April 26, 2012 ZGBriefs is a condensation of news items gathered from published sources. ZGBriefs is not responsible for the content of these items nor does it necessarily endorse the perspectives presented. Get daily updates from ZGBriefs on Twitter @ZG_Briefs. To make a contribution to ZGBriefs, please click here and then select Donate Through Paypal. FEATURED ARTICLE How Many Christians are there in China? And Does it Make a Difference? (April 24, 2012, ChinaSource, by Andrew Kaiser) Growing in Numbers! Growing in Influence?Chinas church is growing. The Christianity fever of the 1980s has continued in various forms on up into the twenty-first century, and now the rapid rate of Chinese church growth is almost a clich in mission circles. The result is that today we have many different scholars representing a range of organizations in and outside of China working hard to determine just how big this church is and perhaps is going to become. While I am generally curious to know just how big the Chinese church is, I must confess that I find in recent years I have found it to be increasingly difficult to get excited about the actual results of these studies. GOVERNMENT / POLITICS / FOREIGN AFFAIRS Ex-leaders of China protest village Wukan ‘punished’ (April 24, 2012, BBC News) Former officials from a Chinese village that staged a high-profile rebellion over local corruption have been punished, Chinese state media says. Two officials from Wukan had been expelled from the Communist Party over illegal land deals, Xinhua news agency said, and 18 others punished. The protests in Wukan in late 2011 attracted enormous public attention. Villagers drove the leaders out because of land seizures for which they said they were not properly compensated. China pledges North Korea ties amid rocket tensions (April 24, 2012, BBC News) China’s president pledged strong ties with North Korea, amid serious tensions between the two Koreas in the wake of Pyongyang’s failed rocket launch. Hu Jintao’s promise came at a meeting with a top Workers’ Party delegation leader in Beijing on Monday. It came as North Korea threatened “unprecedented action” against Seoul. Meanwhile the US says it has raised allegations with China that a missile launcher seen in Pyongyang last week was of Chinese origin. State-run press issues rare call for political overhaul (April 24, 2012, South China Morning Post) In an unusual move, three leading mainland media outlets have published a series of commentaries calling for political reform amid the unfolding scandal surrounding Bo Xilai’s downfall. The People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece, the official Xinhua news agency – run directly by the State Council – and the China Youth Daily, run by the Communist Youth League, a training base for China’s future leaders, all joined the chorus for reform. The People’s Daily published four articles, each written by a different think-thank, including the Central Party School, on its opinion page. Xinhua and the China Youth Daily published similar commentaries. None made any direct reference to Western-style political reform, such as democracy and freedom of the press, but they all acknowledged that China was at a crossroads and urgently required all-round restructuring of its systems, including its political system. Two Chinese Politburo Members Call for Loyalty to Party (April 24, 2012, Bloomberg) Two members of Chinas elite Politburo Standing Committee said in separate remarks that Communist Party officials must uphold loyalty to the party and stay in line with the central committee. Zhou Yongkang, 69, said the partys Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, which he heads, will train party secretaries so they implement the Partys lines and policies more conscientiously, according to a March 26 speech printed today in the official Peoples Daily. He Guoqiang told officials in Shandong province that members at all levels of the party must ensure discipline. The appearance of the remarks comes after the Financial Times and the Associated Press reported that Zhou is under investigation after he opposed the decision to strip ousted Chongqing party leader Bo Xilai of his Politburo post this month. Zhous speech may indicate that he has fallen back in line behind President Hu Jintao, the partys general secretary, said Huang Jing, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. I would assume that he caved in and is trying to soft- land, Huang said. RELIGION Sakyamuni’s parietal-bone relic enshrined in HK for public worship (April 25, 2012, Xinhua) The only existing Sakyamuni Buddha’s parietal-bone relic has been enshrined in the Hong Kong Coliseum Wednesday afternoon shortly after its arrival from Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province. President of the Buddhist Association of China Chuan Yin, President of the Hong Kong Buddhist Association Kok Kwong, Secretary for Home Affairs of Hong Kong