ZGBriefs

ZGBriefs | January 16, 2025

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Featured Article

How China’s Lunar New Year Travel Rush Is World’s Biggest Annual Migration (January 14, 2025, Reuters)
Hundreds of millions of Chinese criss-cross the country during the Lunar New Year holidays each year to reunite with families back in their hometowns or for sight-seeing during an extended festive period, making it the world’s largest annual human migration. The Lunar New Year travel rush, known as Chunyun in Chinese, is often seen as a barometer for China’s economic health and a pressure test for its vast transportation system.

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Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

The Maps that Show How China’s Military Is Squeezing Taiwan (January 7, 2025, The Guardian)
China’s military launched a record number of warplane incursions around Taiwan in 2024 as it builds its ability to launch full-scale invasion, something a former chief of Taiwan’s armed forces said Beijing could be capable of within a decade. Analysts said China’s relentless harassment had taken a toll on Taiwan’s resources, but had failed to convince them to capitulate, largely because the threat of invasion was still an empty one, for now

Podcast – In the Room With Xi Jinping (January 9, 2025, Foreign Affairs)
The United States’ relationship with China has scarcely been so contentious. Over the last several years, the two powers have butted heads over trade and technology, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and Beijing’s belligerence in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Nicholas Burns has helped oversee Washington’s response to these rising tensions. Two years after his first conversation with editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan, Burns, in his final days as ambassador, looks back on the Biden administration’s approach to managing the relationship at this critical moment—and reflects on the need for diplomacy in the rivalry that may define the twenty-first century.

The ANTIDOTE to US-China Tension? (January 13, 2025, The National Committee on U.S. China Relations)
President Trump ended the Fulbright program to China and Hong Kong in 2020, pausing a longstanding avenue for academic exchange between the United States and China. Today, the numbers of American students studying in China have not yet bounced back to pre-COVID levels. As geopolitical tensions persist, can sustained academic exchange heal the damage done to the relationship during this period of distrust?

Religion

Governing the City Through Prayer: Part 1 (January 9, 2025, China Partnership)
For the Chinese church to have faith and depend on God in prayer. God doesn’t necessarily need a lot of people. Maybe he can use 300 or 7,000 – that might be enough. But each person needs to be very strong and rely on God’s power. We should pray for the strengthening of the Chinese church’s faith, and for them to believe in God’s great power.

Extending Blessings (January 10, 2025, ChinaSource)
In the social system in China, if you have a community service program which supports certain governing policies, your organization will be put in an advantageous position to reach out to a wide variety of target groups because of the endorsement of the officials. As a result, people will feel free to gather around and listen to you.

Listening to the Bible in One’s Heart Language Is Like Hearing Parents Speak’: Yunnan’s Ethnic Bible Translation Journey (January 13, 2025, China Christian Daily)
Yunnan Province, accommodating 25 ethnic groups, has the most ethnic diversity in China. The ethnic groups of Yi, Lisu, Jingpo, Lahu, Wa, Miao, Hani, Dai, Zhuang, Tibetan, and Nu, are Christian believers. Being able to listen to sermons, read the Bible, and sing hymns in their ethnic languages is a special expression of God’s love towards ethnic minority believers.

Governing the City Through Prayer: Part 2 (January 13, 2025, China Partnership)
God has given believers authority to govern. From one perspective, prayer is governance. When you pray for a city from God’s perspective – when you pray for God’s righteousness, mercy, and truth to be applied – you are actually governing that city. Non-believers can’t see this, but believers know. Every time we pray for a city like this, God is using his children to govern that city with his truth. This is something I feel very deeply.

Living to Be Forgotten (January 14, 2025, ChinaSource)
These radical disciples were basically refugees on the run, yet they carried the gospel wherever they went. Here is a gospel movement by God’s people, the unknown, unnamed, uncelebrated, ordinary disciples of Christ.  A mission movement without borders was started by these unknown people of the early church. They lived to be forgotten so that Christ will be remembered.

