ZGBriefs | June 25, 2015

Featured Article

The village and the girl (June 24, 2015, BBC)
She spent her childhood working in the fields, feeding the family’s pigs. The destruction of rural China became for Xiao Zhang a liberation – and an opportunity. This is the story of how her life changed as much as her country.

Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

Foreign Groups Fear China Oversight Plan (June 17, 2015, The New York Times)
If the government adopts the legislation unchanged — a prospect many experts say is likely given the party’s approach to lawmaking — foreign groups working in China will have to find a government sponsor and seek police approval for all “activities.” With few exceptions, they will be barred from accepting donations inside China and will be required to hire Chinese citizens for at least half of all staff positions. And professional associations, whether for scientists or insurance brokers, will be prohibited from accepting Chinese members.

China Prepares 'Traditional Culture' Textbooks for Its Officials (June 18, 2015, Caixin Online)
A series of textbooks focusing on traditional Chinese culture and history recently appeared at the country's top academy for civil servants, paving the way for what state media reported is the government's first attempt to systematically train officials and Communist Party cadres in the subjects.

Fighting China Corruption? There’s an App for That (June 19, 2015, China Real Time)
The Central Committee for Discipline Inspection this week updated its smartphone app to allow users to report instances of official corruption on the spot and upload cellphone photos to back it up. Best of all for the nervous cadre, it can be done anonymously.

Chinese website shows photos from disputed reef in South China Sea (June 19, 2015, The Guardian)
A Chinese website has published photographs from one of the reefs under China’s control in the disputed South China Sea showing female sailors posing on ocean breakwalls, vegetable gardens being watered and even pigs in a pen.

What next in Hong Kong-Beijing democracy tussle? (June 19, 2015, BBC)
Lawmakers in Hong Kong have rejected a highly controversial proposal by the government to change the way the territory chooses its top leader. The vote failed after only eight members of the Legislative Council voted for the motion, with 28 against it. Most of the other lawmakers in the 70-member council staged a dramatic walkout.

13 Arrested in China After Clashes With Police (June 20, 2015, The New York Times)
The police in a southern Chinese township arrested 13 people who illegally detained officials and police officers and stormed a police station and a government building in a dispute over a young woman’s death, the authorities said late Friday.

China's hackers got what they came for (June 21, 2015, The Hill)
The Chinese hackers who are believed to have cracked into the federal government’s networks might not be back for a while. They got what they came for. “I think they have 95 percent of what they want from both U.S. industry and government,” said Tom Kellermann, chief cybersecurity officer at security research firm Trend Micro.

When Corrupt Chinese Officials Flee, The U.S. Is A Top Destination (June 23, 2015, NPR) 
The U.S. may not seem like an obvious destination, but Huang Feng, a criminal law expert at Beijing Normal University, says there's a clear rationale. The fugitives pick the U.S. for its standard of living and its mature legal system. They know that the U.S. and China have no extradition treaty, and that the U.S. is wary of sending fugitives back to China, where they may be denied legal due process.

China’s Biggest Taboos: The Three Ts (June 23, 2015, The Diplomat)
Almost upon arrival in China, one is counseled not to discuss the three Ts — Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen.

Deadly Clash Between Police and Ethnic Uighurs Reported in Xinjiang Region of China (June 24, 2015, The New York Times)
More than a dozen people were killed in the Xinjiang region of far western China this week in a clash between ethnic Uighurs and the police, according to a report by Radio Free Asia that was largely corroborated by local residents, including a police officer.

Why China warned the US to stay away (June 24, 2015, BBC)
Beijing is not spending billions of dollars on huge land reclamation hundreds of miles from its own coast to help fishermen. These islands are military and strategic. China is alone in claiming the whole of the South China Sea. Now it is creating "facts on the ground". That runway is not for tourist flights.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang steps out of President Xi Jinping's shadow (June 24, 2015, South China Morning Post)
Eclipsed by a strongman president, Premier Li Keqiang has been steadily winning praise for stewarding the economy from behind the scenes.

Religion

Why China restricts fasting by Xinjiang Muslims during Ramadan (June 18, 2015, Christian Science Monitor)
Civil servants, students, and teachers in China's far-western Xinjiang Province have been prevented from fasting during the Islamic holy month.

