If there is one article you must read this weekend, it's this article by John Garnaut of the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled "Show them the money, old China". The article offers fascinating insight into what's going on today in Chongqing, one of China's four direct-controlled municipalities, and the economic hub of the western region. Here is an excerpt: more ›

Update (4:45PM): The AFP has corrected the story. The new version sent out across the wires now reads at the top "ATTENTION - CORRECTION: REMOVES quotes from blogger Marc van der Chijs in paras 15-19 which were mistakenly taken from comments made in a blog dated 2007. Here is a corrected repetition." In an email to Shanghaiist, an AFP employee wrote: "The story went out this morning so it should be corrected before it is published in any Australian newspapers and web site versions should also be updated and corrected automatically." more ›

An interesting inside look at how China's state-run spin machine operates from the Sydney Morning Herald. Wonder how they got their hands on this. more ›

China Daily: Shanghai to base growth on service industry more ›

NYT: China Censors a Film, Then Bans It Entirely more ›

A South China tiger has been born in a South African wildlife reserve in South Africa, the first to be born outside China, raising hopes that the species can be saved from extinction. Only about 90 South China tigers are left in the world today. More from Sydney Morning Herald. more ›

What's happening around the nation as one year closes and another begins more ›

Hong Kongers snub Beijing Sydney Morning Herald: Hong Kong voters snub Beijing, strike blow for democracy TIME: One for the Democrats in Hong Kong Reuters: Pro-democracy Chan wins symbolic Hong Kong election Fake moon pictures? Fox: China: Our Moon Photo Is No Fake The Canadian Press: China rejects questions over allegedly generic lunar surface photo The Telegraph: China defends lunar probe pictures China business WSJ: China Railway Shares Surge On Shanghai Trading Debut WSJ:... more ›

The Peking Duck: Is the rush to study Chinese a time-wasting fad? more ›

Despite the fact that Kevin Rudd - the fluent Mandarin speaking leader of the Australian Labor Party - is widely predicted to romp it in at the Australian Federal election this coming Saturday, it seems he's not taking any chances. The latest salvo in Rudd's "earnestness offensive" according to the Sydney Morning Herald, takes form in a seven-metre billboard of The Great Rudd (see right) that has been suspended above Cameron Road in Hong... more ›

The International Olympic Committee has called on Beijing Games organisers to release detailed information about air quality gathered during an August trial when 1.3million cars were taken off the Chinese capital's roads. more ›

The video includes two images of Kevin Rudd cleverly photoshopped into old communist propaganda posters (yes, the type that you'd find in the Dongtai Lu antique market), and classic lines among the subtitles (which are supposed to the translation for the rubbish Chinese voiceovers) include "Rudd impress and frighten Australian person with his earnestness offensive," and "He unnerve decrepit Howard by deploying clever principle of 'similar difference'. Leader Rudd declares swift and violent Education Revolution." Ingenious. And as the Sydney Morning Herald notes, political parties with their multi-million dollar advertising budgets have a thing or two to learn from guerilla tactics such as these. more ›

Excitement is palpable among the crowd as China launched its first lunar orbiter, the Chang'e One satellite (named after the goddess of the moon 嫦娥), half a century after the Russians became the first to set out to space. more ›

During her speech at a conference on quality and safety issues held on Thursday, Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi described a new four-month nationwide campaign to improve the quality of goods and food safety as a "special battle" to ensure the people's health and interests and maintain a good image of Chinese products. more ›

Shanghai prosecutors have charged former property tycoon Zhou Zhengyi with misappropriation of funds, bribery and forging value-added tax receipts, said a government source. more ›

The match signifies the dawn of a new era in Asian football, as the A-League side enter the Asian fray for the first time since Australia quit the Oceania confederation a year ago to join the Asian one. more ›

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on China's plans to reverse the brain drain that has seen one million of its students sent abroad, with two-thirds not coming back:

"It has been a great loss for China - which is now in dire need of people of expertise - to see well-educated professionals leave after the country has invested a lot in them," the official newspaper China Daily quoted one of the report's authors, Li Xiaoli, as saying.

Someone found the image on the right on Google Earth: more ›

Anyway, Huang Jianxiang, the idiot in question, has apologized: more ›

In this week's edition of "Shanghaiist Trashes the Media" we have an article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Here's the premise: more ›

This sounds like a cool job: go out and search for a Shanghai's soul. That's what this reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald was sent to do. However, in the course of this he makes some observations that we found debatable, or in other cases, flat-out wrong. Here's one part of it: more ›

It seems the Australian Broadcasting Corporation follows the tried-and-true inverted pyramid format for writing news stories ... only sometimes they leave out the "inverted" part. Take this story about Xue-Jun Wang, a Sydney Dance Company dancer, for example. He was in Shanghai to perform Mulan, a collaborative project with the Shanghai Song and Dance Ensemble (the show will go on Oct. 18-19 at the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, by the way). And yesterday, Wang got kicked out of China -- "without explanation," as the ABC puts it. more ›