Asia

A great piece on the issue of organ harvesting in China and the dilemma facing all foreign reporters in China trying to cover the story by Daily Telegraph’s Richard Spencer. Keying off a new report issued on the subject in Canada, he summarizes the state of knowledge about “this disgusting form of evil.” He also dissects the moral and …

The strange case of Chinabounder has turned up again. This was an anonymous blogger who purported to be an English language teacher in Shanghai describing his amorous conquests. Because these involved Chinese women and he said he was English, once his posts were highlighted there was a (predictable?) storm of nationalist vitriol on the …

The signs of irrational exuberance in China’s stock markets don’t seem to be going away. Take the Financial Times report (here, behind a paywall) that people are borrowing against their homes to buy stock. My colleague Kathleen Kingsbury had a piece out Friday that included comments from a small-scale punter in Beijing who doesn’t see …

A headline in today’s China Daily reads: “Unclear Signs in English to be History.” I feel like I’ve read this headline before. Many times. The gist is that in order to prepare for the Olympics, the city is going to wage a campaign against the creative translations in public signage that have delighted tourists and exchange students for …

People in Hong Kong woke up today to learn they have a new neighbor: the eldest son of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. The son, Kim Jong Nam, has been living in nearby Macau for the past three years, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. (The paper has a subscription-only web site, but here’s an AP report that hits …

A footnote to Simon’s piece on the Silk Market: Protecting intellectual property requires the use of all kinds of different tactics, some obvious–like telling vendors they can’t sell exact replicas of brand name products–and some more subtle. The People’s Daily‘s English-language site has a whole special section elaborating the …

Last fall Chinese border guards opened fire on a group of Tibetan refugees who were climbing a Himalayan pass that linked their homeland to Nepal. At least one young woman was killed. Several Tibetans fled, while the guards captured several others. The incident was witnessed by dozens of climbers from around the world who were camped …

Alan Leong, a Hong Kong lawyer and politician, announced this afternoon he has secured enough nominations to participate in Hong Kong’s Chief Executive race. That means the territory will have its first contested election for the top political office since the handover 10 years ago. Of course, as I wrote previously, under the current …

Beijing has many charms for visitors: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, weird and wonderful new architecture, a slew of museums celebrating China’s millennia of culture and history. The list is long. But I’ve noticed that even the most academically-inclined out of town visitor invariably ends up asking –somewhat sheepishly– whether I …

Over the weekend, Xinhua reported the latest in the Shanghai corruption scandal which was responsible for the dismissal of the city’s Communist Party Secretary Chen Liangyu. Chen was removed from his post last September and put under “joint regulations,” a special kind of extra-judicial disciplinary regime reserved for high-ranking …

It’s been interesting to see the reaction to the post about Zhang Ziyi and her supposed new western boyfriend. There have of course been the usual number of silly and abusive comments, but on the whole it seems to me for a discussion about something as emotive as racism, it remained remarkably civilized. I think the subject was pretty …

The past few months have been a relatively bright period for China-Japan relations. That’s of course in comparison with the abyss that immediately preceded it. The causes of the past strains included Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, where millions of Japanese war dead and 14 top-level war …

I always thought Ronaldo made an odd shill for Chinese cough drops. About three years ago, around the time–coincidentally enough–when Real Madrid came to Beijing for an exhibition game, the Brazillian striker started appearing in ads for Jinsangzi or “Golden Throat” a popular mentholated lozenge. The honey-colored pastilles come …