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’s Three Gorges dam, the world’s largest hydropower project, is retaining huge amounts of sediment and nutrients and causing significant erosion in the downstream reaches of the Yangtze River. Official Chinese press reports say the build-up of silt in the Three Gorges reservoir is under control.
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.
China’s rapid rise into an economic powerhouse offering aid and soft loans is changing the aid picture in Africa — winning China its share of critics but also the gratitude of governments who say its engagement makes a difference. China has pledged to double development assistance to Africa by 2009 and write off another 10-billion yuan (,3-billion) of debt.
Africa is experiencing unprecedented growth, but the continent will have to sustain that expansion for years to come if it is to lift people out of poverty, the African Development Bank chief said on Thursday. Africa is set to grow about 6,5% this year, marking the fifth straight year of above-trend expansion.
A Sudanese central bank official told China on Thursday its oil investments could exacerbate conflicts in Sudan unless it pressed the government to engage local populations and share revenues. China, which buys much of Sudan’s oil, has been under fire internationally for doing business with a regime condemned in the West for its actions in Darfur.
The African Development Bank must undertake significant internal reforms to become more responsive to the continent’s needs and more effective as a tool for development, the bank’s president and governors said on Wednesday in Shanghai at its annual two-day meeting.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday called on the world community to do more to help Africa as he opened the annual meeting of the African Development Bank in Shanghai. Debt relief and technology transfers were among the tools the wealthier nations could use to help boost growth in Africa, Wen said.
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.
When Pulitzer Prize-winner Peter Arnett was reporting from the front line of the Vietnam War, the last thing he had to worry about was censorship, but that’s not the case for the Chinese journalism students who are hanging on his every word. As the students to Arnett talk about his experiences as a war correspondent, it is easy to forget that their greatest concern as professional journalists will be ensuring they do not run foul of the communist party that governs their country.
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.
Casey Stoner won the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday to notch up back-to-back MotoGP victories and firm his hold on the championship lead. The Australian started fourth on the grid, but his Ducati blew past pole-sitter Valentino Rossi at the start of the second lap, forcing the seven-time world champion into second place.
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’s ZTE announced a -million deal with Ethiopia’s state-owned telecoms group just ahead of the release of seven abducted Chinese workers in the African nation, a statement said on Monday. The agreement signed on Saturday with Ethiopia Telecom Corporation proposes to build up the East African nation’s fledgling telecommunications network.
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.
Frenchman Raphael Jacquelin finally cashed in on his recent hot run of form with a wire-to-wire victory by two strokes in torrential rain at the Asian Open on Sunday. The 32-year-old, second in Portugal at the start of the month and leader for two rounds at last week’s China Open, survived a late wobble as the wind and rain made conditions difficult.
Frenchman Raphael Jacquelin put himself in position for a wire-to-wire victory at the Asian Open on Saturday, carding a two-under-par 70 to take a one-stroke lead into the final round of the ,3-million event. The 32-year-old mixed four birdies with a couple of bogeys to finish the third round on 11-under, a shot ahead of Australian Scott Hend.
Raphael Jacquelin fired a second-round three-under-par 69 to open a three-shot advantage at the ,3-million Asian Open on Friday, the Frenchman leading a tournament at the halfway stage for the second week in a row. The 32-year-old, who led by two strokes at the same stage of last week’s China Open, made the most of balmy afternoon conditions.
France’s Raphael Jacquelin shot a six-under-par 66 to take a one-stroke lead over Denmark’s Soren Kjeldsen after the first round of the ,3-million Asian Open on Thursday. Eight-time European number one Colin Montgomerie finished three behind after a patient round of 69, while two-time US Open champions Ernie Els and Retief Goosen finished five off the pace with a pair of one-under 71s.
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.
Ernie Els and Retief Goosen will be aiming to ease very different forms of Masters heartache when they tee off at the BMW Asian Open in Shanghai on Thursday as a high-class field aims to impose more misery. The smooth-swinging South African duo walked off the famed fairways at Augusta National this month with their hopes of securing another Major title blown away.
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.