Matteo Ricci's “Maxims” and Friends (June 19, 2015, The Catholic World Report)
The methods of the 16th-century Jesuit missionary to China offer lessons for Christians living in suspicious or hostile cultures.

China opens new land route for Indian pilgrims to Tibet (June 22, 2015, Reuters)
China inaugurated a new land crossing into Tibet on Monday for Indian pilgrims who wish to visit one of the holiest sites in both Hinduism and Buddhism, state media said, as the two countries seek to set aside differences and improve ties.

Responses to the Cruise Ship Sinking (June 23, 2015, Chinese Church Voices)
As is the case in any country now, Chinese citizens went online to express their grief. Christians joined the conversation as well, using the incident to reflect on the meaning of life and death, and the urgency of spreading the gospel. In this article, translated from Christian Times, the author offers three things for Christians to consider.

Shekou International School’s church must stay off Facebook, Twitter to hold on to lease at new meeting site (June 24, 2015, China Aid)
A large church in southern China that draws hundreds of mainland Chinese and foreign Christians for weekly worship services has been told that if photos of its meetings appear on international social media sites, it would lose the lease on its new meeting site.

China considers harsher punishment for cults (June 24, 2015, China Daily)
China's legislators are discussing harsher punishment for those involved in cults or superstitious activities that hamper the implementation of laws and regulations. According to a draft amendment to the Criminal Law, deliberated on Wednesday, in serious cases the maximum punishment may be extended to life imprisonment, in addition to fines or confiscation of property.

Society / Life

Video: House washed away in China floods (June 18, 2015, BBC)
Mobile phone footage shows a house being washed away by floodwater in Dungog in New South Wales during a fierce storm.

More ‘Tofu Buildings’? String of Collapses Causes Alarm in China (June 19, 2015, China Real Time)
A spate of building collapses in China has left more than two-dozen people dead in recent weeks – and the country’s authorities are sounding the alarm. Chen Zhenggao, China’s housing minister, this week ordered that old buildings be put under intensified checks and renovated if they are deemed to pose a safety risk.

China’s Stolen Children – Why Babies Are Booming Business (June 22, 2015, What’s on Weibo)
In China, around 70,000 children are kidnapped and sold on the black market every year. As the internal trafficking of children has become a serious social problem, Weibo netizens are crying out for help.

Americans Drive on the Left and Other Truths I’ve Learned (June 22, 2015, From the West Courtyard)
It’s amazing the amount of implicit cultural assumptions we carry around in our noggins, and that sort of thing is liable to trip a person up when dealing cross-culturally.

All Together Now (June 23, 2015, Outside-In)
I had a good chuckle because seeing people do things as a group is a fairly common site in China. Students (from pre-school to university) learn how to march in step and do synchronized morning exercises. Security guards practice goose-stepping in front of the establishments they guard.

A Chinese Miner With a Heart of Gold (June 23, 2015, The New York Times)
He Quangui spends his days in a bed connected to a battered oxygen machine that pumps air into his lungs. The monotonous sound is punctuated only by his gasping cough. Like many of his fellow villagers in a mountainous area of Shaanxi Province in China, he answered the government’s call to leave his farm and make a better living as a migrant worker in the 1990s.

Golden Rules of Working in China (June 24, 2015, From the West Courtyard)
Awhile back I was going through some old files on my computer and ran across something that a Chinese friend gave me years and years ago. It is a list of 12 so-called "golden rules" of doing any kind of business in China.

In pictures: 3D art in China's rice paddy fields (June 24, 2015, BBC)
Farmers in the north-eastern Liaoning province, made use of different colours and varieties of rice saplings in order to mimic the 3D effect. The fields are housed as part of a theme park in Shenyang city, which also caters to weddings and camping trips for tourists.

Education

Eton launches online lessons for China (June 19, 2015, BBC)
From this autumn, the leading UK independent school is going to provide classes in leadership to Chinese students, using live online tuition. The school has formed a partnership with a technology firm to create a company called EtonX.

Exam results for nine million Chinese (June 23, 2015, BBC)
For more than nine million high school students in China, Tuesday is a big day. They'll get the results of their exam known as the "gaokao" which will determine whether and where they go to university.

