Singapore | November 12

World Bank - World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said in 15 years the Chinese yuan can become an alternative to US dollar as a global reserve currency, with China's fast economic growth and efforts to internationalise the currency.

Montréal, Québec | November 19

CBC - China's terracotta warriors are coming to Montreal in 2011.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal will receive rare visit of 14 of the warriors — life-sized replicas of soldiers of the Qin dynasty — it announced on Thursday.

President Obama visited the Great Wall of China yesterday. Having seen the Wall in many different places in China, from the Badaling, where Obama visited, to the perilous angles and heights of Simitai and then all the way out in the West at the Jade Gate where the Han and T'ang walls peter out into the sand I can attest to its hold on the imagination. I've seen some amazing places in my travels but my first experience with the Wall stands head and shoulders above any other experience in China. The Great Wall is one of those places that is both cliche and profoundly impressing. It lives up to the hype.

If you are inclined to learn more about the Great Wall, its provenance and history I highly recommend this book by Julia Lowell. It is an insightful narrative history of the 'Long Wall,' its place in the Chinese psyche and that of the West. From the first tentative tamped earth ramparts built to keep out the marauding Rong and Di tribes to the massive Qing Walls that President Obama visited yesterday it is a wonderful, easy to read romp through Chinese history.

ChinaDaily - Growing up as a farmer's son, Lin Zuojun used to play hide-and-seek with his friends in the bamboo forest of Fujian province. Little did he know back then that he would one day make millions of yuan by selling those most common plants of the region.

Harvesting more than 1.6 million bamboo trees and 25,000 tons of bamboo shoots every year, his company, Asian Bamboo, is China's biggest bamboo producer today.

It is also one of the only three Chinese companies listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Germany - the third-largest stock exchange in the world.

Nov 15

Reuters - The United States and China sparred over exchange rates at a meeting of Asia Pacific leaders today, pointing to tricky talks ahead for President Barack Obama when he flies to China to address economic tensions.

The discord surfaced at a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore when a reference to "market-oriented exchange rates" was cut from a communique issued at the end of two days of talks. An APEC delegation official said Washington and Beijing could not agree on the wording.

That underscored strains likely to feature when Obama flies to Shanghai later on Sunday following moves by Washington to slap duties on various Chinese-made products and a growing drumbeat of pressure on Beijing to let its yuan currency strengthen.

Chinese officials have grown testy about the pressure over the yuan. Chinese banking regulator Liu Mingkang told a forum in Beijing on Sunday that ultra-low interest rates in the United States were fuelling speculation in overseas asset markets and threatened the global economic recovery.

Obama pledged on Saturday to deepen dialogue with China rather than seek to contain the rising power, which is set to overtake Japan next year as the world's second largest economy.

But issues ranging from the yuan and trade tensions to human rights could complicate what many regard as the most important relationship of the 21st century.

R. Jeffrey Smith & Joby Warrick | Urumqi, China | November 13

WaPo - In 1982, a Pakistani military C-130 left the western Chinese city of Urumqi with a highly unusual cargo: enough weapons-grade uranium for two atomic bombs, according to accounts written by the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and provided to The Washington Post.

The uranium transfer in five stainless-steel boxes was part of a broad-ranging, secret nuclear deal approved years earlier by Mao Zedong and Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that culminated in an exceptional, deliberate act of proliferation by a nuclear power, according to the accounts by Khan, who is under house arrest in Pakistan.

Arunachal Pradesh, India | November 8

Al Jazeera - The Dalai Lama has angered the Chinese government with a visit to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery town in the remote northeast Indian region of Arunachal Pradesh.

The Tibetan spiritual leader said his visit on Sunday was only a lecture tour, but China, which claims the region as its own, has described the event as a provocation aimed at harming China-India ties.

Beijing | November 6

Al Jazeera - China has described as protectionist new US anti-dumping duties on steel pipes and demanded Washington's recognition that it is a market economy.

