Supporters of Chinese lawyer Xu Zhiyong have released a video, filmed inside an undisclosed detention center, of the prominent rights activist proclaiming his willingness to pay any price for social progress.
China will begin one of the most sensational trials in its modern political history, when Bo Xilai, the former rising star in the Politburo and Communist Party boss in the megacity of Chongqing, faces corruption charges.
In 2011, approximately 9,900 premature deaths in China are estimated to have been due to pollution. The Ministry of Environmental Protection recently released a pollution ranking of seventy-four cities over the first three months of the year. Of the ten most polluted, seven are in Hebei, with the provincial capital Shijiazhuang top of the list.
On August 8, 2008, I was in Beijing reporting on the media aspects of China’s first Olympic Games, and I am still amazed that the four-hour opening ceremony, as designed by film director Zhang Yimou, was seen by sixty-nine percent of China’s television audience, or roughly 842 million people.
The last ten years have seen a genuine transformation in China’s arts world, as a large sector that used to be dependent almost exclusively on government funding has been downsized into the maelstrom of the market, leaving survivors to navigate not only China’s rapidly changing market forces but also the vagaries of state preferences and political vacillations.
China said Asian neighbors must be alert to Japan’s defense buildup after it unveiled a vessel capable of carrying 14 helicopters, the largest Japanese military ship produced since World War II.
At a time of rampant corruption and social injustice, many see Bo Xilai as a charismatic leftist who at least dared to challenge the status quo of organized crime and official self-dealing and to revive Mao’s socialist, egalitarian ideals.
Two of China’s richest men are intensifying their rivalry over the world’s biggest Internet market. Both have made purchases and encroached on each other’s established markets in the battle for dominance of the country’s online spending.
State-owned China Network Television has installed more than 30 cameras at a panda reserve in Western China, designed a fancy website providing access to the cameras, launched a mobile app so the pandas can be watched on-the-go, and then some.
Argentine Agriculture Minister Norberto Yauhar said Chinese health authorities cleared 60,000-tonnes of genetically modified (GMO) Argentine corn. The cargo is already headed inland to be used as hog and chicken feed.
