Asia

The Beijing government has announced its plans for car restrictions during the Olympics. These are one of the key measures to prevent the Games from being clouded by a toxic air. It’s been understood for a while that some sort of limitations would be placed on vehicle traffic in Beijing. What’s surprising is how early the measures will …

From the Oil Drum (via Foreign Policy’s Passport blog) comes an eye-popping graph on a most mundane subject: cement. As someone who complained earlier this week about the work going on just outside my bedroom, these figures shouldn’t be a surprise. And still. This is what happens when you take that seven-day-a-week construction and …

Monday’s overseas edition of the People’s Daily has an essay about the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. As Ed Cody notes in the Washington Post, it focuses heavily and rather awkwardly on the issue of race. The overall argument of the People’s Daily piece is that Obama’s candidacy isn’t truly a step forward for equality. Here’s a …

Little is permanent in Beijing these days, but the construction work outside my house shows little sign of ever ending. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my neighborhood is in a frenzy preparing for the Games. Homes are being torn down and rebuilt, walls bricked over or painted, roofs and windows replaced. When this started there was …

A friend involved in Tibet issues writes to say that the latest in a constant stream of attacks on his email purportedly came from me. or at least my feminine side. He says he gets many of these kind of emails, which invariably ask him to open an attachment that almost certainly contains a type of virus called a Trojan horse that can …

We’ve written before about the rush of inquiries in China about adopting kids orphaned by the Wenchuan earthquake. For any of our readers personally interested in pursuing this, the China Daily has a story on a notice issued by the Sichuan provincial authorities outlining eligibility and procedures. Bottom line: relatives get …

Original team members from the 1971 ping pong diplomacy event will face-off again today at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in southern California. The event, which kicked off Tuesday with exhibitions and training sessions for students, will culminate in a rematch today between two of the original players: Tim Boggan, 77 (!!), and …

A heads up for our latest take on Tibet, which is actually an amplification with more reporting of an earlier blog post (see below). It really does seem like this is crunch time and if this opportunity is let slip by Beijing and things turn ugly again on the ground it could means years and years of misery. These things are always tricky …

I am probably a little flippy about this building, the roughly 800 million dollar extravaganza that is to be the headquarters of China Central Television. But having posted pics of its progress several times (last one here in November) on this blog, I thought I’d keep up the tradition. The first picture gives you some idea of where the …

Interesting AP report about a clash between Chinese officials concerned about security and foreign television executives trying to get their logistical ducks in a row for the Games. There’s a matching piece at the Guardian that also comments on the effects on the International Olympic Committee and the Games of what seems to be a growing …

Beijing announced yesterday that talks between representatives of the exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama and senior Chinese officials were to be postponed until later this month. It was a another bad omen in a situation that looks increasingly grim. Conditions on the ground are still very tense. Beijing also announced that it had …

More than 5,000 children have been orphaned by the earthquake in Sichuan, and with 18,000 people still unaccounted for, that number is sure to rise. For the last three weeks, phones have been ringing off the hook at Chinese Civil Affairs departments, the agencies that handle adoption in China. International adoption groups have also been …