China sought to defend its role in Africa on Monday ahead of this week’s G8 summit, saying its long friendship with the continent was a force for good. some G8 ministers are worried Beijing is too willing to lend money without strings to African countries.
A strong earthquake hit a tea-making city in south-west China on Sunday, killing at least two people, injuring 200, causing houses to collapse and damaging roads, Xinhua news agency and a local official said. The quake shook the city of Pu’er and the surrounding area in mountainous Yunnan province in the early morning when most people were asleep.
China urged the international community on Thursday to show patience with Sudan and said new sanctions would only complicate efforts to implement a United Nations peace plan for Darfur. The United States imposed unilateral sanctions on Sudan earlier this week and sought support for an international arms embargo.
All religious artefacts in places of worship in Tibet belong to the Chinese state, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday, in Beijing’s latest attempt to exert control over religion in the restive Himalayan region. Beijing is wary of religious groups and has jailed Tibetan monks and nuns it accused of stoking ”separatism”.
More than 20% of toys made in China for its domestic market are substandard or potentially dangerous, state media said on Tuesday in the latest example of the country’s lax consumer-product controls. At least 10 000 children are hurt by dangerous toys each year, the China Daily newspaper said.
Endangered, hunted, smuggled and now abandoned, 5Â 000 of the world’s rarest animals have been found drifting in a deserted boat near the coast of China. The pangolins, Asian giant turtles and lizards were crushed inside crates on a rickety wooden vessel that had lost engine power off Qingzhou island in the southern province of Guangdong.
Landslides triggered by heavy rains in western China buried a village and knocked a bus off a highway, killing a total of 21 people, news reports said on Saturday. A mudslide late on Friday swept through the village of Heba in Garze, an ethnic Tibetan region of Sichuan province, killing 12 people and injuring 18 others.
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.
China has signalled during a week of high-level diplomatic wrangling over the Darfur crisis that it is unlikely to bend to global pressure and change its much-criticised policies on Sudan. Beijing has been showered with condemnation over its support for the Khartoum government, accused of shielding Sudan from sanctions and abetting genocide in Darfur.
A drought affecting several Chinese provinces has left 4,8-million people short of drinking water, state media reported on Wednesday, citing the state drought-relief headquarters. Eleven million hectares of crops have also been affected by drought in several provinces, the <i>China Daily</i> reported.
China promised on Tuesday to do more to strengthen Africa’s economic sinews even as the continent enjoys its fastest burst of growth in 30 years on the back of booming Chinese demand for oil and minerals. Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said Beijing would redouble efforts to share the lessons of its economic take-off.
Police in southern China have detained a woman after she admitted killing her four-year-old daughter because the child could not count, according to news reports. Investigators talked the woman, identified only by her surname Du, into confessing and took her into custody last Saturday, four days after her daughter was killed.
China has appointed a seasoned diplomat as its special Africa envoy, with a brief to focus on Darfur, the government said on Thursday, amid growing criticism of Beijing’s role in Sudan. ”The Chinese government has decided to name Ambassador Liu Guijin as a special representative for African affairs,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said.
China announced a food industry clean-up on Wednesday after exports of a contaminated ingredient in pet food drew global attention to insufficient product controls. It will prioritise the inspection of fertiliser and pesticide use in vegetable planting as well as animal medicines and additives in livestock feed.
China faces a looming baby boom as newly rich couples find they can afford to pay fines incurred from having more than one child, state media reported on Monday. Upward pressure on the birth rate also is coming from millions of Chinese in their 20s and 30s, who are allowed two children under the policy because they themselves were single children.
The mildly toxic chemical melamine is commonly added to animal feed in China, a manager of a feed company and one of the chemical’s producers said on Monday, describing a process that fraudulently boosts the feed’s sales value but risks introducing the chemical into meat eaten by humans.
China hit back on Friday at Taiwan’s refusal to admit the Olympic torch, saying the island’s Olympic Committee had reneged on an earlier agreement to let the relay pass through. Beijing, host of the 2008 Summer Games, unveiled the torch relay schedule on Thursday and included self-governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own, as the stop before Hong Kong.
