ZGBriefs | January 30, 2025

Featured Article

The Growth of Christianity in China May Have Come to an End (January 10, 2025, Sage Journals)
Christianity in China grew rapidly in the decades following the end of the Cultural Revolution. Some scholars and journalists claim that Christianity in China is still expanding in the twenty-first century. In this study, the authors contrast evidence for such claims with the results from two decades of survey data. In 19 nationally representative surveys conducted since the early 2000s, the authors find no clear evidence that Christianity continues to grow as a share of China’s population. 

Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

Chinese Experts, State Media React to the Arrival of Trump 2.0 (January 22, 2025, China Digital Times)
Like their American counterparts, Chinese leaders in academia, government, and the media are working to discern and shape the new trajectory of U.S.-China relations under a second Trump administration, now that he has officially taken office this week.

Religion

How Our Church Prays (January 23, 2025, China Partnership)
Praying for the city isn’t just a vague exercise. It requires you to understand the city. To pray with purpose and meaning, we need to understand the beauty, brokenness, and idols of the city. This has also helped us experience remarkable growth in evangelism.

Practicing Faith Through Hospitality During Spring Festival (January 26, 2023, China Christian Daily)
People may boast of their wealth or status with lavish banquets, but Christian hospitality aims to glorify God. In practicing hospitality over the Spring Festival, we can focus on sharing the gospel and conveying God’s grace in every act of kindness. We can use our homes for evangelism, with tables set with love, offering a feast of faith, love, and wisdom, and sharing God’s love with more people.

Snake in the Chinese Culture and Serpent in the Bible (January 27, 2025, ChinaSource)
When the Year of the Snake arrives on the Chinese lunar calendar, the Chinese people routinely say something auspicious related to snakes, such as “The snake travels a thousand miles, and I wish all is well with you,” “The golden snake welcomes the spring, bringing you good fortune, longevity, peace, and health.” But in Chinese culture, the snake is not only a symbol of health, wealth, wisdom, agility, and mystery, but also considered to be a symbol of cunning, malice, and danger.

Tithing as Proof of Citizenship (January 27, 2025, China Partnership)
Tithing is a way believers actively live out their faith by storing up their treasures in heaven, because it demonstrates where their allegiance lies and where their hearts long to be. A Christian’s tithe to the church is much like a passport; it is proof of heavenly citizenship.

Slithering Into the Year of the Snake (January 28, 2025, ChinaSource)
As we welcome the Year of the Snake, our team has prepared a short video to send heartfelt New Year’s blessings to all our readers! We also invite you to explore our archive of articles that delve into the spiritual and cultural dimensions of the Lunar New Year. Wishing you and your family a joyful and blessed Lunar New Year! 蛇年大吉，“蛇”么都有！

Society / Life

As China’s Population Continues to Plummet, Demographic Alarms Are Ringing (January 21,2025, Christian Science Monitor)
China’s population fell last year for the third straight year, its government said Jan. 17, pointing to further demographic challenges for the world’s second most populous nation, which is now facing both an aging population and an emerging shortage of working-age people.

Pet Healthcare Booms in China as Furry Friends Outnumber Infants and Toddlers (January 25, 2025, South China Morning Post)
Just a few months after opening his first pet clinic in Hangzhou in early 2019, Yang Zhong, the founder of Joy Pet Hospital, launched two more branches. Despite the lingering impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and a property market downturn on many industries, China’s pet economy is thriving, fuelling Yang’s ambitions for rapid expansion.

China Is More In Love With Its Pandas Than Ever. That’s Complicated Matters for Beijing (January 26, 2025, CNN)
Hailed in imperial times as the “land of heavenly abundance,” Sichuan is now better known as the “hometown of pandas.” The mountainous province boasts a latticework of panda nature reserves and breeding centers, all built in recent decades as China – and the world – raced to save the multimillion years old “living fossil” from extinction.

Collage: The Year of the Snake (January 28, 2025, Sixth Tone)
This week marks the official beginning of the Year of the Snake, and cities across China are ringing in the Chinese New Year with lanterns, ice sculptures, and light shows. Here are highlights of New Year’s celebrations from across China, as selected by Sixth Tone.

Economics / Business / Trade

Understanding Emotional Consumption in China: A Lunar New Year Perspective (January 22, 2025, ChinaSkinny)
China’s younger generation is not only acknowledging mental health challenges but also addressing them through “guzi” goods – products that cater to emotional consumption. Items such as collectible figurines and plush toys, designed to lift spirits, have become increasingly popular.

Share of U.S. Companies in China Looking to Relocate Hits a Record High, Survey Finds (January 23, 2025, CNBC)
A record share of U.S. companies in China are accelerating their plans to relocate manufacturing or sourcing, according to a business survey released Thursday. About 30% of the respondents considered or started such diversification in 2024, surpassing the prior high of 24% in 2022, according to annual surveys from the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

China’s Position in the Global Aviation Industry (January 27, 2025, The Diplomat)
China’s aviation ambitions are soaring to new heights, as evidenced by it’s latest push to persuade Vietnam to authorize domestically produced jets for operation. China is trying to set up domestic firm COMAC as a challenger to Western giants Airbus and Boeing.

