Asia

From our colleague Bruce Crumley in Paris, a look at why China reacted so strongly to Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to meet with the Dalai Lama but did little after the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader’s recent talks with British premier Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In the entry of the building where TIME’s Hong Kong offices are located, there is a statue of a man squatting on a pedestal. Presumably the artist envisioned a work depicting a person deep in thought. To anyone who has used a squat toilet in China, the statue clearly depicts a man engaged in one of life’s necessary activities. Whether …

As my colleague Liam Fitzpatrick has volubly complained in the past, the powers that be of world cuisine, or rather the self-appointed powers that be, don’t seem to register that Chinese cooking is right up there with French and Japanese as one of the world’s greats. He was particularly miffed that a purported ranking of the world’s best …

China’s Ministry of Health announced yesterday that six infants may have died in the country’s tainted-milk scandal, up from the previously declared total of three, the state-run Xinhua news service reported. The number of children sickened also grew dramatically from 60,000 to 294,000. Their illnesses were caused by the illegal addition …

From Bill Powell, here’s a look at the recent layoffs in south China and why they have the government so concerned.

Getting an accurate read on what people in China think about the prosecution of Chen Shui-bian is difficult because Taiwan’s former president isn’t too highly thought of here. To the extent people have an opinion they seem to be glad he’s in trouble because, well, Chen’s a troublemaker. The larger question about what it means for Taiwan …

When Beijing wants to make a diplomatic point about issues that really get it hot under the collar (Tibet, Taiwan, Falungong, “interference in China’s internal affairs etc) it isn’t exactly subtle. After announcing Wednesday that it was cancelling a summit meeting with the European Union scheduled for Monday, in diplomatic terms the …

An interesting piece by my colleague Mark Kukis in Washington about the fate of the 17 Uighurs detained in Guantanamo. Their situation really does deserve the much abused description of Kafkaesque. Having been delivered into U.S. hands by bounty hunters in Afghanistan, they were cleared of terrorist connections in 2003 (yep, 5 long …

Since the spontaneous outpouring of charity and volunteering after the May earthquake in Sichuan, we have all wondered whether the event marked a new beginning for such grassroots civil society work in China. Lin Yang finds where small corner of the country where that spirit is continuing:

The mention of charity in China usually

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The weird case of cop-killer Yang Jia (details here) continues to resonate through the Chinese internet even after his execution on November 26th. Colleague Jessie Jiang has these thoughts about about the reaction to his death. As ever, you can find anything you want on the web and justify anything, but as Jessie notes, this feels …

One of the unexpected consequences of the great time.com blog blowup of 2008 is that the China Blog is no longer easily accessible in China. Regular time.com blog readers will recall that in late October our servers experienced some sort of meltdown. In order to correct things in a hurry before the presidential election, our Web …

After nearly 60 years, punters in mainland China can now bet on horseracing. In January, the central government had announced that horse betting would be reintroduced in Wuhan in September. After a two-month delay, it’s official: beginning this Saturday, the Orient Lucky City racecourse (let’s hope they come up with a less …