China has a new Olympic worry that could leave protests and air pollution in the shade: will Yao play? The hoops superstar suffered a stress fracture in his left foot that will end his NBA season. Now the question is whether the Houston Rockets center will be well in time for the Games. His injury is expected to heal in June, just two …

At the Olympic media center this afternoon Beijing environmental officials defended the city’s record on reducing air pollution. When asked about allegations that emissions recording locations were shifted to less polluted areas as part of an effort to cook the numbers, Du Shaozhong, deputy head of the Beijing Environmental Protection …

News today that three managers received life terms for an explosion that killed 105 miners in early December of last year. Thirteen other heavy sentences were handed out to other executives who were running the mine at nearly double approved production rates, totally ignoring safety regulations and all …

The Steven Spielberg affair rolls on. He announced in mid-February that –because of China’s lack of action in stopping the killing in Darfur– he was resigning as adviser to the committee that is staging the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, but the news is still generating considerable heat and light. Danwei has a good round up of …

My neighbors and I had a deal. They brought the dumplings, fireworks and baijiu; I provided the house and the beer. Then we had a party. The occasion was the fifth day of the Chinese New Year.

After a few toasts, I added another condition. Everyone had to submit to a little interview about their hopes for 2008. The answers are recorded …

Below are excerpts from two interesting commentaries on the Beijing Olympics. First, from our sister publication Sports Illustrated, is a piece by S.L. Price about how China is handling domestic critics ahead of the Games, and the responsibility of the IOC:

Maybe each nation chose on its own to truckle. Or perhaps there’s been a

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Ok. I m back from vacation in Bali. And it most certainly is not China. This may seem obvious but I personally think it is important so am generously providing readers with the clip below to prove the point once and for all. Note particularly the lingering pan across the blue, blue sky.

So says Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch, after the trial yesterday of Yang Chunlin, an activist from Helionjang who collected signatures for a petition that said “we want human rights, not the Olympics.” Here is the HRW statement as well as its link to coverage of other, similar cases. (The link is not accessible in China without …

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Yue Minjun should be as happy as all of his self-portraits. On a recent trip to piracy heaven, also known as Shenzhen’s Luohu Commercial City, I spotted some knockoff versions of the contemporary Chinese artist’s work. It was a bit …

Son and mother, Ronan and Mia, who popularized the phrase “the genocide Olympics,” add their two cents on Speilberg, Darfur and the Beijing games, in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Link is here

online.wsj.com/article/SB120338432062875839.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Jun Ma of Deutsche Bank, one of the better China economists in Hong Kong, has just published his latest forecast, which includes inflation going to eight per cent year over year in March. That’s a big number and if true could mean serious trouble for the government. It means nothing it’s done thus far has even remotely succeeded in …

Earlier this week the U.S. State Department released a new volume about U.S. foreign relations with China. It included a transcript of a February 1973 conversation between Chairman Mao and Henry Kissinger. Several media outlets (BBC, Bloomberg, and yes, Time.com, via AP) jumped on what seemed to be the most newsworthy aspect of the …