Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have detained 45 East Turkestan "terrorist" suspects, and foiled plots to carry out suicide bomb attacks and kidnap athletes to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, a police spokesman said on Thursday.

Uighur militants have been agitating to establish an independent East Turkestan in China's predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

This tale was splattered across media websites within hours of its first appearance. It seems to have all the marks of the airline hi-jacking and the earlier gang raid in Urumqi i.e. no evidence. The timing is very handy too.

Chronicles past summers, presenting graphic and picture evidence of what we should expect in August 2008 (something is supposed to happen then...)

Sixteen policemen in China's Muslim-majority northwest were killed on Monday in a suspected terrorist attack, state media said, raising security fears four days before the Beijing Olympics.

I’ve heard people say that this will be the year that the Chinese stock market bubble will burst. I’ve had my money on 2009 or 2010 before anything like that happens in the Chinese stock market. Why? I don’t see any evidence that makes me think this will be the year.

The LA Times documents the rising tide of unrest in the Middle Kingdom. According to the story, "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 same period in 2005, though it offered no explanation of how it had come up with the figures."

After a year and a half of arrogance and grandstanding on China's human rights record, our prime minister, under increasing pressure from the business community to mend a defacto broken Sino-Canadian relationship, is now blaming the public servant for not putting more emphasis on China.

A new film set to air on the UK's Channel 4 next week is causing all sorts of stirs in the Middle Kingdom as it shows evidence that upwards of 70,000 children are abducted a year, destined for parents willing to pay for a (usually male) child.

Charlie from the blog Positive Solutions laments a boring and ill-informed report on China from Will Hutton in The Observer.