Featured Article
Pastor Ezra Jin: ‘God Poured Words’ Sustained Me Through 266 Days in a Chinese Cell (October 2, 2026, The Christian Post)
When Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri of Beijing Zion Church found himself confined to a squalid cell at the Beihai No. 2 Detention Center in the southern Chinese province of Guangxi, he remembered the sign of Jonah. “I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple,” were the words the prophet prayed from the belly of the fish before he was delivered. Jin said they were also the words the Lord gave him last October on the first day of his imprisonment, which would extend for 266 days and draw international attention.
Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs
Xi Wants 100,000 American Students. Send Him 100,000 American Ambassadors (September 27, 2026, Desmond Shum via Substack)
Xi Jinping’s invitation for 100,000 young Americans to visit, study and participate in exchanges in China over the next five years has created quite a stir on X. The argument broadly falls into two camps. One side says China is America’s principal strategic competitor. America cannot compete effectively with a country it does not understand. It needs more Americans who speak Chinese, have lived in China and understand the country firsthand. The other side asks: why send 100,000 impressionable young Americans into a political system that specializes in propaganda, censorship and influence?
Return of the Pekingologist (September 29, 2026, ChinaFile)
In 2023, China scholar David Shambaugh argued that contemporary China studies was “coming full circle.” This meant a return to an era in which researchers must observe a closed regime entirely from the outside. Following Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the ’80s, fieldwork opportunities had expanded. But under Xi Jinping, this trend has decisively reversed. In light of this shift, Shambaugh suggested that China studies may have to reacquire the methods of “Pekingology,” or the art of “peering into China from the outside” by interpreting indirect clues.
Inside the Ukrainian Military Unit Training Fighters from China (September 30, 2026, The Guardian)
On the makeshift workbench in the cramped front room of a cottage near the frontlines of the Russia-Ukraine war, there are all the accoutrements of a drone workshop. The walls are lined with pliers and rolls of duct tape; the table is cluttered with screwdrivers and piles of wire. Propped up against the wall are two kamikaze drones. Only one item looks out of place in this Ukrainian village house: a pot of Chinese longjing tea, the leaves wilted from repeated top-ups.
China’s LinkedIn Espionage Is Only Getting More Advanced (October 5, 2026, The Diplomat)
On June 3, in a rare—and telling—indication of collective alarm, the member states of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance published an unprecedented joint bulletin highlighting China’s use of professional networking sites like LinkedIn to carry out an aggressive, industrial-scale online espionage campaign.
Religion
Leaving China, Entering Mission? (October 2, 2026, ChinaSource)
We cannot help asking: Chinese churches and pastors have geographically “left China,” but have we truly “entered mission”? Taking the situation of Chinese churches in Thailand as its starting point, this article examines the internal and external tensions facing Chinese cross-cultural workers in Thailand and the complexity of this group. The difficulties visible on the mission field in Thailand are, in fact, an important microcosm of Chinese house churches’ transition toward global mission. Looking into this mirror may help us see more clearly that, for the Chinese church’s overseas mission efforts to mature, a profound internal transformation is needed in theological understanding, kingdom perspective, and spiritual health.
Living at the Hyphens (October 5, 2026, ChinaSource)
Following Easten Law’s two introductory essays on Sinophone Theologies, Menghun Goh turns the series toward biblical reflection. Beginning with the experience of keeping multiple New Years across Kuala Lumpur, the United States, and Taiwan, he considers untranslatability not as confusion to be resolved but as a theological condition. Through Paul’s letters, “similarity-in-difference,” and the image of the body of Christ, Goh explores how Christian identity is formed in hyphenated relation rather than in isolation.
Open Letter from the Early Rain Covenant Church Regarding Pastor Wang Yi’s Health and Family Visits (October 5, 2026, China Change)
In December 2019, Pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to nine years in prison by the Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court on charges of inciting subversion of state power and illegal business operations, and was subsequently transferred to Jintang Prison in Chengdu (成都金堂监狱) to serve his sentence. It has been nearly eight years since his arrest. Normal visits, correspondence, and phone calls between him and his wife, son, and parents have been restricted for a long time, making it difficult for his family to know his living conditions and health status in a timely and accurate manner.
