ZGBriefs from 2015
The Resource Library is where you will find the latest resources from across our publications.
ZGBriefs | October 15, 2015
Nobel Renews Debate on Chinese Medicine (October 10, 2015, The New York Times)
These contrasts are part of a bigger, century-long debate in China that has been renewed by the award on Monday to one of the academy’s retired researchers, Tu Youyou, for extracting the malaria-fighting compound Artemisinin from the plant Artemisia annua. It was the first time China had won a Nobel Prize in a scientific discipline.
ZGBriefs | October 8, 2015
Population to peak in 2025 (October 7, 2015, China Daily)
A lower-than-expected fertility rate means China's population will peak in 2025, something the country's leadership will have to seriously consider when drawing up its forthcoming national development blueprint, said a senior Chinese demographic expert in Brussels. China's population is expected to peak at 1.41 billion in 2025 and the total population in 2050 will be much lower than it is today, said Zhang Juwei, director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
ZGBriefs | October 1, 2015
“Masters of the People”: China’s New Urban Poor (September 23, 2015, Dissent)
The ranks of the poor in China today also include people who have lived in cities all their lives, and, as members of the industrial proletariat, were once considered “the masters of the people.”
ZGBriefs | September 24, 2015
China’s gospel valley: Churches thrive among the Lisu people (September 22, 2015, Christian Century)
Pastor Jesse’s mud-plastered Mitsubishi SUV jolted wildly along the newly dug dirt road that zigzagged up the mountainside toward the construction site of the new church. We stopped to let a pedestrian squeeze by, a middle-aged Lisu woman with a pink, checkered headscarf and a giant bamboo back basket which was strapped to her forehead. The Lisu are one of the 55 ethnic minorities of China and the predominant tribespeople in Gongshan, which nestles on the slope of the Gaoligongshan mountain range.
ZGBriefs | September 17, 2015
How the Piano Became Chinese (September 6, 2015, Caixin Online)
Indeed, though China in the 1600s had numerous rich musical traditions that employed both domestic and imported instruments, it had nothing resembling the clavichord, a stringed keyboard instrument and predecessor of the piano. That's why Ricci chose it, hoping that the unusual instrument would so excite the emperor's curiosity that he would agree to receive Ricci – who could then explain the precepts of Catholicism and, in his wildest dreams, get the emperor to convert, and with him, all of China.
ZGBriefs | September 10, 2015
Driven to Kill: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit. (September 4, 2015, Slate)
Most people agree that the hit-to-kill phenomenon stems at least in part from perverse laws on victim compensation. In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions.
ZGBriefs | September 3, 2015
For China, a Plunge and a Reckoning (August 28, 2015, The Wall Street Journal)
Anyone trying to design an event to bring Xi Jinping ’s China back to Earth couldn’t have engineered something much more elegant than the turmoil in China’s financial markets and the resulting global aftershocks. The upheaval is traumatic for China’s leaders but not life-threatening to China’s system. Yet the jolt may have been just large enough to change the country’s underlying bargain between ruler and ruled—and by doing so, to temper Beijing’s current tendency toward arrogance, rigidity, belligerence and diplomatic hectoring.
ZGBriefs | August 27, 2015
China's 20 Percent Problem: Millennial Migrants' Discontent (August 25, 2015, Foreign Affairs)
What’s more, a rising generation of “millennial migrants” aspires to the same lifestyle and opportunities afforded their urban contemporaries. As a result, their expectations are shifting rapidly, increasing the possibility that their accumulated discontents will turn into a volatile force that catalyzes social instability.
ZGBriefs | August 20, 2015
He Xiaoxin: How Far Can I Go? How Much Can I Do? (August 15, 2015, China Digital Times)
Journalist He Xiaoxin (和小欣) of The Beijing Daily (北京日报) traveled to report from the scene of the massive explosion in a chemical warehouse at the Tianjin port, in which 112 people have been reported killed so far. Dramatic photos and videos of the explosion traveled quickly around the world via the Internet. But in this photo essay, He provides an up-close, personal look at the devastation. Propaganda officials have since banned media from reporting on the explosion or posting stories that did not originate from Xinhua.
ZGBriefs | August 13, 2015
Putting China’s Cyberpolice in Context (August 9, 2015, Medium.com)
In our rapidly evolving global news space, content is still king. But I confess at least equal devotion to the sovereign’s hoary (and so often ignored) envoy: context. As media reported last week, following a Public Security Bureau “work conference” in Beijing, that China would now "embed internet police in tech firms” and priority websites — underscoring yet again the deteriorating information climate under President Xi Jinping — context cowered in the shadows of the court. Everyone, as a result, got the story wrong.