ZGBriefs | September 3, 2015

ZGBriefs is a compilation of news items gathered from published online sources. ChinaSource is not responsible for the content, and inclusion in ZGBriefs does not equal endorsement.

Featured Article

For China, a Plunge and a Reckoning (August 28, 2015, The Wall Street Journal)
Anyone trying to design an event to bring Xi Jinping ’s China back to Earth couldn’t have engineered something much more elegant than the turmoil in China’s financial markets and the resulting global aftershocks. The upheaval is traumatic for China’s leaders but not life-threatening to China’s system. Yet the jolt may have been just large enough to change the country’s underlying bargain between ruler and ruled—and by doing so, to temper Beijing’s current tendency toward arrogance, rigidity, belligerence and diplomatic hectoring.

Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

How Should the U.S. Conduct the Xi Jinping State Visit? (August 18, 2015, China File)
As tensions increase between China and the United States over the value of the yuan, human rights violations, alleged cyber attacks, and disputed maritime territories, among other issues, how should the Obama administration conduct the upcoming state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping?

Behind Deadly Tianjin Blast, Shortcuts and Lax Rules (August 30, 2015, The New York Times)
Now, more than two weeks after explosions at its warehouses leveled a section of that district, killing 150 people, injuring more than 700 and leaving millions here fearful of toxic fallout, Rui Hai has become a symbol of something else for many Chinese: the high cost of rapid industrialization in a closed political system rife with corruption.

Beijing’s World War II Military Parade: What to Expect (August 31, 2015, The New York Times)
This is the first time that China is holding a military parade to commemorate what it calls the Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and World Antifascist War since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. […] Here is what to expect on Thursday:

Hong Kong: One year after 8.19, by Alex Chow and Yang Jianli (August 31, 2015, Hong Kong Free Press)
For now, the city might have returned to normal. Traffic is flowing again, business as usual. However, if the government thought that all it took to return everything to normal was a clearing of the streets, history will prove them wrong. But we are no longer satisfied with just a march. 

Video: What You Need to Know About Xi Jinping (September 1, 2015, China Real Time)

Will Xi always be obeyed? (September 1, 2015, East Asia Forum)
So Xi may currently be taking the plaudits for being a decisive and successful leader. But what will happen when he makes a bad decision? By putting his face to China’s policies, Xi is more likely to be personally associated with any missteps.

Preparing for a Military Parade, China Deploys a Troop of Monkeys (September 1, 2015, The New York Times)
Even the possibility of stray birds has become a gnawing worry for officials. But the Chinese Air Force says it has deployed an “ecological” solution to any birds that might foul up the engines of fighter jets involved in the parade: vandalistic monkeys.

Leader of Hong Kong democracy protests Joshua Wong to face trial (September 2, 2015, The Guardian)
Wong has pleaded not guilty on charges of inciting illegal assembly after months-long protests against Chinese control of elections.

US urges China to free Christian activists and lawyers (September 2, 2015, BBC)
The US has called on China to release several lawyers and Christian leaders who were detained ahead of a meeting with a senior US official. Among the detainees is Zhang Kai, a prominent Christian lawyer, as well as pastors and activists. They were rounded up on 25 August, the evening before a planned meeting with David Saperstein, the US envoy for religious freedoms.

Chinese human rights lawyer: 'You might disappear at any time' – video (September 2, 2015, The Guardian)
Wang Yu was the most high profile of the lawyers arrested in July 2015 in a crackdown on rights campaigners in China. She was held on suspicion of inciting subversion after one of her last cases, a sexual assault involving six underage girls and their school headteacher in Wanning City. Despite pressure on the girls’ parents to stay quiet, Wang Yu took up their case, risking her safety to inform the public about their rights, and fighting for the incident to be classified as rape. Here she explains why.

Bangkok Bombing Suspect Is Uighur, Thai Police Say (September 2, 2015, China Real Time)
A senior Thai police investigator on Wednesday said for the first time that the main suspect in the deadly bombing at a busy Bangkok shrine last month is believed to be a member of China’s Uighur ethnic minority.

Sweeping Change in China’s Military: Xi’s PLA Restructuring (September 2, 2015, China Real Time)
Propelled by Xi’s vigorous efforts to realize his dream of a strong country with a strong military, reform plans long underway are finally surfacing. Now reportedly afoot: a sweeping transformation of China’s military, with tremendous implications for its strategy and operations.

Beijing Turns Into Ghost Town as It Gears Up for Military Parade (September 2, 2015, The New York Times)
The police and paramilitary units fanned out in streets across central Beijing on Wednesday, shutting down the heart of this world capital in preparation for a parade of some 12,000 Chinese troops called by President Xi Jinping to showcase the nation’s rising might for a global audience.

