When Zhou Changshun complained about the fairness of elections in his home village in China’s Hebei province, he had just three days left to live.
China was poised on Saturday to dynamite a dangerous ”quake lake” to drain its waters as 1,3-million people nearby were kept on alert for possible evacuation. Workers set explosives on a dam formed by this month’s catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan province, after thousands of soldiers finished an enormous drainage channel after 10 days of frantic digging.
The rescue of 40 half-starved people from a remote village 16 days after China’s earthquake provided a rare piece of good news on Thursday as rain threatened more misery for millions of survivors. A military helicopter plucked the villagers from their quake-shattered mountain homes on Wednesday.
China’s state press on Monday accused the Dalai Lama of ”monstrous crimes,” a day after Chinese officials reportedly agreed with envoys of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist to keep the door open on dialogue. The Chinese officials and the envoys met in southern China on Sunday for their first talks in over a year.
Foreign diplomats demanded unfettered access in Lhasa Saturday after authorities allowed them to visit the riot-torn city amid debate in Europe on a possible boycott of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Diplomats from 15 embassies, including those of the United States, Britain, France and Japan, arrived in the Tibetan capital for a hastily arranged one-day tour.
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/ 24 November 2005
An 80km-long slick of highly toxic benzene flowed along the icy Songhua river into one of China’s biggest cities on Thursday, contaminating water supplies for up to four million people. The carcinogenic chemical reached the outskirts of Harbin at about 5am on Thursday, authorities said.
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/ 18 November 2005
Anti-American protesters and riot police fought pitched battles in the streets of the southern South Korean port city of Busan on Friday as thousands of people rallied against the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in the city. Violence erupted as police barricaded roads and trained water cannons on activists.
Fifty-one miners are missing and feared dead after a gas explosion early on Thursday ripped through an illegally operating coal mine near Chengde city in northern China’s Hebei province, the government said. China relies on coal for 70% of its energy needs, leading many mine owners to disregard safety in order to meet demand.
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/ 1 February 2005
Labour disputes in southern China’s booming Guangdong province are becoming increasingly prominent as an unprecedented army of 30-million migrant workers clamours for better conditions and treatment. This astonishing influx of cheap labour has been the engine of China’s capitalist miracle, officials say, making Guangdong the nation’s most prosperous region.