The reaction came a day after the US imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties ranging up to 99 per cent on $2.63bn in Chinese-made pipes used in the oil and gas industry.

Nov 6

BBC -
China is planning to hold a robot Olympics in 2010.

The international event will be held in the city of Harbin and will see robots take part in 16 different events.

Robots will be able to compete in familiar Olympic sports such as athletics as well as those more suited to machines such as cleaning.

Entry to the competition will be restricted to robots resembling humans. They must possess two arms and legs. Wheels are banned.

The organisers of the games expect from more than 100 universities from around the world to send competitors to the event.

Washington | Oct 27

AFP - A top Chinese general on Monday defended Beijing's rapid military modernisation, including the development of advanced weapons that threaten US forces in the Pacific, as aimed at meeting its minimum defence requirements.

General Xu Caihou, vice chairman of China's military commission, sought to allay US suspicions over the growing might of the Asian superpower by insisting that Beijing harboured no expansionist ambitions and wanted collaborative international relations.

"We will never seek hegemony, military expansion or an arms race," he told an audience of foreign policy experts at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

But when asked about its development of missiles designed to target US warships in the Pacific, Xu said Western suspicions about China's aims were unfounded.

"It is a limited capability, and limited weapons and equipment for the minimum requirement of its national security," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

Xu, whose position is the rough equivalent to a defence minister, also defended China's double-digit annual increases in defence spending as "quite low" both in real terms and as a percentage of its gross domestic product.

Whereas US defence spending amounts to 4.8 percent of GDP, China's was only 1.4 percent, he said.

The United States has repeatedly urged China to be more transparent about its military spending, warning of a shifting balance of power in the region that could arouse misunderstanding and miscalculation.

Oct 20

Asia Times - China, by issuing residents from Indian-administered Kashmir visas different from those given to Indians from other parts of the country, is treating the disputed area as a sovereign entity. This is a surprising departure from Beijing's traditional policy of leaving the Kashmir issue to India and Pakistan to resolve. Delhi suspects a hidden agenda.

New York Times, By David W. Dunlap & James Estrin, October 14

Any effort to describe the photography of Lu Guang by reference to the work of other artists would almost certainly invoke the name of W. Eugene Smith. (It is, for instance, just about impossible to look at Slide 4 without thinking of “Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath.”)

So it seems especially fitting that Mr. Lu, a Chinese freelancer, is the recipient of this year’s $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his project, “Pollution in China.” The announcement was made Wednesday evening in New York by the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund on the occasion of its 30th anniversary.

Oct 15

Asia Times -

ADRIFT ON A RUSSIAN ISLAND, Part 1
Koreans left high and dry

When Sakhalin Island, off Russia's east coast, became a Japanese colony in 1905, thousands of Koreans were brought in to work in the fishery and timber industries. When the Soviet Union regained the island 45 years later, the Koreans became virtual prisoners, and a stormy coexistence began that lasts to this day.

This is the first article in a two-part report.

Quite the history lesson~ tina

Daniel Howden | Oct 15

The Independent - From Liberia to Ethiopia, Beijing is constructing a 21st century empire thousands of miles from home

This afternoon more than a dozen Liberians are expected at the Samuel Doe sports stadium in the capital, Monrovia. In a makeshift classroom with some plastic chairs and a whiteboard their teacher, Li Peng, is waiting to finish the group's second week of instruction in Mandarin Chinese. Early attendances at the free daily lessons provided by the Chinese embassy have been poor, but officials are blaming heavy rain rather than light interest. The class is still struggling with the basics and few Chinese listeners apart from their teacher would recognise the strange "hellos" and "goodbyes" being called out.

"Learning Chinese may prove difficult," Mr Li admitted. "But if they work hard they will make it."

The West African country set up to settle freed American slaves in 1843 is English-speaking and the going is hard.

