Featured Article
A Town in Northeast China Has Shrunk by a Third Since 2010. Here’s One Family’s Story (October 30, 2025, NPR)
Lin Xin’s story highlights the fast-unfolding demographic shifts happening in China, where the population is shrinking and aging. The United Nations has projected that between 2024 and 2054, the country could see a decline of over 200 million people. Economists say China is getting old before it gets rich, posing a massive challenge for the country’s leadership.
Spotlight
Public Lecture: Continuity and Change in China’s Religious Policy (China Academic Consortium)
ChinaSource Founder Dr. Brent Fulton will deliver a free public lecture on November 15 entitled “Continuity and Change in China’s Religious Policy.”
Location: Calvin Room in the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, CA.
2407 Dana Street, Berkeley, CA
Time: Light meal with beverages at 5:00 pm, followed by lecture and Q&A.
Please click here to register as an attendee or to request a video recording of the event.
For more information, please send inquiries to [email protected] by November 13, 2025.
Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs
Five Key Takeaways from Donald Trump’s Meeting with Xi Jinping (October 30, 2025, The Guardian)
As Donald Trump flew out of Busan airport in South Korea after his meeting with China’s Xi Jinping, the US president sounded upbeat about progress made during less than two hours of talks. […] A Chinese statement quoted Xi saying the two countries had “good prospects for cooperation”, and relations had maintained “overall stability” under his and Trump’s guidance.
Rewriting World History to Redefine the Global Order: Xi’s Claim to China’s Moral Right to Lead (October 31, 2025, MERICS)
Xi Jinping used China’s Victory Day marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and its 76th National Day celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic of China to advance a version of history that aims to legitimize Beijing’s opposition to US dominance and its push for a new international order. Calling for “genuine multilateralism” at the National Day reception on September 30, Xi echoed his 3 September remembrance of World War II as “the joint struggle of the Chinese people together with anti-fascist allies and peoples across the world.”
A Five-Year Plan for Managed Confrontation (November 3, 2025, China Brief Archives – Jamestown Foundation)
The Fourth Plenum of the Twentieth Central Committee, held in October 2025, marked more than a routine leadership meeting: it ratified the culmination of a ten-year project to fuse national planning, security strategy, and technological control under Xi Jinping’s direct authority. The new 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) formalizes an architecture that has been taking shape since 2013, as Xi consolidated command over the Party, military, and financial system and began redesigning the economy around “self-reliance” and long-term systemic confrontation.
Opinion | Following the Xi-Trump summit, is the G2 back on track? (November 4, 2025, South China Morning Post)
Beijing is seeking to leverage the Trump administration’s evolving approach to international affairs and shifting preferences to stabilize China-US relations. Good foreign policy starts at home, and both Xi and Trump are more focused on internal affairs. Xi’s reference to “Make America Great Again” (Maga) during the meeting reflects Beijing’s desire to shape common ground between China and the US.
Religion
A Model of Faith and Politics: The Chester Ronning Story (October 28, 2025, China Christian Daily)
Exactly one year ago, I relocated back to my hometown, Xiangyang in Hubei province, from Galway in Ireland. In an attempt to understand my hometown from a global perspective, I began to research Xiangyang’s international connections. I then first encountered the name Chester Ronning, and was amazed to find that Chester, a Canadian, was also a Xiangyang native.
A Home in God: The Story of Detained Pastor Jin Mingri and China’s City Churches, Part One (October 30, 2025, China Change)
In 1989, when massive student protests swept through Beijing and across China, Jin Mingri was a junior studying geophysics at Peking University, one of the country’s most prestigious academic institutions.
The Water We Swim In (October 31, 2025, ChinaSource) We bring to China our view of the world and our place in it, our sense of “the way things ought to be,” our values and priorities. Through this lens, we try to make sense of a culture and people very different from ourselves. We look for points of similarity, and when we find them we feel the story is starting to make sense. But more often than not, it is the incongruities that stand out, accentuating the differentness of China.
Reformation In Our Time (October 31, 2025, China Partnership)
October 31 is celebrated in the Protestant world as Reformation Day, in addition to being marked as Halloween by the world at large. On Reformation Day, Protestant Christians remember the day Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses. We are pleased to publish this piece, written last year, on the Reformation this house church pastor believes the modern world needs.
