FEATURED ARTICLE
The Bible business (November 20, 2013, Global Times)
To meet the spiritual needs of the rapidly growing number of Christians, China printed more than 105 million Bibles from 1987 to 2012, of which 60 percent were distributed to churches inside the country and 40 percent were delivered overseas. In this factory, employees operate machines round the clock for three shifts a day. Its warehouse stores millions of different versions of the Bible which are ready to be delivered worldwide at any time. The special King James Version which was used for Prince William's wedding in 2011 was made here. China, the world's biggest atheist country, has now become the world's largest Bible-printing state.
SPECIAL SECTION: CHANGES TO CHINA'S ONE-CHILD POLICY
Six questions on Chinas one-child policy, answered (November 15, 2013, Washington Post)
China's one-child policy timeline (November 15, 2013, The Guardian)
China's Communist party has said the one-child policy will be eased, in the first significant change in nearly 30 years.
What to Expect When You're Expecting a Baby Boom (November 18, 2013, Wall Street Journal)
It will take at least nine months for the cooing, crying, bouncing results to appear, but the easing of China's one-child policy has already created a frenzy of anticipation among households, businesses and the stock market for the expected baby boomlet.
Bringing an End to a Senseless Policy (November 19, 2013, The New York Times)
History will look back at Chinas one-child policy with bewilderment, even disbelief. Of all the countries in the world that faced the fear of population explosion in the latter half of the 20th century, only China went to such extremes, and for so long.
Scrapping Its One-Child Policy Won't Solve China's Worker Shortage (November 19, 2013, Business Week)
By announcing their intention to relax the countrys one-child policy, Chinas leaders hope to placate the publics widespread desire for change. But loosening population-control measures may not be enough to reverse a trend that poses an even bigger long-term challenge: The country known as the worlds factory floor is running out of workers.
China's population policy: No tears for the enforcers (November 19, 2013, Analects)
WhenN Chinas formidable one-child policy bureaucracy500,000 strongwas rolled into the Ministry of Health this year, some dared to dream that the end was nigh for the family-planning enforcers. It is now clear no one need shed a tear for them. The bad guys of the one-child policy will still be around years from now, enforcing what will eventually be a two-child policy.
What Will the Beginning of the End of the One-Child Policy Bring? (November 19, 2013, China File)
The Communist Partys announcement that it will loosen the one-child policy is, of course, welcome news. Married couples will be allowed to have two children if only one of the spouses is an only child, meaning that millions more couples will now be exempted from previous family planning restrictions. Yet its too soon to predict what the long-term demographic consequences of the change will be.
For Cash-Strapped Chinese Parents, Two Babies Are Too Many (November 20, 2013, Tea Leaf Nation)
But according to a Nov. 18 survey of 5,000 web users conducted on Sina Weibo, a surprisingly large portion of Chinese think one is plenty: 52 percent of respondents said the economic pressure of a second child would be too much.
Families with twins cannot have a third child: China (November 20, 2013, Xinhua)
The National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), China's demographic authority, clarified that families with twins or multiple births are not eligible for the new birth control policy on Tuesday, according to the Beijing Morning Post. The new policy issued on November 15 allows couples to have a second child when one or both of them are the only child in their families.
GOVERNMENT / POLITICS / FOREIGN AFFAIRS
China Says It Will End Labor Camps (November 15, 2013, Wall Street Journal)
China's new leadership signaled Friday that it plans to make good on one of its most significant legal reforms: dismantling the country's controversial labor camp network. The country will "abolish" the system of re-education through labor, the Communist Party said in a major reform blueprintpart of what the official Xinhua news agency said was an effort "to improve human rights and judicial practices."
China police station attack leaves 11 dead (November 16, 2013, BBC)
Nine axe-wielding assailants have been shot dead during an attack on a police station in China's volatile western Xinjiang province, state media say. Xinhua news agency reports that two auxiliary police officers died in Saturday's clashes in Bachu county's Serikbuya, near the city of Kashgar. Another two policemen were injured. Xinhua provided no further details.
Xi Jinping's Ambitious Agenda for Economic Reform in China (November 17, 2013, Brookings)
Todays blizzard of specific reform pledges allays earlier concerns that the new government led by party chief Xi Jinping and premier Li Keqiang would fail to set major policy goals. But is this enough to answer the three biggest questions analysts have had since Xi and Li ascended a year ago?
The Transparent Chinese (November 17, 2013, The New York Times)
As an outspoken writer, I have become paranoid. I often suspect that I am being followed and videotaped, but I have no way of proving it. I occasionally turn around to see if the police are nearby. When I sit down at a caf with friends, I often cannot help checking under the table for a listening device.
