Asia

….finally. There seem to have been a lot of bugs in the transition (which normally takes a lot longer than a day or two, so there’s no surprise there) and i have just managed to get into the administrator mode to post late Sunday in Beijing. anyway, please bear with us. We will try to get a bunch of posts up that have piling up asap.

Faithful TIME.com blog-readers may have noticed something odd today: the blogs kind of disappeared. Long story short, we’ve had major server problems, and as a result we’ve had to re-launch all of our blogs on WordPress. The upside is a faster, better, more stable platform. The downside is we’ll need a few days to get our archives back …

So Hu Jia did win the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize (see previous post). As I said, it’s at least as likely that this will make his life worse rather than better, at least in the short term. A major Europe-China Summit is coincidentally taking place right now in Beijing, supposedly the largest ever. This should make for some …

Dissident Hu Jia, recently tipped as a leading contender for the Nobel Peace Prize (which he didn’t get), is now one of three names being considered for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, also handed out for human rights work. According to a story by the AP, Beijing has already sent a letter to the President of the EU Assembly …

Larry Yung Chi-kin, an iconic figure in China’s transformation over the past three decades, is in the process of becoming the latest casualty of the financial crisis. One of China’s richest men with a fortune estimated at more than 2 billion dollars (432 on the Forbes list of the world’s richest) Yung (Rong Zhijian in pinyin) has an …

Some thoughts from my colleague Jessie Jiang on piracy:

The failure of millions of computer screens to go black on Monday was almost an anticlimax for many Chinese Windows users. According to Microsoft’s much-awaited anti-piracy plan, millions of PC users in China would turn on their computers on October 20 only to find a black

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Times are always tricky for activists and human rights workers in China but the current post-Olympics period is particularly odd. As this story from AFP flags, activists are groping around trying to figure out where the boundaries are now that the Games are over. Will the authorities relax or will the tough attitude that preceded the …

If you haven’t visited the golden toilet yet, you may have missed your chance. For the throngs of mainland tourists in Hong Kong, the Hall of Gold is a must-see on the itinerary. Constructed with six tons of gold, the palace features chairs, tables, chandeliers, life-size statues, and a fully functional toilet, all made of solid gold. …

So the Chinese government finally issued a communique (official English language report from Xinhua here ) last night addressing the rural reform issue, about which both Austin and I have written previous posts (Austin’s is a couple of poasts before this, my most recent effusion here). This is a complex issue to which we will no doubt be …

Back in action after my brief holiday last week. Was interested to see the announcement that the government was indefinitely extending special Olympic rules for foreign journalists in China. The rules, which were set to expire on Friday, essentially say that a foreign reporter can interview anyone in China as long as they had the …

This is perilously close to boring your guests with your holiday snaps, but there you are. Taking a few days off in Yangshuo in the southern province of Guangxi, I was persuaded (reluctantly: I am a white knuckle flyer) by my wife to take a trip up in a hot air balloon. On first sight this contraption resembles a circus tent attached to …

On the pages of the Global Times, the nationalistic Beijing tabloid, there’s often a little gloating these days about the financial crisis in the U.S. Down in the trenches of China’s manufacturing sector, not everyone is so happy. They know how quickly economic problems in the West will lead to reduced consumer demand and weakening …