SHENZHEN: A Nigerian man received the death penalty Tuesday in Dongguan, Guangdong province, after being convicted of drug trafficking. Experts say it is the first case in the southern manufacturing city in which a foreigner has received a death sentence for drug trafficking. His sentence was handed down from the Guangdong Higher People's Court.
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The tall, dapper and smiling Chinese leader looked presidential as he pulled up at the front entrance of the Great Hall of the People, waving photographers and waiting reporters away. Senior members of the Politburo never enter through the front door. But this is Bo Xilai.
read more »Last year, I wrote in these pages of my hope that the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan people's uprising on March 10 might inspire the Chinese government to reappraise its policies and adopt a more realistic approach to Tibet. As we mark the 51st anniversary today, it's becoming increasingly clear that Beijing isn't serious about resolving the crisis peacefully.
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"Boy, if the Chinese only had 100 good pursuit planes and 100 fair pilots, they'd exterminate the Jap air force!" That boast -- made in September 1937 by Claire Lee Chennault -- turned out to be a prescription for the American Volunteer Group he would bring to Asia in the summer of 1941, to win immortality as the "Flying Tigers" of Burma and China.
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When Chinese farmer Ding Guangyan married his fiancee last year, local officials quickly seized on the event's propaganda value. Mr Ding had only just arrived in the area after being forced to move with his family to make way for a massive engineering scheme.
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The ability to wage war on credit gave the West an insurmountable advantage over the East. The West’s credit, however, has now turned to debt and the West has lost its advantage. But the return to parity will not be easy. The three hundred year economic expansion fueled by debt-based capital markets is coming to an end and with it, the hegemony of the West over the East.
read more »Over the past couple of years we've written a lot about China and its seemingly endless stream of skyscrapers that are sprouting up. There's plenty of growth there, industrialisation is happening, the population is moving from the countryside to the city but is that all? What else is behind China's skyscraper boom?
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Until just over a year ago, Gong Kangshun spent much of his life trekking over the mountains around his remote village in south-west China. It isn't easy to make a living in Xiuxi, a tiny settlement of 58 families deep in Aba county, Sichuan. Gong grows crops on a small plot and sells rare fungi found on the steep slopes nearby.
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Kill tally: At least 3,000 killed in experiments at the Unit 731 biological weapons facility. Approximately 200,000 killed in field tests of biological weapons. Between 20,000 to 30,000 Chinese killed when plague-infected rats are released from Unit 731 at the end of the Second World War.
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Technology, declining fertility and ancient prejudice are combining to unbalance societies. Gendercide—to borrow the title of a 1985 book by Mary Anne Warren—is often seen as an unintended consequence of China’s one-child policy, or as a product of poverty or ignorance. But that cannot be the whole story.
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Archaeologists are currently excavating further areas of the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the first and most infamous Emperor of China. The site, where the magnificent terracotta warriors were discovered relatively recently - 1974 - contains the undisturbed tomb of the Emperor. With rumours of flowing mercury and incomparable treasures, the question on everyone's lips is - what's inside?
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What economic crisis? After a blip last winter, China is growing at more than 8% a year, and the scale and speed at which the country is building a modern infrastructure are mind-boggling.
read more »In 1999, the government began a push to expand college education — once considered a golden ticket — to produce more professionals to meet the demands of globalization. This year, more than 6.3 million graduates will enter the job market, up from one million in 1999. But the number of high-skilled, high-paying jobs has not kept pace.
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As a foreigner here in China, today I’ve decided to (over)generalize my experiences with other foreigners and have a little fun with those of us that are of the paler persuasion. When I first arrived in China my wife and I walked down the Bund in Shanghai and there were almost no other foreigners there!
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Thirty years ago, Vietnamese soldiers waged a final, furious battle in the hills of Lang Son near the country's northern border to push back enemy troops. Both sides suffered horrific losses, but Vietnam eventually proclaimed victory. Decades later, diplomatic relations have been restored and the two nations, at least in public, call each other friend.
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The Dalai Lama is now 75 and his health is deteriorating. Padma Choling, the Governor of Tibet, has stated that there is no need for Beijing to refer to the Dalai Lama in the situation of his death and subsequent reincarnation, and has insisted the final decision lies with Beijing.
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Auto technician Li Xuelin never dreamed of dismantling his boss' Mercedes Benz S300. But one day, that's exactly what the boss ordered Li and a half-dozen colleagues to do. It wasn't easy. At first, the technicians just stood beside the shiny black car, daring not to touch it. But eventually their boss and BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu broke the stalemate.
read more »Strong demand for ghost-written academic papers in the lead-up to university graduation time and revelations that people pay to have scholarly articles published are worrying critics who fear the billion-yuan industry is making it harder than ever to evaluate graduates' abilities.
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After the much-talked about performance by the PLA's female fighters in the National Day parade (nothing says nationalism like women with knee-high boots and guns), the PLA has released new standards for its female PLA recruits that could read like requirements for the Miss Universe pageant.
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China has warned that a plan by pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong to use a special election as a de facto referendum on democratic reform is a threat to stability in the former British colony. While Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, it maintains a separate political system and enjoys Western-style civil liberties typically denied on the mainland
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