France 24 asks if the Beijing Olympics will have any longlasting environmental legacy. The answer may have come earlier than expected: the smog has come back to envelop Beijing almost as soon as the restrictions on drivers and factories were lifted.......

Is water the new oil? Current TV takes us around China for a look at the reservoirs that have dried up, the arable land that's turned into large swathes of desert, rivers in urban spaces that have become dumps for human and chemical waste and the people's lives that have been affected. It also highlights the army of environmental NGO's that have sprung up only recently and their battle against time.......

As part of their "Toxic series" VBS TV took a trip to the "world's most polluted town", Linfen, in China's Shanxi province. In six episodes David Feinberg reports on a city that is experiencing the dark side of China's economic boom, in the form of massive pollution. Part 1.Welcome to the most polluted city on the planet. Part 2. Like living inside a miner's lungs. Who also smokes.......

Manuela Parrino, an Italian woman who has lived in Beijing for the last 41/2 years said she was "fed up with all the visiting journalists talking negatively about China." She decided to prove China's commitment to free speech during the Olympic Games by applying to protest against pollution, with her 4 year old son, in one of the designated zones. After 9 hours, over 2 days, of officials trying to dissuade her cause, and parrying......

Is the air quality at the Beijing airport really that bad? The New York Times has the story (and some photos): The masks they wore were specially designed by and issued to them by the United States Olympic Committee. The U.S.O.C.’s lead exercise physiologist, Randy Wilber, had advised U.S. Olympians to wear the masks on the plane and as soon as they stepped foot in Beijing. Two of the cyclists wore the masks on the......

Caijing Magazine shares some startling statistics on cancer in China, where smoking, poor diet, water pollution and environmental problems have caused the nation's cancer death rate to rise 80 percent in the past 30 years. The statistics come from an exhaustive survey conducted by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Science and Technology. According to the survey, cancer is now accountable for 25 percent of all urban deaths and 21 percent of all......

You go first... no you go first! One might imagine this kind of bickering taking place near the swings during recess, but at a gathering of world leaders? According to PBS's Thirteen/WNET, that is exactly what is happening at this year's G8 discussions. China and India say it is up to the developed world — the biggest polluters — to take the lead in the fight against climate change. But President Bush has said that......

A thick layer of mutant seaweed has bloomed over vast stretches of the 500-mile coastline of the Qingdao Bao, an Olympic sailing venue. As the algae can only be removed manually, the city has already mobilised 1,000 fishing boats and 3,000 people to haul in algae by the boatloads. Qingdao (青岛) which literally means "green island" is prone to summer algae infestations this time of the year, but apparently this is the worst the city......

Are Beijing's anti-pollution efforts paying off? Just yesterday Xinhua published a highly optimistic article on conditions in Beijing 50 days before the Olympics. According to Xinhua, Beijing's skies are peachy-keen: The number of "blue sky" days was 12 more than the same period last year, according to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau. It was a clear sign that years of anti-pollution efforts by the Olympic host city continue to pay off, said Du Shaozhong,......

China's new ban on plastic bags came into force on Saturday, June 1, but as Gerald Tan of Al-Jazeera finds out, the ban is not without its social cost. The Huaqing Plastic Factory, what used to be China's largest plastic bag manufacturer has closed its doors weeks after the ban was announced in January, and with that, 20,000 people lost their jobs.......

Photo by Sabershadezero After a long and sometimes chaotic winter, the recent heatwave has been much celebrated around the city. Outdoor dining is back, the windows are open, and the locals are sporting this season's hottest pajama fashion. But with all the good weather there's a silver lining or, perhaps more accurately, a poisonous death haze. This is that magical time of year where all the tiny particles in the air heat up and......

Having recently trumped the US as the world's number one carbon emitter, China has a long way to go to be considered an environmental role model. But today, on Earth Day, we have high hopes for clear skies ahead. Cough, cough. Photo of Reuse.bag by Juliette McCawley Shanghai Daily recently reported of the city's ambition to be a national model environmental city before World Expo 2010. And thanks to the impending Olympics, Beijing is trying......

France24 uncovers a heavily-polluted town called Xiditou 300km southeast of Beijing, where lead levels in the water are 300 times the recommended safe amounts. This is one of dozens of "cancer villages" around China, and a whopping 10% of the population have died so far. Even that stray dog towards the end of clip looks so sick. Yikes.......

Taken by Jakob Monstrasio while driving from Wuxi to Shanghai in January 2008 Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos at shanghaiist.com.......

A Saturday time-waster brought to you by The Onion Especially quote-worthy:"The labour of the people has made the sky black with the smoke of progress." "The sky over China is now a rainbow of grace reflecting all the shades of our prosperity." "If pollution ruins a river, we will build a new river. If pollution destroys a mountain, we will build a new mountain. At long last, the world cannot ignore our growing prosperity." Just......

Haile Gebreselassie, Justine Henin and Andy Roddick Although there had been some speculation for quite some time, Ethiopian marathoner and double Olympic gold medalist in the 10,000 meters race, Haile Gabreselassie announced that he won't might be forced to might not participate in the marathon at the Beijing Olympics, due to his asthma. He'll still make the trip to Beijing to compete in his best event, the 10,000 meters race. The 10,000 meters race......

