ZGBriefs | November 23, 2017
ChinaSource wishes you a blessed Thanksgiving!
A weekly roundup of news and analysis to help you follow key developments in China and the Chinese church.
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.
The Fast-Fading Memories of Harbin’s Migrant History (September 26, 2017, Sixth Tone)
The construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway saw the arrival of a wave of Russian immigrants in northeastern China. At first, most were rail workers and their families, but later, merchants who had caught wind of the enormous commercial potential raced to open stores in the northeast. By 1917, Russian immigrants made up more than a quarter of residents in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang province.
Featured Article
The Unprecedented Reach of China’s Surveillance State (September 15, 2017, China File)
The Chinese Party-state is building a social credit system for collecting information about all of its citizens by police, courts, and other institutions. This enables the government to reach into society to a degree unprecedented in history.
Featured Article
How I Help Students Cheat Their Way to Academic Success (September 12, 2017, Sixth Tone)
I knew what I was doing was unethical, but I also knew I didn’t have enough cash to get through the month.
Featured Article
Homeschooling Still Illegal, Warns Chinese Government (September 6, 2017, Sixth Tone)
In an effort to reduce dropout rates, the Chinese government has clarified that homeschooling, as well as so-called sishu schools that focus on teaching classic Chinese culture, are illegal.