What Is China’s Big Parade All About? (September 2, 2015, China File)
What is the meaning of this event and why have China’s leaders invested so much in executing it?

Religion

95 Theses: The Reaffirmation Of Our Stance On The House Church (August 30, 2015, China Partnership Blog)
On August 30, 2015, Early Rain Reformed Church in Chengdu published their own version of Luther’s 95 theses in an attempt to reaffirm the Chinese house church’s position on faith before government and society at large, and with a fearful but humble heart, defend the church.

The Work of Lawyer Zhang Kai: ‘I Have God as My Backer’ (August 31, 2015, China Change)
Zhang Kai, 37, is a lawyer with the Xinqiao Law Firm (新桥律师事务所) in Beijing, and a Christian. Amidst the campaign to demolish crosses in Zhejiang, of all human rights lawyers in China, Zhang has been the most active and become the most deeply involved.

9 Take-aways from a Conversation about Coaching in China (August 31, 2015, From the West Courtyard)
Earlier this month, ChinaSource launched a new podcast titled ChinaSource Conversations. The aim of the podcast is to bring together those with Chinese expertise and experience to discuss timely topics impacting China’s church. We hope that it will be a useful resource for those serving in China.

A Church for Lepers (September 1, 2015, Chinese Church Voices)
Sometimes in the wave of negative reports coming out of China the stories of local believers living out the gospel in daily life get buried. The following Gospel Times article shares the work of three churches who are actively seeking to serve a portion of society that continues to deal with intense rejection in this day and age—victims of leprosy.

China expands crackdown on Christianity to Hong Kong (September 1, 2015, EJ Insight)
China’s efforts to put the brakes on Christianity will work about as well as trying to baptize a cat.

Working out a Chinese Public Theology: Three Preliminary Guidelines (September 2, 2015, From the West Courtyard)
n this post, I would like to humbly offer three guidelines by which public theology might be worked out given China’s unique context.

Society / Life

China's workers abandon the city as Beijing faces an economic storm (August 26, 2015, The Guardian)
Liu Weiqin swapped rural poverty for life on the dusty fringes of China’s capital eight years ago hoping – like millions of other migrants – for a better future. On Thursday she will board a bus with her two young children and abandon her adopted home. “There’s no business,” complained the 36-year-old, who built a thriving junkyard in this dilapidated recycling village only to watch it crumble this year as plummeting scrap prices bankrupted her family.

China Holds 23 Linked to Fatal Blasts in Tianjin (August 26, 2015, The New York Times)
The Chinese authorities, facing enormous pressure to account for catastrophic chemical blasts that killed more than 100 people two weeks ago, said Thursday that they had detained or placed under investigation 23 people in connection with the disaster.

Consumer Anxiety in China Undermines Government’s Economic Plans (August 28, 2015, The New York Times)
Many young middle-class Chinese who grew up during the nation’s glittering boom years, when double-digit growth was the norm, are suddenly confronting the shadow of an economic slowdown, and even hints of austerity.

How farmers from rural China bet on the stock market and lost (August 29, 2015, The Washington Post)
This spring, the country was gripped by stock fever, a frenzy of borrowing and buying that saw Chinese markets soar to historic heights, drawing in tens of millions of first-time investors, including dozens of people in this northern Chinese village.

Beijing police paying informants millions (August 29, 2015, Xinhua)
Beijing police have paid out more than 2 million yuan (about 317,000 US dollars) in rewards to informants this year, the force revealed on Saturday. A spokesperson said more than 1,700 citizens have received cash rewards.

China Says 197 Punished in Crackdown on Online Rumors (August 31, 2015, TIME)
People recently punished in China’s campaign against online rumors include those who circulated an inflated death toll in the Tianjin blasts and who alleged a man committed suicide because of the country’s stock market woes, state media reported Monday.

A Holiday Stuck Inside: Learn Why and Stream Frank Capra's 'The Battle of China' (September 2, 2015, The Beijinger)
With the ever-expanding list of restrictions being enforced on the 99.999 percent of Beijing residents not lucky (or important) enough to be part of the dry run of China's big military parade taking place Saturday, we thought: why not stay inside like the good patriot you are and learn about the event worthy of such revelry.

Education

Neither Chinese nor Western way of teaching is the best (August 31, 2015, Xinhua)
The BBC's three-episode experiment with Chinese-style teaching did not so much set off the spark as fan the flame, which is the intermittent and often heated discourse on the merits, or more accurately lack thereof, of the traditional way of Chinese education.

Economics / Trade / Business

30 of the Most Questionably Hilarious Chinese Knockoff Products (August 27, 2015, 22 Words)
We know that there are horribly bad knockoff products made right here in the United States, but there are some Chinese imitations that are anything but the sincerest form of flattery.

