Al-Jazeera's Melissa Chan gives us a fascinating glimpse of student life at a Chinese Communist Party school. more ›

Al-Jazeera (who have recently landed on American airwaves, by the way) takes a look at the phenomenon of mainland Chinese citizens popping over to Hong Kong to pop out their babies (known as 'Birth Tourism') in order to ensure their children are Hong Kong citizens, and other ways that the Special Administrative Region's public services sectors are being stretched by PRC citizens. more ›

Al-Jazeera's Melissa Chan checks out the local election in a small village in Shandong province, where there is only one candidate on the ballot sheet. The situation is repeated in many other villages throughout China. more ›

The practice, along with capital punishment, are merely two of the most visible examples of how China's justice system stands apart from other countries. Though there have been talks of labor camps getting shut down, no official move has yet been made, with recent news also suggesting that labor camps have now at least developed an ironic sense of humor. more ›

Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera brings us video of the flood of money and support flowing into Ai Weiwei's studio in Beijing. His 15 days to cough up a RMB 15 million tax bill are slowing ticking away, but within 8 days, contributions stand at a whopping 6.25 million RMB. more ›

Two years ago, Al Jazeera's China correspondent Melissa Chan visited the city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia and found an entire town raised from the desert in just five years, complete with gleaming skyscrapers and futuristic buildings. Only problem was, nobody was actually living there. more ›

Joshua Rosenzweig, the excellent blogger behind www.siweiluozi.net (on Twitter at @siweiluozi), talks with Al Jazeera about the release of Hu Jia, Ai Weiwei, and the complexity of understanding whether or not international pressure can have an impact on human rights in China: more ›

Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera demonstrates the process whereby pork is made to taste like beef. Gross? Yes. Unhealthy? Maybe. Illegal? Not in China. And to make matters worse, today we found out that 60% of China's 2,200 food additives can't even be tested for due to technical limitations!! more ›

Ezzat Shahrour, chief correspondent for al-Jazeera Arabic in Beijing, has an excellent post on his Chinese blog entitled “The Arab People Have 100,000 Questions for Chinese Media”. more ›

It's a story that causes a reaction of "THIS STILL HAPPENS?!": A woman, eight-months pregant is dragged out of her house and forced to abort the foetus for violating China's one-child policy. more ›

Are you guys ready to live through all that Olympic hoopla again? Well start bracing yourselves because China *wants* the Winter Olympics and they're working hard to make that a reality. For now, it remains unclear which city is going to bid for the Olympics but we're pretty sure it won't be Shanghai or anywhere around us. more ›

Is there anywhere in the world's most populous nation where there is absolutely no one? As it turns out, yes, there is! In the southwestern part of the Inner Mongolia region lies the spanking new and ultra-modern Ordos City (鄂尔多斯), which government officials have raised from the desert in just five years with tonnes of public money. The only problem is, nobody's moved in from the old Ordos City, located just 30 kilometres away. more ›

One report we've enjoyed is Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera's highlight on the Long March (on Youtube, unfortunately), when Mao led his forces on a strategic military retreat through China away from the pursuing Kuomingtang forces. The march, which started in Jiangxi, helped propel Mao Zedong to the forefront to the party. more ›

So apparently the controversies in international media this summer over China and the Olympics came as a bit of a shock to the Chinese people. While the government's retained tight control over its own media, it's been less able to harmonize those pesky news outlets abroad. Not one to take perceived insults to its national image lying down, Beijing is now throwing RMB 45 billion into targeting global audiences. more ›

Melissa Chan of Al Jazeera reports from Beijing of the discrimination that Hepatitis B carriers in China have to deal with — in school and at the workplace. Most of this discrimination, of course, is rooted in the widespread ignorance about the virus throughout society, and results in Hep B carriers being shunned in the same way as HIV/AIDS carriers are shunned in China. more ›

The Dalai Lama has been keeping the guys at the Chinese Foreign Ministry working overtime lately with his eight day tour around Europe. Last week, after telling Nigerians in Lagos that "sex invariably spells trouble", the Dalai Lama flew to Prague to meet Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and democratic hero Vaclav Havel. He then hopped over to Brussels to meet Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme and to address the European Parliament, which led China to scrap a summit with the EU at the last minute. Two days ago in Warsaw, the D.L. was given a rousing welcome by Polish anti-communist hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa, as well as Gdansk mayor Pawel Adamowicz. We're not sure if the Polish premier Donald Tusk got to meet the Dalai Lama eventually but he did say he "would be honoured" if he had the opportunity to do so. And then this latest image of the Dalai Lama draping French President Nicolas Sarkozy with the traditional Tibetan kata totally had the Chinese foreign ministry and media railing against France. It will be interesting to see how French businesses in China will suffer from the new fallout and whether there will be a fresh round of anti-French boycotts. While it's unlikely that China would penalise the entire European Union for the warm welcome it gave to the D.L., it's not hard to imagine all the above-named nations taking a hit, with France bearing the brunt of it all as it currently holds the rotating EU presidency. more ›

