By Jos H.L. Kurstjens Around Shanghai New York Times: Plan to Extend Shanghai Rail Line Stirs Middle Class to Protest AFP: Shanghai metro apologises to kissing couple in Internet video Xinhua: Shanghai aims to become national trendsetter AFP: Beckham to play in Shanghai China Daily: Shanghai to base growth on service industry The New Year Chill AFP: Snow storms cause deaths in China ahead of Lunar New Year AP: Heavy snow in China strands......

Censorship Sydney Morning Herald: China to tighten Internet control Guardian Unlimited: China cracks down on "vulgar" entertainment NYT: China Censors a Film, Then Bans It Entirely The building frenzy Canada.com: Beijing's new skyline: China set to show off to the world Indo-Asian News Service: Beijing opens world's largest air terminal The great big clean-up IHT: Beijing steel company shuts down blast furnace in cleanup effort before Olympics Environment News Service: China to Begin First......

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.......

What's happening around the nation as one year closes and another begins 2007 is definitely the year of angry students. After last month's bloody riot at the Hefei PLA Artillery Academy is a Christmas Eve clash in Tianjin's Nankai University, said to be among China's top ten universities. We all know the powers-that-be do not like angry students, so they will be watching this in 2008.In the above picture, laid off bank workers at the......

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:......

The craze for Chinese language learning The Economist: False Eastern Promise: The craze for teaching Chinese may be a misguided fad Ken Carroll: The Economist at its misguided worst The Peking Duck: Is the rush to study Chinese a time-wasting fad? The Pudong petrol station blast Shanghai Scrap: China National Petroleum to Dead Workers: Blame Yourselves. Wang Jianshuo: Diesel shortage caused traffic jam The lifestyles of the rich and famous Sydney Morning Herald: Britney......

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......

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......

Shanghaiist keeps you up-to-speed with the latest in Australian politics. Remember Kevin Rudd, the Australian Labor Party leader that impressed us all (and President Hu Jintao) with his kickass Chinese skills? Some 23 year old law student with too much time on his hands decided to poke fun at the ongoing Australian election campaign by uploading a Youtube video of Rudd, depicting him as revolutionary leader Chairman Mao. And it was a hit —......

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. Related links LA Times: China launches its first lunar orbiter Sydney Morning Herald: China joins Asian race to the moon Euronews: China launches lunar ambitions with moon shot Herald Sun: China sends first rocket to moon......

Japan's idea of 'broader Asia' partnership irks China [Sydney Morning Herald] The Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has called for a "broader Asia" partnership of democracies to include India, the US and Australia but omit the region's superpower, China. Jailed dissident's wife under house arrest in Beijing [The Guardian] The wife of jailed Chinese activist Yuan Weijing is under house arrest tonight less than 24 hours before she was due to fly to the Philippines......

China jumps to top global financial tier [Sydney Morning Herald] Last Monday, despite bloodshed everywhere else and news that inflation had hit 5.6 per cent in China, the Shanghai Composite Index hit a new record high of 4840. It has risen nearly 500 per cent since July 2005, making every other big market look lifeless by comparison. The combined market capitalisation of Shanghai and its sister bourse in the southern city of Shenzhen has hit......

Intercontinental football comes to town tomorrow night in the shape of a fascinating clash between Australian side Sydney FC and local favourites Shanghai Shenhua in the Asian Champions League. 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. And with typical Aussie bravado, Sydney FC captain......

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......

Someone found the image on the right on Google Earth: Google Earth, the satellite imaging site that brought us hovering cars, is now the source of a mysterious new find - this time an unusual man-made landscape in a remote part of China. The Chinese site based in the very remote Huangyangtan region, appears to be a small-scale model of a piece of territory complete with snow-topped mountains, streams and valleys. The find, recorded by......

By now, you have likely heard about the CCTV sportscaster who got a little ... ahem ... overzealous during his call of the final horrifying moments of the Australia-Italy match in the World Cup -- but have you actually heard him? Play the clip above to hear just how far down Italy's jockstrap this guy's head was. What an idiot. (Shanghai Daily also offers up an audio clip.) Anyway, Huang Jianxiang, the idiot in question,......

In this week's edition of "Shanghaiist Trashes the Media" we have an article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Here's the premise: Given that I'm no stranger to bashing my credit card in the more established fashion capitals of Paris, Milan and New York, I decided it was only right that I took myself and my slightly less enthusiastic shopper of a boyfriend, David, off to Shanghai for a week of bargain hunting -- and to......

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: There have been some incidents of young Westerners being set upon by gangs of young Chinese ultra-nationalists in the past year or two,......

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......