Tsang Tak-sing, Director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs Wang Zuo’an as well as other eminent monks and leaders attended the grand ceremony. The 11th Panchen Lama, Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu is also present. This is the first time that the 11th Panchen Lama made a public appearance outside the Chinese mainland. First Chinese bishop of 2012 ordained by excommunicated bishop (April 26, 2012, Shanghaiist) In yet another display of clashes between China and the Vatican, an excommunicated bishop, as well as two others with questionable standing, were allowed to participate in China’s first two ordination ceremonies of 2012 without papal approval. The Vatican is not pleased. The first incident took place last week in Sichuan province’s Nanchong diocese, when Mgr. Paul Lei Shiyin dressed up in holy robes and was one of six to lay hands on Joseph Chen Gongao, China’s first ordained bishop of 2012. Lei Shiyin, who was ordained bishop of Leshan diocese last year without papal mandate, was later excommunicated by the Holy See. Hong Kong Cardinal John Tong commented on the ceremony, saying: “The mixing of illegitimate with the legitimate is wrong, and should not be allowed. I hope this wont happen anymore in the future, and that anyone the one who committed the offence on this occasion should repent and submit a request to the Holy Father for pardon.” According to La Stampa’s Vatican Insider, Mgr. Lei Shiyins case will be discussed at next weeks Commission for China session in the Vatican. But the Commission, which was established by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, does not have any decision-making power. HEALTH Milk power tainted with deadly bacterium (April 24, 2012, Shanghai Daily) Two batches of infant formula manufactured by Cradle Dairy and Happy Prince Dairy in northeast Heilongjiang Province were found to contain a life-threatening bacterium, quality supervisors in Guangdong Province said yesterday. Tests showed Cradle’s Gaiweijian formula produced last July and Happy Prince’s Jin100 formula produced last September were tainted with enterobacter sakazakii, which can cause septicemia, meningitis and necrotizing enterocolitis with a mortality rate of over 50 percent. The deadly bacterium is not allowable in infant food and dietary supplements, according to the national food safety standard. Hong Kong to limit mainland China maternity services (April 25, 2012, BBC News) Hong Kong hospitals will limit maternity services to most pregnant women from mainland China from next year, under new proposals from its incoming chief executive. Mainland women will be prevented from giving birth in Hong Kong unless they have a Hong Kong husband. While the proposal would only apply to public hospitals, private hospitals have also agreed to follow suit. Increasing “birth tourism” from the mainland has caused tensions. SOCIETY / LIFE China to issue more green cards to woo overseas talent (April 25, 2012, Shanghai Daily) China will issue more green cards and ease restrictions for visa-free entry to encourage more talented individuals from overseas to work in the country, a senior security official said today. “We will increase the eligibility quota for green cards and consider extending the applicable scope for duty-free entry and multiple-entry visas in order to make China more competitive in soliciting foreign investment and talent,” said Yang Huanning, Vice Minister of Public Security. The number of foreigners who stayed in China for at least six months rose to 600,000 in 2011 from less than 20,000 in 1980, according to Yang. By the end of 2011, 4,752 foreigners were given a Permanent Residence Card, or the Chinese equivalent of a green card. Attack against Chinese students prompts fury online (April 26, 2012, China Daily) An assault against two Chinese students on Monday on a train from Sydney whipped social networks into a fury in both countries, prompting a reaction from local legal authorities. Police said six people, aged 14 to 18, robbed passengers, including two Chinese students, on a train between Sydney and Rockdale around 12:30 am on Monday (local time), the Sydney Morning Herald said on its website on Wednesday. Officers were called to Rockdale station, where they arrested three men, a 14-year-old boy and two girls. China’s consulate-general in Sydney contacted the two Chinese and provided consular assistance on Monday night. The consulate also warned local Chinese from unnecessary commuting at night. China set to get tougher over illegal foreigners (April 26, 2012, Shanghai Daily) China is to crack down on foreigners illegally entering, living or working in China, a senior police officer said yesterday. Vice Minister of Public Security Yang Huanning was delivering a report on the administration of entry-exit, residence and employment of foreigners to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the top legislature. Yang