Negotiations about where to hold the resumed talks between Beijing and representatives of the Dalai Lama (or more accurately, talks about resuming the meetings that were held from 2002 until 2007 when Beijing canceled after the DL was awarded the Gold Medal by the U.S. Congress) have been going on in recent days with the aim of getting …

A fresh perspective, as ever, from Access Asia and a timely reminder of the puzzle of why France was singled out rather than Britain or the U.S. Anyway, it’s clear now that as expected a firm hold has been placed on protests by the government, as well as other nationalist activity, especially yesterday when protests in front of various …

Here’s another take on the issue by our colleague at the Beijing Bureau, Lin Yang:

With the overwhelming patriotic propaganda on the Olympic torch’s “harmonious world tour” in the local press for the past month, I thought I could no longer be surprised by anything. But I was wrong. The torch’s Seoul leg took Chinese nationalist

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Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images

100 days to go and Beijing put on some celebrations that included a run past the newly opened Olympic Stadium, aka the Bird’s Nest. As you’ll see from the photo, some of the runners took precautions against ingesting too much of the city’s notoriously rank air. Todays’ API reading was 155 …

Over the past few weeks over-the-top protests during the Olympic torch’s global relay have helped spur anti-foreign sentiment in China, particularly against the French. Now, after the flame’s passage through Seoul, something of the opposite is happening. The fervent and at times violent defense of the torch by Chinese students in Seoul …

Copies of The New Yorker arrive in our Beijing bureau at the speed of a steamship. Since I usually wait to read it in print form I just today saw the Jonathan Franzen article about golf club covers, manufacturing, environmentalism and birdwatching in the Yangtze delta. It’s a wonderful, bizarre tale. Unfortunately the story isn’t …

The latest edition of TIME Asia carries the magazine’s annual Best of Asia guide. There are a couple entries from China, including Liam writing about Jimmy’s Kitchen in Hong Kong and another paean from me to Inner Mongolian beer.

There has been a near unanimous global chorus of approval greeting Beijing’s announcement yesterday that it would resume talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives. As I mention below, it’s definitely great news, given the alternative, which is more name-calling and stonewalling. But it’s hard to get any excitement up about prospects …

Xinhua story below. Seems like a pretty big breakthrough by Beijing to agree to talk again, even though that’s exactly what nearly everybody has been saying had to happen if there was to be any progress on the issue. We’ll see. There have after all been talks going on since 2002 with no result. More urgent now, obviously.

As has been …

In case anyone wants to see our latest take on what’s been happening in China, by the way, please see here.

Some interesting points from commenter Munir Ming:

Most Chinese, please note here I’m not saying all Chinese, want to hold a successful Olympics. They both personally and collectively think this is a huge opportunity to show the world that China has finally recovered from some two hundred years of national humiliation. You may

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Recently I spoke with Dai Qing, a Chinese writer and environmental activist, to get her thoughts on the current surge of nationalism in China. She said that it reminded her of 1966, the year that the Cultural Revolution started, which struck me as hyperbolic. Certainly there are parallels. Both are largely youth movements that emphasize …