Not only high costs are stopping Chinese women from getting more children, as the government wants them to for offsetting the dramatic aging process of the country, writes journalist Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus, a novel, on prostitution in China,  in the South China Morning Post. “The reality is far more complex. One important reason, in my view, is that women have changed. They don’t care to be only the reproductive tool of the family or the state,” she writes.

Foreign media mostly focus on China’s crackdown on religion, but it’s approach has become much more nuanced, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at the New York Times. Two truly global religions, Islam and Christianity, cause China’s leadership most trouble.

China’s women are no longer satisfied with the marriages they took in the past for granted, says Zhang Lijia, journalist and author of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China, in the South China Morning Post. “Although gradually easing, there’s still stigma attached to divorce,” she adds.

Pulitzer-price winning journalist Ian Johnson describes the decline of Hong Kong, in all possible ways – not only economically, as China rose, for the NY Review of Books. “Hong Kong failed to install visionary leaders who might have helped Hong Kong retain its place among the handful of truly key global cities,” he writes. 

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.

A raving review of the appearance of Zhang Lijia, author of Lotus, a novel, on prostitution in China, at the Jaipur Literary Festival in London, at The Citizen. “I was very fascinated by prostitutes. However, the only prostitution I have done was intellectual prostitution,” Zhang Lijia says.

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 Boom

Western media too easily assume the protests in Hong Kong are supported by many mainland Chinese. Wrong, says author Zhang Lijia. There is a wide dived between mainland Chinese and Hongkongnese, and that is not only because of the media censorship in the mainland, she adds at the South China Morning Post.