Additional Chinese troops have been sent to Tibet to check anti-government protests in the region, AP reported. Beijing admitted to making further arrests in Lhasa, and acknowledged for the first time that the protests have spread to Tibetan communities in other parts of the country. On Thursday, state media made the first official reference since […]
Category: Politics & Society
A nice meta-piece on the media machinations behind the NPC sessions in the Straits Times (of Singapore; subscription required) today. Correspondent Tracy Quek reports that Premier Wen Jiabao’s usually staid post-NPC press conference was given a shot in the arm this year. The event usually starts at 10am, after the NPC session has officially ended, […]
Researchers have found that southern China may be the source of the H5N1 avian flu virus, Reuters reported. Strains of the virus that were found in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia in 2002 and 2003 were close matches to a strain from poultry markets in the southern province of Yunnan. Meanwhile, strains that appeared in Indonesia […]
The National People’s Congress ended its first session of the year with President Hu Jintao pledging to move ahead with reforms, AP reported. Several top government posts were filled with new people during this session, along with a bureaucratic restructuring to create "super-ministries." On Monday, a new defense minister, Liang Guanglie, was named. Liang and […]
Much of the media coverage of this past weekend’s Major League Baseball exposition games (Dodgers/Padres) in Beijing has focused on how far the game has to come in China (yes thank you, NYTimes, Chinese people were befuddled by the lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”). But after the experience, what I’ve taken away […]