While religion is getting more leeway in China, the opposite is happening for the Tibetans and Uighur, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of the upcoming book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the Globe&Mail. Just last week Xinjiang, home to the Uighur, saw a strong increase in security forces.Read More →

The forceful removal of crosses at churches and the arrest of Christians have hit of Western media regularly. But that is not the big picture, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of the upcoming book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at CNN. Those government actions are mainly symbolic, he says.Read More →

China has been trying to ignore its unruly neighbor North Korea for as long as it was possible. And North Korea was more interested in talking to the US, and less to China. But Beijing might at last be changing its tune, says Paul French, author of North Korea: State of Paranoia (Asian Arguments) to the Washington Post.Read More →

It sounds odd to hear from the managing director if the Chinaccelator in Shanghai, but William Bao Bean sees it as a success when startups decide to avoid the China market and explore other markets. “Interestingly enough, the greatest help that Chinaccelerator can give to start-ups considering China is convincing them otherwise,” he tells Inc-ASEAN.Read More →

In China most women enter the prostitution on their own free will. The government is criminalizing them, forcing them into a submissive position. What can be done? Author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution researched the sex trade in China, and possible solutions and discusses government approaches.Read More →

Alibaba’s Ant Financial investment of US$200 million into the Korean mobile payment service Kakao Pay illustrates how the leading Chinese payment platform want to gain global dominance, says business analyst Ben Cavender to Reuters. Buying into strong local players is smarter than competing with them.Read More →

Business analyst Shaun Rein told already in his bestseller The End of Cheap China, Revised and Updated: Economic and Cultural Trends That Will Disrupt the World, much of the cheap production was moving from China to other countries. Vietnam, Indonesia and Sri Lanka hope Donald Trump does not find out for the time being, Rein writes in IBT.Read More →

China´s first tier cities seem to be getting out of breath, while second and third-tier cities blossom. Business analyst Shaun Rein has been predicting the shift already for a long time, he tells the South China Morning Post. The rising prosperity of lower-tier cities may boost tourism to cheaper destinations like the Philippines and Thailand, he adds.Read More →

While many analysts expect China to grab chances when the US is changing its global position, eminent China experts Howard French sees the opposite happening. With a shrinking and aging population, China´s power is diminishing, he argues in The Atlantic. While the US have chances.Read More →