China detains Protestant pastor for ‘organizing illegal religious activities’ (October 5, 2026, Christian Post)
Authorities in China detained Protestant Pastor An Yankui at his home on suspicion of “organizing illegal religious activities” amid an ongoing crackdown on unregistered churches. Officers from the Taiyuan Public Security Bureau took An into custody Tuesday morning and presented a police record stating the allegation, the US-based advocacy group International Christian Concern reports. The record cited Article 96 of the Public Security Administration Punishments Law, which requires police to tell anyone they summon the reason and legal basis for the summons.
When Our Children Don’t Go to School (October 6, 2026, ChinaSource)
Sometimes adults taking children out for walks would stand with them behind the iron fence, watching the school raise the flag and do morning exercises. One grandmother beside me said to her child, “When you grow up, you will go in there too.” At that very moment, God put a thought in my heart: I would not send my child to school. We would teach him at home.
Society / Life
Restoring the Great Wall for 20 years: The story of Cheng Yongmao (September 22, 2026, Our China Story)
Seventy-year-old Cheng Yongmao wears a red hard hat, a blue work vest and a small camera hanging from his chest, while holding a wooden hiking pole. This has been his gear for climbing the Great Wall every time over the past 20 years.
In Photos: China Begins Its Weeklong National Day Holiday (October 1, 2026, Sixth Tone)
China’s weeklong National Day holiday began Thursday, extending a travel period that started with the Mid-Autumn Festival less than a week earlier and fueling demand for long-distance trips at home and abroad. The Mid-Autumn Festival, traditionally an occasion for family reunions, fell on September 25 this year. National Day, which marks the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, followed on October 1 and began a weeklong public holiday. With only three working days between them, people who took those days off could combine the two breaks into a 13-day holiday ending October 7.
Bug Bounty: Beijing Park Recruits Visitors Against Invasive Moth (October 1, 2026, Sixth Tone)
Beijing Wildlife Park has turned its fight against a surge of invasive caterpillars into a public contest, offering up to 10 park tickets to visitors who collect the heaviest haul each day. From September 28 to 30, participants caught an estimated 120,000 larvae weighing a combined 18.5 kilograms.
A Woman Exposed China’s Cat-Abuse Networks—and Paid a Terrible Price (October 5, 2026, The Diplomat)
In April, a 29-year-old woman traveling in Hainan swallowed a bottle of pills in a hotel room. Two days earlier, a fellow volunteer had told her that her national ID number, her parents’ home address, and her grandparents’ phone numbers were circulating online. Her offense, in the eyes of the people who posted her and her family’s private information, was reporting cat abusers to the police.
Economics / Trade / Business
Logan Wright on China’s Financial Decay (subscription required) (October 4, 2026, The Wire China)
Logan Wright is the director of China markets research at Rhodium Group and senior associate of the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has studied the expansion of credit in China, the Chinese government’s deleveraging campaign, and local government debt. In the following lightly edited interview, we discussed his new book, Broken China: How the Economic Miracle Shattered and What it Means for the World, and what went wrong.
Why Protecting Home Values Is Beijing’s New Priority (October 5, 2026, South China Morning Post)
For decades, China’s property sector was defined by spectacular scale: farmland transformed into suburbs, skylines rising across regional hubs and, more recently, the prominent unravelling of heavily indebted developers. Yet beneath those dramatic changes, a far quieter and more consequential transformation is taking shape.
Interdependence and Its Limits | Sinification: September 2026 (October 5, 2026, Sinocism)
Much of the commentary in September revolved around the strength and limitations of economic interdependence as a source of political power. Against the backdrop of “strategic stability”—or stalemate—in the US-China trade relationship, Wu Bingxuan and Huang Chaofeng advise Chinese firms to concentrate on trade diversification and developing sanctions-evasion tools against the prospect of expanding US trade controls and restrictions on Chinese firms.
History / Culture
Bamboo and the Chinese Imagination (September 28, 2026, The World of Chinese)
In the fourth century, the Chinese scholar Wang Huizhi (王徽之) moved, temporarily, into someone else’s vacant house. Upon arrival, he immediately had bamboo planted outside. When asked why he had gone to the trouble for such a short stay, Wang pointed directly at the plant and replied, “How could I be without this gentleman even for a single day?”
