Chinese artist Ai Weiwei underwent cranial surgery this week in Munich to treat lingering pain he’s suffered since being punched by a Chengdu police officer last month. (He’s posted pre- and post-surgery photos on his Twitter page.) Ai, who organized a campaign to tally student deaths in last year’s Sichuan earthquake, was detained with …

Heads up: here’s my essay in this week’s TIME Asia, about why, after nearly 100 years, China is suddenly honoring my great-grandfather.

Small shops in China can change their operations with remarkable frequency. In a matter of weeks this summer I’ve witnessed a storefront near my home in Beijing’s Dongsi area transform from the mundane to the salacious.

It has been a tense few days in Urumqi, the western Chinese city that saw renewed unrest last week, two months after rioting left nearly 200 dead. Late Friday the government said five people had been killed during the previous week’s unrest, including two “innocent civilians.” On Saturday it announced that Urumqi’s Communist Party …

The details of recent violence in Urumqi are surprising, but the news of further unrest in the capital of China’s northwestern Xinjiang region isn’t. State media reported that police arrested 15 people this week for attacks using syringes.

Possibly in response to those stabbings, residents of the city gathered today to protest poor …

Various reports yesterday (here’s the Financial Times) noted that the U.S. and China ended discussions aimed at solving the problem of confrontation betweem Chinese ships and the U.S. Navy in what China’s is evidently aiming to make a 200 mile exclusive maritime zone off its coast. I say evidently as the talks clearly didin’t go well. …

Just back from summer holiday and the ever reliable Global Times scores immediately with a piece on a supposed online controversy (as is their common practice backed up with the results of an online poll, which are surely meaningless and easily manipulated even by the loose standards of statistics) revolving around the CCTV Towers, about …

This weekend authorities released Xu Zhiyong, the lawyer who was arrested last month in an investigation into the taxes of the legal research group he heads. Zhuang Lu, an assistant, was also let out of jail, as was a Uighur economist who was arrested after deadly rioting in western Xinjiang region, AP reported.

Xu’s group, the Open …

In Beijing yesterday Tony Blair praised the progress China has made on green initiatives, which are outlined in a new report by the Climate Group. “Chinese businesses are now today among the top producers of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and energy efficient appliances,” he said. “In an incredibly short space of time, …