The Current State of Member Care in Taiwan (November 3, 2025, ChinaSource)
הקןרא עין (En Hakkore) comes from Judges 15:19 and means “spring of the caller.” It is the living water that God provided for an exhausted Samson in the wilderness. This is exactly our vision — to provide grace and support for parched gospel workers. En Hakkore Member Care Platform is a third-party, holistic care platform dedicated to integrating resources and supporting cross-cultural workers.
Dalian: Multicultural Port City (November 3, 2025, China Partnership)
Dalian is a port city of about 7.5 million in northeastern China. It is the second-biggest city in Liaoning Province (after Shenyang), and the third-biggest city in all of northeastern China, coming in behind Shenyang and Harbin. Although there has been a port in the area for thousands of years, modern Dalian was not established until the early 1900s. The city was laid out by Russian planners, completed by the Japanese, and then run by the Soviet Union for several years after World War II. The area was returned to China in 1950, and was renamed “Dalian” only in 1981.
What the Chinese Mission Movement Means for the Global Church (November 4, 2025, ChinaSource)
Through their words and actions, Chinese university graduates will continue to bring the good news of the gospel to the ends of the earth. They (and we) all have a part to play in God’s global mission. Perhaps Xu’s words say it best: “God is the one who’s pushing this agenda. He cares. He will make it happen. You are just a small part of this big picture, and there’s comfort in that. And, it’s enough just to do your part well.” May it be so.
A Home in God: The Story of Detained Pastor Jin Mingri and China’s City Churches, Part Two (November 4, 2025, China Change)
In May 2007, the Zion Church was born. In its first year, it grew to have three hundred congregants, with two or three hundred more joining in the second. Around Christmas 2008, over 100 newcomers came in just one week.
Society / Life
A Town in Northeast China Has Shrunk by a Third Since 2010. Here’s One Family’s Story (October 30, 2025, NPR)
Lin Xin’s story highlights the fast-unfolding demographic shifts happening in China, where the population is shrinking and aging. The United Nations has projected that between 2024 and 2054, the country could see a decline of over 200 million people. Economists say China is getting old before it gets rich, posing a massive challenge for the country’s leadership.
Crowd Control: Why China’s Marathon Boom Has Suddenly Hit the Brakes (October 31, 2025, Sixth Tone)
After years of runaway expansion, China’s marathon calendar unraveled this autumn, with nearly 100 events canceled or scaled back, according to public notices and organizer statements. The cancellations cover both major city marathons and smaller “fun runs,” marking the sharpest nationwide pullback in the sport since the pandemic. Officials and organizers say the pullback follows months of concern over weak race management and safety lapses.
A Grey Beard in the Silver-Hair Market: One Month in China’s Retirement City (November 4, 2025, Made in China Journal)
Travelling to the place I would come to call Retirement City, my mind was filled with questions and concerns. I had not been to China for a full decade. Kept away by parenting, administrative duties, and a global pandemic, I knew much had changed in my absence. And what would I find at Laolao’s new home? What had become of her life after she and Laoye left Louisiana? As a historian of twentieth-century China, I was also curious to see what retirement looked like for the children of Mao Zedong’s China now that they were elderly.
A Tiny Rural Community’s Grand Effort to Welcome the Ancestral God | Photo Story (November 4, 2025, The World of Chinese)
Every year on the 20th day of the ninth lunar month, at around seven in the morning, beneath the soft glow of autumn light, the elders of Fujian’s Weixiang village don their ceremonial red robes and set out for one of the village’s most revered events: inviting the statue of “Lord Marquis of Martial Virtue,” their “Ancestral Lord,” from a neighboring village for a lively parade through their own streets.
Economics / Trade / Business
At China’s Canton Fair, Exporters Sense a Warming Trend in Yuan Settlements (October 21, 2025, South China Morning Post)
At the ongoing autumn edition of the Canton Fair in Guangzhou – China’s oldest and largest trade exhibition – Chinese exporters are noticing a quietly spreading shift: an increasing number of overseas clients, particularly from emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Africa, are proactively proposing to settle trade orders in yuan.
