So the U.S. destroyer John S. McCain is the latest ship to run into trouble with the Chinese navy in the South China Sea. In this case, a Chinese submarine, which was undoubtedly tracking the vessel, ran afoul of a sonar tracking device being towed by the ship. The incident took place outside of Subic Bay in the Philippines, where even …

Here’s my story on the rapid growth of electric bikes in China and what it means for the future of transportation here.

As some observers have noted, Barack Obama has appeared a few times on the cover of TIME. This cover of Obama as Chairman Mao, spotted by the Quirky Beijing blog at Beijing’s Joy City mall, is not an official TIME product. Will Sarah Palin want a copy for the next campaign?

So it now seems four of the 17 Uighurs mentioned in the post below ended up in Bermuda, which I guess is kind of like Palau but 10,000 miles closer and run by Britain. The U.S. seems to have a thing about Muslim detainees and tropical islands, Guantanamo, Diego Garcia, Palau, the Bahamas. Anyway, here’s part of a nice AP story on their

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So the 17 Uighurs captured in Afghanistan and finally declared non-combatants last year after seven years in Guantanamo are to go to Pulau, the only country (it was a U.S. dependency until 1994) that would take them. Palau is a tiny group of islands way out in the Pacific. I have friends who lived there and they would constantly wax …

A heads up, somewhat belatedly, for our take on the Green Dam Youth Escort episode.

The chengguan, China’s notorious city management officers, have become digital villains. According to a thread on the Chinese web portal sina.com (translated here by Roland Soong, with details added at ChinaGeeks), a chengguan officer has been added to the ultraviolent game “Grand Theft Auto IV.” Character Niko Bellic takes on the role …

The New York Times’ Lens blog has a fascinating photo from the 1989 crackdown in Beijing that hasn’t been published until now. It is of “tank man,” the anonymous pedestrian who blocked a row of tanks, producing one of the iconic images of that event. But unlike the more famous photos and footage taken from up in the Beijing Hotel, this …

In a story that was flagged by Ling Liu below on the crackdown ahead of the June 4th anniversary I listed a number of examples of tightened control by the authorities and said that it would likely loosen up a bit after the anniversary. But the piece’s broader point was that the current very low level of tolerance for any form of dissent …

A Chinese NGO, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, has drawn mostly blanks in its bid to reasearch pollution levels in the mainland. It recently sent requests to local government departments charged with environmental protection in 113 mainland cities, asking for details on local polluters. Of the 113, just 27 gave any …

In completely unrelated China news on time.com today, Bill Powell writes about U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s visit to Beijing, and Jimmy Wang has a video about hip-hop on the mainland.