ZGBriefs | March 31, 2016

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Featured Article

The Swept Tomb vs. The Empty Tomb: A Collision of Holidays in China (March 30, 2016, The Gospel Coalition)
Each spring almost one-fifth of the world’s population observes a tomb-oriented holiday that isn’t Easter. Yet despite the mass observance of this festival, most Christians in the West are unfamiliar with it. The holiday is China’s Qingming Jie (pronounced along the lines of “ching ming jieh,” henceforth QMJ). As a Westerner who pastors in China, I’d like to tell you what it is and why you should care. 

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Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

Chinese Lawyer Who Was Detained While Defending Churches Is Released (March 24, 2016, The New York Times)
A lawyer who was detained in southeastern China while defending churches that were being forced to remove their crosses has been released by the police, according to a post on his main Chinese social network account. The lawyer, Zhang Kai, was detained in late August and made a televised confession last month, apparently under coercion.

China Warns Officials: No Unrest, Or Lose Your Job (March 25, 2016, China Real Time)
The Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council, China’s cabinet, this week warned party and state officials that they will lose their jobs if they fail to control public unrest. That’s not altogether surprising: on one level,it’s just a restatement of longstanding practice.

Missing Hong Kong bookseller mysteriously resurfaces – briefly (Mary 25, 2016, Christian Science Monitor)
His disappearance, along with others linked to books that Chinese officials disliked, has raised serious concerns about the strength of freedom of speech and the press in Hong Kong.

Missing Chinese journalist released from custody, says lawyer (March 27, 2016, The Guardian)
A prominent Chinese journalist has been released after being detained earlier this month, possibly in connection with an online letter critical of China’s President Xi Jinping, his lawyer said on Sunday. Jia Jia, who writes a regular column for Tencent Online, went missing late on 15 March, around the time he was scheduled to board a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong.

China Hunts For Author Of Anonymous Letter Critical Of Xi Jinping (March 28, 2016, NPR)
It's not often that the governments of major nations are so concerned about hunting down the authors of anonymous online letters. But that is what's happening in China, as police have detained and questioned journalists and the families in China of overseas dissidents, in an apparent effort to find out who wrote a letter calling for President Xi Jinping to step down.

Chinese journalist denounces Xi Jinping in resignation letter (March 29, 2016, The Guardian)
The editor of a Chinese newspaper has published a resignation letter denouncing increased controls on the media under Xi Jinping, according to a cached version of his online post. Yu Shaolei, the culture editor of the Southern Metropolis Daily, posted a photo of his resignation letter on his Weibo social media account.

Grumbling mounts in China, even in the party. Is President Xi losing his grip? (March 29, 2016, The Washington Post)
A series of extraordinary outbursts of public criticism of Chinese President Xi Jinping in recent weeks has raised the question of whether his crackdown on dissent is backfiring. The sniping has come from the highest levels of the business community and the media but also, most tellingly, from within the Communist Party itself. At its core is a growing unhappiness with Xi’s attempts to centralize power and crush dissent, both within the party and outside.

Hong Kong’s New National Party Viciously Denounced in Chinese State Media (March 30, 2016, TIME)
A English-language newspaper owned and published by China’s state-run People’s Daily has slammed the formation of the new Hong Kong National Party as both “a prank” and a manifestation of “illegal ideas.”

Rights activist Ni Yulan 'barred from leaving' China (March 30, 2016, BBC)
A Chinese human rights activist says she has been barred from leaving the country just as she was planning to travel to the US to accept an award. Ni Yulan had hoped to travel this week to accept the state department's International Women of Courage Award.

Singing Xi's praises: chorus of Chinese pop songs celebrate president (March 30, 2016, The Guardian)
As Xi moves into his fourth year as president of the world’s most populous nation, the two musicians are part of a growing chorus of Chinese minstrels singing the praises of the man they call “Xi Dada” which translates as Uncle or Big Daddy Xi.

Religion

Video: Growing numbers of Christians in China under scrutiny (March 25, 2016, BBC)
Accurate figures are hard to come by, but this Easter weekend as many as 100 million Christians will celebrate across China. But with congregation numbers still on the rise the authorities it seems are keen to tighten their control.

Chinese turn to Christian revolution en masse (March 26, 2016, The Australian)
This Holy Week has seen unprecedente­d numbers attending both officially recognised Protestant and Catholic churches as well as underground “house churches” — although there is also constant traffic between these strands of Christianity.