Education

U.S. – China Higher Education Exchange (January 22, 2025, National Center for U.S. China Relations)
Watch NYU Shanghai’s Vice Chancellor Jeffrey Lehman and Tsinghua University’s Vice President & Provost Yang Bin provide insight on the state of U.S.-China higher education exchange in a discussion moderated by CGTN’s Senior Host Liu Xin. This dialogue was part of the 2024 U.S.-China People’s Dialogue, which took place in Beijing on November 22, 2024.

China’s Sichuan University Overtakes Stanford, MIT and Oxford in High-Quality Research (January 25, 2025, South China Morning Post)
A regional university in southwest China, little known to the wider world, has eclipsed much more famous Western institutions with its high-quality scientific research output, according to a new ranking of global universities. Sichuan University (SCU), in Chengdu, the provincial capital, has overtaken Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Oxford University and the University of Tokyo in less than two years, according to the latest Nature Index.

China to Prioritize Physical Education in Schools as Obesity Rate Rises (January 27, 2025, Reuters)
China is aiming to beef up physical education in schools, making it core to the curriculum rather than a secondary subject, authorities said as they push for a more “holistic education” amid growing concerns about the rise in childhood obesity. Primary and secondary schools must ensure physical education teachers are treated “the same as their colleagues in subjects such as Chinese, math and English, and intensify efforts to develop key sports such as soccer, basketball and volleyball,” the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the country’s Ministry of Education.

Science / Technology

We Tried Out DeepSeek. It Worked Well, Until We Asked It About Tiananmen Square and Taiwan (January 28, 2025, The Guardian)
The launch of a new chatbot by Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek triggered a plunge in US tech stocks as it appeared to perform as well as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI models, but using fewer resources. By Monday, DeepSeek’s AI assistant had rapidly overtaken ChatGPT as the most popular free app in Apple’s US and UK app stores. Despite its popularity with international users, the app appears to censor answers to sensitive questions about China and its government.

Exclusive: Images Show China Building Huge Fusion Research Facility, Analysts Say (January 28, 2025, Reuters)
China appears to be building a large laser-ignited fusion research centre in the southwestern city of Mianyang, experts at two analytical organisations say, a development that could aid nuclear weapons design and work exploring power generation.

History / Culture

How China’s ‘cultural confidence’ push is sparking the revival of traditional crafts (January 26, 2025, South China Morning Post)
Liu is one of many entrepreneurs from less-developed parts of China to have benefited from the country’s renewed emphasis on preserving and revitalising cultural heritage – a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping’s vision to instill “cultural confidence” in the population of 1.4 billion.

Travel / Food 

Try Making Dumplings This CNY With These Recipes (January 24, 2025, The Beijinger Blog)
Making Dumplings is a wonderful part of the Chinese New Year Celebration, and if you and your family and friends want to try and make them at home we have three great recipes for you to try. All three can be made using the same basic dumpling wrapper recipe, or you can buy store-made wrappers.

This Spring Festival, Travelers Are Swiping Right — On Each Other’s Homes (January 28, 2025, Sixth Tone)
A record 9 billion trips are expected this Spring Festival, and travel costs are soaring to match. Budget hotels have tripled their rates, flights are packed, and finding a good deal feels impossible. To sidestep the steep prices, some travelers are turning to house swaps — trading their own homes for a temporary stay somewhere new.

Language / Language Learning

A Chinese Conversation Nādi in Cairo: The Grassroots Popularity of Mandarin Chinese in the Middle East (January 20, 2025, Global China Pulse)
Across today’s Middle East, Mandarin’s economic value is a socially accepted, powerful truth. By this, I mean two interrelated things. First, there is increasing awareness that Mandarin is an important language in global trade (Loh 2023); and second, proficiency in Mandarin provides a type of human capital useful to pursue promising job prospects and opportunities for free training and higher education in Chinese universities.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

China’s Fastest-Growing App (January 22, 2024, China Media Project)
All eyes may be on TikTok and its ongoing drama in the US, but it’s not the only killer app in Chinese tech giant ByteDance’s quiver. The Beijing-based company, which has been the focus of concerns in Washington that it is beholden to the Beijing leadership, has developed another streaming service that is dominating the hot new market for micro-dramas (短劇) — TV series cut into bit-sized snippets of between one to 15 minutes.

Quality Journalism in China Is Not Dead; It’s Just More Dispersed Than Ever (January 28, 2025, Made In China Journal)
One full cycle of the Chinese zodiac has passed since the beginning of the Xi Jinping era, marking 12 years of significant transformation in the landscape of Chinese journalism. While some observers declared its demise several years ago, in this essay, I argue that despite the formidable challenges it faces, journalism in China remains remarkably resilient.

Pray for China

January 25 (Pray For China: A Walk Through History)
Dong Jing’an (董景安先生) became a Christian at age 13 while attending a Baptist school in Ningbo, Zhejiang. His lifetime work as an educator and evangelist included serving as a full professor at the Shanghai Baptist College and Seminary, as the founding principal of the Dinghai Zhoushan Secondary School, and as the general secretary of the Chinese Home Mission Society (中华国内布道会). Dong went to be with the Lord on Jan. 25, 1944, and was survived by his wife and 70 children and grandchildren. Pray for Christian educators to follow Dong Jing’an in being zealous for the Lord. His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” John 2:17

Praying for China | Prayercast (January , 2025, ChinaSource)
Aiming to activate a global prayer movement, Prayercast “provides video resources and information on every nation and religion in the world!