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| Shaun Rein |
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| Ian Johnson |
Xi’s remarks exemplified the fierce tensions that surround the past and present role of religion in communist China. While the party acknowledges and accepts the resurgence of religious belief made possible by the post-Mao thaw, it retains an ongoing compulsion to regulate faith – a compulsion that has resulted in violent suppressions of spiritual movements such as Falun Gong.
In his fascinating odyssey through contemporary Chinese religion, Ian Johnson uncovers the roots of these tensions, and the contradictory, complex face of religion in China today. He begins by describing the interlocking relations in pre-20th-century China between politics, society and multiple faiths. In the west, he argues, we are accustomed to thinking “in exclusive terms: this person is Catholic, that person is Jewish, another is Muslim.
These faiths have … set places of worship, a holy book and, quite often, a clergy.” In pre-modern China, religious attachment lacked this absoluteness: believers veered between the “three teachings” (Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism) according to social and ritual need.
Religion blurred ubiquitously into political power. Control of local temples and religious practices gave local bigwigs community clout; religious authority constituted the “lifeblood” of imperial rule. “The emperor was the ‘Son of Heaven’, who presided over elaborate rituals that underscored his semi-divine nature.”
Religion’s saturation of political life made it an obvious target for reformers and revolutionaries discontented with a China torn apart by foreign enemies and domestic rebels. In searching for the roots of the country’s crises, many early 20th-century radicals blamed religious tradition – particularly but not only Confucianism – for holding China back from becoming a cohesive, modern state populated by rational, dynamic citizens. This antagonism towards religious tradition peaked during the Mao years (1949-76): temples and monasteries were destroyed; clergy were beaten, imprisoned and killed; Christians were automatically suspect as adherents of a “western” faith. (The religious impulse, of course, did not disappear through these decades: especially from the 1960s onwards, Mao was worshipped as an infallible deity.)Much more in the Guardian.
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| Tom Manning |
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| Shaun Rein |
The Atlanta company says it decided to feature a drawing of the billionaire investor on cans for the launch of Cherry Coke in the country. Buffett is a known fan of Cherry Coke, and his Berkshire Hathaway is Coke's largest single shareholder.
Shaun Rein, founder of the China Market Research Group, said business leaders in China tend to have an "outsized" following, in some case more than sports stars. Buffett is also seen as "a non-corrupt, down-to-earth" person in the country, Rein said.
Coke began selling Cherry Coke in China on March 10. The special edition Buffett cans will remain on shelves for a limited time.More at AP.
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| Ben Cavender |
Official numbers may suggest a rosier 2017 for China, but the bottom lines of the country’s top consumer firms – from brewers to noodle makers and cinema chains – paint a patchy picture of spending in the world’s second-largest economy. Tsingtao Brewery Co Ltd, China’s number two brewer, posted its steepest drop in net profit in 20 years last week, blaming tough competition and weak demand. Noodle maker Tingyi saw profits drop by a third.
China’s top cinema operator Wanda Cinema Line saw 2016 profits rise 15.2 per cent – down from growth of nearly 50 per cent the year before, as broader box office sales stalled. Imax China’s profit tumbled, too.
“There’s still a tonne of room for growth, but these markets are much more competitive now and even bigger brands are starting to struggle,” said Ben Cavender, Shanghai-based principal at China Market Research Group.
“Consumers are becoming more cagey about how they’re spending their money, (from) food to clothing and movies.”More in Reuters.
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| Sara Hsu |
Guo’s appointment indicates that China’s leadership is acutely aware of the financial risks that are building in the economy because of mounting debt and an increasingly unwieldy shadow banking sector. Real estate property bubbles, overcapacity in some sectors and supply-side reform are just a few of the challenges the government needs to tackle. As Guo stated on 2 March, ‘we will put priority on financial risk control to make sure there won’t be any systemic financial risks’. Guo also noted that the banking sector controls business risks and it should ‘strengthen the sense of responsibility’ toward these risks.
What is not yet clear is how Guo will balance the need for growth with financial risks. But it is comforting to know that he has ample experience in implementing market-oriented financial reforms that dampen risk while creating room for economic activity. Still, the challenges are immense and only time will tell how Guo will balance these contradictions.More in the East Asia Forum.
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| Ian Johnson |
What are some of the ways faith in China is misunderstood?
In polls, if you say, What zongjiao (religion) do you believe in? people still think it’s an odd question. The word zongjiao has been heavily politicized under the Communists. It’s better to ask people what they do rather than about labels. There was a very good study done that found something like 25% of respondents said that a god or a spirit or—I think they used a word like “Buddha”—had influenced their life in the past 12 months. That’s much higher than if you say, do you believe in zongjiao, when you get like a 10% rate [of people saying yes]. For most people there was no contradiction between, say, reading Confucian books on morality and going to a Taoist temple and then inviting Buddhist monks over to perform a funeral ceremony for your granny. It was all part of the same thing. They were not discrete organized religions in opposition to each other the way we think of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
You write that President Xi has helped boost Buddhism and traditional religions in China.
