ZGBriefs | October 24, 2024

Featured Article

The Rise of Scripture Copying for Inner Peace Among Chinese Youth (October 18, 2024, ChinaSkinny)
More young people today are turning to peaceful, health-focused activities like yoga, meditation, fishing, or spending a day at a spa with a buffet and various entertainment options to unwind. Once a niche hobby among middle-aged people, scripture copying has now transformed into a relaxation trend for the younger generation.

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Events

Sponsored Event—Free Fall Public Lecture
China Academic Consortium is hosting the next event in our joint lecture series. On Saturday, November 9, Dr. Lian Xi (David C. Steinmetz Distinguished Professor of World Christianity at Duke Univ.) will lecture on Lin Zhao and on what her story reveals about Christianity in twentieth-century China. Click here to get more details and to register.

ERR China November Online Book Club
On November 13, 2024, ERRChina will host a book club discussion, facilitated by Joann Pittman, on her book The Bells Are Not Silent. Register and find more details about the online book club here.

Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

China’s Latest Drills Highlight Key Strategy to Annex Taiwan: Blockade (October 21, 2024, The Christian Science Monitor)
A massive PLA joint exercise last week practiced blockading the island—Beijing’s latest escalation in its use of the military “stick” to try to coerce Taiwan into unification. China’s Communist-led government has never ruled Taiwan, but has claimed the island for decades and vowed to annex it—by force, if necessary.

Reports Document Chinese Border Intrusions in Bhutan, Nepal (October 16, 2024, China Digital Times)
International media coverage of China’s territorial disputes often focuses on India, Taiwan, and the Philippines—countries with substantial military forces or powerful Western backers that, at least to some degree, slow the inevitability of annexation or even employ some of the same tactics as China. Comparatively less attention is given to China’s much smaller neighbors Bhutan and Nepal, which have far fewer resources to defend their legitimate territorial claims.

Is It Too Late for China’s Israel Policy? (October 18, 2024, The Guardian)
In the wake of Hamas’s horrendous terrorist act on October 7, 2023, which opened the gates of hell in the conflict-ridden Middle East, Israel saw all the countries it counted on for backing condemn the attack in the strongest terms—with one exception. To Israel’s dismay, despite the cordial state in their bilateral ties up to that moment, China bluntly expressed concern over the “current escalation of tensions and violence between Palestine and Israel,” declining to even mention Hamas, let alone condemn it.

Part II: Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics: PRC Consulate Gray Zone ‘Pop-up’ Events in New York (October 18, 2024, China Brief Archives – Jamestown)
The activities of consular officials from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the United States and other countries appear to extend beyond the standard provision of consular services. This implies not only the breaking of diplomatic norms, but also the violation of international—as well as US domestic—law. The US government has announced that it is aware of PRC activities that are seeking to influence congressional races and candidates in the country’s November elections (US Department of State, October 7).

Religion

Listening to the Echoes (October 18, 2024, ChinaSource)
This is an invitation to listen to the echoes, following the recent Fourth Lausanne Congress on Evangelization held in Incheon, South Korea. When the noise dies down and silence starts to reign, what are we hearing and seeing? What is rising within? So far, I’ve heard exuberant joy and life-changing impact on some participants at one end of the spectrum, as well as heartbreaking lament and ire from others at the other end, and everything else in between.

China’s Cities—Should We Not Be Concerned (October 21, 2024, ChinaSource)
When traveling to Beijing recently, I had a chance to visit a Mandarin-speaking church. The sermon that day was on the last part of the book of Jonah (Jonah 3:10-4:11). This was one of those divine coincidences since I had just been hearing about China’s re-categorization and management of its larger cities.

Crossing Cultures: Boundary Events and Paradigm Shifts (October 22, 2024, ChinaSource)
Over a lifetime the Lord will intentionally lead us through a series of boundary events. Some will pass almost unnoticed. Others will be “significant alterations in the structures of one’s knowing and valuing…in the basic orientation and responses of the self,” where cognitive/affective/evaluative worldview presuppositions “effectively die and must be replaced…feelings of anguish, struggle and possibly guilt and grief…Our very life meanings are at stake…This is the stuff of which faith stage transitions are made.”

Xi’an: Common Challenges (October 17, 2024, China Partnership)
Believers tell us that it is difficult to train and raise up laborers, and that the workers the church does have are stretched thin and overburdened. Xi’an churches are struggling to help families know how to raise the next generation to know and follow Christ, and continue to deal with the impact of academic and societal pressure on children and families. Many churches feel isolated and cut off from the larger community of believers. But despite these struggles, Xi’an Christians also see hope, as societal struggles expose how empty the world can be without Jesus at the center

How to Pray for YOUR City (October 21, 2024, China Partnership)
This year, we have been praying for cities across China. As we continue to pray for Chinese cities, we also wanted to re-run an older post from a Chinese prayer warrior on how to develop a heart for your own city through prayer walks. She encourages us not to view our city with a consumerist mentality, but to see the city with God’s eyes and to seek to bless the place where we live.

Society / Life

Cigarette Sales Are Rising in China, Defying Global Trend (October 17, 2024, Sixth Tone)
After a decline from 2014 to 2016 as several major Chinese cities introduced tough indoor smoking bans, cigarette sales have again risen over the last five years, reaching 2.44 trillion in 2023, according to an August report by the state-backed ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development.

Divorcing China from Wedding Humiliation (October 18, 2024, China Media Project)
Late last month, media across China reported on the latest incident of harassment directed at a newlywed bride—a practice known in China as “wedding hazing” (婚闹). The news story was prompted by the surfacing on September 25 of a video showing a woman in Shanxi province tied to a telephone pole, crying for help while bystanders failed to intervene. The footage quickly went viral, igniting outrage—and prompting widespread debate about the lines between custom, decency and legality in modern Chinese society.

