Featured Article
How Does China Build Everything So Fast? (Mar 31, 2026, Manocha Opinion via Substack)
A couple days back, I was watching this reel on Instagram that it took China nine hours to rebuild a railway station, 28 hours to construct a ten-story apartment block, ten days to build a mobile cabin hospital. I personally couldn’t fathom that. China built over 45,000 km of high-speed rail in just over ten years. In comparison, it is taking India to make its first Bullet line of Mumbai-Ahmedabad (~508 Km) more than ten years since it laid the foundation in 2017. And it is not just India. USA, Canada, UK are all at a snails’ pace as compared to China. We binge watch, they binge build.
Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs
Competing for Soft Power: China’s Image-Making in Africa (August 7, 2026, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations)
With a growing young population, vast natural resources, and emerging technology hubs, countries across Africa have become key sites for diplomatic competition between the United States and China. Focusing on Ethiopia, Maria Repnikova examines the ambitious and disjointed display of Chinese diplomatic influence in Africa, developing a new theoretical approach to understanding China’s practice of soft power, identifying the core mechanisms as tangible enticement with material and experiential offerings, promotion of values, visions, and governance practices, and censorial power over the production and dissemination of China narratives.
Zhu Rongji, who helped turn China into a trading giant, dies at 97 (August 12, 2026, BBC)
Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, who spearheaded China’s entry into global trade and laid the foundation for its explosive growth, has died at the age of 97. He served in the country’s second-highest office from 1998-2003 and played a leading role in securing its entry into the World Trade Organization, opening Chinese factories to the international market and drawing foreign investment.
Religion
Suzhou: An Earthly Paradise (August 6, 2026, China Partnership)
Suzhou is an ancient and famous city in Jiangsu Province in eastern China. Known for its beautiful gardens, water culture, classic opera, and delicious food, Suzhou has been immortalized (alongside the nearby city of Hangzhou) as heaven on earth. Local pastors say Suzhou has a long history of missions, and certain parts of the city have many local believers, but overall Suzhou is dominated by worshiping idols, not Christ.
When Public Theology Meets the Chinese-Speaking World (August 7, 2026, ChinaSource)
Over the past two years, I have been closely following developments in public theology. Through my reading and research, combined with my experiences at this conference, I have formed some reflections—and also some concerns—regarding “Chinese public theology.”Public theology is not a one-size-fits-all panacea; it has its own unique historical context, as well as its own distinct principles and limitations, which are essential to its very nature.
Video: Statements by family members of the eight Zion Church leaders still being held (August 9, 2026, HPCC) (Chinese with English subtitles)
Behind Every Name (August 10, 2026, ChinaSource)
Textbooks tell the story of Fan Zhongyan（范仲淹, the renowned statesman of the Northern Song dynasty. That story may seem distant, but not to me: I am one of his descendants. Yet in another sense, it has always felt far removed from my life. For many years, his distinguished name was little more to me than a few characters recorded in our family genealogy.
A Tale of Two Chinas (3) (August 11, 2026, ChinaSource)
In the summer of 2016, my Korean friend and doctoral classmate, Changmin, invited me on a trip to the only Tibetan prefecture in Gansu Province, Gannan, which was the focal area of his academic research. Setting out from the neat but underwhelming prefectural capital, a couple of hours’ bus ride took us up into the grasslands and to the remote county of Machu, so named after the Tibetan for “Yellow River,” on whose first major bend it sits.
Society / Life
In China, Mortherhood Begins with ‘Sitting the Month.’ The Tradition Is Spreading. (August 4, 2026, Christian Science Monitor)
“Of course, I ‘sat the month’— all Chinese mothers do!” says Gao Pei, a kindergarten teacher turned stay-at-home mom, cradling her 7-month-old son on a recent outing in Beijing. Ms. Gao extols the benefits of the ubiquitous Chinese tradition of “sitting the month,” or zuo yue zi, when new mothers rest, stay indoors, bundle up, and eat nourishing soups and other dishes for a month after giving birth. Relatives or other helpers care for the mother and baby, ensuring a smooth postpartum recovery.
Check in, Log on, Stay for Months: Life at China’s 9-Cent Internet Café (August 5, 2026, Sixth Tone)
Outside an unassuming three-story building in downtown Kangyi Town, in the eastern Shandong province, hangs a sign that reads: “Striving to be the cheapest internet café in China.” With charges as low as 0.6 yuan ($0.09) an hour, it’s certainly not false advertising. Yet step inside and you will find not just gamers chasing rock-bottom prices, but also a mix of locals and out-of-towners with a myriad of tales of misfortune, many looking to rise from their own rock bottom.
