidated Beijing's claims to the South China Sea, Chinese authorities have declared in no uncertain terms that they will be ignoring the ruling.

South China Sea: China may establish air defense zone after losing court ruling (July 13, 2016, CNN)
Liu said imposing an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the region, which would require aircraft flying over the waters to first notify China, would depend on the threat level China faced. "If our security is threatened, we of course have the right to set it up," Liu said.

Religion

Beijing photographer captures the lives of Muslim communities across China (July 7, 2016, Shanghaiist)
Photographer Lee Jian grew up in a Muslim family in Beijing. Beginning in 2013, he started documenting the various traditions and holidays practiced and celebrated by Muslim communities across China. Lee started in Beijing, then moved on to cities across the country, in Henan, Hebei, Ningxia, Jilin, Liaoning, Shanxi and Hubei, he took over 3,000 pictures in total, detailing the architecture of various mosques, the atmosphere at praying sessions and during holidays like Eid al-Fitr, which occurred yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan.

The Preeminence of Love in Chinese Families (July 11, 2016, ChinaSource Quarterly)
Since Confucian ethics are based on blood kinship, they depend on family relationships and hierarchy. If the order of relationships is broken, ethics are violated. For example, loving others like you love your father is seen as an affront to your father. In a traditional Confucian family, the father is the maximum authority and most highly respected. All family members must obey him.

A Theology of Family for the Chinese Church (July 11, 2016, ChinaSource Quarterly)
The traditional order of a Chinese family is based on the authority of the father. After this was demolished in the socialist movement, the workplace system caused people to treat families as part of the economic society. However, if we stand on the foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the characteristic of love within the family and orderly fellowship will be renewed.

Solving the House Church Problem (Part I) (July 12, 2016, Chinese Church Voices)
‪I would like to now outline my recommendations for how to solve the issue of house churches, based on church-state relationships abroad, China's practice management of religion, combined with 30 years of experience after the Cultural Revolution.

From Confucius to Christ: Chinese Families in Tension (July 13, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
The latest issue of ChinaSource Quarterly takes an in-depth look at the pressures facing young Christian families in urban China. A key theme that emerges is the contrast between the Confucian notion that love flows from authority and the Christian concept, seen in the extraordinary sacrifice of Christ himself, of authority emanating from love.

Society / Life

China's new opium wars: Battling addiction in Beijing (July 6, 2016, Al Jazeera)
In China, addicts face mandatory detention and must contend with the stigma Chinese history has placed on drug use.

225m reasons for China’s leaders to worry (July 9, 2016, The Economist)
Scratch the surface, however, and China’s middle class is far from content (see our special report in this issue). Its members are prosperous, but they feel insecure. They worry about who will look after them when they grow old; most couples have only one child, and the public safety-net is rudimentary. They fret that, if they fall ill, hospital bills may wipe out their wealth. If they own a home, as 80% of them do, they fear losing it; property rights in China can be overturned at the whim of a greedy official.

The Internet was supposed to foster democracy. China has different ideas. (July 10, 2016, The Washington Post)
China’s Communist Party and its military say they are waging an ideological war against hostile Western ideas on the Internet, and people like Wen are in the firing line. Through censorship, intimidation and repression, and with the help of an army of “patriotic” netizens, the party appears to be winning.

China’s Worst Flooding Since 1998 Kills 173, Takes Economic Toll (July 11, 2016, Bloomberg)
A swollen Yangtze and other rivers spilled over their banks as flood waters moved toward the coast. That was compounded by the arrival of Typhoon Nepartak, which was downgraded to tropical depression as it made landfall on Saturday in Fujian province.

Why Huge Amounts Of Garbage Are Washing Up On Hong Kong’s Shores (July 11, 2016, Huffington Post)
Over the past several weeks, Hong Kong residents have become increasingly angry about the unprecedented amount of trash landing on the city’s beaches. While Hong Kong certainly generates plenty of its own garbage, activists and residents noticed that a majority of the trash landing on the city’s beaches had labels popular in mainland China, not Hong Kong.

Rural Chongqing village is home to an insane 39 sets of twins, locals would like to know why (July 11, 2016, Shanghaiist)
How many sets of twins do you know? Well, if you are a resident of Qingyan village outside of Chongqing, then that number is at least 39. The village has a total of 367 households and an insane 39 sets of twins among them. The oldest set of twins are already 89 years old.

Chinese government's 'weird architecture' ban in ruins as 'giant toilet' skyscraper is built (July 12, 2016, The Independent)
Back in February, the Chinese central government demanded an end to all mainland construction of buildings that are “oversized”, “xenocentric” or “weird” and a move toward architecture that is “pleasing to the eye”. Fast forward five months, and a 12-story toilet has been built in Henan province.