College graduates spend big to mark occasion (June 24, 2015, China Daily)
The graduation season for Chinese university students is not just about receiving degrees. It's also about spending money. Celebrating the end of university life includes journeys abroad, expensive dinners and fancy graduation photos, putting many students under heavy financial pressure. A survey of new graduates by the China University Media Union (CUMU) found that 68 percent spend 4,000 yuan ($640) on graduation celebrations, and that two percent spend as much as 10,000 yuan during graduation season, which lasts less than a month.

Innocents Abroad? — Liberal Educators in Illiberal Societies (Ethics and International Affairs)
Some host regimes openly herald the passing of Western premises and power: “The Chinese aren’t trying to coexist with us; they’re offering to buy us,” notes Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations.

Health / Environment

Study Maps Concentrations of Antibiotics in Chinese Waterways (June 21, 2015, Sinosphere)
Rivers near Beijing and Tianjin in the north and in the Pearl River Delta in the south contain some of the highest concentrations of antibiotics in China’s waterways, according to a study that cites the overuse of the drugs in humans and farm animals.

China’s Air is Much Worse Than India’s, World Bank Report Shows (June 23, 2015, China Real Time)
India’s capital may have the worst air quality in the world on some days, but a new report shows that nationally, the air in the world’s second-most-populous country is far less polluted than in China. In fact, China’s air is more than twice as dirty as India’s, according to recently released estimates by the World Bank.

Over-Aged: Chinese Authorities Seize Decades-Old Meat (June 24, 2015, NPR)
China's customs agents have seized thousands of tons of frozen chicken wings, beef and pork that were smuggled by gangs. Weighing more than 100,000 tons, the meat has an estimated value of more than $480 million — but it also poses serious health risks, officials said.

Economics / Trade / Business

Remaking world trade? China's might driving plan for Nicaragua canal (June 18, 2015, McClatchy DC) 
Colossal. Mammoth. Vast. There’s almost no other way to describe the proposal to build a 170-mile, inter-oceanic canal across Nicaragua, and while the plan has been greeted with widespread skepticism, powerful global forces may also coax the project forward.

Who Wants a Dream American Home? The Chinese, Of Course (June 18, 2015, TIME)
China’s President Xi Jinping is peddling the notion of a Chinese Dream. Apparently that vision may include a suburban home in California. For the first time ever in percentage terms, Chinese investors snapped up more American residential real estate than any other group of international buyers.

Chinese firm to rent Russian land in Siberia for crops (June 19, 2015, BBC)
A Chinese firm is in talks with Russia about renting up to 115,000 hectares (284,050 acres) of land to grow crops and rear livestock in eastern Siberia. Trans-Baikal regional officials say the deal with investment firm Huae Sinban could be worth up to $448m (£282m).

In China, Illegal Drugs Are Sold Online in an Unbridled Market (June 21, 2015, The New York Times)
In a country that has perfected the art of Internet censorship, the open online drug market is just the most blatant example of what international law enforcement officials say is China’s reluctance to take action as it has emerged as a major player in the global supply chain for synthetic drugs.

China’s pension system still pits the country's old against its young (June 23, 2015, China Economic Review)
Until the systemic issues that led to this deficit are dealt with, existing pensioners will continue to benefit at the expense of China's current workers, with the pension contributions of the latter funding payouts to the former. How exactly such an unsustainable system came into being is a textbook case of stopgap reform and good intentions gone awry. Without a systemic overhaul, it will likely get worse.

Millions of Uber’s China rides are faked (June 23, 2015, Tech in Asia)
A new report on Chinese tech site Tencent Tech suggests that millions of Uber’s booked rides in the country are fakes – fraudulent fares reported by drivers in order to collect Uber’s high driver subsidies.

Science / Technology

China says hello to Mr. Roboto (June 22, 2015, CNBC)
An increasing number of Chinese factories are ditching human workers for machines as a robotic revolution gets underway in the world's second-largest economy.

History / Culture

Explore China’s Jewish history (June 17, 2015, The Australian Jewish News) 
The first Jews to settle in China are believed to have been traders from Persia travelling on the Silk Road in the 10th century who settled in the city of Kaifeng. At the time Kaifeng was a major centre, one of the seven ancient capitals of China with a population of more than a million people.

