So Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer says the whole supposed hijacking incident over the weekend was a sham:
“It’s completely untrue. All these allegations are falsified,” the separatist figurehead, who joined her US-based husband in 2005 after six years in a Chinese jail, told AFP through an interpreter. “The real goal of the Chinese
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Over the weekend I visited 798, Beijing’s booming art enclave that was once an East German built factory area. I was looking for an exhibition by a friend, artist Zhao Gang, but had a tough time, what with the crowds, traffic and plethora of new galleries. Anyway, here’s a video:
Last week we mentioned the development of the Beijing airport, which will be the main entry point for the athletes, journalists and visitors coming to town this summer. My friend and fellow Iowan Josh Kucera recently took a road less traveled to the Chinese capital. His series of reports has been running this week on Slate. An excerpt …
Premier Wen Jiabao opened the National People’s Congress on Wednesday with the usual “work report” to the delegates. t took two and half hours but there was no question then and in subsequent comments by senior officials that inflation is very much on their minds. Wen said their target for the year is 4.8 per cent, which seems optimistic …
I asked for and got some smart, considered replies on the rubber stamp issue (and a fair amount of abuse, too, for the record). The thrust was that I was probably right in being uneasy using the term because of all the baggage it carries: Bottom line is that the NPC does do important work but that it isn’t anything like a representative, …
In my last entry I succumbed to the reporter’s original sin and referred to the National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of some 2800 or so selected delegates that is a sort of Chinese parliament, as China’s “rubber stamp” parliament. So today, reflecting, I thought maybe that I was being was lazy, using a cliche …
So China is to raise its official military spending by nearly 18 per cent. According to a spokesman at the National People’s Congress, the rubber stamp parliament whose annual session begins today, military spending in 2008 will reach 417.8 billion yuan ($57.2 billion). This comes on the heels of a Pentagon report which sounds the alarm …
Back in June, the people of the coastal city of Xiamen came out onto the streets for two successive days to protest plans to allow a billion-dollar chemical plant to be built within city limits. It was an unprecedented but entirely peaceful demonstration and, after considerable twists and turns, eventually resulted in the municipal …
Anyone who is wondering what the future holds for China might take a close look at what happened in Russia over the weekend. As was widely predicted President Valdimir Putin’s choice for a successor Dimitri Medvedev handily won presidential elections and will make Putin his prime minister. According to the New York Times,”The election of …
When I first came to China 12 years ago, I walked through the Beijing Capitol International Airport and wondered what I had gotten into. I had flown from San Francisco via Tokyo, and the contrast between the two airports I passed through and my destination was stark. Unlike those efficient, modern hubs, Beijing’s airport was cramped and …
To follow on Simon’s post below about Zeng Jinyan, it’s worth noting what Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi had to say yesterday regarding human rights. During a joint press conference with U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Yang said, “The Chinese people enjoy extensive freedom of speech,”
Human Rights watch in New York have issued a call for Beijing to release activist Hu Jia, whose case we have followed closely. “The case of Hu Jia, who will as of February 27 have been detained for two months, has become emblematic of Beijing’s broad attempt to suppress dissent ahead of the Olympic Games,” the …
We’ve been having a glorious early spring in Beijing with a series of clear days, temperatures in the low 60s (or mid teens, depending on your orientation). With only five months to go before you-know-what, the rumor mils have started grinding. Apart from the speculation about how the …
