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Archive for Changing China
Catholic Church to be built in Olympic village
Posted by: | CommentsA temporary church will be set up in the Olympic Village during the 2008 Games for Catholic athletes, and all churches in Beijing will be open to Catholic tourists, a senior official has said. The Beijing diocese is training priests fluent in foreign languages to celebrate Mass during the upcoming Games, said Liu Bainian, vice-president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.”All will be arranged in accordance with the practices adopted by other Olympics host cities,” he said.
According to Games organizers, a religious service center will be set up in the Olympic Village with professional religious personnel providing services to meet the needs of athletes from various religious convictions.
Athletes and those who accompany them can enjoy different dishes specially made in accordance with their religious beliefs, the organizers said.
Religious services and information will be available in Beijing as well as the six other co-host cities.
A total of 60 volunteers from the five major religions in China – Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Christianity and Catholicism – recently attended a three-day training session organized by the Beijing municipal administration of religious affairs for providing religious services during the Games.
Anyone else getting the impression that China is REALLY trying to put forth an image of religious tolerance during their time on the world stage of the Beijing 2008 Olympics?
University Students Banned From Living Off-Campus
Posted by: | CommentsSometimes China’s citizens ‘push back’ a little when being told what to think or do;
Although the Ministry of Education bans university students living off-campus, many students ignore the ban and continue to rent housing outside their colleges.
In a notice issued recently, the ministry states that all university students should live in school dormitories, and forbids students renting private accommodation off-campus in principle.
The ministry said the ban is motivated by a concern for students’ safety, as well as a desire to simplify administration in educational institutions.
Plenty of dissenting voices have been heard since the ban was issued.
Hotels told to stock Bibles for Olympic visitors
Posted by: | CommentsThe official China news agency recently released this story…
Hotels in Beijing should provide Bibles for foreign visitors during the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games, a Chinese political adviser said.
“The majority of the foreign visitors expected during the 2008 Games have religious beliefs, and we should cater to their needs,” said Liu Bainian, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
Liu, vice-president of the China Patriotic Catholic Association, said on Thursday the service could also help clear up foreigners’ misunderstandings about China in terms of religion.
He added that the Bible is a must at hotel rooms in foreign countries, especially in Europe.
Beijing is expected to receive about 500,000 to 550,000 overseas visitors during the 29th Summer Olympiad, which opens on August 8, 2008 and will run until August 24.
Liu said authorities should encourage local Christians to donate Bibles for temporary use during the Games, after which they would be returned.
“The China Patriotic Catholic Association could also help collect Bibles,” he said.Zhang Liwei, vice-secretary of the Christian Amity Foundation, which operates the country’s sole Bible printing house, told China Daily that his foundation would try its best to meet demand.
According to Zhang, the Bible is published in Chinese and English in China, as well as in eight ethnic minority languages including Miao and Korean.
At least 40 million copies of the Bible have been distributed across the Chinese mainland since 1980, said Cao Shengjie, president of the China Christian Council. Around 2.5 million copies of the Bible have been published in China annually over the past decade, said Cao.
The Bible first arrived in China 1,500 years ago, while the first Chinese-language edition appeared in the early 19th century.
The Protestant church on the Chinese mainland is one of the fastest growing in the world today, with the number of Christians having reached more than 16 million and still growing fast.
The country also has more than 5 million Catholics.
The Chinese capital currently has over 700 star-rated hotels and the number is expected to reach 800, with 130,000 rooms, before the Olympics, tourism authorities said.
Besides star-rated hotels, Beijing has more than 4,000 non-rated ones that can be upgraded.
This story creates many different emotions as I read it. It helps to put it into context and realize this is propaganda. There is truth in the article, there are also some lies as well as several deceptive statements designed at promoting a false image. I’ll withhold my personal commentary on this and just put it out there for you to read and discern for yourself.
If you have a specific question about this story (or anything related) leave a comment and one of us will reply!
China’s Growing Urban Population
Posted by: | Comments
China’s 1.3 billion people make up one-fifth of the world’s population. But strict rules and changing lifestyles have led to lower growth rates. Most urban couples are bound by the “One Child” policy. Rural families are allowed a second child if their first-born is a girl. Many go to great lengths to ensure they have boys which officials believe is leading to a growing gender imbalance.
China is seeing a great movement of population from the rural interior to the cities in the east. In 1950, the urban population represented less than 13% of the total – it is now about 40% and is expected to reach 60% by 2030.
The kind of social upheaval that will result from this dramatic shift in China’s population is hard to accurately predict. However, we feel certain that this will create a significant amount of ‘openness’ to the gospel among many of those who are undergoing the social changes.
Universities rack up huge debts
Posted by: | CommentsAnother piece of information to help you understand the changing scene in China.
By Wang Shanshan (China Daily)
China’s major public universities and colleges are encumbered by huge debts, according to a survey by Peking University.
The one-year survey covered 76 universities and colleges affiliated to the Ministry of Education. It showed that the institutions rely heavily on bank loans and government funds.
Most of their income goes to paying interest on the bank loans, according to the Chinese-language 21st Century Business Herald, which published part of the survey yesterday.
