The desultory NBA finals just wrapped up, and alas, the series was so bad that it was more fun to watch the commercials here than it was the games. (CCTV 5 showed all the games live in the mornings and then replayed them each evening.) Pro sports leagues and the television networks in the US get a fair amount of grief for having beer …

The China Daily reports that China has welcomed Sudan’s sudden decision to accept a U.N. peace keeping force for the troubled region of Darfur. While it remains to be seen whether this will actually work out (Sudan has said it would agree before only to reneg), I can’t help but wonder about the timing. After all, Sudan
has essentially …

AFP / Getty

I was talking with the head of the Beijing Cultural Relics Bureau yesterday and, while wrapping up, it occurred to me to ask about the Starbucks in the Forbidden City controversy that briefly roiled the Chinese web a while back. You probably don’t remember this storm in a coffee cup during which a petition was circulated …

In this piece the always provocative Andy Xie, former chief economist at Morgan Stanley, highlights a basic fact: as China’s trade surpluses–and foreign reserves– continue to rise (and rise…and rise), the world is about to see a huge surge in Chinese investment abroad, and in things //in addition// to US treasury bonds (NOT, I would …

Chinese media are reporting the country’s film board has cut 10-20 minutes from the new Pirates of the Caribbean film. Since the movie runs close to three hours and is amazingly tedious despite all the swordplay and explosions, it’s tempting to say the censors have done the country a favor. (As a disappointed fan I have to concur with …

After a surprising spring that saw a glorious run of blue sky days, no major sand storms and in general a lifting of the pall of coalsmoke haze that bedeviled us in the winter, Beijing has reverted to form. As you can see from the Bureaucam shot above, the city is back to a sullen brown fugue state that turns eerie and somewhat …

I went to a talk here in Shanghai yesterday by Greg Girard, a friend and photographer who is just out with a striking book of photos entitled “Phantom Shanghai.” The book, as Greg says, captures a moment in time, when a large chunk of `old’ Shanghai is getting torn down, replaced by new apartment buildings and skyscrapers. There …

June might not be such a bad month to be a corrupt Chinese official. Sure, there’s a new set of regulations coming into effect baring yet more forms of graft, like payroll fraud or buying property at below-market rates. But the Communist Party’s anti-corruption branch also issued a 30-day window for violators to confess in return for …

Interesting chart of the Shanghai composite index over the last couple of years, courtesy of the good people of Yahoo! It’s worth remembering that, after being in the news last week for roller coasting up and down by as much as 8 percent (that’s the dip in the top righthand corner), the Shanghai index has resumed its steady (2 percent …

A post on the China Law blog makes a good point about an article I wrote recently for Time (the old media, paper one, that is). The story is about China’s dysfunctional legal system and focuses on one particularly egregious miscarriage of justice, which symbolizes the sorry state of the whole. But the China Law post points out (and yes, …

Word from Xiamen is that the authorities are now cracking down in the wake of the demonstrations last week protesting against the plan to build a chemical plant in the city. They say there are posters up in all neighborhood comittee walls and elsewhere are calling for anyone who was in the march to turn themselves in, with the incentive …

This week’s TIME Asia has a cover package on the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China. There are several stories, two photo essays and a roundtable discussion with a group of leading Hong Kong figures.

Ahead of next year’s election, here’s a look at the stances of Taiwan’s presidential candidates on cross-strait relations from TIME’s Taipei-based contributor Natalie Tso:

Taiwan’s presidential candidates are starting to tout their China policies. Opposition contender Ma Ying-jeou says he’ll start direct flights within a year, if …