The NYRB China Archive
10.24.19![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-72878096.jpg?itok=kiPQK17x)
The Eastern Jesus
from New York Review of Books
Over the past few years, the authorities in Beijing have given churches across the country orders to “Sinicize” their faith. According to detailed five-year plans formulated by both Catholic and Protestant organizations, much of this process...
Conversation
09.25.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/49151_sm.jpg?itok=Bsd5nkCA)
Should the Vatican Compromise with China?
Amidst a crackdown on Christianity in China, on September 22 the Vatican and Beijing provisionally reached a major agreement: Pope Francis will recognize seven excommunicated bishops Beijing appointed, in exchange for more influence on who Beijing...
Books
07.10.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/lianxi-sys.jpg?itok=WBdNcjrk)
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Blood Letters
Basic Books: The staggering story of the most important Chinese political dissident of the Mao era, a devout Christian who was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the regime.Blood Letters tells the astonishing tale of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist arrested by the authorities in 1960 and executed eight years later, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. Openly and steadfastly opposing communism under Mao, she rooted her dissent in her Christian faith—and expressed it in long, prophetic writings done in her own blood, and at times on her clothes and on cloth torn from her bedsheets.Miraculously, Lin Zhao’s prison writings survived, though they have only recently come to light. Drawing on these works and others from the years before her arrest, as well as interviews with her friends, her classmates, and other former political prisoners, Lian Xi paints an indelible portrait of courage and faith in the face of unrelenting evil.{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
01.11.18China church demolition sparks fears of campaign against Christians
Guardian
A church in northern China was demolished this week, the second in less than a month, sparking fears of a wider campaign against Christians as authorities prepare to enforce new laws on religion.
The NYRB China Archive
06.08.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/temple_pray-sm.jpg?itok=POK_GAJs)
China’s Astounding Religious Revival
from New York Review of Books
If there were just one Chinese in the world, he could be the lonely sage contemplating life and nature whom we come across on the misty mountains of Chinese scrolls. If there were two Chinese in the world, a man and a woman, lo, the family system is...
Books
05.08.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/ian_johnson_hirez.jpg?itok=Lrvk3HBb)
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The Souls of China
From journalist Ian Johnson, a revelatory portrait of religion in China today—its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China’s future.The Souls of China tells the story of one of the world’s great spiritual revivals. Following a century of violent anti-religious campaigns, China is now filled with new temples, churches, and mosques—as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty over what it means to be Chinese and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is searching for new guideposts.Johnson first visited China in 1984. In the 1990s, he helped run a charity to rebuild Daoist temples, and in 2001 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. While researching this book, he lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. Along the way, he learned esoteric meditation techniques, visited a nonagenarian Confucian sage, and befriended government propagandists as they fashioned a remarkable embrace of traditional values. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle—a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world’s newest superpower. —Pantheon{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
05.08.17AP Exclusive: China Lawyer’s Family Says U.S. Helped Them Flee
Washington Post
Chen Guiqiu whose husband, prominent rights lawyer Xie Yang, is held on charge of inciting subversion made a harrowing flight from China with her daughters chased by Chinese security agents across Southeast Asia.
Media
04.19.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/iansbetter.jpg?itok=-tcnnMeG)
ChinaFile Presents: Ian Johnson on ‘The Souls of China’
On April 13, ChinaFile and The New York Review of Books co-hosted the launch of author Ian Johnson’s new book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao at the Asia Society’s New York headquarters. Johnson discussed the book with Ian...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.01.17As Atheist China Warms to the Vatican, Religious Persecution ‘Intensifies’
CNN
According to a new report from U.S.-based NGO Freedom House, persecution of Chinese Christians and other faith groups has “intensified” in recent years.