The Boxer Rebellion (June 19, 2015, New Historian)
On 20th June, 1900, Chinese nationalists besieged the diplomatic quarter of Beijing. Burning Christian churches in the city and destroying the Beijing-Tientsin railway line, the date marked the point that the Boxer Rebellion became an international event.

Rare color photos reveal life in Mao's Communist China (June 23, 2015, CNN)

'Flying Tigers' objects donated to Chinese museum (June 24, 2015, China Daily)
A Chinese American donated 358 objects related to the Flying Tigers, a US air squadron that helped the Chinese fight Japanese aggressors during World War II. Pedro Chan donated pieces including military uniform, letters, fly sheets, magazines and personal items, to the Chengdu Museum in Southwest China's Sichuan province on Tuesday.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

Anchors Away: State Media Watchdog Takes Aim at Celebrity TV Hosts (June 23, 2015, China Real Time)
China’s state media regulator has declared war on puns and cracked down on cleavage. Now, it has a new target in its sights: celebrity TV hosts. In a statement reported Monday by China’s official Xinhua news agency, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television called for the country’s radio and TV shows to better regulate anchors and do away with guest hosts. No supporting hosts should appear on any news, talk or commentary shows, it said.

Travel / Food

Make Your Own Sichuan Chili Beef (June 12, 2015, Beijing Today)
Chili Beef is a distinctive dish of Sichuan cuisine. As its name suggests, the main ingredients in the dish are hot peppers and beef. With fresh chili peppers and pepper flakes, the dish will suit anyone with a strong palate. Sichuan chefs claim the strong heat will keep “cold winds” from sneaking into the body’s meridians: perfect for a rainy day in Beijing.

Shanghai airport teams up with Tencent to develop WeChat check-in service (June 22, 2015, Shanghaiist)
The Shanghai Airport Authority signed a deal with Tencent on June 19 to develop a new WeChat check-in service. The service will allow airline passengers to check-in their luggage, access information on their flights and buy insurance for delays through the popular app.

Chop Suey’s Comeback (June 24, 2015, The New York Times)
China Café’s food is authentic, all right, but it has its roots firmly planted in California. It’s the food that was created by immigrants who were using ‘‘foreign’’ ingredients and cooking not only for one another but also for the tame palates of non-Chinese customers they encountered throughout America.

Language / Language Learning

Learning Chinese through audio books (June 18, 2015, Hacking Chinese)
In order to listen to enough Chinese, you need long-form content.

Use social media to improve your Chinese with this app (July 24, 2015, Time Out Beijing)
If, like us, whenever you try to improve your Chinese in any formal way, your brain immediately throws up its barriers, Amanda could help you out. It’s the brainchild of the team behind Chinese social media-watching website China Smack, and Chinese social media is the app’s content source, too.

Books

Writing China: Eric Fish, ‘China’s Millennials’ (June 23, 2015, China Real Time)

If millenials in the U.S. are painted with a broad brush of unflattering descriptions – “spoiled,” “demanding” and “entitled” to name a few — their counterparts in China aren’t viewed much more favorably, says author Eric Fish. In his new book, “China’s Millennials: The Want Generation,” Mr. Fish draws on his years spent working as a teacher and journalist in China from 2007 to 2014 to give a multi-faceted look at the country’s complicated younger generation.

A Blind Lawyer vs. Blind Chinese Power (July 9 edition, New York Review of Books)
In early 2012, Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer who had been blind since infancy, lived with his wife and two children in the village of Dongshigu, where he’d been raised, on the eastern edge of the North China plain. They were not there by choice. For a little over a decade, Chen had waged a public campaign against corruption, pollution, forced abortion, and other abuses of power.

Articles for Researchers

Dragon Tracks: Emerging Chinese Access Points in the Indian Ocean Region (June 20, 2015, China Signposts)

Why China is far from ready to meet the U.S. on a global battlefront (June 22, 2015, Reuters)

China’s New Military Strategy: “Winning Informationized Local Wars” (June 23, 2015, China Brief)

Image credit: The Farm, by Mark Heath, via Flickr