China, Sweltering, Doles Out Subsidies for High Heat (July 13, 2016, The New York Times)
After three days of torrid heat in Beijing, with thermometer readings in the upper 90s Fahrenheit, the air in the city’s concrete canyons and on its giant ring roads has cooled a little, to 95. Enough for city officials to drop the health warning they had posted on Sunday, as they do whenever temperatures exceed that threshold.

Economics / Trade / Business

Why Is There So Much Talk of China’s Bleeding Money? (July 8, 2016, China File)
What explains why China’s foreign exchange reserves fell this spring to their lowest level since December 2011? And what long-term effects might this have on the U.S.-China relationship and China’s trade with the world?

Video: Steinway’s Grand Ambitions for Its Pianos in China (July 9, 2016, The New York Times)
Steinway, one of the world’s most prestigious musical instrument brands, is looking to China to breathe new life into lackluster sales. To succeed, the company will need more than smart marketing. It will need to fine-tune a cultural mind-set in a country that once dismissed pianos as bourgeois luxuries.

China’s new normal inches on (July 10, 2016, East Asia Forum)
China is undergoing profound changes in its economic policy and structure. These changes represent a new model of Chinese economic growth. The recent Five Year Plan (FYP) is an evolutionary document. Building on earlier official statements on the new model of growth, it provides the most elaborate statement to date on the model’s content and implementation.

Health / Environment

China’s devastating floods can be traced back to corruption and overbuilding (July 7, 2016, Quartz)
Wuhan’s excessive urban development is partly to blame. Known as “the city of a hundred lakes,” Wuhan doesn’t live up to its name anymore. From 1949 to 2015, the number of the lakes in Wuhan’s urban areas dropped from 127 to 40 because they were filled for construction, which effectively makes it harder for the city to absorb flood water.

Plastic Surgery For High School Grads (July 8, 2016, The World of Chinese)
A gift after high school graduation sounds reasonable, right? Especially given all the hard work students in China put in. But plastic surgery? Many high schoolers (and, apparently, their parents), seem to think that all that matters is your yanzhi (the value of your appearance). Similar calls can even be heard from commentators in the Southern Weekend.

China healthcare costs forcing patients into crippling debt (July 9, 2016, Reuters)
As China's medical bills rise steeply, outpacing government insurance provision, patients and their families are increasingly turning to loans to pay for healthcare, adding to the country's growing burden of consumer debt.

How Much Chinese Are Willing to Pay for Cleaner Air (July 13, 2016, China Real Time)
A recently published  National Bureau of Economic Research working paper shows that, on average, Chinese people are willing to pay $5.46 to remove one microgram per cubic meter of pollution out of the air they breathe for five years.

Science / Technology

‘Pokémon Go’ Chasers in China Hit Brick Wall (July 12, 2016, China Real Time)
But Chinese app stores don’t carry the game, and Google accounts—which are necessary to create a player account—are inaccessible in the country without software to circumvent China’s internet blocks known as the Great Firewall. Chinese players who manage to download the game are greeted with a landscape devoid of Pokémon, as Global Positioning System signals from certain locations, including China, are blocked.

How China Is Rewriting the Book on Human Origins (July 13, 2016, Scientific American)
Fossil finds in China are challenging ideas about the evolution of modern humans and our closest relatives.

History / Culture

Beijing high school students in 1972 (July 10, 2016, Everyday Life in Mao’s China)

Doors to the Past: Visit These 9 Ancient Beijing Gates (July 11, 2016, The Beijinger)
The Second Ring Road follows the line of the old city walls, which were used together with the gates as points of reference when navigating the city and addresses during the Yuan (1271-1368), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. The inner city, formerly referred to as Jing Cheng (京城) or Da Cheng (大城) had nine gates. The walls and some of the gates were torn down to make room for the development of the city, but others remain as tourist attractions.

Hot Peppers for a New China (July 13, 2016, Medium)
President Xi Jinping has favoured the idea of “innovation” in recent years — with the prospect of new media technologies, and the push for newly creative measures to restrain their destabilising impact. Media innovation, however, is as old as the hills in China.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

Reading THE PAPER (July 7, 2016, Medium)
This personal association lends a certain genius to the name of the publication we are told is revolutionising media in the People’s Republic of China. The Paper, or Pengpai (澎湃) in Chinese, promises to be a 21st century paperboy, putting a world of relevance at your fingertips through a mobile app that is slick, simple and responsive. It is not just a paper; it is the paper.

