Featured Article
Who Are the Churches That China Is Persecuting? (January 19, 2026, Domino Theory)
On the night of December 14, over 1,000 police officers surrounded Yayang Church in Wenzhou, Zhejiang. At 3 a.m. they burst into the church “with extreme violence.” Over 100 adult members of the congregation who had chosen to remain inside were arrested; those with children had left earlier in the evening. The police put black hoods on the congregants and took them away.
Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs
Mapping China’s Strategic Space: Borderlands (December 2025, National Bureau of Asian Research)
The Borderlands research project investigates how China invests in, engages with, and deepens its presence within its land and maritime border neighbors, in an attempt to reshape its immediate periphery. The Borderlands Dashboard visually presents data collected on parameters across the three domains to track China’s engagement with its borderlands neighbors since 2013, the year when the Chinese party-state began designating them as China’s “periphery.” This section will present a collection of contributions examining the practice of Chinese statecraft in the fourteen countries with which it shares a land border and six countries with which it shares a maritime border.
2025 Annual Report to Congress (January 2026, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission)
Topics this year include China’s revisionist ambitions with Russia, Iran, and North Korea; China and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands; how Beijing built its manufacturing and innovation engine; China’s ambitions to dominate space; China Shock 2.0; Beijing’s weaponization of supply chains; China’s electrification drive; and a review of Taiwan, Hong Kong, economics, trade, security, politics, and foreign affairs development in 2025.
Venezuela Uncovers the Limits of China’s Security Promise in Latin America (January 13, 2026, The Diplomat)
In recent months, the X account of the Venezuelan media outlet Polianalitica, followed by over 63,000 users, published a series of posts portraying Beijing as a steadfast political and security backer of Caracas. On November 24, a post claimed that “China announced it will provide military help to Venezuela if it faces foreign invasion.” Other X users flagged the claim as false, yet the post was reshared more than a thousand times. It generated a large number of mocking responses, as users quickly identified the announcement as ludicrous.
Podcast – The China Commission Reports! (January 17, 2026, ChinaTalk)
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission late last year released its annual report to Congress. ChinaTalk welcomes two commissioners to the pod to discuss. Before joining the Hoover Institution, Mike Kuiken spent two decades on the Hill with Senators Schumer and Durbin. He was appointed to the commission by Leader Schumer. Leland Miller, the co-founder and CEO of China Beige Book, was appointed by Speaker Mike Johnson.
Religion
Witness to Persecutors (January 15, 2026, China Partnership)
This January, we are praying for persecuted Chinese Christians. This is part two of an interview with Lu Rongyu, who was recently released from jail after spending more than two years inside. Although he is still under state supervision at home, he is continuing to shepherd his church, love his family, and is seeking to witness to the gospel, even with those who persecute him.
Good News of Great Joy (January 16, 2026, ChinaSource)
Seeing any aspect of our faith through others’ eyes—especially in another culture, is like putting on a set of new glasses. The questions, the doubts, the rejection, the wonder, and yes, the amazement force one to look anew at what might be treasured but unchallenged.
Urbana 2025: Gen Z, Global Mission, and the Chinese Church (January 19, 2026, ChinaSource)
Having been displaced from China in 2020 after more than a decade of serving there, I’ve been grateful for opportunities to have continued connections with Chinese Christians both in mainland China and among the Chinese diaspora. I had the opportunity to co-present a seminar on the Chinese mission movement with a good friend from mainland China who is now pastoring at a Chinese church in Texas. As we spoke to an audience of more than 350 people, we were struck how many young people care for the church in mainland China.
Society / Life
Without Pension Reform, China Is Leaving Its Rural Elderly Out In the Cold (January 14, 2026, South China Morning Post)
“Rural heating problems in Hebei cannot wait any longer” declared a recent report in Farmers’ Daily. It described a disturbing reality in parts of northern China: elderly villagers who would rather shiver through freezing temperatures than turn on their heaters, because they simply cannot afford the cost. For many urban readers, this may sound implausible. For millions of rural elderly, it is routine.
Come Out and Play: The Collective Reclaiming of China’s Cities Through Games (January 15, 2026, The World of Chinese)
In response to the growing digital landscape, Shanghai-based art-game collective “rec repair” has designed and organized a series of urban games that encourage young players to rediscover the city. These interactive experiences offer a fresh, engaging way for participants to explore urban spaces, blending art, gaming, and adventure.
Hog Wild: Pig Feast Goes Viral, Overwhelms Village in China (January 15, 2026, Sixth Tone)
“On January 11, my family is going to slaughter two pigs; can anyone help me restrain the pigs during the slaughter? My dad’s old — I don’t think he has it in him to restrain them.” This message posted on January 9 to Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, by a user known as “Daidai,” was meant to attract a handful of people to help with a traditional rural chore. Instead, it set off a wave of online attention that drew thousands of visitors from all over China to her village and hundreds of millions of views online.