said the crackdown will include improving visa policies, strengthening border controls, repatriating illegal aliens, and setting up repatriation locations in regions that have large numbers of such foreignersMost illegal foreigners are from neighboring countries, said Yang, adding that language training, housekeeping and labor-intensive industries were the main sectors employing them. SCIENCE / TECHNOLOGY / ENVIRONMENT Beijing to see acute water shortage in 2012 (April 24, 2012, Xinhua) Beijing is expected to face a water shortage of 1.3 billion cubic meters in 2012, accounting for a third of the city’s annual water usage, according to local water authorities. The municipal government will work to keep the capital’s water consumption within 3.7 billion cubic meters this year, as only 2.4 billion cubic meters will be supplied by local water resources, Cheng Jing, head of the Beijing Water Authority, said Monday. The gap is expected to be bridged via a combination of measures, including the use of recycled water, water diversion and moderate exploitation of underground water, Cheng said. Beijing has been plagued by droughts for 13 consecutive years, with its fast-paced economic development and ever-growing population exacerbating the water shortage, according to Cheng. Chinas mobile phone users increased to 1.02 billion in Q1 (April 24, 2012, China Times) The number of mobile phone users in China increased by 32.57 million to 1.02 billion in the first quarter of this year, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Friday. Of the mobile phone users, the number of subscribers to third-generation services expanded by 23.64 million to 152.06 million during the period. Meanwhile, fixed-line subscribers dropped by 1.08 million in the first three months. BUSINESS / ECONOMICS / FOREIGN TRADE Beijing receives 44 mln tourists in Q1 (April 25, 2012, Xinhua) Beijing received 43.7 million tourists in the first quarter of 2012, up 9.3 percent from the same period last year, new figures have showed. Of the total, 42.7 million were domestic tourists while one million were from overseas, the local statistics bureau said in a statement. The tourists brought the city 69.2 billion yuan (11 billion U.S. dollars) in revenues, an annual increase of 9 percent. The top three sources of tourists were the United States, Japan and South Korea. LINKS TO DETAILED ARTICLES AND ANALYSIS Chinas Urban Immigrants: A Diet of Bitterness (April 20, 2012, Pacific Standard Magazine, by Maura Cunningham) For nearly three decades, those rural hardships have resulted in urban migration; anyone with the means to do so travels to the city for employment. Chinese metropolises are now home to an estimated 200 million rural-to-urban migrants hoping not only to break even but to get ahead. Chinas Achilles heel (April 21, 2012, The Economist) LIKE the hero of The Iliad, China can seem invincible. In 2010 it overtook America in terms of manufactured output, energy use and car sales. Its military spending has been growing in nominal terms by an average of 16% each year for the past 20 years. According to the IMF, China will overtake America as the worlds largest economy (at purchasing-power parity) in 2017. But when Thetis, Achilless mother, dipped her baby in the river Styx to give him the gift of invulnerability, she had to hold him somewhere. Alongside the other many problems it faces, China too has its deadly point of unseen weakness: demography. An upside-down pyramid (April 23, 2012, The Economist) OUR correspondents discuss the impact that China’s ageing population could have on its economy. ‘The service sucks’: Chinese airlines under fire (April 23, 2012, Sydney Morning Herald) Chinese airlines are struggling to stick with schedules as they contend with military restrictions on airspace, bad weather and procedures that haven’t kept pace with demand in the world’s fastest growing aviation market. North Korea threat: China reaches out to agitated Pyongyang (April 24, 2012, Christian Science Monitor, by Ariel Zirulnick) North Korea threat: Washington says it has traced the sale of truck parts North Korea used to transport missiles to a Chinese company. Is Beijing not fully enforcing sanctions on North Korea? SUVs are big in China (April 24, 2012, The Los Angeles Times, by David Pierson) While the U.S. and other markets are favoring more fuel-efficient models, Chinese consumers are clamoring for the large interiors, big engines and high-tech frills of SUVs. An Exclusive Statement from Bo Guagua to The Harvard Crimson (April 24, 2012, The Harvard Crimson) Harvard Kennedy School student Bo Guagua corresponded with Crimson staff writers Hana N. Rouse and Justin C. Worland on Tuesday via his Kennedy School and Google email accounts and sent The Crimson a statement, which is published verbatim below. In China, relatives of Party officials build lucrative businesses on family contacts (April 24, 2012, The Washington Post, by