China’s offer to hold talks with aides to the Dalai Lama is unlikely to bring a breakthrough on Tibet, experts cautioned on Saturday, saying it was a PR exercise ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Chinese state media said on Friday that government officials would meet soon with a representative of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
China is to hold talks with envoys of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism whom it blames for a wave of unrest, state media reported on Friday, as the Olympic flame arrived in Japan. The move comes after concerted pressure from the West on China to talk to the Dalai Lama and marks the first serious step to defuse tensions.
Taiwan’s Cabinet will soon lose one of its more colourful members who was notorious for sleeping in Parliament, shouting at legislators, picking his nose in public and shoving a journalist. Tu Cheng-sheng, Education Minister since 2004, will step down next month along with current President Chen Shui-bian.
There is a ”real possibility” that the Beijing Olympics will be targeted by terrorists or that anti-China groups could attack athletes, Interpol’s secretary general said on Friday. ”An attempted act of terrorism is a real possibility and a real concern that all Olympic host countries have shared in recent years,” said Ronald Noble.
China has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest internet-using population, reaching 221-million by the end of February, state media said on Thursday. The number of internet users in China was 210-million at the end of last year, only five million fewer than the US internet users then, Xinhua news agency said.
Two-time US Open winner Retief Goosen has returned to Asia quietly confident he is finally getting his groove back after a frustrating 18 months trying to reshape his swing. The laid-back South African famously won his two Majors without a coach and then suffered a drop in form last year after deciding to hire a mentor in an effort to improve his backswing.
Nationalist protests against the French supermarket chain Carrefour spread across China on Sunday, with thousands demonstrating outside stores over the West’s stance on Tibet. The authorities appeared to be trying to damp down the protests, with the official media urging citizens to be ”calm” and ”rational”.
Dogged by anti-Chinese protests in Paris, London, San Francisco and New Delhi, the Olympic torch relay is acting as a catalyst for an outpouring of nationalism and indignation by the man on the street in China. In an increasingly wired society, many, especially the internet-savvy young, have taken to the web to express their feelings.
Chinese people in several cities took to the streets on Saturday to denounce Tibetan independence and call for a boycott of French goods following anti-China protests on the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay. Pictures from the central city of Wuhan showed large crowds marching carrying banners reading: ”Oppose Tibet independence, support the Olympics”.
China on Thursday snubbed an apology from CNN over remarks by one of its commentators as a wave of verbal assaults on foreign media raised concerns over coverage at this summer’s Beijing Olympics. CNN’s explanation that a commentator was referring to China’s leaders — not the people — as a ”bunch of goons and thugs”.
China has lodged a formal complaint against television network CNN for what it called a vicious attack by one of its commentators, who labelled the Chinese as ”goons”. In a statement late on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao condemned the comments by Jack Cafferty on CNN’s The Situation Room programme.
Dying towns are rare in booming China, but the expanses of rubble and abandoned homes that ring the once-wealthy oil centre of Yumen mark it out as one of them. And though it is home to just a few thousand people, in a nation of over 1,3-billion, Beijing’s stability-obsessed bureaucrats are fretting about their fate.
China has arrested nine monks for a bomb attack on a government building in Tibet last month, an official said on Sunday. Tibetan support groups warned that it was impossible to verify the claims because the authorities do not allow independent observers into the region.
China said it was outraged by a resolution by United States lawmakers urging an end to a crackdown in Tibet as a Beijing-run newspaper linked al-Qaeda to claimed plots to attack the Beijing Olympics. The condemnation came in response to a US House of Representatives resolution urging China to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama.
China has cracked a terrorist group plotting to kidnap foreigners during the Beijing Olympics, police said on Thursday. The announcement follows the revelation of two other terror plots last month, but there has been scepticism over whether Beijing is inflating a terror threat to justify tighter control on dissent ahead of the Olympics.
China on Tuesday denounced protesters who upstaged Olympic Games torch relays in London and Paris, with state media saying that saboteurs are bent on wrecking Games goodwill. An international Olympic official also criticised the protests, but said the relay would stay on its round-the-world course.
