Asia

Beijing has announced it is launching a four-month joint investigation by nine government departments into illegal food additives. The vice minister of health said the government is taking this step in response to the tainted baby formula scandal. So far six children have died and nearly 300,000 were sickened from drinking powdered milk …

Our colleague Lin Yang writes:

Fifty seven 57 year old Sun Fawu has been spent years attempting to obtain compensation for houses and farmlands lost to the coal mining industry in his village. His efforts to seek redress through China’s arcane petitioning system totally failed to get any compensation for his fellow villagers. Not

…

From TIME’s home office in New York City comes a collection of top 10 lists to crush all other top 10 lists. There’s even a list of the 10 most popular top 10 lists, in case you’re feeling overwhelmed.

China made its way onto the top 10 news stories (here and here), the top 10 scientific discoveries, top 10 religion stories, top 10 …

When it comes to Euope and China lately, the hits just keep coming. Here’s an announcement from the Heinrich Boll Stiftung, one of the German political party-related donor groups among whom the country’s foreign aid budget is divided. Henrich Boll is affiliated with the Green Party:

Petra-Kelly-Prize 2008 – Zhang Sizhi honored by the

…

What does it take to get rich in China? Brains, tenacity, a good idea and luck all help. But to get really really rich it appears that mommy and daddy can offer the biggest help of all, especially if they’re government officials. According to a piece (the Chinese version is here) carried by Xinhua, the state-run news service, more than …

So President Sarkozy of France (currently occupying the rotating presidency of the EU) met as expected with the Dalai Lama over the weekend. Beijing had already cancelled a China-Europe summit that was scheduled to start today in protest. Sarkozy was unapologetic, defending his right to meet anyone he wants. He also tried to strike a …

Here’s a Youtube grab that’s floating around from a Shenzhen TV station about one resident of their city, Mark Ndesandjo. He is Obama’s half brother, has married a Chinese from Henan province and spent the last six years in China. The report states that when his brother won the election Mark texted some of his Chinese friends: …

Some worrying numbers from economist Ben Simpfendorfer at the Royal bank of Scotland. As the government is aiming to get the Chinese consumer to be one of the planks of its economic stimulus plan, some optimists (Ok. ok. I did write a story about a possible soft landing including these figures; the basic points remain valid, though) have …

Last week Belgian TV reporter Tom Van de Weghe was in the province of Henan with a crew attempting to report on the situation of the hundreds of thousands of HIV sufferers (and the many orphaned children of victims) who contracted the disease while donating blood or receiving transfusions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. (See past …

The latest in a wave of taxi strikes throughout the country took place in Hong Kong last night. Angry about a new urban-taxi fare structure, about 1,000 Hong Kong drivers from the city’s rural New Territories region launched an impromptu strike at the city’s airport, paralyzing traffic for several hours. The issues in Hong Kong are …

Today was China’s annual “law day,” when the adoption of the 1982 constitution is marked. Officially the day is meant to publicize the country’s legal system, but for some it is a day to bring attention to their claims of injustice. China’s petition system, which dates back to imperial times, is the last resort for citizens who …

Last month I mentioned my piece on falling scrap prices in China and how that was affecting the people living in a recycling village outside Beijing. The latest issue of the Atlantic has a nice story on the situation from the perspective of international scrap metal traders at a meeting in Shanghai.

So why does the price of scrap …

Lin Yang writes:

There was a curious sight on the expressway leading to the southwestern city of Chongqing on the morning of December 2nd. According to the Chongqing Evening News, four beat-up electric tricycles carrying 11 people were trying to pass a tollgate. The drivers were farmers without licenses. They and the riders were covered

…