A weekly roundup of news and analysis to help you follow key developments in China and the Chinese church.
The Confucian Fundamentalists Who Want to Boycott Christmas (December 18, 2017, Sixth Tone)
Any tolerance toward purportedly non-Chinese religions is tacit acceptance of spiritual and cultural pollution, one that is usually decried as “Westernization.”
O Holy Night, The Disco Ball is Shining (December 12, 2017, Small Town Laowai)
Rather than a traditional song, a new pulsating dance song started blaring through the loudspeakers.
For Decades, China's Laborers Moved To Cities. Now They're Being Forced Out (December 6, 2017, NPR)
Beijing's plan to move millions of migrant workers, who perform essential services, out of the city,
Cheering China’s Urbana: Churches Poised to Become Major Exporters (November 27, 2017, Christianity Today)
When 1,200 youth gathered for the first Chinese “Urbana-style” missions conference this fall, 300 pledged to become full-time missionaries.
ChinaSource wishes you a blessed Thanksgiving!
Chinese Grads Return Home With Degrees and Disillusionment (November 10, 2017, Sixth Tone)
“Unlike 10 years ago, employers now don’t care much whether a candidate has studied abroad.”
Confucius Institutes across Africa are nurturing generations of pro-China Mandarin speakers (November 3, 2017, Quartz)
China is driving the largest language and culture-promoting initiative the world has ever seen.
Documentary: Down From the Mountains (October 31, 2017, China File)
The three siblings are among an estimated 9 million so-called “left-behind children” currently living in the Chinese countryside without their parents.
Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens (October 21, 2017, Wired)
But now imagine a system where all these behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government. That would create your Citizen Score and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy.
Why Do We Keep Writing About Chinese Politics As if We Know More Than We Do? (October 16, 2017, China File)
Even the best-sourced experts can’t discern how policy preferences and objectives shape political coalitions or élite Party divisions, and we lack critical diagnostic information that would be necessary to confirm or refute competing hypotheses about major political questions.
Issues and Challenges for Chinese Christians as Seen Online (September 8, 2017, Chinese Law and Government)
This edition of Chinese Law and Government hopes to go beyond the tired paradigm of control and resistance by presenting a small sample of the kind of online content created by Chinese Christians, revealing to some extent what topics and issues are important to church members.
Featured Article
10 Chinese Christians the Western Church Should Know (October 3, 2017, Christianity Today)
These saints who played such an essential role in the establishment of an explicitly Chinese church deserve to be recognized for their service. May their stories inspire new generations of women and men in China and beyond to serve God wherever he may lead.