The 76 universities and colleges had a total income of 65.67 billion yuan ($8.42 billion) in 2005. Most of the income was derived from government funds and tuition fees.
In the same year, they had a total debt of 33.6 billion yuan, which means an average debt of 440 million yuan for each institution.
Their debt-to-asset ratio was 16 percent on average in 2005. But for the largest borrower – Jilin University – the ratio was 55 percent. The university had a debt of 3 billion yuan, and had to pay an annual interest of more than 100 million yuan.
Those in a relatively good financial situation include Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing; Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Fudan University; Tongji University and East China Normal University in Shanghai; Nanjing University and Southeast University in Nanjing; and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou.
The survey showed government funds remain the top source of funding for universities. More than 49 percent of their income was from the government.
Foreign language universities rely less on government money because they have more ways to generate funds, such as publishing books. Government funds accounted for between 23 and 36 percent of their income in 2005.
Universities and colleges with a focus on agriculture and forestry are most dependent on the government.
Government funds accounted for up to 81 percent of their income in 2005.
A report released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in March said that all of China’s public universities and colleges had a combined debt of between 15 billion and 20 billion yuan in 2005.
Universities became big borrowers when the government merged them into super-sized universities. These universities launched a number of building projects to accommodate more students.
Because the number of young people reaching college age keeps growing, the government has been encouraging universities and colleges to expand their enrollment. There were 5.56 million undergraduate students in China in 2000, and the number was 15.62 million in 2005.
Christianity Finds a Fulcrum in Asia
Posted by: | CommentsI came across an article that speaks to future of Christianity, taking into account the dramatic changes taking place in China right now.
I suspect that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the downside, and that Christianity will have become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now. China may be for the 21st century what Europe was during the 8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past 200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelization. If this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it. Islam might defeat the western Europeans, simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from the East.
China, devoured by hunger so many times in its history, now feels a spiritual hunger beneath the neon exterior of its suddenly great cities. Four hundred million Chinese on the prosperous coast have moved from poverty to affluence in a single generation, and 10 million to 15 million new migrants come from the countryside each year, the greatest movement of people in history. Despite a government stance that hovers somewhere between discouragement and persecution, more than 100 million of them have embraced a faith that regards this life as mere preparation for the next world. Given the immense effort the Chinese have devoted to achieving a tolerable life in the present world, this may seem anomalous. On the contrary: it is the great migration of peoples that prepares the ground for Christianity, just as it did during the barbarian invasions of Europe during the Middle Ages.
The full article can be found here: Christianity finds a fulcrum in Asia; By Spengler
We hope and pray that the Holy Spirit continues to move among the people of China. We pray that this movement will spread throughout all of Hunan Province and Yueyang City – giving every person in Yueyang an opportunity to hear and understand the gospel message and the freedom to follow Christ.
Will you pray with us that the Holy Spirit will be poured out in Yueyang in a mighty and awesome way?
What are your thoughts on this issue?
China’s “One-Child Policy” is Being Side-Stepped
Posted by: | CommentsAs many as 1,968 officials in central China’s Hunan Province have been found breaching the nation’s one-child policy between 2000 and 2005, the provincial family planning commission said Friday.Also exposed by the commission are 21 national and local lawmakers, 24 political advisors, 112 entrepreneurs and six senior intellectuals.Some officials who have had more than one child but had gone their way unnoticed during their tenure of leadership were exposed when they were investigated for corruption, he said.
To curb population growth, China’s family planning policy was enacted in the late 1970s to encourage late marriages and late childbearing, and it limited most urban couples to one child and most rural couples to two.
The policy is credited with preventing more than 400 million births since it was introduced.
In Hunan, officials estimate 30 million births have been prevented due to the policy. As the 7th most populous province in China, the Hunan provincial government has vowed to keep its population within 70.1 million by 2010.
Meanwhile, Hunan has greatly raised the fines imposed on violators of the one-child policy. In some cases, the fine could be as high as over one million yuan (130,000 U.S. dollars).
But heavy fines and exposures seemed to hardly stop the celebrities and rich people, as there are still many people, who can afford the heavy penalties, insist on having multiple kids, the Hunan commission spokesman said.
The culture and society in Hunan is undergoing massive and radical changes. The statement that “The policy is credited with preventing more than 400 million births” really saddens us because we know that number represents a HUGE number of innocent little babies who were aborted and never given a chance to grow up and make their contribution to China and to the world.
Please pray with us that through the upheavals in China’s society, people’s need for a relationship with Jesus Christ will become increasingly clear. Ask that as people begin searching for God, there will be faithful people ready and willing to share the Good News with them!
China has 37 million more males than females
Posted by: | CommentsChina has become the most imbalanced country in gender ratio of newborn babies in the world. This period of imbalance is also the longest time in the world. In 2005, the ratio between newborn girls and boys was 100:118.88, far from the average ratio of 100 to 104-107. In Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, Anhui and Hunan provinces, the ratio is even higher- 100:130.
Yueyang’s social structure is facing challenges from many different sources, the imbalance of male to female children is just one of them. Please pray for the people of Yueyang as they struggle to deal with these difficult problems. Pray that through these challenges, many will open their hearts to the hope found in the gospel.