"Traditionally, we Liberians are closer to the Americans than we are to the Chinese," he says. "But the irony is that the Chinese are more open to us than the Americans are."

Liberia's government has no Mandarin speakers, and China's ambassador, Zhou Yuxiao, admits that he's uncomfortable that multibillion-dollar accords between the two countries are signed with one side unable to read the documents.

Tokyo | Oct 9

AFP - China has detected deadly nerve gas at its border with North Korea and suspects an accidental release inside the secretive state, a Japanese news report said Friday.

The Chinese military is strengthening its surveillance activities after detecting the highly virulent sarin gas in November last year and in February in Liaoning province, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources from the Chinese military.

Sarin gas, which was developed in Germany before World War I, was used in the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by a doomsday cult.

The Chinese special operations forces found 0.015-0.03 microgrammes of the gas per cubic metre when they were conducting regular surveys while there were winds from the direction of North Korea, the report said.

China suspects that there were some experiments or accidents in its neighbouring country, it said.

Seoul | Oct 5

AFP - China and North Korea vowed Monday to strengthen a friendship which they said preserved regional peace, as Premier Wen Jiabao pressed on with a mission to bring Pyongyang back to nuclear disarmament talks.

"History has proven that developing China-North Korea relations is in line with the fundamental interests and common aspirations of the two peoples and conducive to safeguarding regional peace and stability," said a Chinese foreign ministry statement quoting its President Hu Jintao and Wen.

"We are willing to work together with North Korea to... constantly push forward friendly and cooperative relations."

The statement, issued to mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations, came on the second day of Wen's high-profile visit to Pyongyang. It made no mention of the North's nuclear programmes.

In the same statement, the North's leader Kim Jong-Il was quoted as calling the bilateral relationship "a common treasure".

Steven Morris | Bristol, England | September 24

The Guardian - New discovery unearthed in rock formations in north-eastern China confirms birds evolved from dinosaurs, scientists claim

The discovery of five remarkable new fossils has confirmed that birds evolved from dinosaurs, Chinese scientists claimed tonight.

Because the fossils - unearthed in rock formations in north-eastern China - are older than previous discoveries of similar creatures, the find adds weight to the theory that birds descended from predatory dinosaurs.

The fossils all have feathers or feather-like structures. The clearest and most striking of the specimens can be seen to have four wings, extensive plumage and profusely feathered feet.

Daniel Allen | Bangkok | Sept 20

Asia Times - China's role in the development of northern Laos has grown significantly in recent years, but with several unfortunate side effects. Rare wildlife is being poached for Chinese consumption, while land grabs for rubber plantations are destroying not only the environment, but also the livelihoods of the local people.

Harry Wu | Sept 20

The Independent - Harry Wu was incarcerated for 19 years, a victim of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. Now a human rights campaigner, he recalls how the horror began

Harry Wu, was condemned to life imprisonment when aged just 21. He was sent to a laogai, a Chinese labour camp for being a "rightist counter-revolutionary". He was incarcerated for 19 years, survived, went to the United States, and founded the Laogai Research Foundation, which reports and campaigns on labour camps and other human rights abuses in China.

He has described his experiences in a remarkable new book, Nine Lives, which tells the stories of individuals who, operating outside the normal channels, have made the world a better, fairer place. They include Sompop Jantraka, who has rescued thousands of girls from the Thai sex trade, Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian peace campaigner whose daughter was shot by Israeli border police, Rami Elhanan, an Israeli peace campaigners whose 14-year-old daughter was killed by a suicide bomber, Youk Chhang, who has dedicated his life to exposing the atrocities of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, and Chaeli Mycroft, a teenage girl with cerebral palsy who is transforming disability rights in South Africa.

Mr Wu was born in 1937, the son of a banker father who prospered until the 1949 Communist takeover. Thereafter, the family suffered a descent into not-so-genteel poverty. Harry went to university in 1955, and in 1957 came the events which defined his life. This, extracted from Nine Lives, is his story in his own words.

