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/ 8 January 2008

China wakes up to global clout of small firms

Xing Houyuan’s advice to investors who seek her out is patient and practical: do due diligence on any potential partner, clarify its ties to the government and make sure you control any joint venture. Her words would have sounded familiar to any firm trying to enter China in the 1980s and 1990s. But the nervous-looking man who had just shown Xing his proposal was Chinese, and he was looking to do business in Africa.

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/ 4 January 2008

China clamps down on internet video

China has announced new rules to control the explosion of audio-visual content on the internet, in a move seen as an effort to transfer the government’s television- and radio-censorship model to websites. Only state-controlled entities will have the right to operate websites that post audio-visual material under the new regulations.

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/ 31 December 2007

Cheated wife causes stir at China TV event

The wife of a top sports anchor on Chinese state television has created a buzz in the blogosphere by crashing an Olympic media event — to publicly accuse her husband of adultery. A video clip of Zhang Bin’s wife, Hu Ziwei, commandeering a microphone at a presentation of its coverage plans was easily one of the most viewed items on a Chinese video site on Monday.

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/ 19 December 2007

China eyes Olympic glory through haze

The hardest part is yet to come for Beijing Olympic organisers, heading into 2008 with all plans in place but potential pitfalls aplenty in the run-up to the event in August. Traffic congestion, closely linked to air quality, food security, media freedom and human rights as well as boycott calls are issues likely to flare up again over the coming months.

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/ 18 December 2007

World Bank eyes Africa projects with China

The World Bank is planning projects in Africa with China’s Export-Import Bank to address concerns that Beijing is taking more than it gives as it scours the continent for oil and minerals. World Bank president Robert Zoellick said the pros and cons of the country’s push into Africa had been an important topic during his talks with senior officials.

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/ 13 December 2007

Fires claim 31 lives in China

A restaurant fire in southern China killed has killed 10 people, state media reported on Thursday, hours after an apartment fire killed 21 in the eastern part of the country. Xinhua News Agency said the fire at a restaurant in the booming manufacturing city of Dongguan in Guangdong province also injured nine.

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/ 8 December 2007

New fears of human-to-human bird flu in China

The father of China’s latest bird-flu victim also has the disease, officials said on Friday, prompting World Health Organisation fears of possible human-to-human transmission. A Health Ministry statement said a 52-year-old man named Lu in the eastern city of Nanjing had the H5N1 strain, which killed his son on Sunday.

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/ 7 December 2007

China mine toll tops 105 as anger mounts

The death toll from China’s latest major coal mine disaster rose to 105 on Friday, official media said, as hope for survivors ebbed and anger mounted over a litany of mistakes that compounded the tragedy. Twenty-six more bodies were recovered on Friday morning following a gas explosion at the mine in northern China’s Shanxi province.

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/ 6 December 2007

More than 90 feared dead in China coal-mine blast

Ninety-six miners were feared dead after a coal-mine gas blast in northern China on Thursday, a grim toll likely caused by illegal mining and possibly made worse by delays reporting the accident, the Xinhua news agency said. Rescuers had found 70 bodies in the village-run mine by early evening and were searching for at least 26 more.

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/ 6 December 2007

At least 40 killed in China mine blast

At least 40 people were killed and 74 others trapped underground after an explosion at a coal mine in northern China on Thursday, with a group of rescuers among the missing, officials said. The gas blast occurred just after midnight at a mine in Linfen city, a coal-rich area in Shanxi province, the state administration of mine safety said.

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/ 26 November 2007

China waxes lyrical over moon mission pictures

Chinese leaders hailed images sent back from from the country’s first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers. Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the probe Chang’e 1 into space and around the moon, proclaimed the mission a complete success.

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/ 24 November 2007

China struggles to identify landslide victims

The bodies of 31 victims of a landslide in central China are so badly crushed that DNA samples may be needed to identify them, state media reported on Saturday. A long-distance bus was buried under an avalanche of boulders, earth and mud at the entrance to a railway tunnel being built in Hubei province near China’s massive Three Gorges Dam.

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/ 20 November 2007

Chinese city on wild pig shoot-to-kill alert

One of the most popular tourist destinations in China is waging a week-long campaign to hunt down wild pigs that have been frightening visitors to its famed West Lake, state media said on Tuesday. Professional hunting teams from the West Lake district of Hangzhou, the capital of the coastal province of Zhejiang, were under orders to shoot to kill the animals.

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/ 20 November 2007

Adventurous young Chinese hit backpacking trail

Armed with backpacks, sleeping bags, budget travel guides and hunger for a wider world long beyond their reach, backpackers from China are likely to be heading to a youth hostel near you. Loosened travel restrictions and a booming economy mean that growing numbers of young Chinese have visas and cash to travel abroad as never before.

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/ 12 November 2007

China’s ‘citizen’ reporters dodge censors

China’s muzzled press and burgeoning internet have given citizen reporters an audience and an opportunity to spread news quicker than censors can control it. But the ability of bloggers to dodge censors and provide a voice for China’s poor and disadvantaged by covering news events Beijing would rather be left unreported.

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/ 5 November 2007

China’s moon probe enters lunar orbit

China’s maiden lunar probe successfully entered the moon’s orbit on Monday, officials said, a critical step in its year-long mission to photograph and map the surface of the celestial body. Chang’e I blasted off on October 24, signalling China’s rising space ambitions and Beijing’s participation in a renewed race to explore the moon.

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/ 31 October 2007

Beijing apologises for Olympics ticket fiasco

Beijing Olympics organisers apologised on Wednesday after suspending ticket sales following a booking system meltdown, their first major blunder in preparations for next year’s Games. About 1,8-million event tickets were supposed to go on sale on Tuesday on a first-come-first-served basis for people living in China.

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/ 31 October 2007

China to deploy theft patrol on Everest

A Chinese mountaineering official will have the unenviable task of trying to prevent robberies on the roof of the world after a spate of equipment thefts, officials said on Wednesday. The official will be deployed at a breathtaking altitude of 6 600m after a record season this year saw 520 people reaching Mount Everest’s 8 848m summit but also complaints of stealing.

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/ 24 October 2007

Asia space race heats up as China heads for moon

Asia’s space race heated up on Wednesday as China launched its first lunar orbiter, an event hailed in the world’s most populous nation as a milestone event in its global rise. China’s year-long expedition kicks off a programme that aims to land an unmanned rover on the moon’s surface by 2012 and put a man on the moon by about 2020.

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/ 22 October 2007

China factory inferno kills 37

A fire erupted at a shoe factory in south-east China, killing 37 people in the latest industrial accident to hit the world’s fourth-largest economy, officials and state media said on Monday. The blaze at the Feida workshop, located near the city of Putian in coastal Fujian province, broke out at 9.50pm local time on Sunday and was extinguished an hour later.

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/ 7 October 2007

Typhoon hits China, then weakens to storm

Typhoon Krosa crashed into the Chinese coast on Sunday, forcing the evacuation of 1,4-million people, after killing five in Taiwan as it lashed the island with heavy rain and high winds. The typhoon made landfall near the borders of densely populated Zhejiang and Fujian provinces in south-east China at about 7.30am GMT, packing winds of up to 126kph, before weakening.

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/ 3 October 2007

North Korea agrees to disable reactor by year-end

North Korea has agreed to disable its Yongbyon reactor and other nuclear facilities by the end of the year, throwing the ball into the hermit country’s court to turn its promises into action. In an agreement which won praise from United States President George Bush, the isolated state will in return get aid equivalent to one million tonnes of heavy fuel oil