China has ordered local leaders to cool a surge in politically sensitive food prices by raising vegetable production amid rising tensions in poor countries over surging food costs. Mayors were told to make sure local markets have a week's supply of vegetables, said a Cabinet announcement on Friday.
Most Asian stock markets climbed Friday as investors took heart from a slight improvement in U.S. economic indicators amid lingering worries over the pace of the global economic recovery. But gains were modest across the region as investors took a wait-and-see stance ahead of closely-watched U.S. employment figures due out Friday.
Thousands of coal trucks were backed up for miles on a northern China highway Friday, the latest in a series of monster jams that have plagued the overloaded road since construction began on a parallel route earlier this summer. Trucks loaded high with coal from Inner Mongolia inched along bumper-to-bumper on the Beijing-Tibet highway as police redirected traffic and reminded drivers to stay alert, an official with Jining traffic police in Inner Monglia said Friday. Like many Chinese bureaucrats, he refused to give his name.
Climate change may have delivered a solution to the risk faced by ships and crew passing through the waters of Gulf of Aden. A cargo ship bearing Hong Kong flag carrying 41,000 tons of iron ore will become part of maritime history as it sails from Norway to China through Russia's arctic passage instead of the pirate-infested Somalian waters.
Census takers counting China's more than 1.3 billion people already face a daunting task, and it's getting harder for the latest once-a-decade update. After years of reforms that have reduced the government's once-pervasive involvement in most people's lives, some Chinese are proving reluctant to give up personal information and harboring suspicions about what the government plans to do with their details.
I've recently blogged about Singapore, Vietnam and China and their attempts to limit the usage of the internet in young people, and this week China has stepped its efforts up a notch by introducing regulations which require the submission of ID in order to purchase an internet account or mobile phone SIM.
Australia and New Zealand are locked in a stand-off with Fiji’s military leader, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, over his refusal to bring back democracy after four coups in two decades. Sanctions and other tough measures by Canberra and Wellington against Bainimarama's unelected government have been matched by a round of diplomatic expulsions by the South Pacific nation, which in turn is looking more and more to China for aid and support.
China called Thursday for a compromise among the parties to talks aimed at disarming North Korea's nuclear program in order to get the negotiations back on track. China hosted the six-nation talks before North Korea walked away from them last year in protest over the international condemnation that followed its testing of a long-range missile.
China on Thursday dismissed reports saying troops of the People's Liberation Army are in a disputed area of Pakistan. The New York Times ran an opinion piece last week which said up to 11,000 soldiers of the People's Liberation Army were in Gilgit, a northwest area of disputed Kashmir.
China's culture minister is visiting Taiwan in the latest sign of warming ties between the rivals. After arriving Thursday, Cai Wu said he would attend a forum to discuss closer cultural cooperation during his one-week stay. He is the highest evel Chinese official to visit the island since the 1998 visit by a science and technology minister.
Burma military ruler Than Shwe will visit China next week, the Chinese government announced Thursday, in another sign of the close ties between the neighbors. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe would make a four-day visit starting Tuesday, with stops in Beijing and at the Shanghai Expo.
Rescuers were searching for 44 people missing Thursday after a landslide hit a village in southern China and killed at least four people. Workers rescued 23 people buried under rubble in Wama village in the southwestern province of Yunnan after the rain-triggered landslide hit Wednesday night, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
China
