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/ 30 October 2006
Legendary Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok Ying-tung, whose close links to Beijing alternatively led to him being called the ”Patriotic Capitalist” or the ”Godfather”, has died in Beijing at the age of 83. Fok, who died on Saturday night, was a vice-chairperson of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a property tycoon.
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/ 27 October 2006
French President Jacques Chirac visited the central Chinese industrial city of Wuhan on Friday, aiming to boost French efforts to tap into China’s fast-growing economy. Buoyed by more than -billion in deals bagged on Thursday in Beijing, where he met President Hu Jintao, the French leader openly lobbied for more contracts at a lunch with local business leaders.
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/ 26 October 2006
China’s trade with Africa is set to top -billion this year, officials said on Thursday, as Beijing gears up to host a China-Africa forum that will deepen much-scrutinised investment ties. China has defended its growing trade ties and its more than -billion worth of investments on the continent, whose energy and mineral wealth it covets to fuel its booming economy.
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/ 26 October 2006
European planemaker Airbus agreed on Thursday to sell 150 of its narrow-bodied A320 family of aircraft to China and reached a final deal to make the jets in the country, its chief executive said. The deal also involves options for 20 A350s, said Airbus president and chief executive Louis Gallois in Beijing, where French President Jacques Chirac is also visiting.
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/ 24 October 2006
Thousands of extra video cameras are being installed on Beijing’s buses in an effort to improve public politeness ahead of the 2008 Olympics, state press said on Tuesday. The campaign is aimed at raising standards of courtesy in the capital, such as giving up bus seats to the elderly, children, pregnant women and the handicapped, Xinhua news agency said.
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/ 19 October 2006
A Chinese entrepreneur is suing a Beijing trade bureau for denying him a permit to sell bags of ”World Cup air” and for scotching his plans to bottle and sell ”2008 Olympic air”, a newspaper said on Thursday. Li Jie, who describes himself as chief executive of the Lunar Embassy to China and once tried to sell land on the moon, sought a permit to sell ”World Cup air” for 50 yuan (,30).
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/ 18 October 2006
A gourmet with a taste for the good life, North Korea’s reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il will continue to enjoy his favourite French wines and foreign delicacies despite a United Nations embargo on luxury goods for Pyongyang, analysts say. A thriving black market will likely ensure Kim a steady supply of what he likes best, they said, with smugglers always ready to sneak over the border.
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/ 18 October 2006
Chinese officials accused the United States of double standards on Wednesday for criticising China’s oil investments in Africa, and insisted the country had a positive role to play in the continent’s development. China’s booming energy demand and Africa’s bountiful oil resources are mutually beneficial, the officials said.
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/ 17 October 2006
Lin Mu, regarded by Chinese liberal intellectuals as one of the nation’s pro-democracy pioneers, died suddenly at his home at the age of 79, his family said on Monday. His son said Lin, the former secretary of liberal Chinese leader Hu Yaobang, went for a nap on Sunday morning after reporting feeling unwell and never woke up.
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/ 17 October 2006
HIV/Aids in China has spread beyond high risk groups such as drug users, prostitutes and homosexuals and the country was becoming ”like Africa” in how the virus is transmitted, a senior health official says. ”There are 190 new HIV infections every day … and 1% of all pregnant women in China are infected,” said Hao Yang.
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/ 17 October 2006
A Chinese university aiming to produce ”socially elite” graduates is to make golf compulsory for students, state media reported on Tuesday. Golf was once reviled in Communist China as a symbol of western decadence, but has become hugely popular among the newly affluent since the first golf course opened on the mainland in the early 1980s.
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/ 16 October 2006
South Africa’s Retief Goosen retained his Volkswagen Masters-China title by three strokes on Sunday, the first successful title defence of his career. The world number seven shot a one-under-par 71 to finish the week with an impressive 21-under-par 267 total at the Yalong Bay Golf Club. The win was his first of 2006 and the 26th of his career, earning him  550.
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/ 13 October 2006
Title-holder Retief Goosen turned on the style at the Volkswagen Masters-China on Friday, rattling in a clutch of birdies and eagling the last to take a three-shot halfway lead. The world number seven, who has had a modest year by his standards, fired seven-under-par 65 for a two-day total of 129 at the Yalong Bay Golf Club.
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/ 13 October 2006
World powers moved closer on Friday to a response to North Korea’s nuclear test, with a United Nations draft resolution that retains economic and weapons sanctions but specifically rules out military force. North Korea has said it would consider tough UN measures as tantamount to a declaration of war and would respond in kind.
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/ 11 October 2006
China has warned image-conscious citizens against using the rack to lengthen their legs after several such operations went badly wrong, Xinhua news agency said. Ten people were reported to have been disfigured after they underwent stretching surgery last year, it added.
