ZGBriefs | April 7, 2016

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Featured Article

Inside A Chinese Self-Help Group (April 1, 2016, Roads and Kingdoms)
I found my self-help group through an Uber driver. In China, the car service’s drivers are often part-timers who have other occupations—hotel managers, entrepreneurs, housewives—each with his or her own reason for driving, but with the common desire of “going out and learning.”

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Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

Chairman of everything (April 2, 2016, The Economist)
Mr Xi has encouraged the revival of a term that was invented by Deng to describe strong leaders such as himself and Mao: the “core”, or hexin.

China Censors Mentions of ‘Panama Papers’ Leak (April 5, 2016, The New York Times)
The top censored phrases monitored on Monday on Weibo by the University of Hong Kong’s Weiboscope all appeared to be related to the Panama Papers: tax evasion, file, leaked, Putin and company.

China restricts North Korea trade over nuclear tests (April 5, 2016, BBC)
China has said is restricting trade with North Korea, announcing bans on gold and some coal imports and jet fuel exports, in line with UN sanctions. The commerce ministry is also banning the importation of so-called "rare earth metals" used in high-tech goods.

Former top China military official 'took huge bribes' (April 4, 2016, BBC)
The military in China say a former top military official, Guo Boxiong, has confessed to taking "huge bribes" in return for promotions. Gen Guo, 74, stepped down as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission in 2012. The government began investigating him last July.

Crackdown in China: Worse and Worse (April 21, 2016, New York Review of Books)
As a liberal, I no longer feel I have a future in China,” a prominent Chinese think tank head in the process of moving abroad recently lamented in private. Such refrains are all too familiar these days as educated Chinese professionals express growing alarm over their country’s future.

Religion

Dozens of Christians Injured As Chinese Officials Remove More Crosses from Zhejiang Churches (April 1, 2016, The Gospel Herald)
A number of Christians protesting the demolition of over a dozen church crosses in China's coastal Zhejiang province this past week were beaten and bloodied after clashing with Chinese officers. According to a recent report from China Aid, an organization which tracks Christian persecution in China, over 100 demolition workers took down the cross atop Shangen Church last week, and severely injured a female church member protesting the move.

China's Catholics: 'Rome may betray us, but I won’t join a Church which is controlled by the Communist Party’ (April 4, 2016, The Telegraph)
Father Dong Baolu’s flock were gathered outdoors beside a row of foul-smelling lavatories. They had no choice but to worship in this furtive way, as China does not recognise these so-called “house churches”.

Copying the Bible by Hand (April 5, 2016, Chinese Church Voices)
Over the years, many stories have come out of China about believers who, having no access to the printed Word, painstakingly write out the Scriptures by hand. The 21st century has put a new spin on that practice—copying out the Bible by hand not because of its unavailability but in order to break an addiction to online games!

“Passive” Church Planting in China (April 6, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
This “passive church planting” strategy may not have been what this pastor originally had in mind when he set out to grow his church. Looking back, he can now see how the Lord used both internal and external events to bring about church multiplication.

Society / Life

A ‘Lost’ Daughter Speaks, and All of China Listens (March 30, 2016, Foreign Policy)
I went to China to find the birth mother who left me on a street corner. Instead, I became the focus of a nation’s buried pain.

What if Mama Has a New Baby? – A New Question Facing Chinese Kids (March 31, 2016, What’s on Weibo)
Now that young couples have the option to have a second child, China’s young generations face a question that their parents did not face: what if mum has another baby? One company’s marketing campaign has stirred an online public debate on the issue.

Photos: Bad Earth: The Human Costs of Pollution in China (March 31, 2016, China File)
From Beijing and Tianjin to Hebei and Inner Mongolia, Datta’s camera captures the ways lives continue to be diminished. Farmers look tiny beside open cast mines, endless lakes of tailings, and panoramas of smokestacks and cooling towers.

Xinhua: “April Fools’ at Odds With Socialist Values” (April 1, 2016, China Digital Times)
China’s state news agency Xinhua issued a brief statement on its official Sina Weibo account on Friday warning the Chinese public that April Fools’ Day is “at odds with Chinese cultural traditions and the country’s core socialist values.”

