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/ 27 November 2007
Several times this year, Tan Mingzhu had the terrible feeling her home in central China was about to collapse in on her family. Frightening tremors rocked their simple concrete dwelling 4km from China’s mammoth Three Gorges Dam, ripping floor-to-ceiling cracks in the walls, and she doesn’t hesitate in assigning blame.
China faced mounting pressure on Tuesday to honour pledges of media freedom made for the 2008 Olympics, with two Western groups accusing the government of harassing and unfairly jailing journalists. Reports by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch said reporters still faced intimidation just a year before the Beijing Games.
Rioting has highlighted mounting pressures to change China’s controversial population control policies, observers said on Wednesday, but the government shows no signs of buckling. Security reinforcements had moved into 28 towns in the southern Guangxi region after thousands of residents clashed in recent days with officials enforcing the so-called "one-child" policy.