What are Xis plans for Chinas media? (November 18, 2013, China Media Project)
Its a new week, and the mood seems to have flip-flopped over the Chinese Communist Partys reform plans emerging from the Third Plenum. The communique released last week the menu before the meal left many observers disappointed. The full text of the Decision, however, released last Friday, served up plenty of tasty tidbits of language with which we can now stuff ourselves. Well leave the meatier bits about the economy to others and focus on this cold side-dish of ours media policy.
China pays back millions of pounds to Bo Xilai's victims but keeps them in jail (November 18, 2013, The Telegraph)
Hundreds of millions of pounds of confiscated assets are being quietly returned to victims of Bo Xilai, but their prison sentences have not been reversed.
Video: Implementation of Chinas Reforms Could Take Years (November 19, 2013, China Real Time)
The Chinese government on Friday detailed its reform blueprint for the coming decade in a 20-page document, announcing a slew of reforms both big and small. But how long it will take the country to implement the changes amid an immense bureaucracy, both nationally and locally, is unknown.
Jailed Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo to Seek Retrial (November 19, 2013, China Real Time)
Jailed Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo plans to submit a petition requesting a retrial over his conviction on state subversion charges, according to his lawyer, in a move partly intended to test recent talk from Beijing about reforming the countrys legal system.
What Will It Cost to Cover China? (November 19, 2013, New Yorker)
Taken together, this is the Chinese governments broadest effort in decades to roll back unwelcome foreign coverageand that raises the stakes for news organizations that are struggling to figure out how to handle China. Make no mistake, this is not a simple choice. At a time when news organizations find their business models under assault, the prospect of taking an expensive stand against a foreign state is unappealing, especially when it might mean giving up their dreams for future growth in China.
Xi divides and rules (November 19, 2013, Asia Times Online)
China's leaders have anticipated the strongest opposition to their planned concentration of powers that will come from vested interests at the local level. That is why the judiciary, controlled by Beijing, has been given freer rein and a string of corruption trials can be expected to showcase President Xi Jinping's use of age-old divide and rule tactics.
China Sends 'Peace Ark' To Philippines Via Choppy Political Seas (November 20, 2013, NPR)
China says it is sending a state-of-the-art hospital ship to help typhoon victims in the Philippines. The move follows widespread criticism that China's first response to the disaster was stingy. China the world's second-largest economy initially pledged a total of just $200,000, less than a tenth of what the furniture chain Ikea pledged.
Gary Locke to Leave as U.S. Ambassador to China (November 20, 2013, Sinosphere)
The American ambassador to China, Gary F. Locke, the first Chinese-American to hold the post, announced Wednesday that he was stepping down to rejoin his family in Seattle. Appointed by President Obama, Mr. Locke held the job, one of the most important and difficult American diplomatic posts, for a little more than two years, a relatively short time for a top ambassador.
Xi Jinping's One Year Report Card (November 20, 2013, Brookings)
The Chinese saying "A new leader lights three bonfires" vividly captures the momentum and accomplishments of Xi's first year as party boss. Each of these "three bonfires" the vigorous anti-corruption campaign, the successful conclusion of the trial of disgraced politician Bo Xilai, and the comprehensive and deeper market reforms embraced at the third plenum have granted him much needed public support and significantly consolidated his power.
China Reform Plan Leaves Political Battles Unresolved (November 20, 2013, China Real Time)
Xi has made it clear since taking power a year ago that one of his main aims is to secure the Communist Partys legitimacy by cleaning it up and reconditioning it. The plenum was a tremendous opportunity for him and his like-minded comrades to codify that effort into the canon. That didnt happen. Nearly all of the changes proposed in the reform blueprint the Party released on Friday are about economics, not politics. The document reaffirms the Partys leadership, of course. But it talks about improving that Partys capacity to carry out economic and financial reforms and is almost silent about how the Party reforms itself.
Xi's power grab dwarfs market reforms(November 21, 2013, Asia Times Online)
While the recent Third Plenary Session of the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee was expected to unveil major initiatives in economic liberalization, what has struck Chinese and foreign observers most is the weight that the leadership has given to enhancing state security, particularly centralizing powers in the top echelon of the party-state apparatus.
China's top court bans police from torturing suspects (November 21, 2013, BBC)
Chinese officials must stop using torture to extract confessions from suspects, the Supreme Court has ruled. The court said on its official microblog that using "freezing, starving, extreme heat, fire branding or extreme exhaustion" to extract confessions was also illegal. It is the latest in a series of moves aimed at reforming the Chinese police and other security agencies.
