From The Financial Times: Starbucks could be banished from Beijing’s fabled Forbidden City amid complaints that the presence of the ubiquitous US coffee shop chain in the former imperial palace constitutes an “affront to Chinese culture”. China’s official media said on Thursday that a low-key Starbucks outlet near the rear of the sprawling Palace Museum […]
Read MoreFrom Eurasia Daily Monitor: On December 23 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev wrapped up his first three-day visit to Beijing since his reelection in December 2005. The trip, characterized as “a breakthrough” in bilateral relations by the official mouthpiece Kazakhstanskaya pravda, was marked by series of landmark agreements aimed at boosting economic and trade ties and […]
Read MoreFrom Financial Times, via MSN.com China’s government on Thursday publicly kept its cool on the Democratic party’s victory in US Congressional elections, but Beijing policymakers are unlikely to be pleased to see Nancy Pelosi become House speaker. Asked about implications of the imminent ascent of a congresswoman who once demonstrated for democracy in Tiananmen Square, […]
Read MoreSeems that Chinese love crowds. Mainlanders just had another National Day holiday with floods of people traveling across the country, now there is a second protest in Taiwan calling for the resignation of Chen Shui-bian. From BBC News: Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have been surrounding the presidential office in Taiwan, calling on President Chen […]
Read MoreFrom Reuters via the New York Times: China blasted Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian on Wednesday for a plan to change the constitution and rename the island, moves Beijing would consider a formal declaration of independence of territory it claims as its own. Chen’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is studying constitutional changes to name the […]
Read MoreOn its “Foreign Media on China” page, the China Daily website reprints in its entirety an International Herald Tribune column penned by Philip Bowring that describes, and appears to laud, the Communist Party’s recent tightening of controls: It is hard for liberals and democrats to accept, but there seems to an inevitability about the reassertion […]
Read MoreFrom The Los Angeles Times: The Chinese government, which has battled a surge of social unrest in recent years, reported Wednesday that there were 39,000 cases of “public order disruptions” in the first half of the year. The Ministry of Public Security said that represented a 2.5% decrease in the number of protests from the […]
Read MoreFrom New America Media: Technology has been a way to thwart the government’s efforts in controlling the public. In 1989, Tiananmen Square protesters used fax machines to reach out to the international press. Last year, 12,000 workers mobilized using cell phone text messages to go on strike against their company. The blogosphere’s high interconnectedness made […]
Read MoreFrom AFP via Yahoo! News: Tibetan exiles said they will protest next month’s opening of the world’s highest railway which links the Himalayan plateau with the rest of China. Exiles said they would hold rallies outside Chinese consulates worldwide against the July 1 opening of the railway which they fear will lead to a flood […]
Read MoreFrom Reuters (link): Families of victims of the 1989 military crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators have called on the government to reassess the incident and compensate victims, days ahead of the sensitive anniversary of the event. In an open letter released by the watchdog group Human Rights in China on Monday, the “Tiananmen Mothers” also […]
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