When Chinese Parents Outsource Control Over Their Adult Children (August 6, 2026, Global Voices)
On a Sunday morning in March, a 21-year-old music student arrived at an apartment complex in Beijing to teach a piano lesson—a side job she did to earn money to fund her studies. Her father, her aunt, and two employees of a private disciplinary institution were waiting for her. Her relatives claimed that the strangers were police officers investigating a family member. They forced her into a van, confiscated her phone, and drove her hundreds of miles away to a closed institution in Henan province, China, supposedly for “internet addiction rehabilitation.”
Science / Technology
Yang Zhilin, the Founder of China’s AI Kimi Is a “Rock Star”? (July 29, 2026, Our China Story)
Some people once speculated that Yang Zhilin left the United States because he could not get a work visa, but his supervisor Ruslan’s words speak for themselves: “With Yang Zhilin’s calibre, there were countless opportunities for him to stay in the U.S. As graduation approached, Apple wanted to hire him, Google and Meta offered him opportunities, and both Stanford University and MIT asked if he would be willing to do a post-doc. An Apple executive even offered him a position in the Beijing office…” “Yang Zhilin told me that he would regret it for the rest of his life if he didn’t even have the chance to try starting a business. I respect his decision, and he was right.”
China’s Military Is Now Using AI to Plan Strike Operations (August 7, 2026, The Diplomat)
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force now uses an AI system that draws up plans for large-scale strike operations. Instead of being released with great fanfare, the system appeared in a CCTV documentary released in early August to mark the PLA’s 99th anniversary. The system is described as prioritizing targets from a pool of hundreds, coordinating dozens of tactical formations, and assigning tasks to more than 100 tactical units.
China Pushes to Deliver on Its Green Hydrogen Promise (August 8, 2026, East Asia Forum)
China is making a strategic bet on renewable hydrogen as a way to carry clean electricity into the sectors electrification struggles to reach, such as steel, chemicals and long-distance transport. But translating this ambition into actual progress is not straightforward. Progress will be determined not by the scale of the challenges alone, but by the policy commitment to push through them. China has strong reason to keep going, because beyond the economic prize of leading emerging clean industries, hydrogen is central to the cleaner, more competitive economy it is betting on for long-term growth.
Arts / Entertainment / Media
‘I thought it didn’t stand a cat’s chance in hell’: Andrew Ridgeley on Wham’s surreal trip to China (July 27, 2026, The Guardian)
There has always been something surreal about Wham!’s 1985 trip to China. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley looked like alien visitors on the streets of Beijing, their bouffant hair and flamboyant outfits setting them apart from the Mao jackets and drab uniforms of the Chinese people they encountered. Now the full strangeness of the duo’s brief trip, which made them the first western pop act to play in the country, is explored in a fascinating documentary film, Wham! 10 Days in China.
To Whom Does Ethnic Folk Dance Belong? (August 11, 2026, China Media Project)
Dance from and by ethnic minorities constitutes a significant part of how people perceive both ethnic minority cultures in China and Chinese dance at large. However, observers often miss how the staging of contemporary Chinese ethnic folk dance is not a direct representation of some original ‘folk body’. It is, rather, the accumulated product of successive historical formations that encompass state discourse, the academy system, theatrical aesthetics, and market forces.
Lining Up the Pro-Beijing Press (August 12, Lingua Sinica)
Last week, after Hong Kong’s security chief renewed attacks on the territory’s independent journalists’ union, a group of pro-government media outlets became force multipliers—the latest concerning sign for press freedom there.
Health / Environment
Typhoon Dolphin: Beijing Braces for One-Third of Its Annual Rainfall as Storm Sweeps China (August 11, 2026, The Guardian)
Four districts on Beijing’s outskirts activated level one emergency flood responses. In the mountainous district of Mentougou in western Beijing, authorities issued the highest level of flood emergency alert on Tuesday and advised people to stay indoors unless necessary, and avoid traveling to mountainous areas and rivers.
History / Culture
The World that Made Confucius—and the China He Made (August 7, 2026, South China Morning Post)
But two millennia before, Confucius charted a very different path. Long after his death, when most other equally worthy rival philosophies had fallen by the wayside, his teachings became the state ideology (from the Han dynasty onwards) that charted the future of dynastic China.
Education
Nationals of India and China Are Getting Dramatically Fewer Student Visas (August 3, 2026, Center for Immigration Studies)
In the 2024/25 academic year, students from India (363,019) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (265,919) made up 53 percent (India, 31 percent; PRC, 23 percent) of all foreign students (1,177,766) at the post-secondary level, according to the Institute of International Education’s (IIE) annual census. Yet, the number of F-1 student visas the US State Department issued from May to August 2025 to Indian and PRC nationals fell dramatically from prior years’ levels. The number issued to nationals of the PRC (40,034) declined by 46 percent from the 2017-19/2021-24 average (73,853), and by 34 percent from 2024 (61,075).
