On Sunday, a Henanese couple decided the best way to pay off their outstanding hospital bill was to walk the streets bare naked with their children in tow in Dianbai County, Guangdong. more ›

Writing in the New York Times, former Harvard Kennedy School fellow Paul V. Kane argues that giving up military support of Taiwan will reduce American debt, make China happy, help Obama win re-election, and generally just make things peachy-effing-keen for all parties involved: more ›

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• Just the mere whiff of Chinese investment in the Italian debt market had stocks going bonkers on Monday. WSJ points out that, weirdly enough, none of the rumors are really substantiated and this anonymous Italian official just happened to mention the prospects one day before Italian bonds for 2018/2020 go on sale...
• That's Shanghai gives us a nice review of Paul French's new non-fiction murder mystery Midnight in Peking.
• LA Times explains why the mooncake is very much the fruitcake of China. (Agreed - dessert should never feel like a punishment!)

Whoda thunk it? Carson Yeung, the 51 year-old Hongkongnese owner of Birmingham City FC (who were freshly demoted from the Premier League in May), has been charged with five counts of money laundering in a Hong Kong court, having allegedly laundered over $720 million HKD ($92.5 million USD) over six years. more ›

The skeptics who believe China's economy is overheated must be doing a little dance right now: 'Local governments had an overall debt of 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.65 trillion) by the end of 2010, said China's top auditor on Monday in a report to the National People's Congress. It was the first time the world's second-largest economy publicly announced the size of its local governments' debts. The scale amounts to more than one-quarter of its GDP in 2010, which stood at 39.8 trillion yuan. Among the debt, local governments have an obligation to repay 6.7 trillion yuan, or more than 62 percent of the total debt, and they underwrote loans of 2.3 trillion yuan, nearly 22 percent of total debt. Beijing planned to clean up billions in local government debt by shifting 2-3 trillion yuan of debt off the books of local governments, Reuters reported, quoting anonymous sources. Fitch Inc, a major international rating institution, lowered its outlook of China's long-term local-currency rating to "negative" from "stable" in April, saying there is a high "likelihood of a significant deterioration" in banks' asset quality within three years.' [China Daily] more ›

• Boy Killed Anally When Office Chair Explodes [Gizmodo] "Well, stories don't get much worse than this. A 14-year-old boy in China was killed when his chair exploded, sending chunks of metal into his rectum. The bleeding this caused killed him."
• Is anything made in the U.S.A. anymore? You'd be surprised [International Herald Tribune] "The United States remains by far the world's leading manufacturer by value of goods produced. It hit a record $1.6 trillion in 2007 - nearly double the $811 billion of 1987. For every $1 of value produced in China factories, the United States generates $2.50. So what is made in the U.S.A. these days?"
• More than 20 dead in N China coal mine accident [Xinhua] "The accident occurred at about 2: 00 a.m. Sunday at the Tunlan Coal Mine of Shanxi Coking Coal Group in Gujiao City near Taiyuan, the provincial capital, when 436 miners were working underground."