Today's Links: Reporter hostages, Chinese rockets and Made-in-China fears

• My time as a hostage, and I’m a business reporter
  As an American journalist based in China, David Barboza knew there was a good chance that at some point he’d be detained for pursuing a story. He just never thought he’d be held hostage by a toy factory.


• China province head apologizes in slave labor storm
  Yu Youjun the governor of Shanxi province shaken by the slave labor scandal publicly apologized on Friday, as officials described farmers, children and mentally impaired people snatched into a grim rural underworld.
  


• Chinese envoy arrives in Sudan for Darfur talks
  China will send more than 200 troops to Sudan's Darfur region to help a joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force, said special envoy Liu Guijin in Khartoum on Friday.


• Made-in-China fears grip US
  China, a traditional source of cheap goods, has become an alarmingly top exporter of tainted and dangerous products to the United States, triggering concerns among consumers and regulators.


• Death toll in central, SW China flooding rises to 49
  The death toll in flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rains in central and southwest China this week has risen by at least 13 to 49, reports Xinhua news agency.


• China has 80m middle class members
  The number of Chinese officially described as "middle class" has risen by almost 15 million people in the last two years to 80 million in total, according to official sources.


• 23 tourists injured in ship collision in Shanghai
  At least 23 tourists, including 11 foreigners, were injured after their ship collided in heavy rain with a cargo ship on a river running through Shanghai, hospital sources said.
  


• Traditional Chinese medicines find new avenue to int'l market
  China's military medical academy announced on Friday that it would licence a British company to use the patent of its new anti-dementia drug based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), opening up a new avenue to the international market for TCM products.


• China to improve environmental assessment
  China will improve strategic environmental assessment procedures in key regions and industries after the suspension of a controversial paraxylene (PX) project in Xiamen, according to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).


• China plans new generation of rockets
  China plans to develop a new generation of carrier rockets with a payload capacity large enough to launch a space station. China sees its space program as a way to validate its claims to being one of the world's leading scientific nations.

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Image from dingadingdang.