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.
China’s notoriously sex-shy pandas are being put through a rigorous "sexercise" programme in a new effort to encourage them to mate, state media reported on Tuesday. The Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Centre in the province of Sichuan is making male pandas walk on their two legs to strengthen their pelvic and hip muscles, to better prepare them for sex.
Anti-government protests that spread from Tibet into western provinces are under control, the Chinese government said on Sunday, as much of the region remained in lockdown. Thousands of troops have poured into areas with large Tibetan populations in Gansu, Sichuan, Qinghai and even Yunnan, which has not seen unrest.
China said 19 people were killed in riots in the Tibetan capital last week and official media warned against the unrest spreading to the north-west region of Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims bridle under Chinese control. Eighteen were burnt or hacked to death in the Lhasa violence, Xinhua news agency said.
China admitted for the first time that security forces shot at Tibetan protesters, as the military on Friday pursued its crackdown on volatile areas amid fears of mass arrests. The admission comes with Beijing’s Communist rulers trying to put the country’s best face forward in the run-up to the Olympic Games in August.
Tibet authorities said on Thursday they had arrested dozens of people involved in a wave of anti-Chinese violence and prompted Beijing to pour in troops to crush further unrest. China’s response to last week’s violence has sparked international criticism and has clouded preparations for the Beijing Olympics.
China ramped up security on Thursday to quell a Tibetan uprising as it expressed concern over British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s planned meeting with the Dalai Lama. Huge military convoys were seen heading towards Tibet, while a build-up of troops took place in nearby provinces after a week of violent protests against China’s rule of the region.
Chinese Olympic organisers are rushing to renovate bathrooms at flagship Olympic venues after complaints about a lack of Western-style sit-down toilets, an official said Wednesday. The problem emerged during a series of test events conducted over the past several months to determine whether venues were ready to stage the Games.
The Dalai Lama said on Tuesday he will stand down if violence in Tibet spirals out of control, after the Chinese accused him of masterminding the unrest. ”If things become out of control then my only option is to completely resign,” the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, told a news conference.
China’s premier accused Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of orchestrating riots in which dozens may have died and said his followers were trying to ”incite sabotage” of Beijing’s August Olympic Games. The Dalai Lama called at the weekend for an investigation into what he called cultural genocide in Tibet.
China insisted on Monday that it had shown massive restraint in the face of violent protests by Tibetans, which it said were orchestrated by followers of the Dalai Lama to wreck Beijing’s Olympic Games in August. Exiled representatives of Tibet in Dharamsala, India, on Sunday put the death toll from last week’s protests in Lhasa, capital of the Himalayan region of Tibet, at 80.