Video: Why many Christians in China have turned to underground churches (March 26, 2016, BBC)
And today, according to some estimates, there are more Christians in China than Communist Party members. Up to 100 million will be celebrating across China this Easter weekend. But what it failed to destroy, the Party still wants to control. So, an officially atheist government effectively runs its own churches and controls the appointment of its own priests.

Chinese Christians flock to churches for Easter services (March 28, 2016, UCA News)
In the capital of a country that has faced recent criticism for dwindling religious rights there were few immediate signs of the confrontations between a growing Christian population and an increasingly hard-line, atheist Communist Party. In St. Joseph's, another cathedral on Beijing's popular shopping hub Wangfujing Street, crowds of up to 700 people crammed in for each of six Easter Sunday services.

Celebrating Faith in China’s Underground Churches (March 28, 2016, TIME)
Faith springs from even the most barren ground. Amid desiccated farmland and factories casting fumes into the sky, a flock of worshippers celebrates Holy Week. Altar boys parade with palm fronds, a priest swings a thurible, a young woman joins her hands in prayer.

Society / Life

Multi-media: A Tide of Return (MSNBC)
Alex Majoli photographed a different sort of migration, one that's less about conflict and more about opportunity. This is China's economy on the move.

Video: Take Me to the Moon (Aeon Magazine)
An offbeat portrait of modern China, Take Me to the Moon follows a factory veteran and a new arrival as they navigate their hopes and dreams in a peculiarly constructed world, where the borders between work and private life are blurred, and home is far away.

China's Minority Report (March 23, 2016, Foreign Affairs)
In recent years, Xi has repeatedly stressed the need to speed up the pace of cross-ethnic exchanges—with exogamy, or marriage outside one’s own ethnic group, viewed as an important indicator of success. Interethnic marriage, party officials believe, will reduce ethnocultural differences and strengthen identification with a single, shared Chinese culture and identity.

Chinese national killed in Brussels attacks (March 25, 2016, China Daily)
A Chinese national was among those killed in the serial terror attacks in Brussels, the Chinese embassy in Belgium confirmed Friday. The victim is surnamed Deng, said the notice.

China to Survey Children Left Behind by Migrant Workers (March 29, 2016, The New York Times)
The Chinese government plans to conduct the country’s first comprehensive survey of rural children left behind by parents who have migrated to cities in search of work, the China Youth Daily has reported. The move comes after a series of reports on the plight of “left-behind” children, who are often put in the care of older relatives or are sometimes abandoned.

6 facts about how Americans and Chinese see each other (March 30, 2016, Pew Research)
As Pew Research Center surveys have shown, many of these tensions are reflected in American public opinion. Meanwhile, the Chinese public has its own complaints about the U.S. – in particular, most believe the U.S. is trying to contain a rising China. Here are six key findings about American public opinion toward China, and Chinese public opinion about the U.S.

Move Over ‘A4 Waist’, Here Comes the ‘iPhone6 Legs’ Hype – Growing Concerns Over China’s Online Skinny Trends (March 30, 2016, What’s on Weibo)
Now that China’s ‘A4 waist’ online challenge has swept across Sina Weibo, it is time for another trend to show off how skinny you are: the ‘iPhone 6 legs’ (iPhone6腿) rage. Despite the wide propagation of slimming trends on Chinese social media, voices opposing these sort of hypes are growing louder.

Grey boom: Decades of birth controls leave China with distorted demographics (March 30, 2016, Globe and Mail)
After decades of rigid birth controls, China now stands at the precipice of a population explosion – of elderly people. By 2030, the country will count 143 million more people aged 60 and older, a two-thirds expansion over 2015, according to a new analysis by Renmin University researchers.

Economics / Trade / Business

Why China’s Economy Can’t Collapse (March 24, 2016, China File)
This being the case, the substantive issue people really care about is whether the economy will totally collapse, entailing comprehensive social unrest and political crisis. At present, the mainstream judges that it will not. Does this judgment have solid grounds?

Yuan’s Fall Drags Down Some Chinese Companies (March 25, 2016, China Real Time)
A weaker Chinese currency has roiled global markets and heightened worries about the state of the world’s second-largest economy. Now, some Chinese companies are reporting they’ve taken a hit from a depreciating yuan.

