Featured Article
Mandarin Monday: Exploring Chinese Festival Handicrafts (June 22, 2025, The Beijinger Blog)
In China, a land with a millennia-old civilization, you can find tradition breathing through the rhythm of everyday life. Among the most vivid expressions of its cultural heritage are the handicrafts (手工艺 shǒugōngyì) associated with traditional festivals. These intricate creations are more than just art; they are vessels of memory, symbols of cultural identity and bridges between generations.
Spotlight
Public Lecture: “Christian-Confucian Dialogue in the Contemporary World”
(US China Catholic Association)
At 7:00PM ET on July 31, 2025, the USCCA’s speaker series, in collaboration with ChinaSource and China Academic Consortium, will host Dr. Stephanie Wong as speaker on the topic of “Christian-Confucian Dialogue in the Contemporary World.” Dr. Stephanie M. Wong is an assistant professor at Villanova University, where she teaches classes in Catholic theology, Chinese religious and philosophical traditions, and on comparative theology and inter-religious relations in East Asia.
Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs
Taiwanese Rethink China Travel as Beijing Raises Stakes for ‘Separatist’ Speech (June 19, 2025, Christian Science Monitor)
While China’s expanding military drills around Taiwan often capture media headlines, Beijing is waging a less visible legal and psychological campaign that nonetheless feels more intimidating to many Taiwanese.
China Spares No Expense For Latin America and Caribbean Ties (June 21, 2025, The Jamestown Foundation – China Brief)
In May, People’s Republic of China (PRC) President Xi Jinping announced an RMB 66 billion ($9.2 billion) credit line to partners in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Unveiled at the opening ceremony of the annual at the China-CELAC Forum in Beijing, this was the latest example of a determination to leverage the PRC’s vast financial and economic resources to expand influence in the region.
China Will Bring Out the Big Guns for Its Military Parade. What’s It All About? (June 24, South China Morning Post)
China is preparing to show off its military might with a huge parade in Beijingon September 3 marking the 80th anniversary of the victory over Japan in World War II. As well as thousands of goose-stepping soldiers, the People’s Liberation Army will bring out the big guns with its latest missile systems, weaponry and aircraft on display for the first time since the last military parade six years ago.
Religion
160 Years of Gospel Mission: How Hudson Taylor’s Vision Continues Through OMF (May 25, 2025, OMF)
160 years ago, on the 25th June 1865, James Hudson Taylor prayed on Brighton Beach in England for 24 ‘willing, skilful workers’ to take the good news of Jesus to those with the fewest opportunities to hear it in the inland provinces of China.
Bear Fruit with Patience: Faith, Hope, and Love June 19, 2025, China Partnership)
How can you produce good fruit in times of difficulty? Paul Peng, a Chinese house church pastor, says patience is the answer. This is the third of a four-part series focused on the patient bearing of fruit… Today, Peng teaches that patience is “the foremost mark of love,” and that gospel patience is not merely gritting your teeth and bearing it – but cheerfully and hopefully rejoicing as you wait for the seed to mature.
The Core of Chinese Mission: Piety and Suffering (June 20, 2025, ChinaSource)
Hong (pseudonym) was exhausted and overwhelmed. For much of her time serving in her cross-cultural location, she faced loneliness and cultural conflict. The spiritual darkness of that place often settled heavily on both Hong and her Chinese teammate. When she prayed, the darkness would lift, “but I knew it would come back,” she recalled. During those difficult times, Hong often told herself, “God is good,” encouraging herself to keep going. But even through those dark times, the campus ministry she and her teammate had launched was thriving.
Changsha: Evangelism and Family (June 23, 2025, China Partnership)
Our church has two prayer requests. First, pray for evangelism. True church growth comes from evangelism, not just people transferring from other churches. We are still looking for breakthroughs in how to effectively share the gospel. Right now, everyone in our church is enthusiastic about seekers – but it’s hard to bring new people into the church, especially strangers. So, please pray for good opportunities to share the gospel.
Why Some Chinese Protestants Are Becoming Catholic (June 23, 2025, ChinaSource)
It’s a shift you might not see in headlines, but it’s happening—within the Chinese Protestant church, some believers are quietly finding their way to Catholic or Orthodox traditions. This quiet trend has stirred curiosity, concern, and heartfelt dialogue, especially after we published Standing in the True Light and Crossing the Divide.
