Uh-oh spaghetti-o's. Looks like it's time again for another round of harrumphing over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands: "China on Monday demanded Japan immediately withdraw its fishing ships out of the waters of the Diaoyu Islands. 'China has lodged solemn representation with the Japanese side,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei made the remarks in reply to a question saying some Japanese boats were sent to fish in the waters of the Diaoyu Islands. According to the Japanese media, about 10 fishing boats belonging to a fishery cooperative in Ishigaki, Okinawa Prefecture, left a local port Sunday to operate in the waters of the Diaoyu Islands, known as Senkaku in Japan. 'China has indisputable sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands that have been an inherent part of China since ancient times,' Hong said, stressing that any actions taken by Japan in the area were invalid. It is reported that the Japanese fishing boats have already withdrawn from the Diaoyu Islands waters, Hong said, without providing a time frame." [China Daily] more ›

When the world first heard of Farmer Yang, it was a tale a gruff but resourceful rural McGuyver who had begun protecting his land from hungry developers with a homemade artillery - fireworks and maybe a molotov cocktail or two (reports varied). The next time we heard about him, it was through the increasingly depressing tweets of Al Jazeera correspondent Melissa K Chan. And now we know exactly what happened. more ›

• The Spring Festival migration has started in earnest, with an estimated 9.2 million railway passengers having already headed home this past weekend. Follow the latest on Xinhua's new "Travel Rush" website.
• Little-known Chinese car manufacturer BYD has upped the ante in the electric car race with the world's first production plug-in hybrid. The F3DM will be unveiled tomorrow at the International Motor Show in Detroit.
• Land disputes are again cropping up in China: villagers in Jilin are forming an independent farmers' union to collect funds from appropriated lands, while the Economist reports on a potentially "revolutionary" land auction outside Beijing that turns out to be "little more than a typical story of a rural official trying to make money from land." The apparent problem in the latter case is that some 50% of the farmers in the area can't provide evidence of their land rights.