Books
02.16.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/chloe-starr-chinese-theology-systemphoto_0.jpg?itok=Ca3C3qAJ)
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Chinese Theology
In this groundbreaking and authoritative study, Chloë Starr explores key writings of Chinese Christian intellectuals, from philosophical dialogues of the late imperial era to micro-blogs of pastors in the 21st century. Through a series of close textual readings, she sheds new light on such central issues in Chinese theology as Christian identity and the evolving question of how Christians should relate to society and state.Reading these texts in their socio-political and traditional literary contexts, Starr opens a new conversation about the nature of Chinese theology and the challenge it offers to a broad understanding of how theology is created and contextualized. Concentrating on those theologians who have engaged most actively with their cultural and political milieus, Starr argues throughout her readings, as she examines how Chinese literary traditions and reading patterns have shaped Chinese theology, that text is as important as context. —Yale University Press{chop}
Books
02.07.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/jennifer-lin-shanghai-faithful-systemphoto.jpg?itok=XOLGXmg7)
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Shanghai Faithful
Within the next decade, China could be home to more Christians than any other country in the world. Through the 150-year saga of a single family, this book vividly dramatizes the remarkable religious evolution of the world’s most populous nation. Shanghai Faithful is both a touching family memoir and a chronicle of the astonishing spread of Christianity in China. Five generations of the Lin family—buffeted by history’s crosscurrents and personal strife—bring to life an epoch that is still unfolding.A compelling cast—a poor fisherman, a doctor who treated opium addicts, an Ivy League-educated priest, and the charismatic preacher Watchman Nee—sets the book in motion. Veteran journalist Jennifer Lin takes readers from remote nineteenth-century mission outposts to the thriving house churches and cathedrals of today’s China. The Lin family—and the book’s central figure, the Reverend Lin Pu-chi—offer witness to China’s tumultuous past, up to and beyond the betrayals and madness of the Cultural Revolution, when the family’s resolute faith led to years of suffering. Forgiveness and redemption bring the story full circle. With its sweep of history and the intimacy of long-hidden family stories, Shanghai Faithful offers a fresh look at Christianity in China—past, present, and future. —Rowman & Littlefield{chop}
Sinica Podcast
01.13.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/china_catholicism.jpg?itok=MJz4QcbD)
Can the Vatican and China Get Along?
from Sinica Podcast
Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has lived in Beijing and Taiwan for more than half of the past 30 years, writing for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. He has...
Books
12.20.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/john-pomfret-the-beautiful-country-and-the-middle-kingdom.jpg?itok=lH88_exI)
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The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
From the clipper ships that ventured to Canton hauling cargos of American ginseng to swap for Chinese tea, to the U.S. warships facing off against China’s growing navy in the South China Sea, from the Yankee missionaries who brought Christianity and education to China, to the Chinese who built the American West, the United States and China have always been dramatically intertwined. For more than two centuries, American and Chinese statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, men and women, have profoundly influenced the fate of these nations. While we tend to think of America’s ties with China as starting in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon to China, the patterns—rapturous enchantment followed by angry disillusionment—were set in motion hundreds of years earlier.Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have engaged with one another through the centuries. A fascinating and thrilling account, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom is also an indispensable book for understanding the most important—and often the most perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world. —Henry Holt{chop}
Depth of Field
11.08.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/straphangers.jpg?itok=YudUa7zr)
Dongbei’s Last Match Factory, Capital Straphangers, Retracing the Long March...
from Yuanjin Photo
In October, several publications marked the 80th Anniversary of the Chinese Communists’ Long March. We have chosen two stories that revisited this event and that were standouts, visually. Elsewhere, photographers followed stories both large and...
The NYRB China Archive
02.25.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/diagram_of_i_ching_hexagrams_owned_by_gottfried_wilhelm_leibniz_1701.jpg?itok=Mev6AuGs)
What Is the I Ching?
from New York Review of Books
The I Ching has served for thousands of years as a philosophical taxonomy of the universe, a guide to an ethical life, a manual for rulers, and an oracle of one’s personal future and the future of the state. It was an organizing principle or...
Media
02.22.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/nuns-23711-sm.jpg?itok=xHkDzd7a)
Leave China, Study in America, Find Jesus
Shelly Cai was 18 years old when she left the southern Chinese metropolis of Nanjing to enroll in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In August 2010, after a 13-hour flight from Shanghai to Chicago and a three-hour bus ride, Cai finally arrived in...
Media
02.11.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-490003806.jpg?itok=mdIvJUS6)
Chinese Students Are Flooding U.S. Christian High Schools
It is no secret that Chinese students are pouring into the United States; over 300,000 of them attended U.S. colleges and universities in 2015 alone, and Chinese are filling up spots in U.S. secondary schools in search of a better education and an...
Media
09.23.15![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/20130303_zaf_m67_170.jpg?itok=4cmlQQ7w)
‘God’s United Front’ and the Battle Over China’s Crosses
This article first appear in Chinese on September 2 in Hong Kong-based outlet The Initium Media. Foreign Policy translates with permission, with edits for brevity and clarity.On the evening of August 16, nearly one hundred pastors, ministers, and...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.23.15China Cracks Down on Hong Kong Evangelists
BBC
A 2014 survey of more than 1,000 Protestant churches in Hong Kong by the Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement gives some insight into their activities.
ChinaFile Recommends
11.03.14A Comb Worth Fighting For
Economist
By one estimate, the number of Chinese Christians could by 2030 have reached 250 million—the largest Christian population of any country in the world.
