A weekly roundup of news and analysis to help you follow key developments in China and the Chinese church.
Listen: Tiananmen Square, A 'Watershed' For Chinese Conversions To Christianity (June 3, 2013, Here & Now Radio)
Monday is the 23rd anniversary of China's 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. And Professor Fenggang Yang of Purdue University says the crackdown set off a trend of conversions to Christianity in China.
A lot of nice-sounding words (May 24, 2013, The Economist)
CHEN GUANGCHENG is a blind Chinese activist who left his country a year ago, soon after taking refuge in the American embassy in Beijing. Mr Chen was in London recently to receive an award for his work defending the rights of rural Chinese women. The Economist's China Editor, Rob Gifford, caught up with him at the Houses of Parliament, to ask him about recent changes in China and about his own exile.
Encountering China (May 19, 2013, The China Story)
This essay was commissioned as a review of Kin-ming Lius edited volume, My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats and Journalists Reflect on their First Encounters with China, Hong Kong: East Slope publishing, 2012. As it turns out, The China Story offers a more commodious destination for these reflections. My thanks to Linda Jaivin and Gloria Davies for their comments on draft versions of this essay.
China Rising (May 4, 2013, Al Jazeera)
Special Series: After centuries of western dominance, the worlds centre of economic and political weight is shifting eastward. In just 30 years, China has risen from long-standing poverty to being the second largest economy in the world faster than any other country in history. From angry farmers to weary migrant workers, powerful politicians and everyone in between, what China says and does, has become of undeniable importance to the entire world.
Chinese Church Voices: 10 Observed Trends on Chinese Christian Media (April 17, 2013, ChinaSource)
In June of 2012, ChinaSource launched a blog called Chinese Church Voices where we have been posting translations of content taken from Mainland Christian online sources websites, blogs, and micro-blogs. Our goal is to help give outsiders a chance to "listen in on the conversations" that Chinese Christians are having online. I recently went back through the articles that we have posted to see if there were any observable trends.
Insight: The backroom battle delaying reform of China's one-child policy (April 8, 2013, Reuters)
Two retired senior Chinese officials are engaged in a battle with one another to sway Beijing's new leadership over the future of the one-child policy, exposing divisions that have impeded progress in a crucial area of reform. [] Former State Councilors Song Jian and Peng Peiyun, who once ranked above cabinet ministers and remain influential, have been lobbying China's top leaders, mainly behind closed doors: Song wants them to keep the policy while Peng urges them to phase it out, people familiar with the matter said. Their unresolved clash could suggest the leadership remains torn over one of China's most divisive social issues, said a recently retired family planning official. How quickly it is settled may shed light on whether new President Xi Jinping will ease family-planning controls on a nation of 1.3 billion people.
Current Ideological Trends in China How Should The Church Respond? (March 27, 2013, Lausanne Global Conversation)
In discussion of the social and political status of Christianity in China, the relationship of the churches and the government naturally takes centre stage. Nonetheless, how the faith and its growing influence are viewed in China is caught up in a confusing cauldron of competing political and moral ideologies that vie for Chinas future. As Chinas driving market economy and growing liberalization have rendered the old shibboleths of Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought uncouth, Neo-liberalism, Neo-leftism, and Neo-Confucianism have sought to fill the ideological vacuum. Each has its own view on whether the rise of Christianity in China is bane or blessing.
PRI has produced an Easter video for use in the ESL classroom.
Pastor Jin on the Church and Social Responsibility (March 22, 2013, Chinese Church Voices)
The revival of the Korean Church is widely known and its influence cannot be ignored. After WWII, in the course of only a few decades, a small, poor nation became todays second largest missionary sending country. In recent decades Christianity in China has also experienced rapid growth and as one of Koreas neighboring countries, there is much to emulate and many lessons to be learned from the passion and experience of the Korean Church.
For Many in China, the One Child Policy is Already Irrelevant (March 19, 2013, China File)
Before getting pregnant with her second child, Lu Qingmin went to the family-planning office to apply for a birth permit. Officials in her husbands Hunan village where she was living turned her down, but she had the baby anyway. She may eventually be fined $1,600about what she makes in two months in her purchasing job at a Guangdong paint factory. Everyone told me to hide so the family-planning people wouldnt find me, but I went around everywhere, she told me. In the past, that place had very strict family planning, but now the policy has loosened. The cadres worry that there are too many only children here. I asked her if government policy had factored into her decision to have a second child. It was never a consideration, she said.
The balinghou (aeonmagazine.com)
Food metaphors are telling older Chinese want to know: Why do they have it so easy, when we had it so hard? The main target of this slating has been what the Chinese call the balinghou young people who were born after 1980, who never knew food rationing and were raised after Chinas reform and opening began. Im talking here of the urban middle class, who dominate Chinese media both as purchasers and consumers. The raft of criticisms being levelled has very little to do with the actual failings of the young, but is a symptom of the yawning, and unprecedented gulf between young urban Chinese and their parents.
What does the future hold for China? (March 5, 2013, BBC)
China's moment of change has come. After a decade in power, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are stepping aside. Xi Jinping and a new generation are taking over. Already elevated to the post of general secretary of the Communist Party last November, Xi Jinping will be confirmed as China's new head of state by the National People's Congress now meeting in Beijing. So, naturally, the question everyone is asking is, what does the future hold for China? How will Xi Jinping govern this huge, complex and increasingly powerful nation?