Religion has returned to the center of politics, argues journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao at the McGrath Institute for church life. Religion has returned to center of society over the past decades.Read More →

China’s big cities are developing a new city life, including new identities, writes journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at the opening chapter of, Shanghai Sacred: The Religious Landscape of a Global City, by photographer and anthropologist Liz Hingley, quoted in a review of the photo exhibition in Liverpool at Creative BoomRead More →

Morality classes are popping up all over the country, teaching past traditional attitudes towards women, warns author Zhang Lijia in an opinion piece in The South China Morning Post who signals a backlash towards banned feudal behavior. The government steps in when those excesses are discovered, but it remains unclear what stays under the radar, Zhang adds.Read More →

Pulitzer prize winner Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, addresses the change China went through over the past twenty years, beyond the poor cliches we often look at. How the country became more important military, as a consumer heaving, but also developing cultural values that were believed to be missing.Read More →

Luxury, as a display of success, is a key element in China, among all different cohorts, says marketing veteran Tom Doctoroff, author of What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism, and China’s Modern Consumer to Emarketer. What they have in common is a Confucian culture, binding all Chinese together, he says. If explains the longing for luxury.Read More →

Most Western media reports focus on the oppression of religion in China, and miss one of the most important developments in the country when it comes to religion, argues journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the China Zentrum. “Faith and values are returning to the center of a national discussion over how to organize Chinese life.”Read More →

Religion in China is on the rise, shows journalist Ian Johnson in his book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. China’s outbound investments in the One Road, One Belt (OBOR) or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) program illustrate that change in China’s approach to religion, he says to Indepthnews.netRead More →

China’s latest scandal on the fake vaccine for hundreds of thousands of children is the latest example of a deep moral decline in the country, argues Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus: A Novel, a research novel on prostitution in China, in the South China Morning Post. “I believe that the lack of a value system and a spiritual vacuum lay at the roots of China’s moral crisis.”Read More →

In a Washington mall, the Chu Silk manuscript – China’s equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls can be found. Journalist Ian Johnson describes how those precious relicts disappeared from China and ended up in the US, a journey now meticulously describes by the Chinese scholar, Prof. Li Ling of the Peking University for the New York Times. Read More →

China’s deep Confucian roots do influence the way the internet has developed, says marketing veteran Tom Doctoroff, author of What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism, and China’s Modern Consumer, to the South Morning Post. “I call it pride commerce, where there is the idea that you are what you buy … and that sharing your interests is a way to make your identity stronger,” Doctoroff said.Read More →