From AFP:Up to 30,000 protesters marched through Taiwan's third-largest city Sunday, loudly and angrily voicing unease over closer China ties ahead of a high-level meeting with the giant neighbour.Chanting and banner-wielding demonstrators filled the streets of downtown Taichung, the central

From Wall Street Journal:China has tightened land-sale regulations for developers in its latest attempt to take some of the steam out of the potentially overheating property market.The new rules include the first nationwide minimum down payment on land purchases from

From Reuters:Chinese prosecutors will put Liu Xiaobo, one of the country's best-known dissidents, on trial on subversion charges on Wednesday in Beijing, Liu's lawyer and wife said on Sunday.Despite Liu's trial coming shortly before Christmas, it is sure to receive

China at the crossroads, via Corridore di Resistenza.

The 1984 BBS is a private online forum that has over 7000 registered members in China. Ai Weiwei, who had just returned to his Beijing home from an international trip few days earlier, was a special guest for a one

From the Malaysian Insider:Macau marks the 10th anniversary of its return to China today with plenty to show for its gambling industry, but it is also beset with worries over its undiversified economy, corruption and crime.As Chinese President Hu Jintao

From Time:The year 2009 will not be remembered as the year Chinese censors decided to lighten up. This week, the Chinese agency that oversees the country's Internet-domain-name registry announced it will limit the system to use by businesses, effectively excluding

From The Hindu:It all began, as so many stories do, with a knock on the door. On the morning of August 4, 1998, Ma Yalian found three officials from a local real estate firm outside her Shanghai home. Demolition papers

From The Sunday Times:In the late 18th century, China was probably the biggest economy on earth. When British envoys came to plead for trade, the Emperor Qianlong dismissed them grandly.But China fell into revolutions, war, famine and chaos. Only since

From AFP:Police in southern China have arrested eleven people suspected of abducting and trafficking dozens of babies in the past two years, state media reported Saturday.Following a nine-month investigation, police rescued 28 baby boys kidnapped from around the country and

As always, here's the complete setlist for my latest PLAY edition (Vol. 3), from this past Friday. I decided to not go Christmas-y (except for one exception), and ended up doing an extended rock set (mostly in part 2) —

Hokkaido JALT (Hokkaido Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching). January 24 (Sun), 14:00-16:00 in Sapporo, Hokkaido Japan. Mary Virgil-Uchida.

Chinese President Hu Jintao (R) meets with Fernando Chui Sai On, the new chief executive of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), in Macao SAR of south China on Dec. 20, 2009. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)&$&$ Chinese President Hu Jintao Sunday met

An earthquake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale struck Jidong County in China's northeastern Heilongjiang Province at 21:26 (Beijing time) Saturday, the China Earthquake Networks Center reported. The epicenter was at 45.2 degrees north latitude and 131.3 degrees east longitude

An earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale struck Hualien waters off the eastern coast of Taiwan island at 21:02 (Beijing time) Saturday, the China Earthquake Networks Center reported. The epicenter was at 23.8 degrees north latitude and 121.7 degrees

When a revised regulation on China's demolition seems to be definite, people are expressing worries that local government may rush in to enforce demolition projects before it comes into effect. In a signed commentary published by China Youth Daily on

A group of farmers from China's central Hubei province traveled thousands of miles to promote their navel oranges in Beijing Saturday. These farmers, who are immigrants from the Three Gorges Project, come from Zigui county, Hubei Province, where is known

The Chinese worker has been awarded by the TIME magazine as runners-up to Ben Bernanke in its Person of the Year 2009 list, but their jobs are not favored by majority, Guangzhou Daily reported Saturday. "It is ironic that the

At the invitation of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon will start his three-day official visit to China from Dec. 20. Born on March 4, 1954, in Le Mans, a city in western France, Fillon gained DEA

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao brought hope and confidence to the world in its fight against climate change by attending the summit of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said Saturday. Yang, who had accompanied Wen