“China has opened crevices in the Great Firewall that blocks access to many internet sites, allowing the public to see some quarters of cyberspace that it has long blocked … The issue had caused a major stir and created dissension within the top ranks of the IOC because the move reneged on previous pledges of [...]

“Yet the one slogan you never hear at the Olympics is that with dreams come responsibilities … And in the global neighborhood, any city’s treatment of its local problems is suddenly a matter of everyone’s concern. So evicting roughly 3 million of the capital’s residents, as Beijing has done, while spending perhaps $200 billion on [...]

As the Olympics near, converns over the effects of pollution in China’s capital are growing. Air pollution has been on the agenda for some time, with the authoritarian government resorting to drastic measures and mobilising armies of farmers to seed clouds, and planning emergency factory closures at a moment’s notice. But the New York Times [...]

The BBC reports that more than 100 countries (thankfully, Britain included) have agreed to ban current designs of cluster bombs. These weapons are dangerous not only at time of use but also for many years afterward, as unexploded bomblets essentially become landmines littering the ground. However, while the number of signatories is positive news it’s [...]

“As many as eight Tibetans may have been killed when paramilitary police opened fire during protests in Sichuan province, according to Tibetan support groups. They say the protesters were gunned down in the Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture when police used automatic weapons on the crowds on Thursday evening.”
China continues its murderous behaviour against unarmed Tibetans. [...]

“When all the pieces of the global economy work together smoothly, all the players involved benefit. In this decade, a clear pattern emerged: China became factory to the world, the U.S. became buyer to the world, and India began to become back office to the world.”
In an excerpt from her new book on the subject, [...]

Time has a fascinating article on Chinese gui gouwu zhongxin - “ghost” mega-malls. Developers are building increasingly enormous shopping centres, but filling them with designer shops out of the reach of the vast majority of the population. Banks, eager to loan money, show little restraint and few caps on lending. As a result, while 7 [...]

BBC News reports that the US has set up a panel to look into the safety of imported goods. While the move follows a string of safety concerns involving Chinese imports - including toys coated in paint containing lead and food contaminated with banned chemicals - the US claims that the move is not specifically [...]

“China has the right to development, and the right, too, to truck for oil with sovereign governments in the Third World. But China is easily important enough, in 2007, for its growth and development to be in the whole world’s interest.”
James Woudhuysen writes on Spiked about China’s right to develop. As I’ve said before, it’s [...]

“It is as if they have fallen into a crevasse between justice and charity, from which there is no way out. Although this was a made-in-China and consummated-in-Britain tragedy, no one wants to take responsibility for the consequences.”
The families of those who died in the Morecambe Bay disaster face financial ruin. Crippled by debt, their [...]

“China is now building about two power stations every week, the top climate change official at the UK Foreign Office, John Ashton, has said … His statement came as a Dutch think tank reported that China had already overtaken the US as the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 … [But] It is estimated that the [...]

“For better, and for worse, Hong Kong’s future is tied to China’s … Though hugely different in scale, the two learn from, depend on, influence and to an extent intimidate each other. Each needs the other to prosper, yet each also sees the other as potentially harmful.”
Ten years after Hong Kong was given back to [...]

“Maybe it’s time to face the truth. Maybe I really do belong to Google. Maybe I’m just Google’s ‘biatch.’ “
The Republic of T has a really interesting article on the rapidly expanding Google empire. From being able to dredge up years-old spur of the moment comments to giving in to censorship in China, many questions [...]

“Iraq is now the world’s fourth highest user of the death penalty, human rights group Amnesty International has said … At least 270 people have been sentenced to death since mid-2004, often after unfair trials the report says, and more than 100 people have been hanged … Only China, Iran and Pakistan used the death [...]

“The video-sharing website YouTube has offered to show Thailand how to block material deemed insulting to King Bhumibol Adulyadej … YouTube executives said they would not take down material that did not violate policies but would show authorities how to block individual items.”
This is despite the furore over parent company Google’s decision to censor search [...]

“China has called for a treaty to stop the spread of weapons in outer space, state media reported on Wednesday, two months after it blew up an aging weather satellite, prompting fears about its own space plans … China’s ambassador to U.N. bodies in Geneva, Tang Guoqiang, said a 40-year-old agreement [...]

“This year a woman will give birth in the slums of Kibera outside Nairobi, a young man will leave his village in China for the booming metropolis of Shenzhen or a peasant farmer’s family will leave the arid north of Brazil for the bright lights of Sao Paulo. The moment itself will go unremarked. But [...]

“It’s not what the red flags, the hammers and sickles and the Marxist-Leninist rhetoric would have you expect, but China’s Communist leaders have drafted a proposal to safeguard private property, saying rising personal wealth needs better legal protection … The proposed property law being debated by China’s annual parliament, the National People’s Congress, is the [...]

“International concerns about China’s growing military power and a spiralling global arms race intensified yesterday when Beijing announced its biggest defence budget increase for more than 10 years.”
China’s declared defence budget for the coming year will be £23bn, which pales in comparison to the US’s proposed £247bn, a figure which excludes Iraq and Afghanistan. If [...]

I was thinking about China’s increasing consumer culture, and it led me to do a bit of reading to find out whether or not people still regard China as truly communist. With all its market reforms, I wondered what makes it socialist, communist or “not-capitalist”. Although no-one seems to be able to give a particularly [...]