It’s only fitting that at a serious-minded event like this weekend’s Boao Forum, which China envisions as a tropical equivalent to Davos, the biggest news would be some ill-considered comments by film star Jackie Chan. Chan told an audience that, “I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. If you’re too free, you’re like the way …

So God –or at least mother nature–appears to have decided that China’s maritime trade is important enough to merit personal intervention. According to this story from Xinhua, thousands of dolpins spontaneously decided to intevene and stop Somali pirates from attacking Chinese merchant vessels. Money sentence: “The pirates could only …

Here’s the story I mentioned below, which did indeed come out fairly gloomy.  They don’t call economics the dismal science for nothing.

Here’s a link to the latest paper on China’s economy by Nouriel Roubini of Columbia University, aka Dr. Doom. As I wrote a while back, some of his analysis of the Chinese economy seemed to be done from so far away that he missed some of the factors that genuinely do make it different fromits fully capitalist brethren. This time he wrote …

In a recent report, the Ministry of Health said that the HIV virus has become the deadliest infectious disease in China. Here‘s our take on how the official report compares to research conducted by the UN and other organizations.

Earlier this year we mentioned a naval encounter between China and India that turned out to be fictitious. But a rivalry over the Indian Ocean between the two countries is still very real, as our colleague Howard Chua-Eoan reports:

…the presence of the Chinese and Indian warships underlines Beijing’s and New Delhi’s intense economic

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Spend a little time traveling around China and you’ll recognize temple fatigue syndrome. A relative of the New York/London/Paris sensation of being overwhelmed by museums, TFS hits when you’ve visited far too many temples. Your surroundings should be inspiring, but instead your mind wanders. You think about what’s for lunch or why …

A slightly belated heads up for a couple of recent stories. One here on the Chinese online literature phenomenon in part spawned by a desire to avoid the censor. And one here on one of the world’s great unknown fossil museums. Or is it?

The Taipei Times‘ story about “fake” pandas from China had the right elements—counterfeiting, geopolitical tension, bear sex—to make the list of most popular April Fool’s stories last week. Not everyone appreciated it though. The Taipei Times writes:

Taipei Zoo director Jason Yeh (葉傑生) did not see the funny side either and

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If you toddle over to the White House site you can find a fascinating transcript of the “BACKGROUND READOUT BY SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICALS ON PRESIDENT OBAMA’S MEETING WITH PRESIDENT HU JINTAO of CHINA.”

It’s a pretty comprehensive run through by “a senior administration official” of what the two men talked about in the hour long …

Let’s hope it’s the start of a beautiful friendship, as the man in the movie says. They both seem relaxed anyway. Certainly much more so than that awful White House fiasco back in 2007 2006. I notice from the picture that there doesn’t seem to be an interpreter nearby for the photo oppotunity, so presumably President Hu is …

My colleague Howard Chua-Eoan has a nice round up of various April Fools jokes that appeared in the media yesterday including the inspired Taipei Times one about the pandas china gifted to Taiwan actually being common brown bears painted black and white. The punchline was that keepers became suspicious when the two animals spent all day …