This month the provisory agreement for cooperating on the nomination of bishops between the Vatican and the Chinese government is up for renewable. Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, explains why the deal was for the Roman-Catholic church an “understandable gamble,” according to the NCR.Read More →

In a wide-ranging interview with the South China Morning Post, China veteran Kaiser Kuo explains why – unlike many others – he did not become a China-whiner, also not after he returned in 2016 to the US. He is now a leading voice on the relations between China and the US, without taking sides for either country.Read More →

It took China’s courts 27 years to acknowledge Zhang Yuhuan had been in jail innocent, and the reversal of the verdicts shocked the legal community. China’s courts have the largest conviction rate in the world, says author Zhang Lijia, but that is because of forced convictions. When Zhang Yuhuan case shows one thing, it is that structural reform of China’s court system is still needed, she argues at the South China Morning Post.Read More →

COVID-19 or the Coronavirus has triggered off a lot of soul-searching in China, says social commentator Zhang Lijia in the South China Morning Post. “All these problems at home and abroad are proof that nature has been interfered with, as humans go against the natural order. This is a good time to revisit the philosophical aspects of Taoism, writes Zhang Lijia.Read More →

The bike-sharing industry sees a spike now contingency measures allow more people to hit the road in major cities, but business analist Ben Cavender expects the positive news to be short-lived, he tells Abacus News. “In the longer term, it will still be difficult for the industry to bounce back and grow,” says Cavender.Read More →

The national fight against the coronavirus has also triggered off help in temples, churches and mosques, writes author Ian Johnson of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the New York Times, but not all help has been appreciated. Religious groups have been donating large amounts of money, a feature hard to imagine even ten years ago, he writes.Read More →

Veteran China watcher Kaiser Kuo discusses at the Wilson Center what China wants. Does it want to topple global order, and trying to impose change on the outside world? A wide-ranging discussion, also including Jiayang Fan. Is it exporting its ideology of just pragmatic?Read More →