China warned on Saturday it would step up a controversial ”re-education” campaign for Tibetans after a fresh protest showed a huge security crackdown had failed to extinguish nearly one month of unrest. The statement in the state-run Tibet Daily newspaper called for Buddhist monks to become Chinese patriots.
A major, but unidentified Chinese bank is in talks to buy a stake in South Africa’s second-largest lender First National Bank, a media report said on Friday. If carried out, the transaction will follow in the footsteps of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which recently agreed to buy a 20% stake in Standard Bank.
The muezzin’s call to prayer at Kashgar’s main Id Kah mosque is a loud reminder that millions of Muslims here in China’s far west answer to a higher authority than the Communist Party. Muslim residents of this 2 000-year-old Silk Road city express quiet anger when asked about recent clashes in a nearby city between Muslims and Chinese police.
China is too far down the road toward a market economy to turn back from reforms now, even if United States financial market turmoil is causing it some qualms, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Thursday. Paulson told reporters the biggest threat to continued reforms came from firms in China that want to be protected against competition.
China urged the United States to understand the true nature of the Dalai Lama clique — which it blames for stirring up last month’s violence in Tibet — and support China’s ”just position”, state media said on Thursday. China blames Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, whom it labels a separatist, for stirring up the Lhasa violence.
The internet must be open during the Beijing Olympics. That was the message a top-ranking International Olympic Committee (IOC) official delivered on Tuesday to Beijing organisers during the last official sessions between IOC inspectors and the host Chinese before the Games begin in just more than four months.
China said on Tuesday that protesters were out to hijack the Olympic Games as the torch relay embarked on a world tour that is certain to ignite demonstrations. Pro-Tibet activists, human rights campaigners and groups seeking to end the crisis in Darfur say they plan protests during the relay, which is scheduled to last 130 days and cover 137 000km.
China’s president and the country’s top athlete launched the Beijing Olympics torch relay on Monday amid cheering, dancing and tight security, marking the symbolic start to a Games overshadowed by activism and unrest in Tibet. Chinese President Hu Jintao lit a cauldron on a red-carpeted rostrum on Tiananmen Square before handing the torch to World and Olympic champion hurdler Liu Xiang.
Opener Neil McKenzie hit an unbeaten 88 for South Africa against a sloppy India as the first Test headed towards a draw on the final day on Sunday. South Africa reached 212 for two in their second innings at lunch, a lead of 125 runs, with the loss of only Hashim Amla’s wicket for a chancy 81 in the session on a flat pitch.
Further unrest in Tibet’s capital appeared to have been sparked by attempts by police to carry out security checks, indicating the tension and volatility remaining in Lhasa weeks after a deadly anti-government riot. It was unclear exactly what occurred in Lhasa on Saturday but a SMS to residents from police said security checks carried out earlier in the day had ”frightened citizens”.
Chinese security forces sealed off parts of Lhasa on Saturday and Tibet’s government-in-exile said it was investigating reports of fresh protests, weeks after the city was shaken by an anti-government riot. The reports coincided with a visit by a group of diplomats, who were led on a closely guarded tour of the city.
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.
Tibetan monks stormed a news briefing at a temple in Lhasa on Thursday, accusing Chinese authorities of lying about recent unrest and saying the Dalai Lama had nothing to do with the violence. The incident was an embarrassment to the Chinese government, which brought a select group of foreign reporters to Lhasa for a stage-managed tour of the city.
China requires the Dalai Lama to stop sabotaging the Olympics as a condition for talks, Chinese President Hu Jintao told his United States counterpart, George Bush, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Hu’s demand appeared to mark a new addition to a list of actions the exiled Tibetan leader must undertake before China is willing to talk with him.
China said Wednesday at least 660 people had surrendered over deadly protests in and near Tibet as French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised the prospect of boycotting the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. More than 280 people had given themselves up to authorities following deadly protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa against Chinese rule.
China has criticised human rights demonstrators who disrupted the Greek torch-lighting ceremony for the Beijing Olympics as being ”disgraceful”. Just before the torch was lit on Monday inside the archaeological site that played host to the Olympics in ancient Greece, three demonstrators managed to break a tight police cordon.