Why Ever Fewer Young Chinese Study Abroad (subscription required) (August 6, 2026, The Economist)
When Yang Fan, a consultant in Beijing advising students and their parents on overseas education, first joined the industry 15 years ago, those who studied abroad were held in high regard. Parents wanted their children to see the world, hoping they would pick up valuable experience and skills along the way. That is much less the case today. Parents, Ms Yang says, “feel that the quality of domestic universities isn’t so bad, so they ask: ‘why should I spend so much money to go abroad?’”
Saving China’s Vanishing Fields of Knowledge (August 11, 2026, Sixth Tone)
Today, however, “niche and endangered disciplines” is more than a descriptive label. It has become an institutional framework within Chinese academia. In 2016, President Xi Jinping called for greater attention to marginal disciplines with high cultural value and significance for Chinese heritage during a speech at the Seminar on philosophy and social sciences in Beijing. Quoting an old Chinese saying, he argued that resources maintained over the long term prove their worth when they are eventually needed.
Economics / Trade / Business
Beijing Is Failing to Meet the Challenge of Weak Domestic Demand (July 23, 2026, MERICS)
China’s leadership set a feasible-sounding 2026 economic growth target of 4.5 to 5 percent during the National People’s Congress in March. Yet they have done little, so far, to tackle a structural imbalance that threatens economic growth in the long run: consumption remains weak, so Beijing relies heavily on exports to drive growth.
The Bargain Hunters (subscription required) (August 9, 2026, The Wire China)
From the outside, it looks like an oversized convenience store. But the towering stacks of unopened snack boxes spilling onto the sidewalk, and employees hauling cartons inside from morning until night, suggest something unusual is going on. Mascots for Busy for You (left) and Super Ming (right). By late afternoon, crowds begin to form. First come elementary school children in red scarves and school uniforms, clutching pocket money as they line up for snacks.
Travel / Food
China’s Burger Boom Is About Far More than Fast Food (August 5, 2026, Chinaskinny)
Its success was largely due to from adapting a Western burger to Chinese tastes, cooking cues and ideas of freshness. This is similar to what happened with coffee. Coffee took off when it stopped being treated as a bitter Western drink and became a flexible base for coconut, fruit, tea and regional flavors. Burgers are following the same path. Almost anything can sit between two buns, including ingredients consumers already know and dishes carrying strong local associations.
Books
Secretary Wang’s American Friend: William Hinton and the Long History of ‘Fanshen’ (August 5, 2026, Made In China Journal)
Few books have had a stronger impact on global understandings of China than Fanshen. I discovered Hinton’s account of rural revolution as an American student of China in the late 1990s, more than three decades after its publication in 1966. Reading about the experiences of a young American leftist in search of global justice changed my life. The book’s description of land reform—the process through which the Chinese Communists redistributed land from wealthy landlords to poor peasants—inspired me to dedicate my life to the study of Maoist revolution in the countryside. It was only a matter of time before I made the journey to Long Bow to see the place for myself.
From History to Fantasy: Five Chinese Writers Who Shaped a New Era of Storytelling (August 7, 2026, The World of Chinese)
At a literary event hosted by the China Writers Association at the Beijing International Bookstore in late May, 11 representative figures of Chinese history, fantasy, and web novels gathered to share their experiences of taking Chinese stories overseas. Here is the first part of a series introducing the writers you should know.
Pray for China
August 14 (Pray For China: A Walk Through History)
On Aug. 14, 1900, the armies of the Eight Nation Alliance (八国联军) seized Beijing from the Empress Dowager’s government. This effectively ended the Boxer Uprising (义和团运动) during which over 32,000 Chinese Christians had been killed—mostly Roman Catholics. Following a great influx of missionaries, the number of Protestant Christians increased ten-fold to about 700,000 during the next half century. After foreign missionaries were expelled and the Cultural Revolution ended, the Lord brought about another revival in China that Operation World has called “without precedent in history.” Pray for the Lord Jesus Christ to be glorified as Chinese missionaries raise up a church among unreached minority groups. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing! Revelation 5:1
From Deep Thinking to Deep Prayer (July 21, 2026, ChinaSource)
Prayer 2026: Off the Beaten Path (January 1, 2026, China Partnership)
Operation World (April 21, 2025, ChinaSource)
Pray for China (prayforchina.us)
Prayer Walking as a Rhythm of Life (May 30, 2025, ChinaSource)