ChinaFile Recommends
07.28.14China Removes Crosses From Two More Churches in Crackdown
New York Times
In another sign of the authorities’ efforts to contain one of China’s fastest-growing religions, a government demolition campaign against public symbols of the Christian faith has toppled crosses at two more churches in the coastal province of...
ChinaFile Recommends
06.11.14Crackdown on Fringe Sects in China Has Mainstream Churches Worried
New York Times
Although their voices are muted by the censors, human rights advocates and some mainstream religious leaders in China say that the latest anti-cult campaign is misguided and that it frequently violates Chinese law.
ChinaFile Recommends
04.22.14China Could Become the World’s Largest Christian Country
Slate
China likely already has more Protestants—an estimated 58 million—than South Africa or Brazil, major centers of evangelical revival, and 67 million Christians in all—larger than the total population of France. More people go to...
Media
04.11.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/christianweibocover.png?itok=ofLn4ugw)
Is Jesus Really Hotter Than Mao on China’s Social Media?
It’s easier to talk about Jesus than Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping on Weibo, China’s massive Twitter-like social media platform.The atheist Chinese Communist Party, known for its sometimes heavy-handed policies...
The NYRB China Archive
03.24.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/107904486-sysphoto.jpg?itok=I-uTrrW0)
Chinese Atheists? What the Pew Survey Gets Wrong
from New York Review of Books
Earlier this month, I came across a fascinating opinion survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project. The report asked people in forty countries whether belief in God is necessary for morality. Mostly, the results aren’t surprising...
The NYRB China Archive
03.06.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/57559858.jpg?itok=FySgVB3E)
The Brave Catholics of China
from New York Review of Books
Like most pilgrimage sites in China, the shrine in the village of Cave Gulley in Shanxi province is located partway up a mountain, reachable by steep stairs that are meant to shift worshipers’ attention from the world below to heaven above...
ChinaFile Recommends
02.06.14China’s Way to Happiness
New York Review of Books
The return of collective religious traditions is part of Chinese people's search for meaning and stability.
Culture
11.11.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/ricci-zikawei.jpg?itok=YOCA19Q8)
All He Needs is a Miracle
Courtesy of the USF Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History
A portrait of Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci by You Wenhui; painted at the time of Ricci’s death in Beijing, 1610. It now hangs at the Jesuit residence in Rome. It is the...
ChinaFile Recommends
03.14.13Half A Century Of Harvesting Souls In China
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Mark O'Neill writes about the life of his Presbyterian missionary grandfather, Frederick, who first moved to Manchuria in search of souls to save in 1897 and ended up staying for 45 years.
ChinaFile Recommends
02.26.13Going Undercover, The Evangelists Taking Jesus To Tibet
Guardian
Missionaries see Tibet as a formidable yet crucial undertaking, a last spiritual frontier. Today’s evangelists work undercover as students, teachers, doctors, and business owners in order covertly proselytize.
The NYRB China Archive
12.21.12Beijing’s Doomsday Problem
from New York Review of Books
Over the past ten days, China has been riveted by accounts of what authorities say are its very own doomsday cult: the church of Almighty God, which has prophesized that the world will end today. Authorities have said the group staged illegal...
ChinaFile Recommends
12.17.12China Cracking Down on Doomsday Group
Los Angeles Times
China arrests 100-plus members of a Christian group predicting Dec. 21 apocalypse.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.04.12Jesus vs. Mao? An Interview with Yuan Zhiming
New York Review of Books
In the intellectual ferment leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, a much-watched series on Chinese television called River Elegy became closely identified with the hopes of China’s reformers. The six-part series, which used...
The NYRB China Archive
09.04.12Jesus vs. Mao?
from New York Review of Books
In the intellectual ferment leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, a much-watched series on Chinese television called River Elegy became closely identified with the hopes of China’s reformers. The six-part series, which used the Yellow River as...
ChinaFile Recommends
07.16.12Yu Jie on His New Biography of Liu Xiaobo
New York Review of Books
Yu Jie is one of China’s most prominent essayists and critics, with more than thirty books to his name. His latest work is a biography of his friend, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, that was published in Chinese in Hong Kong a few weeks ago...
The NYRB China Archive
07.14.12China’s ‘Fault Lines’
from New York Review of Books
Yu Jie is one of China’s most prominent essayists and critics, with more than thirty books to his name. His latest work is a biography of his friend, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, that was published in Chinese in Hong Kong a few weeks ago...
Reports
05.14.08![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_160x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/american-enterprise-institute_4.jpg?itok=e8qDD0x8)
China’s Protestants
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
The number of religious believers in China continues to grow almost exponentially, far outpacing population growth. Of the officially tolerated faiths, Christianity has grown at the fastest pace. As of 2005, Christians were approaching 5 percent of...