China said on Thursday it remained fully committed to investing in Africa, despite a recent spate of violence against Chinese interests there, including the deaths of nine Chinese among the slaughter of 77 people in Ethiopia. ”China supports trans-national trade and investment between China and other countries, including those in Africa,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
A deadly attack by rebels on a Chinese-run oil field in Ethiopia that left more than 70 dead is the latest example of the human and political cost of China’s growing energy interests in Africa. Tuesday’s attack on the facility left 65 Ethiopians dead as well as nine workers from China, making it the deadliest in a recent spate of killings and kidnappings aimed at Chinese firms in Africa.
More than a year before the first starter’s pistol fires at the Beijing Olympics, competition is rife for what may be spectators’ biggest prize — a comfortable hotel room within range of top sports venues. City tourism officials and Olympics organisers are confident Beijing’s 700-plus star-rated hotels can absorb the onslaught of half a million foreign and domestic visitors.
China has detained four people after a accident in which more than 25 tonnes of molten steel engulfed a room where workers were changing shift, killing at least 32. An industrial ladle was moving into the pouring position when it sheared off an iron rail, spewing out its 1 500 degrees Celsius contents.
At least 32 workers were killed and two injured on Wednesday when they were engulfed by molten steel at a metal factory in north-east China, the government said. The accident was triggered when a steel ladle, with a capacity of 30 tonnes of liquid steel, sheared off from the blast furnace, spilling molten metal onto the factory floor about 3m below.
North Korea said on Friday it may be ready to move in a stand-off over frozen assets it insists be unblocked before shutting down its nuclear reactor, one day before the first deadline of an atomic disarmament deal. The secretive state has until Saturday to start shutting down its Soviet-era reactor.
Medicine abuse is making about 10 000 Chinese children deaf each year, state media said on Friday, blaming doctors and parents alike. Parents had ”blind faith” in antibiotics and doctors, who often take kickbacks from drugs middlemen, were more than willing to prescribe them, the People’s Daily said.
China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and his United States counterpart discussed promoting the continued use of political and diplomatic efforts to resolve the Darfur problem. Dai and US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte discussed the crisis in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region in a late night phone call.
Google apologised on Monday to a Chinese rival that complained its data was used by the United States search giant in a new internet tool in an incident that highlighted the intense competition in China’s booming online market. ”We are willing to face up to our mistake,” Google said in a statement.
United States swimming sensation Michael Phelps said in Beijing on Monday he hopes to race for eight gold medals at next year’s Beijing Olympics and out-do Mark Spitz’s Games record of seven titles. The US champion won seven golds in eight events and set five world records at the recent World Championships in Melbourne.
Working hard at the office is not enough to warrant a promotion in one Chinese county, where a new rule says government employees must also be nice to their parents, state press reported on Monday. Assessment teams interview officials’ relatives, neighbours and colleagues to determine if they are caring towards their mother and father.
The first gay-themed chat show to appear in China debuted online on Thursday, with the host and guests discussing the challenges of being homosexual in the country’s conservative society. The first of 12 episodes appeared on the website of Hong Kong-based broadcaster Phoenix Television and three other sites.
China and Sudan have agreed to strengthen military ties, state media reported, underscoring the two countries’ close and controversial cooperation as some Western nations seek United Nations action over bloodshed in Darfur. In Darfur, over 200 000 people are believed to have died and about 2,5-million have been driven from their homes.
Hail the size of eggs has ravaged southern parts of China, killing 13 people, closing an expressway and damaging crops on at least 81Â 300ha of farmland, the Xinhua news agency said on Monday. Seven people were killed and one was injured when a bus was hit in a landslide triggered by hailstorms since Sunday in mountainous areas in south-western Sichuan Province, Xinhua said.
China announced on Wednesday it will launch a joint mission with Russia to Mars in 2009, marking ”an important milestone” in space cooperation between the two countries. A small Chinese satellite will take off on a Russian rocket, according to the agreement signed on Monday between the China National Space Administration and the Russian Federal Space Agency.