China to Phase Out One-Yuan Notes, Replace with Coins (March 28, 2016, The Beijinger)
You know when you go to Shanghai and you come back with a pocket full of coins because all the stores and taxi drivers give you change in coins rather than bills? Your whole life is about to become like that.

Automakers Expanding in China May Soon Face Weakening Demand (March 28, 2016, The New York Times)
Automakers are expanding at a time when China’s economic growth has slowed to its lowest level in more than a quarter-century. China is closing coal mines across the country and plans to shutter steel mills. Exports are falling. Many Chinese cities are dotted with empty apartment buildings. Worried about pollution and traffic jams, China’s wealthiest metropolises have begun limiting the number of new cars that may be registered.

Samsung becomes latest firm to launch mobile wallet in China (March 29, 2016, BBC)
Samsung has officially launched its mobile wallet service in China, in co-operation with local vendor UnionPay. Instead of using cards, the service allows shoppers to use their smartphones to pay for in-store purchases.

Education

Heard in the Hutong: Beijingers on Chinese Students in the U.S. (March 28, 2016, China Real Time)
In the U.S., Chinese students now comprise 31.2% of all international students, up from about 10% in 2000. But with their rising numbers come challenges; some students have a tough time fitting in, while some teachers say their pupils from abroad are unprepared. We asked Beijingers their thoughts.

About Three-Quarters of Students Going Abroad Return to China: Report (March 28, 2016, Caixin Online)
The number of "haigui," or sea turtles, a Chinese homonym used to describe returnees from overseas, has risen to around 70 to 80 percent in recent years, the report said. Nearly half of returnees surveyed by the ministry last year said they would like to find jobs in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The figure dropped 8 percent from 2013.

China Charges Tibetan Education Advocate With Inciting Separatism (March 30, 2016, The New York Times)
A detained Tibetan entrepreneur who advocated for bilingual education in schools across Tibetan regions of China has been charged with inciting separatism, according to an official police document. The entrepreneur, Tashi Wangchuk, 30, is being held at the main detention center in Yushu, the town in Qinghai Province in western China, where he lives with his elderly parents.

Health / Environment

China Air Quality Study Has Good News and Bad News (March 30, 2016, The New York Times)
Those are some conclusions to be drawn from a new study of air quality in five major cities by a team of researchers at Peking University led by Chen Songxi, a statistician at the university’s Guanghua School of Management.

New Travel Horizons: Hepatitis C Tourism From China (March 30, 2016, China Real Time)
Chinese people in the past have gone to the U.S. to for cancer treatment and have snatched up cold medicine and painkillers on trips to Japan. Chinese now go overseas for another medical purpose: curing their liver diseases.

Science / Technology

China Vaccine Probe Nets 130 Arrests as Public Anger Builds (March 25, 2016, TIME)
The investigation into a ring suspected of distributing almost $90 million of compromised vaccines across 24 Chinese provinces has now netted 130 arrests, though public anger has not been quelled by assertions that the improperly stored and transported drugs were in fact safe.

Facebook probably won’t get into China, and it shouldn’t want to (March 27, 2016, Tech in Asia)
Even if Facebook was willing to make all of those concessions, though – and that’s not a given considering the negative PR it would generate for Facebook at home – there’s little reason for China’s government to let Facebook in.

Beijing Seeks to Tighten Reins on Websites in China (March 29, 2016, The New York Times)
China’s government said on Monday that it would take steps to more strictly manage websites in the country, its latest push to set boundaries in the wider Internet. A draft law posted by one of China’s technology regulators said that websites in the country would have to register domain names with local service providers and with the authorities.

History / Culture

The Awkward Position of Missionaries: Religion and Violence in 19th-Century China (March 24, 2016, The Beijinger)
What became known as the Tianjin Massacre was the culmination of nearly a decade of anti-missionary activity in China. In 1860, a new set of treaties between the Qing government and the foreign powers gave missionaries unprecedented rights to travel, preach, and build churches in the interior of China. Foreign missionaries saw themselves as doing God’s work, but for many local residents and officials they were the most obtrusive and obvious examples of foreign power and privilege.

