Eating is a constant adventure in China these days, and I’m not talking about the ever-growing variety of cuisines you can find in the major cities. I’m referring to the ever-growing number of foods that can make you sick. In Hong Kong it’s a weekly refrain that some product or another has been found to be potentially bad for you. …

Sad indeed. I received word today that fellow reporter Jonathan Napack died in a Hong Kong hospital on Jan. 20th. Genial and wry, Jonathan was a talented writer on many subjects, penning articles for everything from the New Yorker to the old Far Eastern Economic Review (where I was an editor and often commissioned stories from him). He …

Writing that last post made me think about excellent Chinese film Blind Shaft (盲井) which I reviewed for TIME Asia few years ago. It’s a fictional but very realistic thriller set in an illegal coal mine. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

I just finished reading veteran investigative reporter Wang Keqin’s piece on Lan Chengzhang, the Chinese journalist who was killed two weeks ago while trying to investigate an illegal coal mine. It will make you sick, but you should read it too. (Roland Soong has translated it into English with his usual speed and skill.)

What sets …

China’s vast and opaque system of government sometimes makes it difficult for even experienced China hands (a category by the way to which I sadly cannot claim membership) to agree on what’s going on. There has been debate for some time, for example, over whether a deliberate, central government ordered crackdown on dissent is underway. …

Still bringing you things to love about Beijing in winter.
Number 3: The Flower Market Goes Insane

There’s no better time to go orchid peeping in Beijing than in the period leading up to Chinese New Year. The Lai Tai Flower market near my house has been packed these past few weeks with pre-holiday shoppers. The offerings on sale seem to …

Picking up a point from Austin’s comments, the issue of whether the top Chinese leadership knew about the test of the anti-satellite missile before it was fired. President Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Handley suggested in a comment to the New York Times earlier this week that they might not have. That has drawn widespread …

Crisis management types call it the “I am not a crook” denial. It occurs when an accused unnecessarily repeats an allegation, thereby reinforcing it the listeners mind. Richard Nixon is the most famous case of this. Had he merely said, “I am an honest guy,” the phrase might not have had such legs.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu …

Rebecca MacKinnon who teaches journalism at the University of Hong Kong, has a great, insightful post on the Forbidden City Starbucks hubbub and the ways it has been portrayed in the Western media. MacKinnon knows China very well (she was Beijing Bureau Chief at CNN in the late 1990s).

Among the things she points out is that Rui …

A reader takes me to task for being insensitive:

Simon: Is your comment on Indians and Egyptians not being able to afford Starbucks coffee supposed to be a poor joke? I’m not from either country, but found your lame attempt at humor vicariously offensive. Have you actually traveled to either place? Perhaps you should get out of China …

The campaign to pick Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive has started, and the first big issue seems to be … whether incumbent Donald Tsang should have used his official car and bodyguard while visiting his campaign office. Perhaps these sort of procedural debates are to be expected, given the lack of experience with elections in the …

Last Friday a middle-aged couple from Jiangsu province came to our office seeking justice. This is something that happens on a fairly regular basis. A few times a month, sometimes as often as several times in a given week, Chinese people with grievances against the courts, against the police, against their local governments will call the …

Over the weekend Shang Fulin, the head of China’s Securities Regulatory Commission, declared that mainland stock exchanges were on shaky foundations, and that healthy performance wasn’t assured. At the same time, some top analysts have advised investors to be wary of high-priced Chinese stocks. So how did the markets respond? They …