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

"This is how a free and democratic New China will be. All governments at various levels all the way to the central government will be elected through popular, fair and anonymous voting. They will be responsible to the people that elected them. It will be a fulfillment of Sun Yat-Sen's Three Principles of the People, of Lincoln's idea of government of the people, by the people, for the people; and Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. This will guarantee the independence, solidarity and unity of the nation, as well as its cooperation with the democratic nations of the world." more ›

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Zhu Weiqun, executive vice minister of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee, has raised eyebrows with an article published in Qiushi, or "Seeking Truth," a biweekly journal published by the Chinese Communist Party. In it, he warned that the party would suffer "pernicious" consequences if it overturned a ban on party members to subscribe to religious faiths. more ›

"I will change sorrow into strength and courage and remain faithful to respected Comrade Kim Jong Un," says the woman at the end of this video from Korean Central News Agency. more ›

A female government official in Liaoning province has been executed almost a year after she was found guilty of corruption: more ›

The friend who invited me to Huaxi's 50th anniversary first advertised the weekend as some kind of helicopter festival: "Hey free helicopter rides, wanna go?" First instinct: No thanks, don't want to die in China. But then he told me it was Huaxi, now internationally renowned as "China's Richest Village" and home to one of the tallest buildings in the country, a state-of-the-art medical hospital, a fake Great Wall, and 2,000 super wealthy villagers all living in huge houses with luxury cars. more ›

Life in Huaxi, supposedly China's richest village, just keeps getting better. The tiny village, which is a little over twice the size of the Vatican City and home to 380 households, recently launched its own skyscraper, the Zengdi Kongzhong New Village Tower. And now, officials have given journalists a glimpse into the presidential suite of the much-vaunted Longxi International Hotel which is housed inside the building. Said to be one of the largest single hotel rooms in all of China, the "super five star" suite costs an eye-popping RMB100,000 a night (and yes, that's the right number of zero's). more ›

In an appearance that has created more excitement on Sina Weibo than any other UFO sighting this year, former president Jiang Zemin (江泽民) attended the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Xinhai Revolution at the Great Hall of the People today. News of Jiang's first public appearance since rumours of his death surfaced in July quickly trended on Sina Weibo before censors stepped in to remove the subject from the day's trending topics. more ›

"Our ability to question and criticise the party and the government was not made possible by the powers-that-be, but by technological advancement. They are unable to completely control new media. If they were to shut down the internet and shut down Weibo, this would make international news and point to a complete reversal, as well as failure, of the reform and opening up of the CCP -- no one would be willing to take this step. As much as the Agitprop is frustrated by the current situation, the party isn't made of steel." more ›

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Anthony Tao, who writes over at the Heart of Beijing blog, has just returned to China from North Korea, and he has some amazing footage from this year's mass games. more ›

For North Korea's fledgling tourism economy, China represents the largest inbound market. This clip from a Japanese documentary gives you an eye-opening glimpse of what Chinese travellers are shown on their DPRK tours. more ›

In Pyongyang, streams of North Korean civilians and soldiers lay bouquets and bow three times before a statue of Kim Il Sung to mark the 17th anniversary of his death. Kim has been named the DPRK's "Eternal President", and massive celebrations are expected in 2012 to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. more ›

Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai (薄熙来) scored massive brownie points among conservative party elders yesterday for successfully conducting the biggest ever red song fest. 108 choirs from all across China participated at the event held at the Chonqing Olympic Centre, and the total number of participants and spectators came up to over 100,000. more ›

Online rumors are claiming that Mao Zedong may not have been the author behind the little red book. The Communist handbook may have actually been written by Mao's secretary Hu Qiaomu and other individuals, reports The Independent: "It is rumoured that two reports detailing the ghostwriters' activities were filed with the Central Committee in 1993 and in 1995. So vocal have the sceptics become that a website, which is affiliated to the People's Daily newspaper, ran a statement denying the rumours, quoting a spokesman from China's ideological heavyweights - the Party Literature Research Centre, the Party History Research Centre and the Party School of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China. The spokesman said Mr Hu had spoken on many occasions of how Mao would help him edit the articles and how he had learnt his poetic style from the Chairman."
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Would you just take a look at how festive that is? No, it's not Chinese New Year all over again -- it's just the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in Chongqing. According to Xinhua, approximately 10,000 people came dressed in red to celebrate the momentous occasion by singing good ol' fashioned communist songs and to renew their Party oaths. more ›