Society / Life

Filmmaker Sentenced to More than Three Years in Prison for Documentary on White-Paper Protests (January 8, 2025, China Digital Times)
In a closed-door trial on Monday, a judge sentenced 33-year-old Chen Pinlin to prison for three years and six months for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Chen had produced a documentary film about the White Paper protests on their one-year anniversary in November 2023. The film’s Chinese title is “Urumqi Middle Road,” a reference to the street in Shanghai where protesters gathered to express their anger over the government’s restrictive zero-COVID policies and censorship.

China’s Internal Struggles: The Rising Violence That Could Lead to Foreign Aggression (January 9, 2025, The Diplomat)
In November 2024, China experienced its deadliest known instance of public violence in a decade. A man, upset over his divorce settlement, plowed an SUV into a sports complex in the southern city of Zhuhai, killing 35 people and injuring over 40 others. An uptick in “revenge on society” attacks demonstrates the growing discontent at home. The CCP might seek to channel that anger to another target.

China Opens ICC to Rebrand Xinjiang (January 10, 2025, China Media Project)
Xinjiang’s ICC, despite the long wait and the lofty expectations ascribed to it, is unlikely to give us any new, innovative content. But it’s merely one more weapon in what they have called “a smokeless war” for global public opinion — one the Chinese Party-state is determined to win.

Making Global Citizens: Framing China’s Encounter with English (January 10, 2025, Global China Pulse)
These transformations have prompted anxieties (social, political, and economic) about the future. In general, people talk about a scramble to get ahead and the fear of being left behind. The dream is to be wealthy, mobile, sophisticated, working for a multinational company, and able to jet off to Paris whenever the mood strikes. These attempts by people to position themselves—and their child—as new kinds of citizens, to remake themselves as global cosmopolitans, are what is driving the continuing English fever in China.

Protests Turn Violent in China After Student Falls to His Death (January 11, 2025, CNN)
Violent protests have erupted in China after the death of a teenage boy sparked accusations of a cover-up by authorities, videos from the northwestern region of Shaanxi have shown. In videos verified by CNN, dozens of protesters are seen confronting a wall of riot police outside the Pucheng Vocational Technical School, with some hurling batons and other objects towards the officers.

China’s Work Culture Must Change to Give Young People Hope Again (January 11, 2025, South China Morning Post)
As the new year unfolds and people return to thoughts of work, it is an opportune time to look at what the Chinese workplace might have in store for them. The labour force is grappling with a problem of youth unemployment, including among university graduates. This workforce cohort is seemingly caught in a painful pincer movement. On one side they face economic changes and reduced demand for their labour and, on the other, there are social changes shaping new views on work and work ethics.

Economics / Trade / Business

The Truth Behind Your $12 Dress: Inside the Chinese Factories Fuelling Shein’s Success (January 12, 2025, BBC News)
The hum of sewing machines is a constant in parts of Guangzhou, a thriving port on the Pearl River in Southern China. I rattles through the open windows of factories from morning until late at night, as they finish the t-shirts, shirts, blouses, pants and swimwear that will be shipped to fill wardrobes in more than 150 countries. This is the sound of Panyu, the neighborhood know as the “Shein village”, a warren of factories that power the world’s largest fashion retailer. “ If there are 31 days in a month, I will work 31 days,” one worker told the BBC.

China’s Exports in December Up 10.7%, Beating Estimates as Higher U.S. Tariffs Loom (January 13, 2025, NPR News)
China’s exports in December grew at a faster pace than expected, as factories rushed to fill orders to beat higher tariffs that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose once he takes office. Exports rose 10.7% from a year earlier. Economists had forecast they would grow about 7%. Imports rose 1% year-on-year. Analysts had expected them to shrink about 1.5%. With exports outpacing imports, China’s trade surplus grew to $104.84 billion.

Science / Technology

Positive Spin: Can AI and Algorithms Fix China’s Content Crisis? (January 13, 2025, Sixth Tone)
As scrutiny of algorithmic practices intensifies in China, short video app Kuaishou announced plans to use AI-driven tools to combat rumors, improve platform governance, and amplify “positive” content. Several platforms, including Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, and shopping platform Pinduoduo, have recently said they intend to improve transparency regarding their algorithms and platform management.