Is China’s Near Monopoly in Rare Earths Really a Chokepoint in the Global Economy? (October 29, 2025, The Diplomat)
On October 9, Beijing expanded its rare earth export controls. China’s government now required foreign firms to obtain approval to ship magnets containing as little as 0.1 percent Chinese sourced material or produced with Chinese extraction, refining, or specialized technology. The move, ironically, mirrors the U.S. Foreign Direct Product Rule, which restricted third-party semiconductor exports to China.
At Summit, US and China Declare Ceasefire in Trade War (October 30, 2025, The Christian Science Monitor)
Chinese leaders went into Thursday’s meeting with “an unprecedented sense of confidence and empowerment,” says Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center. While they expect the long-term strategic rivalry with the U.S. to continue, they view Mr. Trump as potentially their last best hope for backing cooperation over competition, China experts say. They believe that, unlike China hawks in the Republican and Democratic political establishments, “Trump has defined China as a country to work with,” says Ms. Sun.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative Is Booming (November 2, 2025, The Economist)
(Subscription Required) China’s leader, Xi Jinping, sees difficult times ahead. At a conclave of the Communist Party’s most senior officials that ended on October 23rd he warned that over the next five years the task of ensuring China’s development while maintaining its security would become “much harder” amid a “notable rise in uncertainties and unforeseen factors”. Mr Xi’s meeting a week later in South Korea with President Donald Trump produced an uneasy truce in the two countries’ fight over trade. But it will not have eased Mr Xi’s biggest headache: America. The cure for Trumpian instability, as he sees it, is an alternative order that draws the rest of the world closer into China’s orbit.
Science / Technology
China Sends Its Youngest Astronaut and Four Black Mice to ‘Heavenly Palace’ Space Station (October 31, 2025, CNN)
China’s Shenzhou-21 space rocket and its crew including the youngest member of its astronaut corps blasted off on Friday atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China, Chinese state media reported.
Travel / Food
Walking Zhengzhou (China) – Chris Arnade Walks the World (October 27, 2025, Walking the World, via Substack)
It was the only city with a direct flight from Taipei I didn’t recognize immediately, so I booked a trip to it because I wanted to see a less obvious part of China, to test my theory that all of their cities are strikingly similar.
China Arrival Card to Go Digital From Nov 20 (November 2, 2025, The Beijinger Blog)
Today (November 3), the National Immigration Administration (NIA)announced that it will be introducing online arrival cards from Nov 20. The move is one of ten new immigration and exit-entry management service policy initiatives implemented to “support and facilitate high-level opening-up and high-quality development.” From Nov 20, rather than filling out the usual paper form when foreigners arrive in China, they will instead be able to fill out the form online in advance via the NIA’s official website, Government Service Platform, “NIA 12367” APP and WeChat or Alipay mini programs.
Arts / Entertainment / Media
Hubei Hit-and-Run Escapes the Headlines (October 29, 2025, China Media Project)
On October 22, a car ploughed into a group of primary school children in the city of Shiyan in central China’s Hubei province, leaving one dead and four injured. The tragedy outside Chongqing Road Primary School was the sort of incident that in years past might have brought an upswell of outrage and questioning across social media. But for three full days the story was kept under lock and key by central and local authorities — likely to avoid potential sensitivities in the midst of the CCP’s Fourth Plenum.
Lens and the Loss: How a Chinese Photographer Turned Grief Into Art (October 29, 2025, Sixth Tone)
In July 2024, Chinese photographer Niu Tong was staying with a friend in Beijing, caught between job applications and his mother’s worsening cancer, when he learned he had been shortlisted for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award — one of the photography world’s most respected honors for documentary work.“When I finally opened the message and saw I’d made the shortlist, my mind went blank,” Niu, 27, told Sixth Tone. He was the fourth Chinese photographer to receive the recognition since the award’s founding in 1979.
Beijing’s War on ‘Negative Energy’ (October 31, 2025, China Brief Archives – The Jamestown Foundation)
Beijing is defining and defending an “authorized reality,” securitizing certain social governance issues in the process. It codes online expressions inconsistent with the state’s perception of society as “malicious behavior” (恶意行为) and “negative energy” (负能量) manipulated by external forces. This offers a pretext to mobilize administrative enforcement under the framework of the “total national security concept” (总体国家安全观).
