The crackdown by China’s third-largest city is the most restrictive in a series of moves by big Chinese cities that are putting quality-of-life issues ahead of short-term economic growth, something the central government has struggled to do on a national scale.
Salacious rumours had started swirling on the internet within hours of the spectacular crash in March: another Ferrari in Beijing, another Chinese leader’s son. But which leader? Months later the answer appears to be emerging into view, just as the leadership negotiates a crucial transition of power.
As a goodwill ambassador to WildAid, a nonprofit dedicated to ending illegal wildlife trading, Yao took a trip to Kenya last month in August, where he spent several days interacting with wildlife officials and seeing some of the effects of poaching firsthand.
The vast majority of the illegal ivory — experts say as much as 70 percent — is flowing to China, and though the Chinese have coveted ivory for centuries, never before have so many of them been able to afford it. China’s economic boom has created a vast middle class, pushing the price of ivory to a stratospheric $1,000 per pound on the streets of Beijing.
In the intellectual ferment leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, a much-watched series on Chinese television called River Elegy became closely identified with the hopes of China’s reformers.
A Chinese military official accused last week of assaulting a flight attendant has been suspended following an explosion of outrage online fed in part by rare criticism from state-run media. Col. Fang Daguo, a political commissar for the Armed Forces Department of Yuexiu district in the southern city of Guangzhou, was suspended from his post on Sept. 2 pending further investigation, the official People’s Daily reported Monday through its feed on Sina Corp.’s Weibo microblogging site.
A senior editor of Study Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, has launched a blistering broadside at the country's outgoing leaders, who are about to step down in a once-a-decade shake-up, accusing them of stalling long-overdue political reform and brewing a legitimacy crisis. Offering a contrasting view to the official line, which has hailed the decade-long reign of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao as "golden and glorious", Deng Yuwen, a deputy editor of the newspaper, which is run by the party's central school, said they had "created more problems than achievements".
Nicholas Kristof last wrote about Chinese schools shortly after the release of some stunning news: on a comprehensive exam testing students in 65 countries, China had come in first – thirty spots ahead of the U.S. in math. Kristof praised the Chinese model and ended with a warning: “These latest test results should be our 21st-century Sputnik.”
China’s carefully scripted leadership transition appears to have suffered another glitch: a fatal car crash involving a Ferrari, a privileged son and two women.
Blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng, whose escape from house arrest sparked a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Washington, accepted an invitation on Friday to visit Taiwan, underscoring his drive to ensure his influence as a human rights campaigner will continue abroad.
