Rioting erupted in a province neighbouring Tibet on Sunday, two days after ugly street protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule in Lhasa that the contested region’s government-in-exile said had killed 80 people. A police officer said that about 200 Tibetan protesters had hurled petrol bombs and burnt down a police station.
China’s Parliament re-elected Wen Jiabao as premier on Sunday, but a next-generation leader was passed over for promotion to a top military job. The rubber-stamp National People’s Congress gave Wen, ranked third in the Communist Party hierarchy, a second five-year mandate with 2 926 votes for, 21 against and 12 abstentions.
China set a ”surrender deadline”, listed deaths and showed the first extensive television footage of rioting in Lhasa on Saturday, signalling a crackdown after the worst unrest in Tibet for two decades. Sources suggested China’s official death toll of 10, just months before the Beijing Olympics, may not tell the full story.
Protesters in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, burnt shops and vehicles and yelled for independence on Friday as the region was hit by its biggest protests for nearly two decades, testing China’s grip months before the Olympics. Peaceful street marches by Tibetan Buddhist monks over previous days gave way to bigger scenes of violence and resentment in the remote, mountainous region.
A Chinese bride burned her new husband to death after he got into bed after a drunken argument without washing his feet. ”Wang and his wife, Luo, were married on February 2. The couple, however, frequently fought over trivial things while still on their honeymoon,” the Xinhua news agency quoted a local newspaper as saying.
Beijing Olympic organisers on Monday sought to play down security concerns looming over the Games, a day after authorities said two "terrorist" plots from its Muslim-majority north-west had been foiled. "We are confident that we will be able to have a safe Olympics," said Sun Weide, a spokesperson from Beijing’s Olympic Organising Committee.
David Beckham’s move to Major League Soccer may have been good for his wallet but it has apparently not helped his popularity in Asia. Empty seats and surprising indifference greeted soccer’s greatest star, who was mobbed like a rockstar on his first trip to the region, as he completed an Asian tour with LA Galaxy.
Suspected ”terrorists” killed in a raid in north-west China’s Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region earlier this year had been planning an attack on the Olympics, a top official said on Sunday. In separate comments, another high-level official from the same region said authorities had on Friday foiled a planned ”terrorist attack” on a passenger jet.
China has urged Sudan to do more to stop fighting in Darfur and speed up the arrival of more peacekeepers, Beijing’s envoy on the crisis said of Friday, defending his country as a diplomatic bridge to help end the bloodshed. China has faced widespread criticism that it has not used its stakes in Sudan to press for an end to deadly havoc in the Darfur region.
Wearing mesh tank tops, the cheerleaders waved their pom-poms non-stop and danced with gusto — if only to stay warm in the unheated basketball arena. The smiling young women have come to expect a crowd response as chilly as the winter wind outside.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned on Wednesday that overheating remains the nation’s top economic foe even as global growth softens, vowing a tough fight against price rises and feverish investment. In his annual State of the Nation report to the Parliament, Wen targeted pollution, misgovernment and the gulf between urban rich and rural poor.
Beijing has opened a huge new ,6-billion airport terminal ahead of the expected influx of millions of visitors to this summer’s Olympics, part of a multibillion-dollar infrastructure boost for the capital. The impressive terminal’s nearly 3km-long concourse is divided into three sections and connected by a shuttle train.
China will raise its heavily scrutinised defence spending by nearly a fifth this year, a top official said on Tuesday, warning self-ruled Taiwan that Beijing would ”tolerate no division”. Jiang Enzhu, spokesperson for China’s National People’s Congress, or Parliament, stressed that China adhered to a path of peaceful development.
A marathon contest longer and more complex than any race at the Olympic Games is unfolding behind the windowless facade of Digital Beijing. This secretive, slate-black tower complex that looks like a row of computer chips stands close by the two most famous Olympic venues — the National Aquatics Centre, known as the Water Cube, and the National Stadium, or Bird’s Nest.
Every day, well-heeled citizens clatter in and out of the Rishengchang, China’s first bank. But the ledgers are dusty and unused; the visitors are not customers but tourists. The most notable visitor to the museum, President Hu Jintao, may well recall the lesson in hubris as he stares at the biggest economic challenge that he has faced to date.
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/ 29 February 2008
Beijing opened a huge new ,6-billion airport terminal on Friday ahead of the expected influx of millions of visitors to this summer’s Olympics, part of a multibillion infrastructure boost for the capital. The impressive terminal’s nearly 3km long concourse will boost capacity at the airport to 76-million.