Xi has strongly ramped up support for traditional Chinese ideas, including religion. A lot of guoxue (the study of traditional Chinese culture) now being taught in schools are essentially religious texts—a lot of Confucianism, but they’re reading the [the Taoist classic text] “Dao De Jing” and Buddhist texts as well. There’s been increased support for this idea of intangible cultural heritage, which includes formerly banned religious practices or things that were considered [superstition]. They’ll call it music or theater but it’s religious music and religious theater. They’ve given tons of money to these groups. You also see it in the incredible number of temples under construction. Look at Beijing, which used to have one to two Taoist temples and now there’s over 20.
There’s a redefining of all this as culture. At one temple in Beijing, I asked a guy, “Is this religion?” And the guy shrank back, saying, “No, this isn’t religion.” And I was like, “But they’re kowtowing.” And he said, “No, it’s culture.” If you’re just a cultural-activities thing or a moneymaking tourist site, it’s more relaxed, you can do what you want. You can have a temple fair and say it’s intangible cultural heritage.
What’s underpinning official support?
I think the government is happy to see these things grow—almost as a form of stability. If you wanted to be cynical, it’s almost as if the government buys into religion being the opiate of the masses: Let it be an opiate, because we need people to believe in something.More in the New York Times.
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| Zhang Ying |
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| Zhang Lijia |
KM: In the novel, I found Lotus' strong belief in Buddhism fascinating. In your research, did you find many working girls were very religious?LZ: Yes, many sex workers are very religious. One woman I interviewed told me about a dream, which I borrowed for the novel. She dreamt that she died—in fact, at one point she was obsessed with the idea of death, and often thought she was going to die. So she wrote down her bank details for her mother, in case she died and no one knew where to find the money she had in various banks. In this dream, she was dead. Her whole family—parents, sisters and daughter—came to say goodbye in front of her tomb. They laid down a bunch of white flowers. From death, she watched them, as if in a film. On closer examination, she saw the flowers were made of toilet paper.It seems to me a high percentage of working girls have some kind of religious belief, either Buddhism or Christianity. I believe it is their way of cleansing themselves, but also because they feel the deities won't judge them.
More in AsianCha.KM: Would you say your strong interest in writing about characters/people on the fringe has something to do with your own background?LZ: Yes, absolutely. Because of my poor family, I've always taken an interest in the "little people"—xiao ren wu, those who struggle at the bottom of society. Artists tend to be attracted to those living on the fringe. Also I believe how these people are treated is the true measure of a society.
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| Jeffrey Towson |
The home-sharing market in China is still in its infancy, so, although Airbnb only has 80,000 listings there so far, its domestic competitors are not that far ahead. Xiaozhu, its most direct equivalent, has more than 100,000 listings, while Tujia, which is more of a holiday rental site and oversees the management of its properties, claims to have 450,000 listings.
“It doesn’t strike me that anybody’s got this market yet. It looks like an open playing field,” says Jeffrey Towson, a professor of investment at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. By comparison, he says, when Uber entered China, its domestic competitors, Didi and Kuaidi, were firmly established. After a costly battle, Uber was forced to bow out.
Airbnb’s other advantage is its global platform. As more young Chinese travel abroad and stay in Airbnb properties, the more likely they are to use it when they go home.
“[Airbnb] should try to dominate outbound Chinese tourism immediately,” Towson says, putting the number of these trips at around 110m a year. “Go after all of them. The Chinese competitors, are they going to start finding listings in Brazil? They can’t do that.”More in the Guardian.
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| Ben Cavender |
Qi Xiaozhai, director of the Shanghai Commercial Economic Research Center, said that nearly all the goods supplied at convenience stores are daily necessities so the demand is hardly affected by other modes of shopping.
Ben Cavender, principal of China Market Research Group, echoed this point.
"Convenience stores continue to see strong growth in China because consumers need fast access to pre-prepared meals, snacks and beverages. When they cannot find affordable restaurants or supermarkets, the convenience store is a natural choice," said Cavender.
"Department stores haven't done well because they are not really providing a unique, compelling product or experience to consumers, so consumers have no reason to go. But convenience stores right now are often the only choice to buy cheap food that consumers are familiar with, such as mantou, or baozi (steamed buns), especially as a lot of street food sellers are no longer operating."More in the China Daily.
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| Ian Johnson |
You provide readers with a religious landscape of China, taking them by turns to different regions. But some important places are missing from your map. As a Southerner, for instance, I felt that Jiangnan — a region with major cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai and home to Zhejiang province, a place that has seen a religious boom — was skipped over.
