• China's Top Muckrakers Stop Digging [Foreign Policy] "There are no pyres of magazines burning, no information police combing the newsstands every morning. Magazine censorship in China is banal. Almost all of the control has long been done in-house before publication, by reporters and editors who know just how far they can and cannot go. The closest many private magazines get to an official censor is someone they call "Teacher," sent from their own publishing houses, to patrol content. But these days, it's not just editors who are drawing in the lines. It's the investors — the owners and backers of China's few independent media outlets. And there is no better example than Caijing, China's leading business magazine, for which I used to work as an editor."
• Tanks out in Beijing in 60th anniversary rehearsal [The Associated Press] "Tanks, armored personnel carriers and rocket launchers rolled along a major Beijing boulevard Sunday in practice for a parade next month to mark China's 60th anniversary. The main east-west artery of Beijing was closed for a rehearsal of the elaborate military parade planned for Oct. 1, when the People's Republic of China celebrates six decades since its founding. The parade is intended to highlight accomplishments China has made in its defense sector."
• China Urged to Subsidize 'New Energy' Vehicles [WSJ] "The head of BYD Co., one of China's leading makers of electric vehicles, urged the Chinese government to subsidize private purchases of all-electric battery cars and other "new energy" vehicles, saying their widespread adoption in China depends on it. Speaking at an industry conference Sunday, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu said a lack of consumer incentives and subsidies has kept BYD from making a plug-in hybrid car available for private buyers. He warned that a continued lack of government assistance might doom all-electric cars and plug-in hybrids in the marketplace because of their currently high cost."

Lately, the Olympics has started to remind us of the kind of conversation wherein someone is prepared to reveal a secret, but the key details are not forthcoming. Rather, the speaker dances around the facts, dropping a hint here and there at a carefully measured pace, meanwhile we sit silently, captivated and spellbound awaiting the payoff when the whole truth is finally revealed to us. So we will wait another 14 days for the start of Games of the XXIX Olympiad. more ›