Asia

Folks– I reposted the link on the sexual slavery story below, and now it’s accessible, at least here in HK where I am at the moment. It’s possible that the site is blocked by the censors on the mainland–some stuff on this subject has been in the past. Sorry for the foul up.

Kato HIroshi runs a Japanese NGO that deals with North Korean refugees, and his group is active in trying aid those refugees here in CHina. He passed on the following story of a young girl sold into sexual slavery in Chia after getting out of North Korea. Note what he says about the pre Olympic crackdown, which jibes with reports from …

I made a visit a few days ago to the site of the latest gourmet extravaganza by American Chinese lawyer, restauranteur and bon vivant Handel Lee. Here he is on site looking spiffy in a panama hat.

Lee was the driving force behind the Three On The Bund project in Shanghai, a 1920s (actually 1916) vintage building on the Huangpu …

Last week I mentioned the previously underexplained cuts that China’s film board made to the Chinese pirate character played by Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Now the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television is giving some more reasoning for the censorship, which previously had been …

The furore over the “slaves” forced to work in brick kilns, small iron foundries and coal mines keeps growing and looks set to keep doing so for some time to come…unless the central government decides to shut it down. The police now say they’ve rescued a total of 468 people in China’s north east from forced labor in the last month, a …

The desultory NBA finals just wrapped up, and alas, the series was so bad that it was more fun to watch the commercials here than it was the games. (CCTV 5 showed all the games live in the mornings and then replayed them each evening.) Pro sports leagues and the television networks in the US get a fair amount of grief for having beer …

The China Daily reports that China has welcomed Sudan’s sudden decision to accept a U.N. peace keeping force for the troubled region of Darfur. While it remains to be seen whether this will actually work out (Sudan has said it would agree before only to reneg), I can’t help but wonder about the timing. After all, Sudan
has essentially …

AFP / Getty

I was talking with the head of the Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau yesterday and, while wrapping up, it occurred to me to ask about the Starbucks in the Forbidden City controversy that briefly roiled the Chinese web a while back. You probably don’t remember this storm in a coffee cup during which a petition was circulated …

In this piece the always provocative Andy Xie, former chief economist at Morgan Stanley, highlights a basic fact: as China’s trade surpluses–and foreign reserves– continue to rise (and rise…and rise), the world is about to see a huge surge in Chinese investment abroad, and in things //in addition// to US treasury bonds (NOT, I would …

Chinese media are reporting the country’s film board has cut 10-20 minutes from the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. Since the movie runs close to three hours and is amazingly tedious despite all the swordplay and explosions, it’s tempting to say the censors have done the country a favor. (As a disappointed fan I have to concur with …

After a surprising spring that saw a glorious run of blue sky days, no major sand storms and in general a lifting of the pall of coalsmoke haze that bedeviled us in the winter, Beijing has reverted to form. As you can see from the Bureaucam shot above, the city is back to a sullen brown fugue state that turns eerie and somewhat …

I went to a talk here in Shanghai yesterday by Greg Girard, a friend and photographer who is just out with a striking book of photos entitled “Phantom Shanghai.” The book, as Greg says, captures a moment in time, when a large chunk of `old’ Shanghai is getting torn down, replaced by new apartment buildings and skyscrapers. There …

June might not be such a bad month to be a corrupt Chinese official. Sure, there’s a new set of regulations coming into effect baring yet more forms of graft, like payroll fraud or buying property at below-market rates. But the Communist Party’s anti-corruption branch also issued a 30-day window for violators to confess in return for …