Andrew Higgins) The children and other relatives of party barons, known as princelings, dominate the market in high-level connections, a valuable commodity in a country where the will of the party often trumps the rule of law. Bo Xilai’s wife ‘was in the room when Neil Heywood was poisoned’ (April 24, 2012, The Telegraph, by Malcom Moore) Bo Xilai’s’s wife Gu Kailai, accused of murdering the British businessman Neil Heywood, confessed to police that she was in the room when he was poisoned, according to an account given to American diplomats. This Chinese blockbuster thriller might end in reform (April 25, 2012, The Guardian, by Timothy Garton Ash) Universal fascination with the Bo Xilai scandal is mixed with a few cautious hopes for political change. Ousted Chinese Leader Is Said to Have Spied on Other Top Officials (April 25, 2012, The New York Times) When Hu Jintao, Chinas top leader, picked up the telephone last August to talk to a senior anticorruption official visiting Chongqing, special devices detected that he was being wiretapped by local officials in that southwestern metropolis. Old Beijing lanes embody a useful spirit(April 26, 2012, Asia Times Online, by Francesco Sisci) A walk down the lanes of Beijing holds much more than fascinating insights of past lives, triumphs and tribulations evident in a new unique book about the hutongs. The old courtyards in the heart of historic Chinese cities are a material inspiration to understand and adapt the essence of the old to the new conception of modern China. In Southern China, A Thriving African Neighborhood (April 26, 2012, NPR, by Nina Porzucki) Today, the city of Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, is home to some 10,000 Africans, the largest such community in China. The city’s Little Africa neighborhood is a world unto itself, with restaurants specializing in African food to money changers who deal in the Nigerian currency. But doing business in the city’s informal economy is full of risks. LINKS TO BLOGS Chinese Christian Identity Where Can It Be Found? (April 24, 2012, Global China Center) Arising from a conference held in Hong Kong in 2008 with the theme, Beyond Our Past: Bible, Cultural Identity, and the Global Evangelical Movement, the book contains a dozen chapters from as many contributors. Half the authors are Caucasian, and the rest are Chinese, giving the collection a good balance of ethnic perspectives. An American Doctor In China: What’s Different? (April 24, 2012, My Health Beijing) People often ask me, is your medical practice different in China compared to the U.S.? Finally, after working in China for three years, I can now answer you with a definitive yes and no. And sometimes Y Image Mao Temple in China Chairman Mao Becomes Local God (April 24, 2012, Tea Leaf Nation) Photos of a Mao temple in Mianyang, Sichuan Province were posted to Sina Weibo, Chinas Twitter, by Lin Jie, chairman of B.A. Consulting, a real estate service group. The temple was built in 2006, but many users seem to be encountering these photos for the first time, and Lins tweet generated more than 4,700 retweets and 1,250 comments in less than 12 hours. A Hikers Guide to Xinjiang, China (April 25, 2012, Far West China) In China, Rumblings of an Ideological Campaign (April 26, 2012, China Real Time Report) In the wake of the dismissal of Politburo member Bo Xilai, is another political storm brewing? Video: Apple Sales Skyrocket in China (April 26, 2012, China Real Time Report) Sales of Apple iPhones and iPads in greater China are skyrocketing, with five times as many iPhones sold in the latest quarter as a year earlier. How far will China take Apple? LINKS FOR RESEARCHERS Liu Tingfang (Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity) ZGBriefs is a weekly compilation of the news in China, condensed from published sources and emailed free-of-charge to more than 6,000 readers in China and abroad. ZGBriefs brings you not only the most important stories of the week, but also links to blogs, commentaries, articles, and resources to help fill out your understanding of what is happening in China today. Coverage includes domestic and international politics, economics, culture, and social trends, among other areas. Seeking to explore all facets of life in China, ZGBriefs also includes coverage of spiritual movements and the role of religious believers and faith-based groups in China. The publication of ZGBriefs is supported by readers who find this weekly service useful. Click to view this email in a browser If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please reply to this message with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line or simply click on the following link: Unsubscribe Click here to forward this email to a friend ChinaSource Partners, Ltd. Unit B / 17F Wing Cheung Industrial Bldg 58-70 Kwai Cheong Road Kwai Chung,, New Territories 00000 HK
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