Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

After seven months of WTO discussions, Xinhua will relinquish its role as a regulator of foreign financial information suppliers. Foreign companies such as Reuters and Bloomberg will no longer have to compete against their regulator.

China's government news, Xinhua, posts a picture of Chinese President Hu Jintao inspecting Qingdao's cleanup of the algae before the Olympics. Can you see everything wrong with this picture?

On the Issues does a good job summarizing some of his stances by taking quotes from various debates and speeches he gave in the past. While not a sure-fire indicator, it gives you some ideas into his thought process. I must say: no thank you.

From the article:
The Tea-Leaf readers will look at [the recent media rules], nod their heads sagely, and in hushed tones suggest that this is a part of Hu Jintao's ongoing effort to deepen his hold over the media as he continues his soft purge of Jiang Zemin supporters left in government. That might be true in part, but as with most things in China, that is at best only part of the real reason (and possibly only a political fig-leaf for the action.)

In reality, I suspect this is as much about money as politics.

BEIJING - Chinese state media accused the Dalai Lama on Sunday of closing the door to talks over Tibet's future, an apparent response to rising international calls for Beijing to negotiate with Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader.

In a lengthy article, Xinhua News Agency cited past actions and statements attributed to the 72-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner that it said contradicted or undermined his calls for negotiations.

"It was the Dalai Lama clique that closed the door of dialogue," Xinhua said, using China's standard term for the Tibetan government-in-exile.

China set two more ambitious goals for its space program this week, announcing it will launch an unmanned lunar orbiter in the second half of 2007 and a probe to Mars by 2009, according to reports from the Xinhua news agency.

The lunar orbiter, scheduled to launch later this year, will take 3-D images of the moon's surface. If successful, it will pave the way for a lunar landing mission, Xinhua quoted National Space Administration director Sun Laiyan as saying Sunday in a speech at Beijing Jiaotong University.

China Air Force Airlines has replaced those old Tupolev 154s that have a nasty habit of falling apart in midair with more reliable Boeing 737-300s. I was even able to determine from the interior of the plane that it had previously been used by Continental Airlines in the US. Remember those old shag-carpet logos on the divider between first class and economy?

SHANGHAI - The death toll from a highly infectious virus that preys on children rose to 24 Sunday as it spread to a new province amid heightened efforts by China's Health Ministry to contain it.

The official Xinhua News Agency said an 18-month old boy who died in Foshan city in Guangdong province Friday had enterovirus 71, known as EV-71. Another child who died in the same district on April 25 also tested positive, it said.

The deaths follow 22 already reported in central Anhui province, 1,000 miles to the north. More than 3,000 have been infected.

BEIJING, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese shuttler Lin Dan claimed the men's singles title at the Beijing Olympics