Approximately 115 acres of watermelons have exploded in parts of China--and no that's not some outrageous Willy Wonka joke, it's what happened to 20 farmers in Jiangsu after they injected a little too much of a growth hormone into their crop this season. more ›

From Greenpeace China: "Pesticides aren't your problem? Well unless you buy organic food the chances are you are eating a cocktail of toxic chemicals when you tuck into fruit and vegetables. Greenpeace China tested fruits and vegetables from supermarkets and wet markets in Beijing Shanghai and Guangzhou over the past few months and found traces of 50 different kinds of pesticide residues including two banned chemicals. Pesticides are linked to cancer, neurologicial and fertility problems."
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The CCP warned that 2009 will be "possibly the toughest year" to secure economic and agricultural development since the beginning of the century. A document issued jointly by the State Council and the Central Committee said that the world economy's slowdown would have an increasingly negative impact on the Chinese economy. The best solution for keeping growth up would be boosting rural areas using social security schemes and rural land and employment rights protections. Will 2009 be the year migrant workers actually choose to stay home? Source: Xinhua more ›

The latest issue of TIME Magazine has an interesting story of a US-based company that has just set up shop in where else but Inner Mongolia, to feed the millions of hungry Chinese who are now looking to eat something other than pork: more ›

A 30-year old man in Guangzhou appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge. Paramedics tried to revive him at the cybercafe but failed and he was declared dead on the spot. more ›

The People's Congress is expected to pass an Anti-Trust legislation today, the first of its kind in China, and one, 13 years in the making. For those that are law buffs, Fortune has a nice article here, with some in-depth analysis. We, not exactly students of jurisprudence, have only one question in mind. Will the powers that be stop China Mobile from charging us extortionist rates? Where are our free "night and weekend" minutes? Where are our free "in network calling"? Ok, that's more like three questions. more ›

Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) has released its fifth annual Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) which saw American universities take eight of the top ten spots. Harvard University emerged right on top, followed by Stanford University and University of California-Berkeley. Britain's Oxford and Cambridge -- the only two non-American universities to make it to the top ten -- secured the fourth and tenth positions respectively. The top university in Asia was the University of Tokyo, edging in at the twentieth spot. more ›

Around a week ago, Shanghai Daily ran a story entitled "Top tourism sites named": more ›

Without question, the major drawback of China's rapid economic growth has been the tremendous negative impact on the environment. Now officials at the Ministry of Agriculture and the State Environmental Protection Administration say that the Bohai sea--China's largest internal sea--has reached a tipping point. If measures are not taken to curb the dumping of pollutants into the sea from its tributary rivers, officials warn, the Bohai sea will be "dead" in as little as 12 years. more ›

Big Bird! The Thanksgiving week has been, appropriately, quite busy in regards to China's ongoing bout against the deadly avian influenza virus. Even our precious hometown Shanghai is beginning to feel the pinch. more ›

China has finally announced its long-awaited (and in Shanghaiist’s opinion very long overdue) first human case of bird flu. While the CNN story does not confirm the flu strain, the unlinkable subscription-only South China Morning Post (which has some of the best, most up-to-date information on bird flu) reports that the boy in Hunan province tested positive for the H5N1 strain. While the boy has successfully recovered after falling ill at the end of October from eating part of a chicken that had sickened and died, his 12-year old sister did not … though at the moment her death can only be presumed to be caused by bird flu. Three other suspected human H5N1 cases have not yet been confirmed. more ›