In articles written exclusively for AmCham's China Brief magazine, US presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have outlined their visions for US-China relations if they were to come to power. From Obama:In the coming years, the United States and China face challenges that require fresh thinking and a change from the US policy approach of the past eight years. How the US and China meet these challenges, and the extent to which we can......

Welcome to the newest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. This week Jenny and Amber jump into a topic that's on (almost) everyone's lips -- the US presidential election. If you're in China this Fall (and especially if you're an American), you'll need to be able to answer the inevitable......

Things are getting heated in the build-up to U.S. Presidential elections this coming fall, and China is a subject that both candidates keep coming back to, and that American voters are eager to hear about. The faltering Olympic organization and burgeoning economy of the PRC have been getting most of the attention, but in the past few days it has been other issues that have turned the attention of the Presidential hopefuls and their supporters......

has been revealed by Thomas Crampton on his blog. Anyone know anything about these guys?......

Olympics China Rises: Restricting the foreign press Reuters: China urged to curb executions ahead of Olympics China Herald: Another Olympic mishap: problems in getting tickets Channel NewsAsia: Hong Kong toughens rhetoric to avoid Olympic Games protests ABC News: Athletes banned from Beijing opening ceremony China and the U.S. Blogging For China: America opens its doors, slightly, to Chinese tourists People’s Daily: First Chinese leisure travelers to U.S. greeted by music, hospitality Washington Post: In......

Photo credit: sniderscion Torontoist spent its week uncovering who was behind mysterious ads for a drug called "Obay" that popped up across the country (Scientology? Frank Shepard Fairey?), first tracing them to an advocacy group called Colleges Ontario and then confirming their suspicions a few days later.Phillyist learned how to put on a puppet show – it's not as easy as you might think!Shanghaiist discovers that the average starting monthly pay for fresh graduates......

Photo by Phillyist's Matt Johnson, SkyscraperSunset.com, December 19, 2007. Phillyist explored an impending implosion and lived to tell the tale.Gothamist marveled at the city's new NYC-branded condom campaign - especially the use of a Toronto landmark in the advertising. (Also, fun fact: Gothamist turned five years old yesterday.)Tired of the worldwide Scientology protests? Torontoist totally isn't: they covered the big downtown protest the day it happened, and followed up with an examination of all......

Photograph of Michael Strahan, coach Tom Coughin (holding the Vince Lombardi trophy) and quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning by Tien Mao Gothamist was amazed after the Giants won the Super Bowl, the city went wild, and it witnessed a ticker-tape parade.Barack Obama drew 20,000+ ahead of Seattle’s Saturday caucus.Londonist had Super Tuesday too.Elusive guerrilla street artist Banksy revisits Los Angeles.After the Patriots lost the Super Bowl and came this close to making......

SFist worried over drugstore chain Walgreens celebration of Black History Month.Gothamist was surprised that apparently New York City is the fourth most miserable city in the country, after Detroit, Stockton, CA, and Flint, MI.Shanghaiist finds out what the Chinese think of Hilary and Obama.It was with a healthy amount of schadenfreude that Phillyist reported that former Eagle, and now Cowboy (ew), Terrell Owens owes the Eagles a significant wad of cash.Torontoist is two weeks......

Here, Shanghai, were your favourite stories for the month of January: Most Voted: 1. Shanghai Media Gossip: NVR says never again 2. The return of the KMT 3. Do China’s leaders really want to bond like Bill? 4. Will China win the Olympics? 5. The view from the top of Shanghai's (yet to be finished) tallest skyscraper Most Commented: 1. Book Review: American Shaolin 2. This laowai's gone to heaven 3. Barack Obama and the......

As mentioned before, US expatriates are, for the first time, able to vote in a global primary, meaning that they get their own set of delegates during the primaries, which decide each party's respective presidential candidate. This particular event, held on Tuesday at the ecologically sound and coolly designed URBN hotel, was well attended. Computers were set up to help people register, liquor and hors d'ouevres helped people mingle, and Barack Obama's victory speech from......

Sufei hits the streets of Beijing and asks people what they think of the US presidential candidates, and who she should support. Apparently, most of them only recognise Hilary and either do not know/support Obama. One man says he looks too "aggressive" to be the president. Hmm.........

Shanghaiist is happy to learn that we finally have a chance to break free from the shackles of political impotence and actually make somewhat of a difference in the increasingly heated U.S. presidential campaign. Democrats Abroad, the overseas branch of the U.S. Democratic Party, is holding its first global presidential primary from February 5th through the 12th. For the first time, expatriates who are American citizens have a chance to vote in the Democratic primary......

By JFK Miller So it’s Huckabee and Obama in Iowa. Clearly it’s early days, and neither candidate is a certainty for their respective parties’ nomination for the November presidential election. But it’s worth looking at what both candidates have had to say on the record about China. First Huck. Huck is a Baptist minister turned Republican politician who wrote a best-selling book about his fat-shedding experience entitled Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and......

Well, ok, it's his disembodied voice on a conference call, but we still think having the U.S. senator and Democratic presidential hopeful drop the PRC a line is pretty cool. Even though actual voting won't be happening for a while, election season is in full gear, and the campaign group "Americans in China for Obama" are kicking things off in Shanghai with a cocktail party tomorrow night: Senator Obama Conference Call and Reception: June 7th......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing-- what's going on in the World of the -ist's? Bostonist dug deep to uncover Barack Obama's unpaid parking tickets, their Governor's latest ethical lapse, and a plagarizing sports writer. Chicagoist had everything in twos: two views on having the Olympics, losing two members of their Super Bowl team, and two music festivals. DCist put their noses in legal books as......

Spring appears to have, er, sprung, at least temporarily, in most of the Ist-A-Verse, so naturally, we're all feeling pretty good. (Yes, we know that spring doesn't officially start till later this month. Just let us enjoy our weather!) And that makes us that much more eager to share all of the nifty things we're up to... Over at Sampaist, spring has more than sprung: it's sweltering! But, as everyone knows, museums are an ideal......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur, the......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

If you're hiking, consider charging up your iPod, as Seattlest finds out that a man lost during a hike was found by the glow of his iPod. That cleverness seems to be devoid in cops who were using police cruiser instant messaging clients - although we imagine IMs "so are you nakie" to be included in cop shows, just for realism. If only the cops were busting the Hummer-driving jerk who made a poor parking......