China Specifies 60 Targets to Push Forward Comprehensive Reform (November 21, 2013, China Briefing)
Chinas central government released the Decision on Major Issues Concerning the Comprehensive Reform (hereinafter referred to as the Decision) on November 17, which puts forward 60 detailed targets in the following 15 areas to promote the nationwide reform:
Dispatches: China Bans Confessions Obtained under Torture (Again) (November 21, 2013, Human Rights Watch)
The positive headlines have a point the Supreme Courts move is an encouraging step. It demonstrates at the very least that there are people inside the system pushing for progress, and that alone is significant. At the same time, let's not be naive about the improvements one paper document can bring to the system.
RELIGION
College Christians at 4 percent: surveys (November 15, 2013, Global Times)
Christian college students in Beijing have remained at about 4 percent over the past decade, China Ethnic News (CEN), a newspaper based in Beijing, reported on Tuesday. The data, which was based on three surveys conducted in 2001, 2009 and 2011, can provide reliable foundation for future research on China's Christian population, according to the report. The first survey, conducted by Professor Yang Huilin from the Renmin University of China in 2001, randomly selected 306 samples from 6,184 undergraduate students in the university and found that 3.6 percent of the students claimed they were Christians.
A Beijing Church Prays for Japan (November 19, 2013, Chinese Church Voices)
Historical animosities towards Japan for their brutal occupation during World War II are never far from the surface in China. In fact, years of patriotic education campaigns in China which keep the grievances alive have made Chinas youth as (if not more) anti-Japanese then the older generation who actually experienced Japanese aggression. Given all that, this article about a Beijing church praying for Japan and the Japanese people is a particularly hopeful sign.
SOCIETY / LIFE
What Are The Lives of Chinese Factory Workers Really Like? (November 15, 2013, NPR)
Behind all our material goods, from iPhones to sneakers, is a narrative of exploited Chinese workers with bleak lives. Reporter Leslie T. Chang says that's a disrespectful narrative. She sought out workers in a Chinese megacity and tells their stories.
Spiritual Pollution Thirty Years On (November 17, 2013, The China Story)
The following essay, a period piece, was written in November 1983 and published in the Australian weekly The National Times in January 1984 under the title China Blames the West for Cultural Pollution.
Video: What rooftop gardening looks like in China (November 19, 2013, Matador Network)
Cost of Living: Xinjiang 2013 Infographic (November 20, 2013, Far West China)
Having lived in Xinjiang, China for a total of over 4 years now, and having recently rented my own apartment here in Urumqi, I thought it might be interesting to share with you a quick snapshot of the cost of living in Xinjiang as compared other parts of China, like Shanghai.
Photos: Worst Snowstorm in 50 Years Hits Harbin City (November 20, 2013, Way China)
The worst snowstorm for 50 years has struck Harbin City, capital of Heilongjiang province, north-east China. So far over 50,000 people have been mobilised in an effort to clear the snow. The storm has claimed at least 4 lives.
Raising retirement age an inevitable trend (November 20, 2013, Global Times)
According to the decision on major issues concerning comprehensively deepening reforms approved at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, China will map out a policy to gradually enable a higher retirement age threshold, signaling that reform hits another controversial and sensitive field.
A Chinese Fathers Most Important Job (November 21, 2013, China Real Time)
When it comes to parenting, Chinese fathers say the most important role they play is that of the family chauffeur. In a survey of 500 Chinese fathers released earlier this week by communications company JWT, respondents ranked driving their children to extracurricular activities and to school first and second, respectively, as the childcare responsibilities they most viewed as the responsibility of the male in the family.
Rose Gong: 'China's number one matchmaker' (November 21, 2013, BBC)
Serial entrepreneur Rose Gong has been talking about how she was inspired to create what is now China's biggest online dating site after being disappointed by her own online search for love in 2003.
Check out these photos of Shanghai's beautiful landscape captured from construction cranes (November 20, 2013, Shanghaiist)
A little cloudy, a little crowded, perhaps, but still a beautiful city. Photographer Wei Gensheng's new collection of Shanghai landscapes were captured from construction cranes throughout the city.
EDUCATION / HISTORY
Migrants with mortar boards (November 16, 2013, The Economist)
Students from China are the largest foreign contingent on American campusesmore than a quarter of the total and up by more than a fifth in a single year. Students from India and South Korea come next, but their numbers are declining, partly because more are heading to China to study, and partly because America has made it harder for foreigners to get work visas after they graduate.
Slideshow: What Hong Kong Looked Like 150 Years Ago (November 20, China Real Time)
It's hard to say what's more remarkable about the photographs of John Thomson: the fact that they have been so well preserved after 146 years, or the fact that a bearded, English-speaking Scotsman managed to so skillfully capture the personalities of ordinary Chinese people in the middle of the 19th century.