In 'Ten Years,' A Dystopian Vision Of Hong Kong's Future Under China (July 7, 2016, NPR)
The Hong Kong film industry is best known for martial arts and crime thrillers, and for launching the careers of international stars like Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat. But the most celebrated Hong Kong movie of the past year is not of the same mold. It's a low-budget, overtly political independent film presenting a dark vision of Hong Kong's future.

Mr. Zhang Believes: A Film Review (July 8, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
The film, which has been alternately named Mr. Zhang Believes, has been described as a hybrid documentary—one that blends theatrical fiction and autobiography. Existing in relatively uncharted territory, hybrids bravely blur the lines of categorical boundaries.

Fly Me to the Sky (July 9, 2016, The World of Chinese)
Dongbei, or Northeast China, is the home of Chinese comedy, and as one of the most commonly used dialects for Chinese comedians, Dongbeihua has a somewhat magical effect, turning even the most mundane conversation funny. Today there’s a bit of slang rolling around that owes its existence to this comical accent, specifically, “你咋不上天呢 ?” (Nǐ zǎ bú shàngtiān ne?), or “Why don’t you fly to the sky?” It may not make a whole lot of sense in literal translation, but it’s the perfect facetious remark to your boasting buddies.

Beijing’s Internet Controls Will Only Tighten Under Xu Lin (July 12, 2016, China Digital Times)
While Chinese authorities have long maintained strict control of the internet and done much to guide online public opinion, those efforts have increased substantially in recent years. In 2014, authorities launched the Cyberspace Administration of China, a central internet policy and oversight agency, and its first director Lu Wei did much to further the crackdown on internet speech and promote China’s concept of “internet sovereignty” to the world.

Travel / Food

Residents baffled after coachloads of Chinese tourists descend on ‘unremarkable’ Oxfordshire village and ask for selfies (July 6, 2016, Daily Mail)
Some claim the tourists have been falsely told by rogue tour operators the village is the setting for Inspector Morse, Midsomer Murders or even Harry Potter. Resident Tony Bennell said: 'You are used to seeing tourists going round the Universities in Oxford, or places such as Bourton-on-the-Water but not quite used to seeing them in Kidlington. 

Hainan: Discovering the Hawaii of China (July 7, 2016, New Zealand Herald)
Hainan's other great natural assets are its beaches, bush and geothermal hot springs. Expansive sweeps of sand and surf are everywhere, giving opportunities galore for swimming, boating and snorkelling. I was especially taken by Yalong Bay, 25km southeast of Sanya City, which is home to numerous resorts with manicured grounds that seem to blend in with the beachfront rather than dominate it.

Ice Creams To Beat The Summer Heat (July 8, 2016, The World of Chinese)
But if sensible prune juices and vitamin water aren’t your cup of herbal tea (so to speak), you might have been tempted to try the varieties of frozen desserts offerings of the country that has apparently become the world’s biggest producer of ice cream—or you could, if only you could only tell what’s beneath the bright wrapping. We’re here to help by introducing the most popular, nostalgic, or just plain weird varieties of frozen dessert in China.

Yellowstone National Park Helps Chinese Tourists With Mandarin-Speaking Rangers (July 9, 2016, Skift)
The new hires are interpretive rangers, meaning that they provide information about the park’s resources, lead guided walks, and roam popular areas to talk informally to visitors. The bilingual rangers can also interpret during emergencies. One of the new rangers, Evan Hubbard, studied in China for two years. “It’s great to show the Chinese visitors my country, after they showed me theirs,” said Hubbard. “They are coming here and everything that is so familiar to us is completely foreign to them.”

Stat: 11 Million International Arrivals Came to China Last July (July 9, 2016, The Beijinger)
Perhaps not surprisingly, most of these visitors carry Hong Kong citizenship. The total make up of these almost 11 million visitors was comprised of 2,108,700 foreign visitors, 6,364,400 from Hong Kong, 1,941,400 from Macao, and 507,100 from Taiwan. On top of that, there are more than 2 million additional tourists coming from Europe, North America, and other further away locales. 

One of China’s Best Roast Duck Restaurants Is Opening a New York Outpost (July 12, 2016, New York Eater)
The New York outpost of Da Dong will be upscale like the original locations in China, where Dong’s version of Beijing’s most famous dish frequently ranks as one of the best. (He claims his duck is less fatty than the typical roast duck while still maintaining the dish’s signature crispy skin, juicy meat, and smoky taste.)

Books

4 Books on the Chinese Communist Party (July 11, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
Because the Party’s tentacles are everywhere, it is important for those working in China to have at least a basic knowledge of how it functions and what role it plays in society. Here are some books to help you get started:

Image credit: Church Interior, by Kurt Groetsch, via Flickr