Story openings –ledes in reporter jargon–have to grab, whether they be for a five hundred word news piece or a thousand page novel (“I was in bed with my catamite when Ali the butler knocked on the door to say the bishop had arrived for tea” –or something along those lines would probably keep you reading on, wouldn’t it? And, yes, it …

Jackie Chan is known from Hong Kong to Hollywood as an action star who does his own stunts. Now he’s playing a dramatic role in Shinjuku Incident, a thriller about the lives of illegal Chinese workers in Japan. Submit your questions for Jackie Chan here, then read the interview in an upcoming issue of TIME magazine.

Dr. Jiang Yanyong, a Chinese military surgeon who became a national hero after exposing Beijing’s cover-up of SARS cases, has asked the government to apologize for the way he has been treated since his 2003 revelation. (Reuters has details here.) My former colleague Susan Jakes first reported Jiang’s revelations in the spring of 2003. …

The incident in which a “civilian U.S. survey ship” (actually by all accounts a vessel designed specifically to enhance submarine tracking) was harassed by five Chinese vessels 75 miles off Hainan Island (where China happens to have a huge submarine base) has been dismissed smoothed over by top leaders meeting in Washington. Secretary of …

One of our commenters complained that I had not noted that the Dalai Lama said that China had killed “hundreds of thousands of Tibetans” in the interview I cited. Actually, it was a different speech, which you can read about here. He also said, among other things that Tibet had been turned into a “hell on earth” and that Tibetans could …

Kobe Bryant, maybe you’ve heard of him. Perhaps you’ve booed him when the Los Angeles Lakers are up against your home team. But if you’re an NBA fan in China, you probably love him. His jersey is the number one seller here. During the Beijing Olympics he got cheers on par with Yao Ming. Now he even has a Chinese language blog. TIME’s …

Herewith a statement just issued by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China about the experiences of some of my colleagues reporting in Tibetan areas of China proper at this very sensitive time. The events are entirely predictable but no less dispiriting, particularly coming on the heels of a government crackdown on the ability of both …

A couple of small explosions in Tibetan areas of Qinghai Province have damaged a police car and a fire truck, wire reports say. A sign of things to come? Apparently the Dalai Lama thinks so. He told a German newspaper he is worried about an “explosion” of violence and said he had heard that Han Chinese living in Tibetan areas were arming …

The big news during the first few days of China’s National People’s Congress has been the revelations, or lack thereof, about how Beijing plans to spend its way out of the current slump. The Chinese business magazine Caijing has a useful chart comparing the plan outlined Friday with the original stimulus package announced last year. …

It’s that time of year again, when Beijing is awash in initialisms like NPC (National People’s Congress) and CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.) The signs that China’s rubber stamp legislature and its advisory pal are in session are all around: police patrols increase, the Internet slows to a crawl (YouTube was …