To be honest, we can't quite figure out whether this video "入党申请书" is a parody or is just unintentionally really, really funny, but either way we'll bet good money it will crack you up. This video shows a fellow singing movingly about how he applied to join the Communist party the year he turned 18...and the rest, well you'll have to watch for yourself. Jump ahead to 3:41 to see him croon several priceless refrains of "Communist party, please test me," spliced between montages of the hammer and sickle symbol. more ›

There's been a lot of talk recently about Beijing's "soft power," one initiative of which is the many Confucius Institutes (272 in all!) popping up around the world. Unfortunately, some people in Hacienda Heights, California - a pretty darn Asian neighborhood to begin with - don't take too kindly to thems teachin' Chinese to thems childrens. And Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi was there to talk to them about it. more ›

Looking back on the year in review, we've had a lot of wonderful videos that could use a second viewing. In fact, some of our favorite content from the past year has been in video form: from the crazy ghost town of Ordos to utterly ridiculous Chinese viral videos, these videos have caught our collective fancies. Without further ado, Shanghaiist presents the best videos of 2009. more ›

Shanghai-born Dr. Liliane Willens will be speaking twice this weekend about her newly published book, Stateless in Shanghai at several venues around the city. But first, a word of explanation about what "stateless in Shanghai" really means: more ›

When they changed over the system from Maoist Communism to "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (as Hu Jintao put it during the last 60th anniversary parade), the CCP apparently decided not to tell anyone what the C in their name really meant. At least according to this video by Doing Business in China, which asks a bunch of Chinese people (some of whom are famous) to define "communism" - with dumbfounding results. more ›

Because we know you've all been searching high and low for it, here's a video of President Obama's inaugural address with Chinese subtitles that we found on Chinese video site Youku. The video is complete and includes Obama's references to "fascism and communism" (censored by Chinese media) but the Chinese subtitles leaves "fascism" intact, editing out only the "communism" [insert whatever joke you like here]. For your convenience the full transcripts of Obama's speech, in English and Chinese are included after the jump: more ›

If you were jam packed into Glamour Bar with 600 other people earlier this morning, watching President Barack Obama being sworn in, you might have been a little too dizzy with euphoria (and possibly heatstroke) to notice particular segments of his 18-minute inauguration address -- specifically, ones that likely caused the head honchos in Beijing to collectively cringe. more ›

• Black and White Cat translates a collection of headlines from the earliest editions of Xinhua Daily, Jiangsu Province's oldest party newspaper. In its bid to oust the Kuomintang, the CCP positioned itself as a champion of democracy and demanded for change, human rights and general elections.
• Tao Wang of UBS explains to Thomas Crampton why he thinks the new wave of unemployment is unlikely to cause unrest in China.
• EastSouthWestNorth has a set of pictures of what is supposed to be Guangdong's most run-down school.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Kim II Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Monday holding up banners with slogans including "Long live the Great Leader Kim Jong Il". Shanghaiist was amused to hear we're observing only a "Year of Friendship" with this country in 2009. We've always thought they were our BFF. more ›

China's "blueprint for a worldwide revolution" according to the US Navy in 1964. [h/t to Mutant Palm] more ›

Raw footage from NoCommentTV of President Hu's recent trip to Cuba as part of his ongoing whirlwind tour across Latin America. Many Chinese students and future diplomats receive their Spanish language training in Cuba. In return for a performance item put up by Chinese students singing Guantanamera, Raul Castro (brother of Fidel Castro) took centrestage and sang The East is Red《东方红》which he says he learnt in 1953. The song lauds Mao Zedong as saviour of the Chinese people and was once China's de facto national anthem during the Cultural Revolution. Castro sure has lots to sing for. Yesterday's China Daily reported that China has deferred for 10 years an unspecified trade debt Cuba accumulated in 1995, and made an additional $80 million donation toward its hospital modernisation programme. more ›