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/ 10 October 2006
China declined on Tuesday to rule out possible United Nations sanctions against North Korea for carrying out a reported nuclear test but said any military action was unimaginable. It said it had no information about widespread speculation that the secretive North might be ready to conduct a second test.
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/ 10 October 2006
A day after North Korea said it tested a nuclear device and seismic sensors registered tremors consistent with a small test, the question remains: What exactly happened at that mountain site near the Chinese border? Many scientists and most governments concerned have yet to definitively conclude whether it was a small nuclear device, a dud test of what might have been a much larger device.
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/ 10 October 2006
The $20-billion initial public offer (IPO) of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the mainland’s largest lender, drew intense interest on the its opening day, reports said on Tuesday. The IPO — expected to be the largest to date — attracted a wave of international orders of up to $56-billion, according to reports in Hong Kong’s English-language press.
North Korea is ”more or less ready” to conduct a nuclear test deep inside an abandoned coal mine but might hold off it can win concesssions from the United States, a Chinese source briefed by Pyongyang said on Friday. The source said a device would be detonated about 2Â 000 metres inside a mine near the border with China in the north of the country.
Defending champion Colin Montgomerie and Major winners Retief Goosen and Michael Campbell will spearhead next month’s UBS Hong Kong Open. The trio are among the first players to be confirmed for the -million tournament at the Hong Kong Golf Club on November 16-19.
Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher swept to a sensational victory at a rain-soaked Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday to seize the Formula One championship lead by the slimmest of margins. The seven-time world champion pulled level with Renault’s Fernando Alonso on points, 116-116, but is ahead 7-6 on race victories.
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/ 30 September 2006
World champion Fernando Alonso boosted his Formula One title chances on Saturday by taking pole position on an all-Renault front row at a rain-swept Chinese Grand Prix. Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher, two points behind the Spaniard in the standings with three races remaining, will start a distant sixth.
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/ 29 September 2006
A Chinese performance artist has locked himself up in a lion’s den to experience life as a caged animal, Xinhua news agency reported on Friday. Poet and performance artist Ye Fu, who once built himself a bird’s nest atop a Beijing building, locked himself in a lion’s cage on Tuesday in the eastern city of Qingdao.
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/ 28 September 2006
The duel between Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher is heating up both on and off the track going into this Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, the third-to-last race of the most closely contested season in years. ”It’s quite simple,” Alonso said on Thursday, ”it’s three races to go. The one who wins the most races will win the championship.”
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/ 28 September 2006
A Chinese culture ministry official has denounced a university professor who stripped naked in front of students and teachers during an art class, a Chinese newspaper reported on Tuesday. Mo Xiaoxin, a 56-year-old assistant professor at a university in Changzhou, in eastern Jiangsu province, shocked students by stripping during a lecture on ”body art”.
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/ 27 September 2006
Attention this weekend will be focused on the tussle for the Formula One championship as Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso set up a thrilling conclusion to the season. Schumacher says that thoughts of his imminent retirement will not affect his preparations for the three crucial remaining races of the season, starting in China.
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/ 21 September 2006
People wearing pyjamas in public, still a common sight in Shanghai, is one of the most irritating aspects of life in China’s biggest city, according to an opinion poll of residents. The survey found that pyjama-wearing on the streets and in public places such as shops, banks and parks is among the most uncivilised things in the city, along with aggressive pets and unhelpful neighbours.
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/ 7 September 2006
China has shut down a Chinese magazine’s outspoken website, apparently because of the reported killing of a villager trying to stop demolition of his home, the editor said on Thursday. The online edition of the Baixing [People] Magazine, based in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, was closed on Wednesday, editor Huang Liantian told Reuters.
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/ 4 September 2006
A woman said to be the tallest in the world has been fitted with new size-57 shoes from a German cobbler who travelled to China to meet her. ”If I’d known how poorly she was, I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to go there,” 54-year-old Georg Wessels said on Monday on his return from Anhui province where he met the 2,36m-tall Yao Defen.
Time is running out to reach an agreement on Tibet’s future which, if not sorted out by 2008, could become a blemish on the Beijing Olympics, a French parliamentary delegation said on Wednesday. The Dalai Lama, accused by Beijing of being a separatist, has lived in exile in the Indian hill station of Dharamsala since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese Communist rule.
China may be giving striptease funerals the last rites after officials arrested five people and ordered an end to the practice, state media said on Thursday. Strip shows have been commonly used to attract more mourners to funerals, as villagers believe a crowded send-off brings more honor to the deceased, Xinhua news agency said.
A Shenzhen company has been fined for sending bulk junk e-mail in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in China where more than 50-billion spam messages are received a year. China has a prospering cyber-world, hosting 111-million internet users, 700 000 websites and fast-growing online business, but officials say 60% of the e-mail Chinese people receive is spam.