Criticizing Chinese Christians during the Cultural Revolution (March 30, 2016, Everyday Life in Mao’s China)

Arts / Entertainment / Media

Thousands of Injuries, Mishaps at Chinese Marathon Prompt Alarm (March 25, 2016, China Real Time)
As China’s economy develops, authorities are racing ahead with their efforts to promote long-distance running – but a calamitous marathon in south China has raised questions over whether Beijing is pushing forward at too quick a pace. Thousands of people were injured while running a marathon on Sunday in Qingyuan, a city of some 3.7 million people in south China’s Guangdong province.

Peter Hessler's 'River Town' to Be Remade For the Big Screen (March 29, 2016, The Beijinger)
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, the 2001 book by New Yorker writer Peter Hessler is set to soon be remade into a film, with Chinese director Lu Chuan, who made the harrowing 2009 Nanjing Massacre movie City of Life and Death, is set to direct. River Town chronicles Hessler’s two year Peace Corps teaching assignment at Fuling Teachers College in Fuling, Sichuan starting in 1996.

Chinese Golf Course Owner Files $46 Million Lawsuit over Club’s Closure (March 30, 2016, China Real Time)
In a move against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on golf, a Shanghai links owner is suing local authorities for 300 million yuan ($46 million) for ordering him to shut down his course.

Travel / Food

An Ancient Caravan Town in China Is Reborn (March 27, 2016, The New York Times)
The village square is now considered by some to be one of the most beautiful in China. It evokes the era when the Tea and Horse Caravan Trail passed through the valley. This part of Yunnan Province lies east of the Tibetan plateau, and Tibetans traded horses for tea that was then transported across the plateau, all the way to Lhasa.

Top 5 China Experiences – For the Return Visitor (March 28, 2016, Wild China Blog)
You’ve seen the Forbidden City, walked along Shanghai’s Bund at night, stared those famous Terracotta Warriors straight in the face – and now you’ve caught the China bug. So what’s next? Here are some ways to take your China exploration to the next level.

It Is Already Too Late to Buy a Ticket for Shanghai Disneyland’s Opening Day (March 28, 2016, Skift)
Tickets for the June 16 opening day of Walt Disney Co.’s new theme park in Shanghai were sold out on its official ticketing website hours after going on sale at midnight on Monday. Tickets from June 17 to Sept. 30 are still available, ranging in price from 370 yuan ($57) for non-peak periods, to 499 yuan for peak periods, which include the park’s first two weeks, all weekends, and the summer months of July and August.

The eight classes of Chinese tea and the ten most famous brands (March 30, 2016, Sapore di Cina)
So I decided to limit this first article to two topics that I found interesting: the different classes of Chinese tea and the most famous tea brands of China (for each class of tea there are many different brands, for instance you have the Long Jing green tea from Hangzhou, the Bi Luo Chun green tea from Tai Hu and so on).

Language / Language Learning

Should you learn the pronunciation of radicals? (March 28, 2016, Hacking Chinese)
I see this question often, usually right after people have realised or been told that they should break characters down and learn the building blocks. The answer depends on what you mean. Strictly speaking, the answer is “no”, but if you’re a beginner asking the question and you haven’t got your terminology right, the answer might be “yes”.

Top 12 Errors in Chinese English Dictionaries (March 29, 2016, carlgene.com)
One of the challenges that Chinese learners of English face is being misled by Chinese English dictionaries, especially online ones. The following is a list of the 12 most common errors I have come across in my translating and teaching work.

Links for Researchers

China’s Fourth Evil: Drug Trafficking in the PRC (March 24, 2016, China Brief)
Although drug busts like these are encouraging and the press they receive is welcomed by the government, they indicate the emergence of unconventional vectors and the unprecedented quantities of locally produced narcotics, two factors that may require Beijing to adopt a new approach, namely, enhanced government transparency and direct coordination with foreign agencies at both the national and local levels.

China’s two big challenges (March 28, 2016, East Asia Forum)
Asia’s — and China’s — path to prosperity is not going to be easy. China’s neighbours in Northeast Asia managed to succeed in joining the club of high income countries and the rest of East Asia is trying to emulate that. But there’s no automatic route to the top.

Made in China: Makerspaces and the search for mass innovation (March 29, 2016, Nesta)
This report analyses the trends that are driving the maker movement in China, based on a survey of almost 100 makerspaces.

Image credit: House Grave, by Randy Adams, via Flickr