HEALTH
TCM gains ground (November 20, 2013, China Daily)
Traditional Chinese medicine, which has been practiced for thousands of years, is attracting new fans from abroad. Liu Zhihua finds out more. Earlier this year, Dongzhimen Hospital, a TCM hospital affiliated to Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, opened its international clinic in the heart of Beijing, to provide high-end health services to patients, using traditional Chinese medicine treatments and practices.
China starts to turn to drugs as awareness of depression spreads (November 20, 2013, The Guardian)Antidepressant market booming but health service is struggling to cope with numbers needing treatment.
ECONOMICS / BUSINESS / TRADE
Dont Fly Blind when Managing in China Chinese Negotiation Training Topics (November 15, 2013, ChinaSolved)
If you dont have time to plan for China, you dont have time to succeed in China. You need to figure out how to build your own independent channels of business intelligence and market data.
China's new home prices rise at record pace (November 17, 2013, CNBC)
China'a new home prices rose at a record pace in October, even as the country's leadership unveiled new measures on Friday aimed at stabilizing the red-hot property market. New home prices rose 9.6 percent in the month from a year earlier, the highest jump since records began in January 2011, according to Reuters calculations of data from China's National Bureau of Statistics on Monday. This compares to a 9.1 percent year on year increase in September.
China Employer Taxes / Employee Taxes. Are We Having Fun Yet? (November 18, 2013, China Law Blog)
To describe employer and employee taxes in China as complicated is an understatement. My law firm generally advices its clients to secure bookkeeping/accounting assistance for this, just as they generally use a payroll service back in their home country. Because of this, we generally do not get much involved with calculating these figures. However, a client of ours for whom we are handling a number of China employment law issues requested that we provide them with an overview of the employer taxes (broadly defined) and employee taxes (again, broadly defined) it could be expected to have to pay for the employees it would be hiring for its Chaoyang, Beijing, WFOE.
For small Indian businesses, Alibaba opens door to the world
The Chinese e-commerce giants exploits in India are not widely known. But with more than three million registered members like Choksi, India is home to the second-largest number of suppliers on Alibaba.com after China itself, accounting for nearly a tenth of the business-to-business (B2B) platforms global user base.
SCIENCE / TECHNOLOGY / ENVIRONMENT
Activists say they have found way round Chinese internet censorship (November 18, 2013, The Guardian)
Campaigners create 'mirror sites' to circumvent controls after Reuters and Wall Street journal websites are blocked.
China retains supercomputer crown in latest Top500 list (November 18, 2013, BBC)
A supercomputer built by the Chinese government has retained its place at the top of a list of the world's most powerful systems. Tianhe-2 can operate at 33.86 petaflop/s – the equivalent of 33,863 trillion calculations per second – according to a test called the Linpack benchmark.
China: Waste heat used to warm polluted city (November 21, 2013, BBC)
One of China's most polluted cities is using hot waste water from a refinery to warm homes and reduce smog, it's reported.
FOOD / TRAVEL / CULTURE
Chinese Students Hilariously Describe What They Think About Regional American Food (November 12, 2013, Buzzfeed)
Tumblr user nonomella is currently teaching in China. She made a PowerPoint of her students reactions to Regional/Iconic American Foods.
Where Does General Tso Chicken Actually Come From? (November 15, 2013, NPR)
Journalist Jennifer 8. Lee talks about her hunt for the origins of familiar Chinese-American dishes exploring the hidden spots where these two cultures have combined to form a new cuisine.
LANGUAGE / LANGUAGE LEARNING
BOOKS
Video: Empress Dowager Cixi (November 20, 2013, China File)
Author Jung Chung talks about her new book, Empress Dowager Cixi.
Five Beijing Books You Haven't Heard of But Should Read (November 21, 2013, The Beijinger)
As colder temperatures arrive, Beijing bunks down for the winter in a sort of socialized hibernation. With darkness falling around 5pm, long nights provide good stretches for reading. To fill those hours, here are five Beijing books with which even the most avid reader may not be familiar, but should add to their library.
ARTICLES FOR RESEARCHERS
A Brief Guide to Chinas Media Landscape (November 21, 2013, Danwei)
The table below shows mainland Chinas most important websites, newspapers, and broadcast news organizations, together with numbers for website traffic, circulation and audience.
ARTICLES IN CHINESE
中国教会的专制主义危机 (Pacific Institute for Social Sciences)
Image credit: Beijing Summer Palace, China, by Alberto Carrasco, Casado, via Flickr