ZGBriefs from 2017
The Resource Library is where you will find the latest resources from across our publications.
ZGBriefs | August 10, 2017
'China has conquered Kenya': Inside Beijing's new strategy to win African hearts and minds (August 7, 2017, The Los Angeles Times)
As a digital infrastructure provider, StarTimes is helping African states transition from analog television — a technology akin to FM radio, rife with snow, static and dropped signals — to digital, which ensures high-quality image and sound. As a pay-TV company, it is stacking its networks with pro-China broadcasts. As both, it is materially improving the lives of countless Africans, then making China’s role in those improvements impossible to ignore.
ZGBriefs | August 3, 2017
The Elderly Are Becoming the New Self-Governing Subjects in China (August 2, 2017, China Policy Institute)
Senior citizens, now retired from decades of public and productive life contributing to the nation’s GDP and nation-building, are now private citizens with ageing bodies and often declining health. […] This shift of their social identity from productive worker to individual consumer puts elderly individuals in China at a moral and ethical crossroads, caught between traditional, family-oriented values of personal sacrifice and new individualistic practices.
ZGBriefs | July 27, 2017
No Man’s City – A Chinese Blogger’s Powerful Essay About The “Fake Lives” of Beijing Residents (July 26, 2017, What’s on Weibo)
An essay titled “Beijing Has 20 Million People Pretending to Live Here” by Chinese blogger Zhang Wumao (张五毛) has gone viral on Chinese social media, sparking wide debate on life in China’s capital. The essay describes how Beijing has changed into a city that is overrun by ‘outsiders’ and no longer belongs to the ‘old Beijingers.’ Chinese state media say the essay, which is now censored, polarizes the relations between Beijing’s locals and immigrants.
ZGBriefs | July 20, 2017
The secret lives of Chinese missionaries in northern Iraq (July 16, 2017, South China Morning Post)
Used to persecution at home, two young Chinese Christians say life can be more peaceful in northern Iraq, where they work with Yazidi refugees.
ZGBriefs | July 13, 2017
China Tells Carriers to Block Access to Personal VPNs by February (July 10, 2017, Bloomberg)
Beijing has ordered state-run telecommunications firms, which include China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, to bar people from using VPNs, services that skirt censorship restrictions by routing web traffic abroad, the people said, asking not to be identified talking about private government directives.
ZGBriefs | July 6, 2017
China, House Churches, and the Growth of the Kingdom (June 29, 2017, Christianity Today)
What goes on in China matters to the Church worldwide; soon, it will be the country with the largest Christian population and, in time, it might have the world’s largest missionary force. When Jesus said He would build His Church, He surely had China in mind.
ZGBriefs | June 29, 2017
Is a Buddhist Group Changing China? Or Is China Changing It? (June 24, 2017, The New York Times)
Across China, millions of people like Ms. Shen have begun participating in faith-based organizations like Fo Guang Shan. They aim to fill what they see as a moral vacuum left by attacks on traditional values over the past century, especially under Mao, and the nation’s embrace of a cutthroat form of capitalism.
ZGBriefs | June 22, 2017
China, Where the Pressure to Marry Is Strong, and the Advice Flows Online (June 18, 2017, The New York Times)
Although women in their 20s are greatly outnumbered by men in the same age group in China, a product in part of the since-abandoned one-child family policy and a cultural preference for sons, they face enormous pressure to marry. Those who do not have a husband by the age of 27 are routinely branded as “leftover women,” with diminishing value in the dating market.
ZGBriefs | June 15, 2017
Pakistan says slain Chinese misused business visas, were missionaries (June 13, 2017, CNN)
The man, 24, and woman, 26, killed were among a group of Chinese citizens who obtained a business visa from the Pakistani Embassy in Beijing, the ministry statement said. Instead of doing business, it is alleged the pair went to the Pakistani city of Quetta and under the guise of learning Urdu from a Korean, they "engaged in preaching," the Pakistani statement said.
ZGBriefs | June 8, 2017
Chinese City With a Russian Past Struggles to Preserve Its Legacy (June 4, 2017, The New York Times)
The making of Harbin is like no other Chinese city. In 1898, Russian engineers and workers from both Russia and China came to build the Chinese Eastern Railway. They were soon followed by Russian Jews fleeing pogroms, and then aristocrats driven out by the Bolshevik Revolution and White Russian troops seeking refuge after defeat in civil war.