Gender discrimination is commonplace in China, out of line with international agreements and practices. Author Zhang Lijia asks Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma, and other tech companies like Tencent, and the government, to end rampant discrimination against women on the work floor, for the New York Times.

When Tencent started during the 2014 CCTV New Year show to promote giving red envelopes online, few realized it was the successful kick-off what is now known as WeChat Pay, says WeChat expert Matthew Brennan to the JingDaily. Some luxury brands did not like the concept though: “The idea of a discount communicates value and is generally not an incentive that luxury brands want to be associated with.”

Very slowly the dreadful verdict of China’s approximately 30 million left-behind children on the country-side is slowly getting more coverage. Journalist Zhang Lijia, preparing a book on the issue, summarizes the problems for the New York Times. Why have they been forgotten?

In China power and religion are intertwined, argues journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao and you cannot understand China without knowing its religion. At the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, he explains how religion moved from apparently irrelevant to crucial in today’s China. Why religion is not going away, as many intellectuals have thought.

A new generation is emerging to set their mark on China. Marketing veteran Tom Doctoroff looks at the relative newcomers, and how they differ from past generations, for state-owned TV station CGTN. “Post-90s are proudly patriotic, they want to see a strong China,” he says.

Female students have been accusing their teachers and supervisors of sexual harassment at Chinese colleges and universities. Author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China, tells NewsChina she is not really amazed.

The proposal by President Xi Jinping to scrap the two-term limitation for his position as president has generated little opposition, not domestically or internationally. A logical step in moving to more stability, comments author Zhang Lijia “Socialism Is Great!”: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China at the Wikitribune. And nobody wants to tock the China boat.

Handing out hongbao’s when staff returns from Spring festival is one way how Chinese companies retain staff. WeChat expert Matthew Brennan joined Tencent’s CEO Tony Ma handing out hongbao’s last Friday in Shenzhen to some of this 43,000 employees, he reports on his LinkedIn page.

China’s market economy has brought pros and cons to the women, says author Zhang Lijia of the bestseller Lotus: A Novel, on prostitution in China, to the BBC.“I think women have shouldered most of the cost and burden during the transition from a planned economy to the market economy,” she says. She is currently working on a book on the left-behind children in China.

China veteran and rock star Kaiser Kuo addresses the Confucius Institute at the Webster University at the start of the Year of the dog to talk about his mission as a bridge builder between China and the US. “I figured out what I wanted to do, and my job has been building bridges.”