During his discussion with Kerry Brown and Duncan Hewitt at the recently held Shanghai International Literary Festival, Paul French quoted British environmentalist Jonathon Porritt as saying that "the biggest problem with the environment in China is that nobody in China could care less about it". China's environmental woes are well-documented and, despite attempts to convince the world otherwise, the country is still rarely seen as a leader on environmental protection. Having twenty of the world's......

China Hikes Military Budget 17.6% [National Post] "For the 19th year in a row, China has announced a double-digit increase in military spending. The move comes a day after the Pentagon released an annual assessment of China's military power that concluded the world's largest army is rapidly developing the resources and technologies it needs to put regional stability at risk."Aussies unhurt after China hostage drama [The Age] A man armed with explosives took 10 Australian......

Xinhua has announced that from next month on, international passengers will no longer need to fill out quarantine forms when they enter China, and as Shanghai Scrap notes, the changes are just in time for the bird flu season!In yet another ridiculously redundant ranking, Forbes has named Shanghai as the 10th most densely populated city in the world. The data used by Forbes is highly questionable though. According to them, Shanghai has a population of......

Shanghai wants 50 top minds every year “Local authorities are offering lucrative packages to lure leading academics to the city under a new scheme to help boost its competitiveness.” Shanghai to launch int’l channel targeting foreigners “The ICS programs, covering news, information, fashion, entertainment, foreign TV shows and movies, will be aired in English and Japanese, with Chinese captions, for 19 hours a day.” Shanghai GM to launch Buick LaCrosse hybrid prior to Olympic......

Workers clearing China landslide discover bus in the rubble; 29 believed dead [The Canadian Press] The bus was found three days after a landslide tore a 50-metre gash in a mountainside Tuesday heightening concern that the massive reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam, was wreaking ecological havoc in the region.US studios sue Chinese website for film piracy [AFP] 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios have filed a lawsuit against......

Tiger eats tiger in NE China zoo [Xinhua] A Siberian tiger at the Shenyang Glacier Zoo was killed and eaten by four tigers it had lived with for five years over the weekend. Apparently, the cash-strapped zoo has not been able to feed the tigers with sufficient food for the last two years.'Spiderman' Scales Part of China Mountain [AP] A daredevil French climber nicknamed "Spiderman" scaled part of Hunan province's Tianmen Mountain using only his......

They say the Germans invented the art of bureaucracy but the Chinese perfected it. This may be true if a recently compiled list on Tianya forum is anything to go by — it contains over 3,000 permits/licences/fees a Chinese citizen may be subjected to through the course of his/her life. China Digital Times translates just a handful of them, and as they correctly pointed out, some sound reasonable while others just make you go huh:......

The idea of Mask Week (11/17/2007-11/24/2007) got us thinking about the air we breathe in Shanghai. We know it's bad for us, we can see the haze nearly every day, but just how bad is it. So we got on the web and found the historical records for Shanghai air quality provided by the Shanghai Environment Education Centre, you can also go here to find records for 84 Chinese cities. Since the beginning of the......

China urges UN support for Olympic Truce in 2008 [Bangkok Post] China asked the UN General Assembly Wednesday to adopt a resolution supporting the Olympic Truce, a time-honoured practice from ancient Greece to respect the sportive events that will take place in Beijing next year.French foreign minister in China with sensitive issues on agenda [AFP] France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner held talks with China's leaders Wednesday to pave the way for President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit......

Shanghaiist has just touched down in Beijing. And just as we were wondering if it was just us, or if the air in the Jing was really that much worse *cough*cough*, this is what we read:Birth defects in Chinese infants have soared nearly 40 percent since 2001There is one Chinese baby born with birth defects every 30 secondsIn Beijing, the incidence of breast cancer has increased 23 percent in 10 years, with about 45 women......

Like we told you before, Chinese state media are beginning to get the hang of the art of spin. CDT informs us that People's Daily Online ran an article about President Hu's wonderful skills in the traditional Chinese art of paper-cutting and this has spawned yet another wave of satirical commentaries from Chinese bloggers, read here, here and here (in Chinese). Really, Shanghaiist would love to lay his hands on a pic or video of......

If you're still thinking of getting to Sanya (which has often been touted as the Hawaii of China) for that long-awaited getaway, you might very well change your mind after you see this video. Some Chinese guys on holiday in Sanya were disappointed to find out that it wasn't only not all that it was cracked up to be, it was also very dirty and polluted. Armed with a digital camera, they took down everything......

China unleashes cautious giant onto world's financial markets [AFP] The low-key ceremony that marked the launch of China Investment Corp. this weekend could reflect the cautious manner in which Beijing intends to unleash the largest fund in history onto the world's financial markets. Irish charity calls for boycott of Beijing Olympics [Belfast Telegraph] Irish charity Trocaire has called for a boycott of next year's Olympics in Beijing, to highlight China's failure to act on the......

Planning an October holiday escape? Need some fresh air? How does Norway sound? The European Arctic. That should be far enough from the pull of Shanghai's pollution, right? Wrong. These days, there's no escaping China's chief export: Crappy air. Researchers at the Norwegian Polar Institute have said that they've detected chemical traces from China all the way up north on Spitsbergen Island. How do they do it, you ask? Well apparently with some smart detective......