I don’t exactly agree. I specifically put in a large section on Jiangnan. The Master Nan chapter is set there, as are key parts of the chapters on internal cultivation. But I take your point — there isn’t much on areas like Fujian or Guangzhou, which have important and vibrant religious traditions. I was faced with a quandary: a book about a huge country has to be selective in order to be coherent. A survey of China would be a different kind of book.
Any book involves a series of choices and this was no different. When it comes to books about religion in China, many people in the West would expect to see chapters on Tibet and Xinjiang, but I focus on Han Chinese. This explains why I don’t include deal with Islam, despite a strong interest in that religion that shows through in my other writings, from a previous book, A Mosque in Munich, to interviews I’ve published with scholars working on Chinese Muslims, such as Matthew Erie, and pieces I’ve done on recent books about Xinjiang. I also selected aspects of religions that I thought were more indicative of China’s future development. So I don’t write too much about Wenzhou and “boss Christians,” who are successful business people with large churches, because I think they are specific to a region and a model that is dying out.More in the LA Review of Books.
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| Bill Fischer |
Haier has tried to speed up product development by using the internet to ask potential customers for suggestions and feedback, an approach taken by Chinese smartphone brands. The company says a new appliance can go from drawing board to market in as little as one year, down from more than three.
Zhang (Ruimin)'s management changes "are more impressive than we see anywhere," said William A. Fischer, a professor at the IMD business school in Switzerland who has followed the company for a decade. He co-wrote the 2013 book, "Reinventing Giants: How Chinese Global Competitor Haier Has Changed the Way Big Companies Transform."
"He trusts his employees to play more of a leadership role," said Fischer.
Fischer said a group of European executives he took to Haier headquarters two years ago refused to believe its decentralized style could work.
"I was struck by how daring Haier was in their thinking. And the people I was working with were hostages to very traditional ways of working," said Fischer.
The strategy appears to be paying off. Last year's profit rose 12.8 percent from 2015 to 20.3 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) on revenue that increased 6. 8 percent to 201.6 billion yuan ($29.3 billion). Transaction volume on its business-to-business and consumer-oriented internet platforms rose 73 percent to 272.7 billion yuan ($39.6 billion).More on Haier at AP.
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| Jeffrey Towson |
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| Kaiser Kuo |
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| Jeffrey Towson |
So why aren’t such deals happening? I argue it is mostly not because of any of the commonly cited reasons, such as language barriers (both Saudis and Chinese speak English), inconvenient flights or visas, security issues (such as Yemen), or a lack of opportunities.
My experience has been that it is a lack of trust and necessity. Private deals are face-to-face, relationship-based and long-term. And Chinese and Saudi business people just don’t trust each other very much. There is no history of working together. There are few close friendships. There is no history of going to university together. And the deals thus far have been prone to problems. There just isn’t a lot of trust or comfort. And when you are operating in environments without clear rule of law and easily enforceable contracts(such as in both China and Saudi), you rely on close relationships far more.
The other problem is necessity .There actually is no need to do private China-KSA deals. Chinese companies can make investments in lots of places. And Saudis can continue to work with Western companies, just like they have for decades. China-Africa have the same trust issues but the deals happen because there is a real need for resources. China-Germany deals happen because there is a need for technology (by China) and market access (for Germany). But there is no such need for KSA and China. And absent a compelling need, the lack of trust is not overcome.
So the Chinese and Saudi groups meet, drink tea, take photos and express interest in working together. Maybe they even sign an MOU. But then, outside of basic trade, not much happens. Ultimately, nobody writes big checks or makes long-term commitments. So we have not and I do not think we are going to see hundreds of private deals between Saudi and Chinese private companies in the near future.Much more at Jeffrey Towson's weblog.
French’s account, not surprisingly, runs counter to the official Chinese narrative. Admiral Zheng He, a Muslim eunuch who led a Chinese armada to Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and the east coast of Africa, is lauded in China as an unconventional explorer. Unlike his Western counterparts, whose voyages were marked by greed, violence and conquest, Zheng, the story goes, was an ambassador of Chinese benevolence. The reality, as French reminds us, is that Zheng’s massive ships were actually troop carriers, whose menacing arrival conveyed a distinctly different message about the nature of the Chinese deal on offer.
Modern China continues to proclaim this theme of benevolent internationalism, something French challenges with numerous examples. The most chilling is his account of the Chinese navy’s 1988 massacre of flag-waving Vietnamese troops on the disputed Johnson Reef in the South China Sea. The Vietnamese protest is captured on a grainy YouTube video that is suddenly interrupted by Chinese naval gunfire. When the smoke clears, the Vietnamese are, shockingly, gone. It’s worth noting this happened just a year before the Chinese military perpetrated another massacre, this time of student protesters in Tiananmen Square. Nei luan, wai huan.
