Headliners: Zhang Huimin, Yu Dan and Jin Renqing

People who have made the news this week
Zhang Huimin, 8, runs her way to the Olympics 2016
Little Zhang Huimin, who stands at just 1.25 meters tall and weighs a mere 20kg, has run from Sanya, Hainan all the way to Beijing, wearing out 20 pairs of shoes and covering a staggering 3,560 km in 55 days. That’s an average of 1.5 marathons per day! Her goal is to win the marathon at the 2016 Olympic Games (and only God knows for now where that will be held). See that man next to her on the motorbike? That’s her father, and her trainer who has made her wake up everyday at 3am for training since the day little girl could run. Starting with 3 km a day since she was three, Zhang was hitting 23 km daily by the time she was seven. Experts have lambasted the father for putting the girl through such a gruelling training programme which they say is not only difficult for most adults but will undoubtedly do the little girl’s body great harm.
Prof Yu Dan (于丹), 38, now with cleavage
Probably the most popular exponent of Confucius ever, Yu Dan, has found her way back into the media spotlight — this time in an IHT article which places her at the centre of the current rage for China’s ancient philosophies. Her book has sold 4.2 million legal copies and about 6 million pirated versions. But wait a minute, Yu is not even a Confucian academic. She is a media professor at the Beijing Normal University, certainly one who understands that a bit of cleavage will do your popularity good, as this latest picture of her shows. We too ended up buying her DVD’s and found her sounding shockingly similar to our pastor back home, except that she was preaching Confucius and quoting Hegel at the same time, and basically anything else that fit her message. Her feel-good version of Confucius has won her flak from people who are jealous of her success classical Confucian scholars, as well as the suicide of her student.
Jin Renqing (金人庆), 63, removed from Finance Minister position
Jin Renqing, who has been Minister of Finance since March 2003, has been replaced by Xie Xuren (谢旭人), director of the State Administration of Taxation, and will be moved to a government think-tank position (read: left to rot?). No reasons have been cited for Jin’s transfer and the man himself gave no public indication of plans to stand aside. Xie, 59, a Ningbo native of humble beginnings with 14 years spent as a worker in a Zhejiang machinery factory, has rapidly risen the Party ranks in recent years. Behind the scenes, officials are currently jockeying for top positions in the Chinese Communist Party, which is preparing for the upcoming 17th Congress on Oct. 15 — the biggest political meeting in five years.