Benjamin A Shobert | Sept 18

Asia Times - An emotive new television advertisement in the United States aimed at awakening people to the long-term perils of rising national debt has an unflattering, none-too-subtle nod to China. The commercial infers that tomorrow's generation of Americans will be beholden to Beijing due to its large holdings of US debt, and that the debt problem is somehow China's fault.

Sudha Ramachandran | Bangalore | Sept 18

Asia Times - A proposed trip by the Dalai Lama in November to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, part of which China claims as its territory, has ruffled feathers in Beijing. The visit by the Tibetan spiritual leader could lead Sino-Indian relations, already tense over alleged Chinese incursions into Indian territory, to deteriorate even further in the coming months.

"We firmly oppose Dalai visiting the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh'," Jiang Yu, the spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, told Reuters this week. China claims around 90,000 square kilometers of territory in India's northeast, roughly approximating Arunachal Pradesh. It regards the area as "disputed territory" and refers to it as "Southern Tibet".

With India indicating that it will not buckle to Chinese pressure on the issue as it has in the past, a war of words and heightened tension along the nation's frontiers is on the cards. "Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India and the Dalai Lama is free to go anywhere in India," India's Minister of External Affairs S M Krishna said on Wednesday.

Arunachal Pradesh is India's eastern-most state. During the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, China advanced deep into the state, and after briefly occupying it, withdrew. It has continued to lay claim to the area, expressing this in increasingly strident language and alleged intrusions in the last couple of years. It objects to any Indian assertion of sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh.

Rex Nutting | Washington | September 11

MarketWatch - The Obama administration will impose stiff tariffs on imports of Chinese-made tires after finding that a surge of imports has disrupted the U.S. domestic market.

President Barack Obama signed an order on Friday to impose the special punitive tariffs for three years, the White House announced.

media round up after the jump

Clifford Coonan | Sept 8

The Independent - As China prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic, a new blockbuster tells the story of its founding. Naturally, the nation's biggest movie stars took part, as Clifford Coonan reports from Beijing

There has never been a movie quite like Jiangguo Daye. The blockbuster features nearly 200 of China's top movie stars, including action heroes Jackie Chan and Jet Li plus a host of directors, comedy stars and even journalists. There is Zhang Ziyi of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Stephen Chow of Kung Fu Hustle, and Hong Kong heartthrob Andy Lau. Imagine a Hollywood film featuring the entire celebrity audience at the Oscars and you get the idea.

But The Founding of a Republic – the title in English – is not just an A-list extravaganza. It is a stirring propaganda epic, a tale of how 60 years ago, when Chairman Mao's scruffy band of revolutionary warriors overcame Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Kuomintang in the civil war to establish the world's most enduring Communist revolution.

The film is a key component in celebrations to mark six decades since the foundation of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949. It is also tipped to be one of the biggest hits in China in years. Younger Chinese cinema-goers typically give a wide berth to state-sponsored propaganda. As an example of the genre, this one is up alongside Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will or Roland Emmerich's Independence Day. But by peppering the picture with stars, its producers hoped to update patriotic cinema for a new generation. If the audience at a preview screening yesterday were anything to go by, they succeeded. They cheered loudly and chuckled when their favourite actors or pop stars appeared on screen.

Lots of sources reporting on China's derivative threat today. So where do I come for enlightenment? :-)

In short, the reports are that the Chinese have threatened to unilaterally terminate commodities contracts in an attempt to cut losses on derivatives. Lots of speculation amid a general selloff, but could this be the beginning of the next wave?

Nansan, Yunnan, China | August 27

Al Jazeera - Thousands of people have crossed the border from northeastern Myanmar into China after tensions flared between government troops and ethnic minority groups in the region, activists, state media and witnesses have said.

Officials and local residents said large groups of refugees have been streaming over the border into the town of Nansan in southern Yunnan province this month.