From Reuters: Chinese state television has begun sacking contract staff after a bogus news report about toxic dumplings that drew international alarm and angered propaganda chiefs, newspapers reported on Monday. A report made by Beijing TV and shown on China Central Television (CCTV) this month claimed to show a vendor selling steamed dumplings stuffed with […]
Read MoreFrom Reuters via Financial Times: Alibaba.com , China’s largest e-commerce company, confirmed on Monday that it is making preparations for an initial public offering, as it seeks to raise capital to expand its international presence. Alibaba, which has long been rumoured as an IPO candidate, is preparing to list its business-to-business unit in Hong Kong […]
Read MoreFrom UPI Asia Online: When the Congress Party took over the governance of India in 2004 with the support of India’s two major communist parties, Beijing had hoped for a policy more attentive to Chinese interests. After all, Congress President Sonia Gandhi was known to be an “old friend,” and the Communists were even more […]
Read MoreCNN carried the report of coal miner’s latest tragedy of China’s “deadly industry.” Sixty-nine miners have been trapped in a flooded central Chinese coal mine operating above its design capacity, state media reported on Monday. Rescuers pumped out water and drilled holes to provide oxygen to the miners who were swamped after a flash flood […]
Read MoreBBC News reports that thirty companies have been on the “blacklist of pollution violators;” China will miss its target “of cutting the emission of pollutants by 10% between 2005 to 2010.” As Beijing moves to take action on the country’s growing pollution problem, the 30 firms will be barred from receiving bank loans. The companies […]
Read MoreWhat to make of the execution this month of Chinese food and drug czar Zheng Xiaoyu (ÈÉëÁ≠±Ëê∏)? Debate has raged, and it could be years before the full ramifications, however significant, come clear. Cynics have read Zheng’s death as the exorcistic end of a show trial for the world’s consumers. Others chalk it up to […]
Read MoreFrom Reuters: Deaths from floods, lightning and landslides across China this summer have reached nearly 700, state media said on Monday, with experts warning that global warming is likely to fuel more violent weather. Over the weekend alone, fierce storms and hail killed 17 people across four provinces. Summer storms are nothing new in China, […]
Read MoreWen-hsin Yeh (叶文心) is the Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Professor of History and Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley. Her most recently book, Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the...
Read MoreMore to melt, and less water for an already dry northwestern region. Translated from Lanzhou Evening Post via sina.com (photo: Tianshan Mountain, via wikipedia.org): Global warming, a 40-year research concludes, has helped largely to melt almost 14% of the #1 glacier for Urumqi River source at Tianshan Mountain in Xinjiang, shrinking by .27 square kilometer […]
Read MoreIn the north, China is losing land to desertification. In the south, Hainan is losing forests. Translated from the Beijing News (photo: trees peeled by locals in Hainan via Xinhua) via sina.com: In the island of Hainan, where people pride themselves on their pristine ecology, things are not in great shape. In seven years, the […]
Read MoreMcClatchy Newspapers is reporting that the Chinese government has relocated 250,000 Tibetans from remote, rural areas to “socialist villages,” which they must build and pay for themselves: The government calls the more than year-old project the “comfortable housing program.” Its stated aim is to present a more modern face for this ancient region controlled by […]
Read MoreFrom the Australian: Over the past year, I have had to travel out of Xi’an on three occasions, deep into the farmland of Shaanxi province. Once was to talk with farmers about their response to the negotiation of a free trade agreement with Australia. On each occasion, the countryside remained enveloped in a grey fog […]
Read MoreFrom The Observer, a travel piece on the Kashgar Sunday market: It is the westernmost town in China, and it ought not to exist at all. Geologically and politically, Kashgar is the last town on one of the longest dead ends on the planet. On three sides, it is shielded by the Karakorum and Pamir […]
Read MoreRebecca MacKinnon posts excerpts of a document sent to Yahoo!’s Beijing office from the Beijing State Security Bureau requesting information about Yahoo! user Shi Tao, who is now serving a ten-year sentence for revealing state secrets. As Rebecca points out, the document (originally translated and posted by the Duihua Foundation) specifically says the investigation concerns […]
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