Meet ‘Depth of Field’: The Month’s Best Chinese Photojournalism (April 3, 2016, China File)
Our opening column features stories from Beijing to Zimbabwe, on subjects from teens dropping out of the education system to adults seeking sex ed.

Wuhan! (April 4, 2016, From the West Courtyard)
Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province and has a population of over ten million. Strategically situated on the Yangtze River in Hubei province, it’s really three cities; Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang. It is famous for being one of China’s “furnace cities.”

'Shanghai Nightscapes': Dancing, Drinking And All That Jazz (April 5, 2016, NPR)
It's 9:30 on a Thursday night and Chinese and foreign jazz fans descend on the JZ Club in Shanghai's former French Concession. Glasses clink and the splashing sound of cymbals ripple through a cabaret setting bathed in soft red light. Andrew Field, an American historian, says clubs like JZ represent a return to Shanghai's cosmopolitan past.

Chinese honor ancestors on Tomb-sweeping day (April 5, 2016, China Daily)
On Qingming, or Tomb-sweeping Day, over 5.4 million people paid visits to the 150 burial sites nationwide monitored by the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA), according to the ministry figures. During the three-day Tomb-sweeping holiday, which ended on Monday, more than 13 million people visited the cemeteries.

Beijing to Ban Electric Bikes on 10 Major Streets, Including Chang'an Jie (April 6, 2016, The Beijinger)
Electric bikes are about to bear the blame for a significant number of traffic accidents, as Beijing’s Public Security Bureau (PSB) will ban the popular and economical means of transport from Chang’an Jie and nine other major Beijing streets, beginning April 11, China state media reported.

Shanghai police release list of 36 drivers banned for Life (April 6, 2016, China Daily)
Shanghai police on Tuesday released a list of 36 citizens who have been banned from driving for life. This is the first time the local police have publicly shamed the drivers by publishing a list of those who have had their licenses revoked amid a crackdown on unruly driving.

Infographic: Charity Law to give good Samaritans a helping hand (April 6, 2016, China Daily)

Economics / Trade / Business

McDonalds to open 1,250 new China outlets (March 31, 2016, BBC)
McDonald's is to open 1,250 new restaurants in China over the next five years as it focuses on high-growth markets to boost sales. This would make China the fast food chain's second-largest market after the US.

Chinese government imposes tariff on EU steel imports (April 1, 2016, The Guardian)
The Chinese government said it had slapped the tariff on “grain-oriented electrical steel” imported from the European Union, South Korea and Japan. It justified the move by saying imports from abroad were causing substantial damage to its domestic steel industry.

Death ecommerce is the latest sector to feel China’s internet boom (April 6, 2016, Tech in Asia)
China’s big-name ecommerce firms all have significant offerings, of course. On JD.com you can buy caskets, urns, and other funeral-related items, and the most popular among them have been purchased hundreds of times. 

Education

China’s Rural Youngsters Drop Out of School at Alarming Rate (April 1, 2016, China File)
Chen is among the millions of students in rural areas who quit school each year without completing high school. Although there are no official statistics, studies by various research institutions say one in three students in villages—some 3 million teenagers on average—quit school every year before earning a high school diploma.

Chinese 'parachute kids' flock to US schools (April 5, 2016, China Daily)
But the pursuit of the American dream can quickly turn into a nightmare, experts warn, as many of these so-called parachute kid live in the US with little parental supervision and can end up in trouble — and even in prison.

Health / Environment

Signing Up Organ Donors in China Can Be an Uphill Battle (April 6, 2016, The New York Times)
When Cao Yanfang left her nursing job to become a full-time “human organ donation coordinator,” someone who asks families to donate their just-deceased relatives’ organs, she set herself the goal of persuading one in 100 families to give. That was in 2010, when China set up a nationwide voluntary donation system.

Science / Technology

China Real Time Tests Xiaomi’s Smart Rice Cooker (April 4, 2016, China Real Time)
We have smartphones and smart watches. But do we need a smart … rice cooker? What even is a smart rice cooker? And, wait, isn’t rice the easiest food in the world to make?