“Love Yourself”—Young China’s New Wellness Mantra to Cope with the Rat Race (January 17, 2026, South China Morning Post)
For 26-year-old Tianjin office worker Celine Wang, it is an extra cup of milk tea. “One for me and the other for lao ji,” she said, placing the double order on a workday afternoon in January.“ After going through all the difficulties from trying to be the best performer at school to surviving at my workplace, I feel tired. “I’ve decided to treat myself well … ai ni lao ji,” she said, using a buzzword that took off in the gaming world and has become a mantra for personal wellness in China.
How Can China Solve Its Elder-Care Problem? (January 19, 2026, The World of Chinese)
As millions of Chinese enter old age, those born under the one-child policy grapple with the financial and emotional burden of being their parents’ only caregivers, even as government and business efforts begin to ease the pressure.
China’s population falls again as birthrate drops 17% to record low (January 19, 2026, The Guardian)
China’s population fell for a fourth consecutive year in 2025 as the birthrate plunged to another record low despite the introduction of polices aimed at encouraging people to have children. Registered births dropped to 7.92 million in 2025—or 5.63 for every 1,000 members of the population—down 17% from 9.54 million in 2024, and the lowest since records began in 1949.
Rectifying Names, Erasing Mongols: The Unmaking of Mongolian Education in China (January 20, 2026, Made in China Journal)
Since 2021, we have recorded the renaming of nearly 100 Mongolian-language schools across the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) (for the list, see Borjgin n.d.). Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials insist this is mere bureaucratic rationalization aimed at ensuring that educational resources match the needs of students and the nation. Yet, for Mongolian students, teachers and parents, it looks like something else entirely: cultural erasure, subtly chronicled—and protested—on social media, as a basic search for ‘ethnic Mongolian schools’ (蒙古族学校) on Chinese-language social media apps such as Weixin, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu clearly shows.
Travel / Food
The Best Way to See Hong Kong Is On Its Trams (January 15, 2026, The Economist) (subscription required)
Few tourists dream of a tram commute on their day off. Yet on a Tuesday in Hong Kong, they jostle with workers and schoolchildren for a spot on one of the streetcars trundling across the city. “Ding dings”, as the trams are affectionately known, are “an attractive way to show people around”, explains Nico, a local. And at HK$3.30 (42 American cents) a trip, they are an inexpensive way to see an expensive city.
Podcast: “The English person with a Chinese stomach”: how Fuchsia Dunlop became a Sichuan food hero (January 19, 2025, The Guardian)
The author has been explaining Sichuan cuisine to Westerners for decades. But “Fu Xia,” as she’s known, has had a profound effect on food lovers in China, too.
Arts / Entertainment / Media
A Tradition In Retreat (January 14, 2026, China Media Project)
At the start of each new year, it has become a tradition in Chinese journalism since the late 1990s to publish carefully crafted editorial messages welcoming the year ahead. These messages to readers, called xinnian xianci (新年献词), or “New Year’s messages,” are typically penned by commentary departments within media organizations and serve as statements of purpose and vision—a rare moment when Chinese media can systematically express values and reflect on the year past. This year, as 2026 began, these messages arrived as expected, with Chinese media and some foreign Chinese-language outlets publishing their own New Year’s messages one after another.
CDT 2025 Year-End Roundup: CDTV Video Compilation (January 15, 2026, China Digital Times)
As 2025 draws to a close, CDT editors are compiling a series of the most notable content (Chinese) from across the Chinese internet over the past year. Topics include this year’s most outstanding quotes, reports, podcasts and videos, sensitive words, censored articles and essays, “People of the Year,” and CDT’s “2025 Editors’ Picks.” This year-end video compiled by CDT Chinese editors offers a month-by-month look back on the major events of 2025, as illustrated by popular—and sometimes censored—viral video content from around the Chinese internet.
Economics / Trade / Business
China Reports Record Trillion-Dollar Trade Surplus Despite Trump Tariffs (January 13, 2026, The Guardian)
China has reported a strong export run in 2025 with a record trillion-dollar surplus, as its producers brace for three more years of a Trump administration set on slowing the manufacturing powerhouse by shifting US orders to other markets. Beijing’s resilience to renewed tariff tensions since Donald Trump returned to the US presidency last January has emboldened Chinese firms to shift their focus to south-east Asia, Africa and Latin America to offset US duties.
Health / Environment
“If You’re Flushing the Toilet with Grey Water, People Should Know”: How China Turned Rain Into an Asset (January 16, 2026, The Guardian)
The Bird’s Nest is one of the most pioneering examples of China’s focus on the practice known as “urban rainwater harvesting” (URWH), but it is not the only one. All over China, major buildings are constructed with a focus on URWH.