China is clearly in the midst of a new period of exuberance and expansion, and, as French makes clear, this inevitably involves friction with the two powers, Japan and the United States, that have come to dominate its neighbourhood over the past 200 years.In recent decades, Japan, seduced by the lure of the China market and by the friendly pragmatism of previous (and needier) Chinese leaders, played down territorial disputes as it helped to rebuild China. The tables have since turned. All things Japanese are now demonized by China, which evokes past Japanese aggression as it steadily encroaches on the rocky outcroppings that mark the beginning of the Japanese archipelago.
More in the Globe&Mail.Even more worrisome is China’s growing rivalry with its most formidable adversary, the United States. China is rapidly acquiring the weapons and technology to make it highly risky for the U.S. Navy to operate in the western Pacific, an ambition furthered by China’s construction of military airstrips on artificial islands in the South China Sea. French ominously quotes another Chinese aphorism: “When two emperors appear simultaneously, one must be destroyed.”
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| Ian Johnson |
In 1982, two men arrived in this dusty provincial town. One was Shi Youming, a Buddhist monk who was taking up a post in the ruins of one of Zhengding’s legendary temples. The other was Xi Jinping, the 29-year-old son of a top Communist Party official putting in a mandatory stint in the provinces as a bureaucrat in the government he would eventually lead.
The two forged an unusual alliance that resonates today. With Mr. Xi’s backing, Youming, who like most Buddhist monks preferred to go by one name, rebuilt the city’s Linji Temple, the birthplace of one of the best-known schools of Buddhism. Even after Mr. Xi was transferred, he regularly visited Youming in Zhengding and sent officials there to study the partnership between the party and religion.
Mr. Xi’s early encounters with religious life give insight into a man who has run China with a firmer hand than any other leader since Mao Zedong. Although he is best known abroad for his efforts to expand China’s territorial reach in the South China Sea or his high-profile campaign against corruption, at home the president is engineering a remarkable about-face for the Communist Party: an effort to rejuvenate China’s spiritual life through an embrace of some religions.
As an organization that has tried to squelch religion, the Communist Party under Mr. Xi is now backing it in ways that echo the approach of strongmen like Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who use faith to legitimize their rule. Faced with growing social tensions and slowing economic growth, the government is turning to religion to bolster its hold on power.
Mr. Xi, by making China a guardian of a major faith like Buddhism, also sees religion as a way to promote China’s position in a world still dominated by the United States, which he tentatively plans to visit for a meeting with President Trump early next month.Indeed, one of Mr. Xi’s signature lines is, “If the people have faith, the nation has hope, and the country has strength.”...I’ve found that Mr. Xi’s embrace of faith is incredibly popular among most Chinese. While Christians may cringe at his views, many more others see his support for traditional faiths as positive — a re-creation of the imperial Chinese state’s support for certain faiths and belief systems. Far from being an anomaly in Mr. Xi’s rise, his stint in Zhengding is most likely something else: a template for the mixing of faith and politics — a reimagining of the political-religious state that once ruled China.
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| Add caption |
Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, said one reason so many women strike it rich on the Chinese mainland is the traditional family structure. "The one-child policy coupled with traditional child care, whereby grandparents often play a much larger role in bringing up children than in developed countries," has given women more space to pursue their ambitions, he said...
According to Hoogewerf, one challenge in calculating the wealth of female billionaires is the difficulty in distinguishing between the wealth that belongs to a woman and her husband, especially in the case of women who had co-founded a business with a husband.
An example of this is Zhou Hongwen, 46, who co-founded Tomorrow Group with Xiao Jianhua. The conglomerate has investments in real estate, insurance, banking, coal, cement and rare earth minerals, and the couple is estimated to be worth $5.5 billion. Although Zhou was instrumental in the company’s early decision to invest in the Inner Mongolia region, its stock exchange filings do not differentiate who owns what, making it difficult to split the couple’s wealth, Hoogewerf said. And the recent disappearance of Xiao from the couple’s apartment in Hong Kong, presumably to help Chinese authorities with an ongoing corruption inquiry, has put Zhou in the spotlight and may affect her fortunes.Much more in Caixin.
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| Zhang Ying |
The project, headed by Zhang Ying, associate dean of China Business and Relations at RSM, represents a collaboration between the industry and the education sectors in China and Europe, helping industries, education institutes and research bodies move into the era of digital transformation.
Both parties aim to facilitate knowledge sharing between technology, innovation, business development and education in order to add value to the local social-economic community and academic-practice by means of joint research, China-EU relevant business relationships, and applied projects.
Wonder Wang, CEO of Huawei Technologies Netherlands, said Huawei is committed to investing in Europe, and the MOU is part of the company's mission to aid in talent development across Europe.
"The goal is to achieve local employment to contribute to the European economy and serve European industries for generations to come," said Wang.More in the China Daily.