Interview with Gen Z Chinese Censor: June 4 is Internet “Folk Festival” (October 18, 2024, China Digital Times)
In a remarkable interview, a censor for one of China’s biggest search engines described what gets deleted from the Chinese internet and how—as well as their perspective on the morality of their work. The interview was published by Mang Mang, an independent Chinese-language magazine that publishes on Substack.

Responding to Government Censors’ Crackdown on Online Slang and Memes, Chinese Internet Users Protest, “We Want to Speak Properly, but You Won’t Let Us!” (October 21, 2024, China Digital Times)
Chinese internet users are taking issue with a recent announcement that the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and Ministry of Education are trying to standardize online speech by cracking down on the use of “irregular and uncivilized language and text” appearing on the homepages, trending search lists, and suggested content sections of major online platforms. Such verboten speech includes variant or homophonic Chinese characters, abbreviations, online slang, “bad” memes, and phrases whose meaning seems obscure.

In Chinese Megacities, ‘Ultra-Long Commutes’ Are on the Rise (October 21, 2024, Sixth Tone)
Long commutes have become a hot-button issue in China over recent years, as rising living costs in megacities push more workers to move further out into the suburbs, where rent tends to be cheaper. In recent years, several news stories involving workers having to make Herculean efforts to get to work have gone viral on Chinese social media, including one woman from the northern city of Tianjin who reportedly wakes up at 5 a.m. each day so that she can make it to her office over 260 kilometers away in Jinan.

‘Really Squeezed’: Why Drivers in the World’s Largest Food Delivery Market are Having Meltdowns (October 18, 2024, CNN)
The $200 billion industry, the world’s largest by revenue and volume of orders, more than doubled during three years of Covid-19 lockdowns and once provided a solid income for casual workers. But not anymore.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

For State Media, Copycats Are No Joke (October 21, 2024, China Media Project)
Earlier this month, the People’s Daily astonished millions of online readers in China by weighing in on a petty dispute between two celebrities. The article, which accused an actress of grabbing publicity by slandering her ex-boyfriend, was an odd change of character for the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece. Speculation raged about what this aberration could mean. There was just one problem—the article was a complete fake. And within hours, a new question loomed: How did this happen?

Science / Technology

Inside the Underground Lab in China Tasked with Solving a Physics Mystery (October 16, 2024, Reuters)
A giant sphere 700 m (2,300 ft) underground with thousands of light-detecting tubes will be sealed in a 12-storey cylindrical pool of water in coming months for an experiment that will shine new light on elusive subatomic particles known as neutrinos. After years of construction, the $300 million Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) in China’s southern Guangdong province will soon start gathering data on neutrinos, a product of nuclear reactions, to help solve one of the biggest mysteries in particle physics.

Education

What Makes Chinese Students so Successful by International Standards? (October 20, 2024, The Conversation)
There is a belief widely held across the Western world: Chinese students are schooled through rote, passive learning—and an educational system like this can only produce docile workers who lack innovation or creativity. We argue this is far from true. In fact, the Chinese education system is producing highly successful students and an extremely skilled and creative workforce. We think the world can learn something from this.

Economics / Trade / Business

Real Estate Once Drove China’s Economic Growth. Now It’s Holding It Back. (October 15, 2024, Christian Science Monitor)
China has a glut of tens of millions of unoccupied housing units, many unfinished and unsold. An inescapable part of the landscape, seen from roads or trains, are compounds of hulking, empty high-rise buildings. Many of these “ghost cities,” as they’re often called, have no lights and a see-through quality due to their unfinished, open windows.

Why Chinese Are Rushing Into a ‘Casino’ Stock Market (October 21, 2024, New York Times)
Steps to bolster the economy have set off a stock buying frenzy. Our columnist spoke to Chinese investors about why they are jumping in knowing the risks.

China Posts Slowest Economic Growth in 18 Months as Optimism Fades Over Stimulus (October 17, 2024, The Guardian)
Beijing says it has “full confidence” in achieving its annual growth goal, but economists say more direct fiscal stimulus is needed to revive activity and restore business confidence. Investors are clamouring for more specifics on how Beijing will shift its economy towards a consumption-driven model that can sustain long-term growth.

Language / Language Learning

New WeChat Translation Makes Meituan a Breeze (October 17, 2024, The Beijinger Blog)
As if our lives didn’t already revolve around WeChat enough, today they’ve just made it even easier for foreigners to use. WeChat launched a feature that now translates all the mini-programs with the push of a button.

Mandarin Monday: Can You Say This Chinese Tongue Twister? (October 21, 2024, The Beijinger Blog)
If there’s one fun way to learn Chinese, it’s with tongue twisters and poems. This is especially true for ones using similar sounding words with different tones, like the one will focus on today, a poem about shi and si.

Pray for China

October 21 (Pray for China: A Walk Through History)
Pioneer missionary John Livingston Nevius (倪维思) went to be with the Lord on Oct. 19, 1893. Nevius and his wife Helen came to China in 1854 and spent most of the next 40 years in Shandong. In 1886 he published a book that called for discarding the traditional missions approach—including paying national church workers—and implementing a plan to foster an independent, self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating local church. In 1890, Nevius traveled to neighboring Korea where Protestant missions work was just beginning, and met with newly arrived missionaries there to explain his book. The Nevius Plan is credited with having a great impact in the establishment of an independent church in Korea, which has sent many thousands of missionaries to China and elsewhere in this generation. Pray for Chinese and foreign Christians to partner effectively in seeing the world reached for Christ.

Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. 2 Timothy 4:11