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/ 9 February 2006

Japan, North Korea talks end in stalemate

Japan and North Korea ended five days of talks in Beijing on Wednesday unable to make progress on normalising relations, with sharp differences remaining over kidnappings, security and wartime history. Japan insisted throughout the talks that no progress would be made unless the issue of North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s was addressed.

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/ 8 February 2006

Long road to G8 membership for China, India

With vibrant economies and more than a billion people each, China and India might seem obvious candidates for the Group of Eight (G8), but analysts say the road to membership will be long. Russia is now heading the G8 for the first time, inevitably triggering questions about why the two Asian giants have not joined long ago.

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/ 7 February 2006

China protests killing of citizens in South Africa

China has made representations to Pretoria over a series of crimes and murders of Chinese citizens in South Africa and on Tuesday urged its nationals to step up their vigilance in the country. ”Recently there are repeated cases where Chinese citizens were robbed or even injured or killed,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Kong Quan.

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/ 6 February 2006

Japan says abductions key to North Korea relations

Japan and North Korea wrapped up a third day of talks on Monday hoping to make progress on normalising ties, but the Stalinist regime’s abduction of Japanese citizens remained the major stumbling block. North Korea declared the abduction question settled after repatriating five kidnap victims following a landmark summit in 2002.

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/ 6 February 2006

Three Gorges Dam to be completed in May

China’s Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric power project, will be completed in May this year, nine months ahead of schedule, state media reported on Monday. It will officially be completed in three months’ time when the main dam has concrete poured to 185m above sea level, according to Xinhua.

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/ 2 February 2006

Mine blast in China kills 23, poisons others

A blast at a state-owned coal mine in northern China killed 23 workers and caused 53 others to be poisoned with carbon monoxide, the government said on Thursday. The blast occurred Wednesday at the Sihe coal mine in China’s Shanxi province when 697 workers were mining the pit, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

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/ 30 January 2006

China’s New Year fireworks frenzy kills 36

Fireworks explosions killed 36 people and injured hundreds more in China as traditional Lunar New Year celebrations led to much mayhem as well as joy across the nation, officials and state media said on Monday. In the most serious accident, 36 people died when a storeroom full of fireworks exploded, Xinhua news agency said.

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/ 27 January 2006

China condemned over jailing of journalist

International media rights groups condemned China on Friday over the jailing of journalist Li Changqing for three years on charges of providing ”alarmist information” to an overseas website. Li was sentenced on Tuesday by a court in Fuzhou in the southeastern province of Fujian for publishing an article about a local dengue fever outbreak.

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/ 26 January 2006

Google in ‘race to the bottom’ in China

Google and other Western internet companies are competing in a ”race to the bottom” as they bow to Chinese censors in order to gain a slice of the world’s most promising market, critics said on Thursday. The Silicon Valley-based online search engine has agreed to censor websites and content banned by China’s propaganda chiefs.

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/ 25 January 2006

Enkhbold elected as Mongolian prime minister

Mongolia’s Parliament elected Miyeegombo Enkhbold, the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party’s chairperson, as the country’s new prime minister on Wednesday, Chinese state media said. The election of Enkhbold (41) a former Ulan Bator mayor, marks an end to the political upheaval that emerged this month after his party withdrew from a coalition government with the Democratic Party.

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/ 20 January 2006

eBay scraps transaction fees in China

The United States online auction service eBay on Friday scrapped all sellers’ transaction fees in China, in an effort to compete with local competitors offering free services, including Yahoo-invested Alibaba.com. The move means that sellers won’t get paid until the buyers receive and are satisfied with the products, it said.

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/ 18 January 2006

Kim heads home after secretive trip to China

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il was reportedly heading home on Wednesday on a special train, ending a secretive week-long visit to China that apparently focused on nuclear weapons and economic reforms. Press reports said the famously reclusive Kim, who is afraid of flying, had left Beijing on Tuesday night and crossed the border back into North Korea on Wednesday morning.

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/ 12 January 2006

Mystery still shrouds Kim’s apparent China trip

The location of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il remained a mystery on Friday amid a series of rumours that he was in Beijing, possibly for nuclear talks. Other rumours, quickly picked up by global media outlets, had him in southern China near the border with Hong Kong staying at a luxury hotel while more speculation placed him in Russia.

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/ 11 January 2006

Chinese FM’s African visit to boost energy ties

China’s foreign minister began a six-nation African tour on Wednesday, which analysts say will focus on boosting energy ties and forging stronger global political alliances to counterbalance United States dominance. Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing will visit Cape Verde, Senegal, Mali, Liberia, Nigeria and Libya during the trip, set to end on January 19.

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/ 10 January 2006

US lawmaker calls on China to cut trade gap

A leading United States lawmaker warned Chinese officials on Tuesday that Beijing is risking a protectionist backlash in Washington if it doesn’t take steps to cut its -billion trade surplus with the United States. Without Chinese action, ”Washington may take measures to reduce the trade imbalance by reducing Chinese exports to the United States,” said United States Senator Max Baucus.

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/ 6 January 2006

‘Pure ice’ for festival in China’s Harbin

Harbin’s popular annual ice festival has opened with an official declaring it free of the toxic chemicals that polluted the northern Chinese city’s water supplies late last year, state press said on Friday. The ice festival, which opened on Thursday, is one of the few tourism drawcards for Harbin, an otherwise bleak industrial city of nine million people.

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/ 6 January 2006

Last surviving member of China’s Gang of Four dies

Yao Wenyuan, the last surviving member of the Gang of Four, who has died aged 74, was a literary polemicist whose pen, under Mao Zedong’s patronage, launched the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76). His vitriolic essays provided ammunition for Mao and his wife, Jiang Qing (Madam Mao) in their campaign to destroy senior communist leaders.

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/ 6 January 2006

Microsoft faces backlash after blocking blogger

Microsoft was under the spotlight on Friday over its blocking of a Chinese internet blogger, in the latest case of a major Western technology firm helping Beijing curtail free speech. The MSN Spaces-hosted web log, or blog, belonging to Beijing-based media researcher Zhao Jing was closed down this week after he posted articles critical of a management purge at the Beijing News daily.

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/ 26 December 2005

Fire kills 26 in Chinese bar on Christmas

A Christmas Day fire at an unlicensed bar killed at least 26 people and injured eight in a Chinese city near Hong Kong, the government said on Monday. The fire broke out at 11pm local time on Sunday evening in Zhongshan, which abuts the former Portuguese colony of Macau west of Hong Kong, the official Xinhua news agency said.

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/ 25 December 2005

Bus plunges into icy river in China

A bus ran off a road in northern China into a freezing section of the Yellow River, leaving 28 people missing and presumed dead, official media said on Sunday. The accident occurred late on Saturday in Hanggin prefecture of the Inner Mongolia region, state-run China Central Television said.

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/ 15 December 2005

At least 10 dead in Chinese hospital blaze

At least 10 people died when a hospital in north-east China’s Jilin province caught fire on Thursday, forcing desperate people to jump from the building to escape the flames, state media and officials reported. The fire started at the City Centre hospital, Liaoyuan city’s largest, at about 4.30pm local time.