A Media Tour in Hangzhou (November 3, 2025, China Media Project)
When Liu Fei (刘非), the Communist Party secretary of Hangzhou, visited the city’s main newspaper group last week ahead of its 70th anniversary, he had no words of wisdom, only perfectly echoed directives from the very top of the political hierarchy. And though this was not news in the general sense of the word, Liu’s speech was splashed across local news media over the weekend, illustrating how CCP control over the media is hammered down through layers of bureaucracy through constant, insistent repetition.
Living Cross Culturally
Eight Taobao Finds to Improve Your Life (October 31, 2025, The Beijinger Blog)
A little while ago, we wrote about some Taobao travel essentials to improve your next trip, and now we’re turning our attention to the home. Here, we’ve found a few items you can find on Taobao, or your preferred shopping app, that we think will definitely improve your life. Plus, with Double 11 coming soon, you’ll be able to get a lot of these items on sale.
Health / Environment
Healing Economy Booms as People Seek Inner Peace (November 4, 2025, China Daily)
When English teacher Yan Lingjia, 37, joined a hike in the Tengger Desert in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region with her seven-year-old son, she expected a simple trip but instead found a personal awakening. Over two days and one night, along with six other families, Yan and her son learned about desert plants, meditated under ancient trees, attended a singing bowl concert under the stars and took part in a “blind walk” where children guided their blindfolded parents.
Events
Seminar: The Church in China Beyond the Headlines (The North Church)
This seminar, presented by Joann Pittman, will provide an introduction to the complexity of the church in China, moving beyond common narratives to look at the key issues and challenges that Christians face today. This will include a historical overview of Christianity in China, as well as gospel-centered stories of what God is doing among his people despite the challenging social and political environment. Finally, we will consider lessons that Christians in the West can learn from Christians in China.
Date: November 22, 2025
Time: 9:00 am to 11:00 am (in the chapel)
Location: The North Church, 5151 Program Ave., Mounds View, MN, 55112
No registration necessary. Please just show up!
Online Book Club Discussion (ERRChina)
How did China become the world’s largest supplier of Bibles? There was a time when people smuggled Bibles into China. Now, millions of copies are printed there annually. In the process, God’s word has impacted different segments of Chinese society, including the poor and blind, young and old, ethnic minorities, pastors, and opinion shapers of the country. How did this happen? Unveiling a hidden chapter in China’s history, From Banned Book to Bestseller, by Cynthia Oh, explores the impact of the Bible and its message on the lives of ordinary people. It recounts how the Bible Press in China has helped to make Scripture available in China and around the world. This book is based on first-hand accounts and testimonies from the archives, records, and reports of the United Bible Societies. Please read the book, and then join us for a discussion.
Date: Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Time: 8:00 pm EST / 7:00 pm CST / 6:00 pm EST / 5:00 PST
Location: Zoom
Please go here to register for the event.
Pray for China
November 1 (Pray For China: A Walk Through History)
On Nov. 1, 1887, missionary and philanthropist William Borden (博德恩) was born into a wealthy family in the US. Borden earned degrees from Yale and Princeton Theological Seminary before joining the China Inland Mission. At that time, there was little work being done among China’s Muslims, and under the influence of Samuel Zwemmer, Borden felt God’s call to make that his life work. He moved to Cairo and was studying Arabic, when he contracted meningitis and died there in 1913 at age 25. His will left $800,000 to the CIM and other Christian charities. Borden Memorial Hospital was opened in Lanzhou in 1918 by the China Inland Mission, and a leprosarium followed in 1926. Borden’s epitaph described him as: “A man in Christ…Fervent in spirit serving the Lord, Rejoicing in hope, Patient in tribulation, Instant in prayer…” In recent years, Chinese Christian doctors from eastern China have taken short-term trips to the Lanzhou area to serve poor Muslim families. Pray for these doctors to likewise walk with Christ as they provide itinerant medical care in Gansu. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Romans 12:12
Seeking the Salvation of East Asia’s Unreached Through Intentional Prayer (October 28, 2025, ChinaSource)
Praying Through ZGBriefs (August 29, 2025, ChinaSource)
Operation World (April 21, 2025, ChinaSource)
Pray for China (prayforchina.us)
Pray for China (China Partnership)
Prayer Walking as a Rhythm of Life (May 30, 2025, ChinaSource)
Jason Mandryk on Intercessory Prayer (July 29, 2025, ChinaSource)