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/ 29 February 2008
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called Friday for Sudan to speed up the deployment of peacekeepers to Darfur and to end aerial bombing in the troubled region’s western districts. Miliband said the international community is united in the need for a hybrid United Nations-African Union force, but the effort is stalled by a lack of necessary support from Khartoum.
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/ 27 February 2008
Pollution turned part of a major river system in central China red and foamy, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to as many as 200 000 people, the provincial government and a state news agency said on Wednesday. Some communities along tributaries of the Han River were using emergency water supplies.
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/ 20 February 2008
More than two million people have registered as descendants of Confucius, tripling the size of the celebrated Chinese philosopher’s family tree, state media reported on Monday. The new list, which was last updated in 1930, has rocketed by more than 1,3-million, the Confucius genealogy compilation committee said.
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/ 20 February 2008
A group of Chinese alcohol producers is trying to overturn a ban on government officials enjoying a lunchtime tipple that has seen a fall in restaurant trade, state media reported on Wednesday. Officials in several cities in central Henan province were banned from drinking during their lunch break in an effort to improve government efficiency.
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/ 18 February 2008
Freezing weather has again swept through southern China, leaving 180 000 people stranded and causing power failures, just as the region was recovering from the last cold snap. The cold weather has taken a toll in mountainous Yunnan province, where heavy snowfalls since Thursday have caused huge problems.
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/ 18 February 2008
A Chinese contractor has won bids to build two railways in Libya worth a combined $2,6-billion as China enhances its economic presence in energy-rich African nations. Under one contract, China Railway Construction, the firm that built part of the railway to Tibet, would construct a 352km west-to-east coastal railway.
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/ 14 February 2008
China was facing a major international crisis linked to the Olympics on Thursday amid mounting pressure over its role in Darfur after United States filmmaker Steven Spielberg severed his links to the Games. So far neither the Foreign Ministry nor the Olympic organising committee has responded to the decision by Spielberg.
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/ 13 February 2008
Freak cold and snow across the southern half of China over the past month killed 107 people and caused ,4-billion in direct economic losses, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. The freezing weather downed power lines, triggered a series of road accidents and left millions headed home for the Lunar New Year holiday stranded.
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/ 13 February 2008
Alarmed by polls showing one in four Thai teens will celebrate Valentine’s Day by having sex, police plan to swoop on motels, malls and parks to ensure youths behave themselves. The annual campaign to ensure good behaviour on February 14 will see city officials turn on all lights at public parks in the capital Bangkok.
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/ 11 February 2008
Beijing Olympic organisers said on Monday they backed a ban on political protests by athletes attending this year’s Games, amid an uproar over an effort to silence British athletes. Following widespread anger, the British Olympic Association backed down on Sunday on its plan to prevent British competitors from commenting on ”politically sensitive issues”.
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/ 10 February 2008
China has lost about one tenth of its forest resources to recent snow storms regarded as the most severe in half a century, state media reported on Sunday. A total of 17,3-million hectares of forest have been damaged across China as the result of three weeks of savage winter weather, the China Daily said.
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/ 7 February 2008
The thunder of firecrackers ushered in the Year of the Rat on Thursday, but millions of Chinese spent a cold holiday as teams fought to restore power knocked out by the worst winter weather in a century.
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/ 7 February 2008
The Spring Festival is traditionally the time for China to put up its feet and relax. That has rarely been more necessary. With food prices rising, Olympic expectations growing and much of the country snarled up in snow and ice, China enters the Year of the Rat under more pressure than at any time in more than a decade.
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/ 5 February 2008
Millions of Chinese are likely to spend the biggest holiday of the year without power and water after more than a week of wild winter weather that shut down transport links. Railways and highways were returning to normal across China on Tuesday but millions are still trying to catch trains, planes and buses.
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/ 5 February 2008
China is debating whether to relax control of the internet during the Olympics, allowing access to banned websites such as the BBC, a spokesperson for the organising committee said on Tuesday. Plans to tear down the so-called Great Firewall of China were being debated and a decision was expected soon.
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/ 5 February 2008
China’s prime minister said ”victory” was in sight on Tuesday with the country finally overcoming huge transport and power problems caused by weeks of savage weather. A huge backlog of passengers left stranded at airports, train stations and bus depots by blizzards and icy temperatures in the last three weeks appeared to be clearing.