ZGBriefs | April 10, 2025

Featured Article

Three Ways to Become a Taoist Deity (April 8, 2025, Sixth Tone)
In addition to rewriting China’s box office record book, the animated hit “Ne Zha 2” — which tells the story of a rebellious god child — has drawn renewed interest to the Taoist canon. But fans of the film may be surprised to learn that Ne Zha and his family are actually rather marginal members of the Taoist pantheon — at least on paper. That doesn’t mean they’re not gods. Rather, it’s just another example of the complex nature of Taoist divinity, which can be attained via religious ceremony, imperial decree, or simple mass acclamation.

Government / Politics / Foreign Affairs

Ukraine War: 2 Chinese Nationals Captured Fighting for Russia, Zelensky Says (April 8, 2025, South China Morning Post)
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Ukrainian troops had captured two Chinese citizens fighting alongside Russian forces, adding that Kyiv would demand an explanation from Beijing and a reaction from its allies.

China Turns Up the Heat: How Beijing’s War Drills Are Turning Taiwan’s Crisis Into the New Normal (April 8, 2025, Economic Times)
Just like the proverbial frog in a pot, who boils to death after the water is heated incrementally, so China under Chairman Xi Jinping is gradually but inexorably ramping up the pressure and heat against Taiwan. By acting in this way, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is normalizing such coercive behavior against the democratic nation.

Religion

Why I Went Home to China: Part 1 (April 3, 2025, China Partnership)
In recent years, many Chinese Christian leaders have moved overseas. Some of this is due to pressure or persecution, which makes it more challenging to follow Jesus and raise children in the faith, especially for church leaders. However, although many people are leaving China, others are deciding to return or remain. Recently, we spoke with one church leader about her decision to come back to serve the church in China after living overseas for several years.

Blessing as a Culturally Acceptable Theme for Outreach (April 4, 2025, ChinaSource)
This outreach program tried to uphold the harmony between urban dwellers and villagers. Farmers’ hard work in producing safe and healthy food should be encouraged and recognized. Without the support from urban consumers, eco-farming could not be sustainable. Therefore, the promotion of eco-farming was positioned as a program to restore communal relationships. God’s love among different groups was the key to the restoration.

Planting Seeds of Faith (April 7, 2025, ChinaSource)
In a rapidly shifting religious landscape, Chinese house churches have faced increasing challenges in recent years. For one pastor and his congregation, these changes have become an impetus to embrace a greater mission—cross-cultural evangelism. In this interview, a Chinese pastor shares his journey from leading a thriving church in China to starting a new congregation in Thailand, shedding light on the opportunities and challenges of cross-border ministry.

Shenzhen: Young and Highly Mobile (April 7, 2025, China Partnership)
Shenzhen is a young city with a highly mobile population. This makes pastoral care difficult, as young people often change cities or locations when they change jobs. Another challenge is the fast-paced life and work here, which creates a lot of pressure. Young people face significant material temptations and secularization. As a young city, with the popularity of the Internet and the influence of AI, there are great challenges.

Society / Life

Translations: China’s “Officialdom Complex” – Cures and Effects (April 2, 2025, China Digital Times)
While the CCP swept away many remnants of China’s imperial past, one prominent feature has endured: the existence of an elevated official class, to which fiercely contested examinations offer an entryway. A pair of recent essays on WeChat discuss the social, economic, and other effects of China’s “officialdom complex.”

Stairway Porters Rise to the ‘1,000-Yuan Man’ Challenge (April 3, 2025, Sixth Tone)
As job interviews go, few are as physically challenging as those for kanglou (“stairway”) porters in Guangzhou, in China’s southern Guangdong province. To prove their strength and agility, candidates must carry a sandbag weighing 50 kilograms on their shoulders up and down four flights of stairs 10 times in under 40 minutes. These manual laborers spend their days navigating this bustling metropolis’s aging apartment blocks — most of which have no elevators — hauling heavy loads of sand, cement, and other building supplies, as well as sundry bulky items, up narrow stairwells.

Me and My Censor (April 3, 2025, Made In China Journal)
I left China in 2021 and spent time thinking about writing without censorship. About a year later, I told a good friend about this story and he strongly urged me to put it in writing because not only is it about China’s censorship, but also it provides insight into how China has come to be where it is today. I hope that it will help people understand more about life in China, as well as the struggles and rebellions that have taken place.

China Facing Obesity Crisis as Forecasts Predict 65% Will Be Overweight by 2030 (April 5, 2025, South China Morning Post)
China, plagued with famine six or seven decades ago, is facing an obesity crisis, prompting warnings that more than 65 per cent of adults could be overweight or obese by 2030. Beijing is racing against time before chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular problems place further pressure on the country’s healthcare system.

Beijing Can Do More to Support China’s Youth (April 7, 2025, The Diplomat)
This isn’t a typical unemployment crisis. China’s young people face pressures unlike those of any generation before them. Most are only children, products of the decades-long one-child policy, now tasked with supporting aging parents in a society where the elderly population is swelling rapidly. By 2035, nearly a third of China’s citizens will be over 60, and the burden of care – financial, emotional, and physical – will fall squarely on today’s youth.