The Enduring Appeal of China’s Eight Immortals (September 30, 2026, Sixth Tone)
This summer, “All Wishes Come True!” took in more than 1.8 billion yuan ($268 million) at the Chinese box office, becoming the latest in a string of hit animated films inspired by traditional Chinese myths and legends. The movie reimagines the Eight Immortals, a group of legendary figures in Chinese mythology and Taoism, as ordinary mortals who pose as immortals and venture into the celestial realm of Penglai. There, the mismatched group finds itself caught up in a conflict involving powerful gods, including the warrior deity Erlang Shen.
“Shanghai” Beyond the Map: The Story of an English Verb (October 5, 2026, The World of Chinese)
What ties a modern Supreme Court legal battle, an office worker trapped in an unexpected meeting, and a 19th-century sailor pressed into service aboard a vessel bound for the Far East together? They are all connected by a single, evocative verb: to be shanghaied—forced, tricked, or hijacked into a journey or task they never chose.
Fifty Years After the Cultural Revolution, China Won’t Talk About It (subscription required) (October 5, 2026, The Economist)
There will be no big celebrations. Yet it is a momentous anniversary. October 6 marks exactly 50 years since the official end of the Cultural Revolution. The close of that tumultuous decade, and the decisive turn from Mao’s erratic rule, paved the way for China’s half-century of remarkable growth. But the date is altogether too sensitive for the Communist Party, given its profound aversion to examining past errors. The party long ago rendered a negative verdict on the Cultural Revolution and has no interest in reopening old wounds.
Travel / Food
Golden Week Drives More Lower Tier City Consumers to Think Internationally (September 30, 2026, Chinaskinny)
China’s National Day Golden Week runs from tomorrow to October 7, but this year’s travel window is much larger. The Mid-Autumn holiday was celebrated from September 25 to 27, leaving just three working days between the two breaks. Take those days off and the combined holiday stretches to 13 days. This is reflected in the 123% year-on-year growth in hotel bookings of seven nights or more across Trip.com Group’s platforms. More than half of its outbound flight bookings depart before the official holiday begins, with the average trip lasting over nine days.
Science / Technology
China Has Cracked Down on AI Relationships. Is It Ahead of the Game? (October 1, 2026, BBC News)
Has China taken the lead in protecting its people from a manipulative and dangerous technology with the power to change human interaction forever? Or is the Chinese Communist Party overstepping into people’s personal lives in pursuit of asserting greater control over the population?
Agricultural Drones: Material Afterlives of Mao’s Green Revolution (October 6, 2026, Made In China Journal)
The four propellers begin to spin. A gust of wind presses down the surrounding rice plants as a pulsing rotor-whir fills the air. The drone, carrying its battery and a tank of pesticides, lifts off and stabilises, hovering briefly before angling towards the fields. It accelerates over the paddies, the air beneath it flattening the rice in a shifting ripple.
Arts / Entertainment / Media
National Security on the Silver Screen (October 2, 2026, China Media Project)
But in the debut episode of The Long Watch (交锋), a Chinese spy drama released last month, Lee’s words become something else entirely. They are the catalyst for dramatic action, with the underlying message that Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory. The words are a warning to all Chinese—and a call to action.
Health / Environment
Cutting Corners or Cutting Red Tape? The US-China Trial Speed Debate (October 5, 2026, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations)
Clinical trials are an essential part of developing new medicines and treatments. In recent years, China has become an increasingly important center for clinical research and drug development. On September 22, 2026, Dr. Amy Abernethy, cofounder of Highlander Health and former principal deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Ruby Wang of LINTRIS discussed the differences between US and Chinese approaches to clinical trials, including the tradeoffs between speed, safety, and research quality.
Pray for China
October 8 (Pray For China: A Walk Through History)
Jesuit missionary Ferdinand Verbiest (南怀仁) was born in Belgium on October 8, 1623, and came to China in 1659. In 1669, the young Kangxi Emperor (康熙帝) held a public contest between Verbiest and the leading Chinese astronomer to see which one could accurately predict three events. A similar contest in 1664 had resulted in Verbiest’s predecessor being sentenced to death. After Verbiest won the 1669 contest, he developed a close, lifelong relationship with Kangxi and gained unprecedented privileges for Catholic missions. Verbiest died in 1688 after falling from a horse; the emperor gave him a posthumous name, the only time in Chinese history this was done for a westerner. Pray for the Infinite-Personal Creator God to be glorified as His mercy brings joy to astronomers and other scientists in China. Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. Romans 10:1
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)