The latest data shows that China's output has fallen to a seven year low. The forecast for China's economic growth has been revised downwards to between 9.5% to 10% this year and 8.8% to 9.3% in 2009 — news that makes you go awwwww shucks we know, but economists are saying the reduction of even 1% in economic growth in China will have a massive impact and we're getting a glimpse of that right now. Even the ayi at our local All Days convenience store has been lamenting over poor sales, believe it or not. All across Guangdong province and elsewhere, factories are shuttering down and people are getting laid off. Jobs are a lot harder to come by and consumer sentiment is down. As usual, it is the people at the lowest rung of society who will be hit hardest, and China's greatest challenge now will be to tackle the growing social divide. more ›

Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera continues on his journey in Sichuan province, talking and spending time with quake victims who are still struggling with putting back the broken pieces of their lives. For some, getting back to work has proven easy enough, but the spiritual and emotional anguish they continue to experience on a daily basis remains deep six months on. more ›

Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera follows up on the Sichuan earthquake refugees and finds many of them running out of patience because the aid that was promised to them never arrived due to suspected corruption. Many of these refugees are still living in temporary shelters in massive camps (which to the credit of the Chinese government was an incredible feat), but with no job, no land to till, and no place to really call their own, they don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. more ›

From Al-Jazeera:

General Laurent Nkunda, rebel leader of the National Congress for People's Defence (CNDP), has said he wants to re-examine a $5bn dollar deal the Congolese government has struck with China. more ›

File this under "Only in China". This report by Melissa Chan of Al-Jazeera has intrigued us with how Chinese buyers are now banding together to shop for apartments so as to bargain for better prices with developers. The practise, known as tuan gou (团购) or 'group purchases', has long been used to buy anything from apparel to household items, but this really is the first time we've heard of apartment buyers using the same tactic. And apparently, the practise is growing. more ›

China is the country most feared by Americans as a potential military threat, according to a recent survey by the Financial Times. While China and the United States both appear to at least be interested in engaging each other to secure peace in the Asia-Pacific region, they are also sizing each other up for the possibility of some kind of military confrontation in the future. Shortly after this high level military exchange was conducted in Hawaii, China announced it would suspend all such future exchanges as a way of protesting the supply of military weapons to Taiwan by the U.S. more ›

China is helping to build a spanking new home for the President and Foreign Ministry of East Timor, but apparently not everyone is happy. The Timorese workers Al-Jazeera interviewed say they are paid only $3 per day while their Chinese counterparts are paid $36. This works out to about RMB7,560 monthly according to our calculations — a ridiculous figure even for "expatriate" construction workers. Al-Jazeera then goes on to lambast China for not delivering its aid in a way that benefits the average Timorese citizen, suggesting that China is in it all for Timor's oil as well as its potential multi-million dollar fishing industry — old tired arguments that we're getting tired of hearing. more ›

Al-Jazeera takes another look at children, this time at the 150,000 homeless children that the government estimates roams the streets of China. Our hearts are drawn to Wang Pan who wandered the streets alone for a year after his mother was put on death row for murdering his father (while he watched), and Guo Jianhua who himself was once an absent father and is today the founder of an orphanage in Shaanxi province. more ›

Tony Birtley of Al-Jazeera reports that between 70,000 and 200,000 babies, children and women are kidnapped each year around China. Baby boys are sold for as much as US$5,000 to desperate childless couples, and some of the abductees even end up overseas in the hands of foreign adopters. Police have had some success in breaking up child trafficking rings, but most of the anxious parents, like the ones interviewed in this report, can only wait. more ›

Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera visits an old woman in Tokay village in Xinjiang who is only now experiencing electricity in her home for the first time in her life, thanks to the new solar cells that have been installed in homes around the region. more ›

Tony Cheng of Al-Jazeera pays a visit to Zhongdian County (中甸县) — which was renamed Shangri-La (香格里拉县) in 2001 to attract tourists — and finds that it is far from the mystical, harmonious valley as described by the British author in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Although the town is located hundreds of miles away from Lhasa, where riots earlier this year threatened to spoil the show for the Beijing Olympics, a heavy, military presence is on hand to ensure that violence doesn't break out again. more ›

From Al-Jazeera:

China's staunch support of Sudan's government has led some to question Beijing's involvement in the UN peacekeeping mission to Darfur. more ›

From Al-Jazeera:

China is on course to join Japan and the US as a leader in the art of animation. more ›

Last Wednesday's episode of The Riz Khan Show on Al Jazeera English dealt with Chinese industries in Africa. Khan hosted a debate among three experts on the subject: Richard Behar, an investigative journalist and author of an article this month in Fast Company titled "China Storms Africa;" John Afele, former director of the International Program for Africa at the University of Guelph; and David Shinn, former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia. The question on the table:

Is China exploiting African nations and reflecting colonialism, or is it offering them real economic growth and opportunity?