Society / Life
Eating for Views: Rising Concerns Over Binge Eating Livestreams (June 18, 2025, Sixth Tone)
Dubbed dawei wang, or “big-stomach king” livestreams, central and local Chinese authorities have launched numerous campaigns since 2020 to crack down on what they see as unhealthy excess and food waste. To date, over 13,600 related social media accounts have been banned, according to a report on the phenomenon released by Legal Daily on Tuesday.
China Has Millions of Single Men – Could Dating Camp Help Them Find Love? (June 19, 2025, BBC)
To say China’s women are outnumbered would be an understatement. With a staggering 30 million more men than women, one of the world’s most populous countries has a deluge of unattached males. The odds are heavily stacked against them finding a date, let alone a wife – something many feel pressure to do.
Opinion | Giving Up Seats to Elderly Should Be an Easy Decision in China (June 21, 2025, South China Morning Post)
Chinese civilisation is deeply rooted in the virtues of sympathy, respect and love towards the elderly. For instance, Confucian teachings promote the idea that filial piety is the root of virtue and place great emphasis on the moral duty of the younger generation to care for and honour their elders. This long-standing cultural ideal has helped shape familial relationships and defined broader societal norms. Needless to say, there are numerous examples of preserving filial piety. Yet in today’s fast-paced and increasingly individualistic society, these values are too often forgotten or neglected.
Translation: Plunging Prices, Sprouting Weeds, and Broken Dreams (June 23, 2025, China Digital Times)
At The New York Times on Monday, columnist Li Yuan describes how, as “wages stagnate and jobs disappear, the promise of upward social mobility is eroding, especially for those from modest backgrounds. For many […], the Chinese Dream no longer feels achievable.”
Economics / Trade / Business
UK Firm Not Racist for Rejecting Chinese Applicant Over Security Concerns, Tribunal Rules (June 18, 2025, The Guardian)
Refusing to give a job to Chinese and Russian people in companies that deal with issues of national security and require security clearance is not racist, an employment tribunal has ruled. It is not discriminatory to stop people from “hostile” states taking up certain jobs in the defence sector because of the risk to British security, the judgment says.
‘Labubu’ Is a Plush Toy that Is Causing a Frenzy. Here’s Its Origin Story (June 18, 2025, NPR)
It’s a plush doll. It’s a bag charm. It’s a collectible that recently sold for six figures. But no, this wildly popular creature isn’t a Gremlin or one of the monsters in Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are. Meet Labubu.
China, Kyrgyzstan, and the Quiet Construction of a Sanctions-Resistant Trade Corridor (June 20, 2025, The Diplomat)
Kyrgyzstan is not merely a passive conduit in Russia’s sanctions evasion effort. It is a testbed. While policymakers in Washington and Brussels remain focused on punishing Russia’s known violations and scrutinizing Central Asian states’ complicity in gray-market activity, Beijing is quietly achieving something more ambitious.
Payment Connect: Hongkongers, mainland China residents embrace service on launch day (June 22, 2025, South China Morning Post)
Hongkongers and mainland residents jumped at the chance to send money across the border via a new electronic payment service on its first day of operation on Sunday. […] Connecting Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System (FPS) to the mainland’s Internet Banking Payment System (IBPS), it allows 315 million users to transfer money across the border to pay for travel, meals, education, medical services, salaries and other daily activities.
Podcast: Apple in China (June 24, 2025, China Talk)
Patrick McGee is the author of Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company. Our discussion led us through a detailed history of Apple’s relationship with China, where iPhone manufacturing became a project of nation-building.
Science / Technology
How China made electric vehicles mainstream (June 22, 2025, BBC)
In many countries, electric vehicles (EVs) are considered luxury purchases. But here in China – where almost half of all cars sold last year were electric – it’s a banal reality. At the beginning of the century, China’s leadership laid out plans to dominate the technologies of the future. Once a nation of bicycles China is now the world’s leader in EVs.
DeepSeek’s Democratic Deficit (June 24, 2025, China Media Project)
DeepSeek’s R1 model has only been in the public eye since this February, but governments and tech companies have moved fast to adopt it. Institutions as disparate as the Indian government, the chip maker Nvidia, and a host of bodies from the Chinese local government have announced that they will deploy the model. And China’s central government has lost no time in exploiting the broader implications of this private company’s success.
Travel / Food
How Industrial Sites Became the New Disneyland for Young Chinese Tourists (June 17, 2025, ChinaSkinny)
What began as corporate walkthroughs and educational excursions has quietly become one of China’s most surprising tourism trends: factory tours. From car plants to coffee estates and from textile workshops to soda bottling lines, young Chinese are now flocking to factories for weekend fun, Instagrammable moments, and even a little DIY action.