History / Culture
In Wuhan, A Race to Study a 3,500-Year-Old City Between Seasons (January 15, 2026, Sixth Tone)
For a few cold, dry months each winter at Panlongcheng, conditions briefly align for archaeologists to work on a 3,500-year-old city. That brief reprieve leaves no margin for delay. Archaeologists rush to open trenches, record fragile layers, and gather samples, knowing that spring rain and rising moisture will soon compromise both access and preservation. Beneath the surface is Panlongcheng, an urban settlement built during the Shang dynasty (c.1600–1046 BC).
Nie Weiping, the ‘Wild Warrior’ Who Restored China’s Confidence in Go (January 16, 2026, Sixth Tone)
In December 1974, Go player Nie Weiping wasn’t having a great run of matches. He’d won one and lost two, all against middling competition. For his next game, he would take on Japan’s Miyamoto Naoki, a player of the highest rank who had won six consecutive matches. Miyamoto’s dominance was emblematic of that era. Though Go was invented in China some 2,500 years ago, the country had, by the 70s, fallen behind Japan embarrassingly so, some thought.
Books
Forever Hong Kong: A Conversation with Ching Kwan Lee (January 15, 2026, Made In China Journal)
Six years after the spectacular “Be Water” rebellion that rippled across national borders, Forever Hong Kong asks: What historical conditions and precedents precipitated the citywide revolt in 2019? How can we understand Hongkongers’ political resistance as acts of decolonial defiance? Weaving cogent historical and political-economy analyses of Hong Kong’s colonial history with rich ethnographic data from 2019, C.K. Lee situates the protest cultures and tactics she observed amid geopolitical tension and the conditions created under the “double coloniality” of the British and Chinese governments. Full of intimate details from Lee’s participant observations during the protest, Forever Hong Kong offers an incisive theory-driven analysis of Hongkongers’ struggle for self-determination.
Onward to Make Him Known : A Book Review of Chinese Christian Witness (January 20, 2026, ChinaSource)
Chinese Christian Witness will be an informative, enriching addition to the library of anyone interested in not just Chinese missions, but in the big picture of Christianity’s encounters with the Middle Kingdom, its culture and history. This book would serve well as a text in a class on the story of the faith there, and indeed as supplemental reading for students of missions history generally—furnishing thought-provoking insights into the interactions of the Gospel with a high culture.
Resources
World Watch List 2026 (January, 2025, Open Doors)
The World Watch List is Open Doors’ annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution. Explore each country profile and download the data and stories for in-depth information about following Jesus in the most dangerous places. You’ll learn more about Christian persecution and discover how to stand with your brothers and sisters in prayer and action.
Events
Online Course – Being Bridges Across Cultures and Generations (Ambassadors For Christ – Online Symposium for Church and Lay Leaders)
February 1, 2026, 8pm EST
Join us to hear one church’s journey of bridging cultures and generations to serve in missions. The pastor and members of the Living Water Evangelical Church will share about how their outreach to Afghan refugees provided an opportunity for them to serve cross-culturally as well as learn how to carry out intergenerational collaboration. Though this story focuses on the ministry to the Afghan refugees, the journey of bridging across cultures and generations goes beyond this ministry. May the personal stories from this journey be an encouragement to other like-minded congregations.
Some Perspectives on Science and Christian Theology (Cambridge Center for Christian Theology)
May 21, 2026, 4pm GMT+1
This paper focuses on two important incidents: the visit to China by Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century, and the visit by British philosopher Bertrand Russell in the early twentieth century. In the first instance, the integration of science and Christian theology by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) had a significant impact on the conversions of leading Chinese Confucian scholars such as Xu Guangqi (1562–1633). In the second instance, Russell’s arguments that science and Christianity are fundamentally in conflict in their epistemologies and attitudes had a crucial impact on the anti-Christianity movement involving the young Mao Zedong in the 1920s, and remain influential in China to this day.
Pray for China
January 24 (Pray For China: A Walk Through History)
On January 24, 1974, Xu Daoheng (许道亨弟兄) was arrested for being a counter-revolutionary. Xu was born into a Christian family in Fujian in 1928. His great-grandfather was a prominent Christian. Although Xu became a Christian at a young age, he did very little to serve the Lord until the church was under assault during the Cultural Revolution. In 1969, he felt God’s call to evangelize from 2 Timothy 4:2-5. Until his arrest, God used Xu to ignite a great revival, first in Fuzhou and then throughout Fujian. He preached with great power; churches were planted; miraculous healings abounded and thousands were baptized. He was jailed for over five years and almost died from illness during that time. After he was released, God used him to combat the “shouters” heresy in the early 1980’s. Pray for pastors in Fujian to preach the Word and fulfill the ministry given them by God. “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching…As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” 2 Timothy 4:2-5
Prayer 2026: Off the Beaten Path (January 1, 2026, China Partnership)
Praying Through the ChinaSource Journal (October 13, 2025, ChinaSource)
Praying Through ZGBriefs (August 29, 2025, ChinaSource)
Operation World (April 21, 2025, ChinaSource)
Pray for China (prayforchina.us)
Prayer Walking as a Rhythm of Life (May 30, 2025, ChinaSource)