Despite threatening earlier to cancel the enterprise, China Three Gorges Corp will now follow through with the $1.6 billion West Seti River hydropower project in an effort to "recharge" Nepal's lacking electricity reserves and promote the nation's development. more ›

A 31-kilometer section of the new S207 highway in Gansu, an 8.7 billion RMB project ($1.36 billion USD), is already being repaired for cracks mere months after opening for service. The 235-kilometer Tianding Expressway (天定高速) runs from Tianshui (天水) to Dingxi (定西) in Gansu, and was completed on May 31st. more ›

Ah, the old accoutrements of modern civilization bait n' switch! How shrewd. Reuters is reporting that the Chinese government is going to make it rain something fierce on the Tibet Autonomous Region, to the tune of 300 billion RMB ($47 billion USD) over the next four years. The figure more than doubles the 138 billion RMB spent on Tibet from 2006 to 2010. more ›

Chinese drivers, our heart goes out to you (when you're not trying to kill us on a daily basis). We know of the Book of Job-like struggles you face just to get your hands on a car, now one of the main face-maintaining/wife-snagging accoutrements in contemporary China. Import taxes and price markups are absurd: the starting cost of a 2011 BMW 650i Convertible in the United States begins at 550,880RMB ($85,550 USD), while the same car in China starts at 2,039,000RMB ($316,650 USD). more ›

God/Allah/Buddha/老天爷 has spoken, and it would appear that zhe isn't too hot on this high-speed rail hullabaloo. The superficially shiny bauble that is the new high-speed rail network could not possibly be faring worse than it is right now, barring any new revelations alleging that the free 5100 Tibetan Spring mineral water given out on high-speed journeys is chock full of the cancer. Another 20 Beijing-Shanghai trains were affected by a power failure yesterday evening, with over 6,000 ornery and jittery passengers delayed for three hours. more ›

I don't know, maybe we should just start a daily photo gallery of crap that's collapsed or fallen apart around China? This week, the White River Bridge in Beijing's Huairou district collapsed when a truck weighing approximately 160 tons tried to drive across it. more ›

The freight rail across Eurasia officially launched on Thursday night, with a cargo train leaving on its journey from Chongqing to Duisburg, Germany, filled with laptops and LCD screens scheduled to arrive in Europe two weeks after leaving China. more ›

China Premiere Wen Jiabao has a piece in today's Financial Times about China's economy. He says in the article (most of which is behind the FT's paywall, grr!) that China is capable of sustaining fast economic growth and that it has brought inflation under control. more ›

Tim Pawlenty is currently considered the most boring candidate in the race for who will face Obama in next year's United States presidential election. He's also been described as a moderate. That's definitely not true - and If his comments about China are any indication, he's just as inane as the best of the contenders. more ›

In about a month you will be able to travel from Shanghai to Beijing and back both super fast and in style! With speeds of over 200 kmph and up to 300kmph, the 1,318-kilometer-long journey between the two cities will be cut in half, from ten to five hours. Originally, the speed was planned to be as much as 350 kmph, but for safety and other reasons, the trains have been slowed down. more ›

Shanghai made it to the top of China's list of fastest developing cities in 2009, beating out Beijing and Tianjin by a pretty wide margin both in terms of population and GDP per capita. According to China.org.cn, the cities were evaluated on a "comprehensive assessment basis" that took into acount the size of the economy, number of employed, and location and infrastructure, as well as financial things we don't quite understand - like fixed assets investment, gross output of industrial enterprises, etc. But don't pat yourself on the back just yet - we haven't gotten top spot in everything. Says Shanghai Daily, we're only third in China for efficiency of public services, despite spending the most out of anyone on that sector. Better get to fixing that, Shanghai - there's no place like first place! more ›

• Time to Board China's Infrastructure Train [Barrons.com] "Around 250 Chinese cities are planning to build new subway lines by 2015; the city of Changshang in central China alone is investing 22.4 billion yuan in two new subway lines." Changshang?
• China says U.S. provoked naval confrontation [LA Times] "China blamed the United States on Tuesday for a naval confrontation in the South China Sea over the weekend, contending that an American surveillance vessel was illegally conducting activities in China's special economic zone."
• Hoops in the Far East: A primer on China's basketball development [Sporting News] "Indeed, Yao has been away from the CBA long enough to have lost some perspective on it. But, in the coming years, the league figures to grow in importance. As crises in older economies around the world deepen, belt-tightening already has seeped into the basketball universe, with some players having trouble getting paid in Europe and with the NBA taking out a loan to prop up half of its struggling teams. China, though, is on the uptick, which figures to give its league more sway in the future."