Travel / Food 

Video – I Took Three Italian Chefs to China’s Famous Noodle Province, Part 1 (December 31, 2024, SaintCavish)
I took three outstanding Italian chefs, all based in Asia, to China’s most famous province for noodles to have a look and to learn. In this three-part series, Riccardo La Perna (formerly of 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo, Shanghai and Macau), Paolo Vitaletti (from Appia, Bangkok) and Marino D’Antonio (formerly of Giada Garden, Beijing) meet some of the noodle masters of Shanxi province. In episode one, the chefs arrive to Taiyuan and immediately jump into the world of Shanxi noodles.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

China Unveils New MCN Rules (January 13, 2025, China Media Project)
Last Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the national agency overseeing the country’s internet and online content regulation, released a draft regulation aimed at standardizing the operations of the multi-channel network institutions (MCN机构) that serve as intermediaries for content creators on social media platforms. The draft is the latest effort to strengthen oversight of China’s social media industry, ensuring first and foremost that they adhere to political controls.

With a TikTok Ban Looming, Users Flee to Chinese App ‘Red Note’ (January 13, 2024, Wired)
As TikTok anxiously awaits a Supreme Court decision that could determine whether it will be banned in the United States, users are preemptively fleeing the app and migrating to another Chinese social media platform called Xiaohongshu, which literally means “little red book” in Mandarin. As of Monday, Xiaohongshu was the number one most-downloaded app in Apple’s US App Store, despite the fact that it doesn’t even have an official English name.

Language / Language Learning

Best of Hacking Chinese 2024 (January 13, 2025, Hacking Chinese)
Another year has come to an end. Which were the most popular articles on Hacking Chinese in 2024? The most popular podcast episodes? It’s time to summarise the year that was and highlight the things you really shouldn’t miss!

Books

Book Review – How God’s Word Spreads in China and Beyond (January 13, 2025, ChinaSource)
Do miracles happen in our time? In From Banned Book to Bestseller: The Bible in Contemporary China,Cynthia Oh resoundingly answers that question by telling the miraculous story of Bible printing in China. Less than sixty years ago, owning a Bible was against the law in China, and citizens found with a Bible could easily be subject to severe punishment. Since that dark time, however, owning a Bible in China has not only become widespread but openly printing Bibles there has become a major achievement.

When Beijing Was China’s Most International City (January 13, 2025, Sixth Tone)
These and other snippets of life in China’s capital were compiled by Ouyang Zhesheng for his newly translated book “Ancient Beijing and Western Civilization,” which chronicles the experiences of Western missionaries and envoys in Beijing during the Yuan (1279–1368), Ming (1368–1644), and Qing dynasties (1644–1911). A professor of history at Peking University, Ouyang set out to recover the history of Beijing as a global city, including the daily lives, correspondences, and observations of its Western residents.

Living Cross-Culturally

Are You Paying Your Ayi Enough? Latest Survey Results Are In (January 10, 2025, The Beijinger Blog)
If you haven’t heard of hiring an ayi, you probably haven’t lived in Beijing long enough. Just about every Beijinger who has the means to hire an ayi would consider one because they can relieve you of grueling everyday responsibilities like pesky housework or even entertaining young children. Yet for many foreigners (and locals, for that matter) the ayi industry is shrouded in mystery. What exactly does an ayi do? How much should you pay her? What are reasonable working hours? In an effort to gain some clarity for Beijing families, every year jingkids runs the Ayi Survey where we ask respondents about their ayi‘s work hours, pay rates, experience, responsibilities, and benefits.

Pray for China

January 10 (Pray For China: A Walk Through History)
James F. Broumton (巴子成) and Charles H. Judd (祝名扬) became the first Protestant missionaries to take up residence in Guizhou when they moved to Guiyang in Jan. 1877. Judd soon returned to the China Inland Mission base in Hubei. However, Broumton remained in Guiyang after marrying fellow CIM worker Ellen McCarthy (麦卡悌) and pioneered work among the Miao and Yi minorities. Pray for Han, Miao, and Yi missionaries to be effective in cross-cultural ministry in Guizhou, Hubei and to the ends of the earth. Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” Acts 8:35-36

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Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Jon Kuert

After his first trip to China in 2001, Jon Kuert served as the director of AFC Global for seven years and was responsible for sending teams of students and volunteers to China and other parts of Asia. After that, he and his wife Elissa moved to Yunnan province where they …View Full Bio