Asia

Various reports yesterday (here’s the Financial Times) noted that the U.S. and China ended discussions aimed at solving the problem of confrontation betweem Chinese ships and the U.S. Navy in what China’s is evidently aiming to make a 200 mile exclusive maritime zone off its coast. I say evidently as the talks clearly didin’t go well. …

Just back from summer holiday and the ever reliable Global Times scores immediately with a piece on a supposed online controversy (as is their common practice backed up with the results of an online poll, which are surely meaningless and easily manipulated even by the loose standards of statistics) revolving around the CCTV Towers, about …

This weekend authorities released Xu Zhiyong, the lawyer who was arrested last month in an investigation into the taxes of the legal research group he heads. Zhuang Lu, an assistant, was also let out of jail, as was a Uighur economist who was arrested after deadly rioting in western Xinjiang region, AP reported.

Xu’s group, the Open …

In Beijing yesterday Tony Blair praised the progress China has made on green initiatives, which are outlined in a new report by the Climate Group. “Chinese businesses are now today among the top producers of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and energy efficient appliances,” he said. “In an incredibly short space of time, …

In the late 1990s and early years of this decade China’s industrial regions were hit by extensive protests as workers resisted the privatization of large state-owned enterprises. Now there are signs of that labor unrest returning. For the second time in a month steelworkers have protested the sale of a mill to private buyers. In late …

Artist Ai Weiwei, who has led a campaign to document student deaths from last year’s Sichuan earthquake, was detained with several other activists last night in Chengdu. The group was there to attend the trial of Tan Zuoren, another activist who has investigated the quake’s aftermath and is charged with subversion. According to the …

China is reconsidering restrictions on street merchants, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The story has significance beyond whether residents of Chinese cities can find a good kabob stand. In recent years conflicts between peddlers and the police forces responsible for monitoring them have frequently spiraled out of control, with …

On the China Beat blog, our former colleague Susan Jakes takes a look at the breadth and boldness of detained legal scholar Xu Zhiyong’s work:

Xu has a knack for seeing what’s possible where others see only futility. In 2003 and again in 2006 he ran as one of China’s handful of independent—that is, not CCP pre-approved—candidates

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The lawyer Xu Zhiyong disappeared in Beijing one week ago, but now his image is popping up all over town. Xu, who was taken from his house by police, is featured in the latest edition of Shishang Xiansheng, the Chinese version of Esquire. He is one of 60 people interviewed by the magazine in recent months about their idea of the Chinese …

A recent web survey by a Chinese magazine has found that prostitutes are more trustworthy than government officials. The result comes from a web survey, not the most trustworthy form of surveying itself. But the China Daily deemed it “unusual.” Perhaps not. Prostitution is illegal here but amazingly widespread. A visiting editor once …