What’s the Right Way to Translate Chinese Dish Names? (June 20, 2025, Sixth Tone)
The translation of culturally specific Chinese terms has long been a challenge for even the best of experts, with culinary terms ranking among the most difficult. Not for nothing, a recent 2,000-word CNN article decried the “impossible task” of translating foods like fuqi feipian, a chilled dish of beef offal served in chili oil that literally means “husband-and-wife slices.”
China’s Thrill-Seekers Splash Out on Adventure Tourism as Social Media Lures Them Off-Grid (June 22, 2025, South China Morning Post)
Big city lights? Too dull, say bright-eyed Chinese travellers who prefer to dream of far-flung locales – areas more likely to drain their life alongside their bank account. And oh, what a thrill. Chinese tourists eyeing overseas excursions are increasingly turning their gaze to remote areas – generally away from urban settings and run-of-the-mill tourist destinations that comprise the photo posts of more traditional travellers, and towards off-the-beaten-path locations that, in many cases, wowed them on social media.
The Great Beijing Ice Cream Quest | the Beijinger (June 24, 2025, The Beijinger)
Proper ice cream is a bit of a recent development in Beijing’s food scene that’s been growing over the past few years. We certainly didn’t have very many exciting options way back when, but I find things to be different nowadays!
Language / Language Learning
7 Characteristics of a Great Chinese Tutor or Private Teacher (June 22, 2025, Hacking Chinese)
The goal today is to explore what signifies good tutors and how to find them. Naturally, what “good” means is circumstantial and subjective to a certain extent, but I do believe that there are some general characteristics that are objectively desirable in a tutor.
History / Culture
Mandarin Monday: Exploring Chinese Festival Handicrafts (June 22, 2025, The Beijinger Blog)
In China, a land with a millennia-old civilization, you can find tradition breathing through the rhythm of everyday life. Among the most vivid expressions of its cultural heritage are the handicrafts (手工艺 shǒugōngyì) associated with traditional festivals. These intricate creations are more than just art; they are vessels of memory, symbols of cultural identity and bridges between generations.
China’s Rare Woods: Bearers of Beauty, Toil, and the Supernatural (June 24, 2025, The World of Chinese)
For centuries, wood—especially rare species like nanmu (楠木, Phoebe wood), huanghuali (黄花梨, Chinese rosewood), and zitan(紫檀, red sandalwood)—has played a central role in everything from music-making to maritime expeditions, and remains a status symbol among older generations. But does it still hold the same appeal for young people today?
Arts Entertainment / Media
2025 Shanghai Int’l Film Fest Sees Record Premieres and Bigger Crowds (June 19, 2025, Sixth Tone)
Now in its 27th edition, the 2025 Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF), which began June 13 and concludes June 22, includes over 400 movies across Shanghai, as well as five nearby cities including Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Suzhou. The event will also host celebrations of the 130th anniversary of global cinema and the 120th anniversary of Chinese cinema.
A Media Corruption Case in Shanghai (June 23 2025, China Media Project)
In the latest case underscoring the persistent challenge of media corruption in China’s tightly controlled information environment, local district authorities in Shanghai reported this week that they had dismantled a “news extortion” (新闻敲诈) operation using a WeChat public account to blackmail companies for exorbitant “service fees” in order to make negative exposure disappear.
Books
Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (June 20, 2025, China File)
For those interested in learning about the real Huawei and the people who made it, Eva Dou’s new book, House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company, is an excellent start. A longtime tech reporter and China correspondent, now at the Washington Post, Dou blends archival research and firsthand reporting seamlessly into a page-turning volume.
Pray for China
June 19 (Pray For China: A Walk Through History)
James M. Menzies (明义士) served as a missionary in China for 26 years, departing on June 20, 1936. He was the first to scientifically excavate, study, and decipher the Shang dynasty oracle bone script that had been identified by Wang Yirong (王懿荣先生) in 1899. Pray for many to see in the ancient characters and rituals that their ancestors knew the Lord and the Genesis history. I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever. Psalm 86:12
Praying the Lord’s Prayer (June 24, 2025, ChinaSource)
One of the things I miss most about living in China is worshiping with Chinese brothers and sisters on Sunday mornings. Over the years, I attended various registered churches in Changchun and Beijing. I loved learning and singing the hymns, as well as struggling to understand the sermons. Attending church each week was a good way to measure my progress in learning Chinese, but more importantly, it was a blessing to be with God’s people.
Operation World (April 21, 2025, ChinaSource)
Pray for China (prayforchina.us)
Pray for China (China Partnership)
Prayer Walking as a Rhythm of Life (ChinaSource)