The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Group (HSH), which owns and operates all Peninsula Hotels worldwide, will remove shark fin from all menus in their associated properties beginning on January 1st, 2012. more ›

Most of us in Shanghai know about the failure of Dongtan, an eco-friendly concept that was supposed to be built on Chongming Island, but that's just one of dozens of "low-carbon" concept cities the Chinese government wanted to built... and have actually built. Unfortunately, if unsurprisingly, most of the ones now in existence aren't environmental at all. Says energy researcher Jiang Kejun in this telling interview on Chinadialogue, the problem lies in what the government thinks is green: "We can’t blame Langfang or any other city - they were working to the ministry’s standards. But now that “low-carbon” is the thing, the ministry is calling “environmentally-friendly” cities “low-carbon” instead. Langfang is a small city, you can normally bike from home to work in ten minutes, and drive in three or four - but car usage is higher than in Beijing. Why? Because parking is free and the roads are wide... The most frightening thing is that, in the future, half of China’s urban population will be in cities like this. If they all copy Beijing, our low-carbon cities are done for." more ›

Ignoring the shortcomings of Dongtan and other failed attempts at an eco-friendly settlement, China is forging ahead to create another "green city" in the north. This time, with financial assistance from the Singapore government, developers insist the project will succeed. more ›

A few kilometers northeast of Shanghai, developers have been dreaming of a 400,000-citizen sister city. Rapid development is nothing new in China, as this recent cement-production graph shows. And, as the global community is more and more quick to point out, all those new factories, highways and residences do considerable damage to the whole world’s environment. But this new city comes with a catch — it will be powered entirely by renewable energy. more ›

We've been somewhat faithful readers of Foreign Policy for awhile and noticed that they had a couple of articles that either mention or focus on China in their recent issue. Jeff Chang has written an article called It's a Hip-Hop World where he talks about how globalized hip hop has become, and, in this context, mentions Shanghai. More worrisome than a bunch of seventeen-year-olds in baggy pants is information we found in the article on... more ›