Economics / Trade / Business

China Tries to Downplay the Trade War’s Effects on Its Economy (April 7, 2025, The New York Times)
Faced with economic disruption, Beijing is presenting itself as too powerful to succumb to U.S. pressure. It is also censoring criticism at home. (subscription required)

China Urges Unity, Resilience as US Trade Tensions Soar. ‘The Sky Will Not Fall’ (April 7, 2025, South China Morning Post)
China has called on the nation to “weather storms together” amid an escalating trade war with the “capricious” Trump administration after the US president warned that Beijing had miscalculated in striking back at his new tariffs. People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, published a front-page commentary on Monday that explained the rationale behind the Chinese government’s decision to strike back at US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs”.

As US Tariffs Rise, Could Chinese Consumers Take Up the Export Slack? (April 8, 2025, The Christian Science Monitor)
The escalating U.S.-China trade war will exacerbate the mounting global glut of Chinese manufactured goods, raising the question, Where will all these goods go, if not to the United States? The world is already facing what some analysts call a second “China shock,” as shiploads of Chinese-made cars, steel, and other goods flood into foreign markets.

Beijing’s Balancing Act Aims to Trump US Tariffs (April 8, 2025, East Asia Forum)
While China possesses a broad range of economic measures at its disposal, including sanctions and export controls, its responses so far have remained restrained in both scale and intensity. This well-prepared yet restrained response results from adaptation and rational calculation, reflecting China’s delicate balancing act — projecting strength and improving its bargaining position while not overplaying its hand in great power competition.

Science / Technology

Humanoid Hype: Top VC Sounds the Alarm on China’s Robot Boom (April 7, 2025, Sixth Tone)
As humanoid robots take center stage in China’s tech frenzy, a prominent venture capitalist is sounding the alarm — calling the billion-dollar sector overheated, commercially shaky, and ripe for a bubble. Zhu Xiaohu, a prominent early-stage investor at GSR Ventures known for backing unicorns like the ride-hailing giant Didi, food delivery platform Ele.me, and lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, better known as RedNote abroad, said he’s pulling back from humanoid robotics. 

Travel / Food

‘Fruit of the Devil’: Hainan’s Betel Nut Sellers Suffer from Stuttering Economy (April 6, 2025, The Guardian)
Many cities across southern China are known for the art of relaxing. Chengdu in Sichuan province is the tea house capital. Guangzhou is the birthplace of dim sum, a time to share steamed dumplings and chew the fat with friends. And in Haikou, the capital of Hainan province, people have been chewing the betel nut for centuries.

Health / Environment

Video – Chinese Mountain to Get Escalators for ‘Painless Climbing Experience’ (April 4, 2025, South China Morning Post)
The management of a mountain site in eastern China’s Jiangxi province is installing escalators to help visitors to the tourist hotspot. “Taking the escalators to the peak may diminish the meaning of maountain climbing. But this is perfect for lazy people like me,”

What Lies Ahead for Global Climate Cooperation (April 4, 2025, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations)
In this conversation, recorded on March 21, 2025, David Sandalow and Ma Jun, leaders of the Track II delegation, discussed the main takeaways from the dialogue and the future of global climate collaboration.

History / Culture

Qingming Festival: What Is It and How Can I Celebrate? (April 1, 2025, The Beijinger)
It’s that time of the year again! Every street corner in Beijing will be filled with people burning paper money and the sky will be full of kites, well, kind of. Qingming Festival (清明节) or Tomb Sweeping Day, rolls around in early April and is a day to celebrate life and commemorate the dead. It is also a day that marks the nascent spring warmth, falling on Apr 4 this year.

Rebellion, Corruption, and the Lychee: The History of Chinese Couriers (April 8, 2025, The World of Chinese)
Long before express delivery became an everyday essential, ancient China had built an intricate courier system, though its bureaucracy also bred corruption and chaos

Arts / Entertainment / Media

Loud and Mighty: Navigating the Future of Chinese Diasporic Media (April 8, 2025, Made In China Journal)
Demand for unfiltered news in Chinese language among Chinese readers both within China and in the diaspora is huge and growing. While the White Paper Movement that erupted across China in late 2022 against the government’s draconian Zero-Covid policy served as a recent and prominent trigger for political expression and civic participation within China (Connery 2022), coverage of the protests also underscored longstanding issues and growing market demands within the Chinese diaspora for information from both outside and inside the Great Firewall.

Books

The Elusive Path to Religious Freedom (April 8, 2025, ChinaSource)
Book Review – Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Religious Freedom by H. Knox Thames.
Reflecting on 20 years of service as a diplomat and advisor to multiple US administrations, international human rights lawyer Knox Thames lays out a vision for how governments, legislatures, NGOs, and religious leaders can work together to combat religious persecution globally.

Pray for China

April 4 (Pray For China: A Walk Through History)
On Apr. 4, 1869, pioneer missionary William C. Burns (宾惠廉) went to be with the Lord from China. He was born in Scotland and moved to China in 1847. For 20 years, he traveled widely as an itinerant evangelist before moving to Niuzhuang (now Yingkou) to become the first Protestant missionary to take up residence in Liaoning. Burns died just six months later. His prayer life had a great impact on Hudson Taylor and, in turn, Taylor’s method of wearing Chinese clothing while evangelizing was adopted by the older Burns. Pray for Christians in Liaoning to emulate Burns by always being ready to share their faith. But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…1 Peter 3:15

Praying for China | Prayercast (January, 2025, ChinaSource)

Pray for China (prayforchina.us)

Pray for China (China Partnership)