Zombie Factories Stalk the Sputtering Chinese Economy (August 28, 2015, The New York Times)
As China allows its own “zombies” to stalk the economy, the situation is clouding the country’s outlook, making it difficult to predict where growth is headed. If the leadership doesn’t address the underlying problem, the economic weakness could be prolonged.

China's Tricky Economic Transition: From Steel Mills To E-Commerce (August 28, 2015, NPR)
But China's economy has a long way to go. In fact, it's in the midst of wrenching transition from an economy based on investment and manufacturing to a higher-income one built on services and consumer spending. The stakes are high — not just for China, but for the rest of the world. Economic growth is slowing in China in a way it hasn't in a long time.

The Fading Chinese Model (August 29, 2015, The Weekly Standard)
Peer through the fog of commentary on recent share price gyrations and you can see the unclothed figures of Chinese president Xi Jinping and his fellow managers of the Chinese economy, the very one that in recent years has been providing about half of global economic growth even though it accounts for only about 15% of world output.

Plunging Chinese Stock Market Was Barely Covered In China (August 29, 2015, NPR)
As the Chinese stock market dramatically tumbled, the country's state-run news media remained largely silent on the turmoil.

Fresh factory data confirms slowdown in China's economy (September 1, 2015, BBC)
China's factory activity contracted at its fastest pace in three years in August, confirming fears that the country's growth is continuing to slow.

Four Questions, and Answers, About China’s Economy (September 1, 2015, China Real Time)
Here are a few of the big questions I brought back from a quick trip to Beijing:

China’s Stock Market Is Not In Step With Its Victory Day Parade (September 2, 2015, TIME)
The V-Day parade is supposed to not only show off the latest in Chinese military technology but also prove just how far China has come since the devastation of World War II. China’s economy, though, is slowing and the stock market has refused to entirely heed the state’s ministrations.

History / Culture

Parading the People’s Republic (August 31, 2015, The China Story)
This essay, which is reprinted with minor emendations, was written by Geremie R Barmé and Sang Ye; it reviews the fourteen National Day parades held in the Chinese capital since 1949.

What Were Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists Doing Around the Time of the Cairo Conference? (September 1, 2015, China Change)
Wanton misrepresentation and distorted history are par for the course for the Chinese Communist Party and its propaganda machine, but in this article, I would like to raise and hopefully answer the following question: At the time of the Cairo Declaration, exactly where was Mao Zedong and what was he doing?

In China, long-delayed recognition for troops who fought in World War II (September 1, 2015, The Los Angeles Times)
Communist leaders still refuse to acknowledge that it was Chiang's troops — not Mao's — who did the bulk of the fighting against the Japanese. In the last few years, though, Beijing has begun to acknowledge that Nationalist forces played a not-insignificant role.

Arts / Entertainment / Media

Even Chinese Audiences Tiring of Outlandish Japanese War Dramas (September 2, 2015, Nanfang Insider)
The upcoming September 3rd military parade and national holiday will put a focus on China’s War of Resistance against Japan, known in the rest of the world as World War II, but those outside the country might be surprised to learn there has been a constant drumbeat of anti-Japanese dramas airing in the country now for years.

Travel / Food

Switzerland: Special trains for Chinese tourists (August 28, 2015, BBC)
A mountain resort in Switzerland is launching special train services for Chinese tourists to defuse tensions with other visitors, it is reported.

Biking China’s Karakoram Highway Pt 1 (September 2, 2015, Far West China)
Most people take a bus or taxi across the Karakoram. I decided to take a bicycle. I have been across the Chinese side of the Karakoram Highway a few years ago but this would be the first time that I would turn it into a bicycle adventure.

Language / Language Learning

Chinese learning tools and resources worth paying for (August 27, 2015, Hacking Chinese)

Zooming in: The tools you need to break down and understand Chinese (September 1, 2015, Hacking Chinese)
One problem for many learners is that they don’t spend enough energy connecting the various layers. They learn components, but don’t know how they work in different characters, or learn grammar words without knowing how they work in sentences.

Books

Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945, by Rana Mitter (Amazon)

3 Reasons You Need to Read this Chinese Food Memoir (August 28, 2015, From the West Courtyard)
Food matters in China, so reading about food is not mere fun, it is a window of understanding. The more we, as outsiders, understand about food, the more we’ll understand China, her people, and her flavors.

New eBook: Guide to Z Visas and Work Authorization in China (US & China Visa Law Blog)
This free Guide summarizes the requirements and procedures to apply for work authorization in China on the basis of an employment permit issued by a local Human Resources and Social Security (HRSS) bureau.

Articles for Researchers

New Spaces, New Controls: China’s Embryonic Public Sphere (September 2015, The Current History)

Image credit: by Aurelio Asaian, via Flickr