The Architect of China’s Great Firewall Was Himself Blocked by the Firewall (April 6, 2016, TIME)
Talk about irony. Fang Binxing, the controversial creator of China’s Great Firewall, the filtering mechanism by which the government dictates what Chinese can and can’t see online, was himself blocked from viewing a South Korean website during a recent talk at the Harbin Institute of Technology, according to a report in the Hong Kong–based daily Ming Pao.

History / Culture

The Legend Behind Beihai Lake (March 31, 2016, The World of Chinese)
Looking out into the vast body of water at the center of Beihai Park, one might wonder why Beijing, a relatively dry area, is so obsessed with aesthetically pleasing fresh water lakes. The answer, simply put, is immortality. The landscape of Beihai is based off of an old Chinese story of an Emperor’s quest for the fountain of youth.

Everyday life in Beijing in 1957 (April 1, 2016, Everyday Life in Mao’s China)

Celebrating the establishment of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in 1958 (April 3, 2016, Everyday Life in Mao’s China)

Chaos of Cultural Revolution Echoes at a Lonely Cemetery, 50 Years Later (April 4, 2016, The New York Times)
Yet this cemetery in Chongqing, an industrial city on the Yangtze River, is the only sizable one left solely for those killed then. Mr. Zheng, 73, is one of the aging custodians of their harrowing stories. He buried many of the 400 to 500 bodies here, on the edge of a park in the Shapingba district.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

‘River Town’s’ Chinese Director on Censors, Ghosts and Big Changes on the Big Screen (April 1, 2016, China Real Time)
And Mr. Lu maintains that in order to deliver the best final product, a filmmaker must be prepared to take some liberties – particularly in China, where films often face even tighter restrictions than print or online content.

Reality show singer breaks China's Cultural Revolution taboo (April 1, 2016, The Guardian)
Nearly half a century after his father plunged to his death from the roof of a Beijing university, Yang Le stepped out on to the stage to tell millions of Chinese television viewers how Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution had torn his family apart.

China News Blackout as ‘Ten Years’ Takes Hong Kong Best Film Award (April 4, 2016, The New York Times)
That was because the top honor went to “Ten Years,” a low-budget independent production depicting a dark future for a Hong Kong bullied by the mainland government into assimilation.

Digital Paper in China Covers Contentious Issues, Now in English (April 5, 2016, The New York Times)
The Paper is a new media success story in a fast-changing marketplace for news. It covers contentious issues — such as official corruption and a recent scandal involving improperly stored vaccines — with a clutch of digital bells and whistles. Its smartphone app, it says, has been downloaded about 10 million times.

Travel / Food

Online Visas for China (both as a group or singly) (April 4, 2016, Sapore di Cina)
Since 2016, if you have a passport form one of the countries listed on this page, it is possible to get your Chinese visa directly online at China Visa Direct, a platform authorized by the Ministry of Public Safety of the People’s Republic of China. This means that you can get your visa without having to go to the consulate or mail your passport.

Video: Going Local in China, Part 4: Food of China (April 4, 2016, Johnny Jet)
Some speak of China’s food with fear and others while drooling, but after having been myself, I side with the latter. The food surely was foreign but it also made each dining experience exciting!

A Travel Agency’s Warning for Tourists in Taiwan (April 5, 2016, China Digital Times)
Tourists are encouraged to rein in behaviour that may make a bad impression on locals, and to steer clear of symbols of the island’s de facto self-rule.

What you can’t miss on your first trip to Tibet (April 6, 2016, Wild China Blog)
This is one of Asia’s most geographically and culturally rich destinations; here are the sites you cannot miss on a trip to Tibet.

Books

Hacking Chinese: A Practical Guide to Learning Mandarin (April 4, 2016, Hacking Chinese)
The book is about how to learn Mandarin Chinese, but most of what I talk about also applies to learning other dialects or even other languages.

Cao Wenxuan: Chinese author wins top children's literature prize (April 5, 2016, BBC)
Beijing-based author Cao Wenxuan has become the first Chinese author to win the Hans Christian Andersen award for children's literature. The award is considered the top prize in the field. 

Events

Chinese Worldviews Course (ERRC)
Study Abroad in China
Dates: June 19-July 6, 2016
This course is designed for those who will do ministry among the Chinese, whether in North America or in China.

Image credit: Biker with Umbrella, by Bernd Thaller, via Flickr