We like it when China gets play on the Colbert Report, especially when he interviews people who know things about stuff. Last night The New Yorker's China correspondent Evan Osnos went on the show for his second time to face Colbert's wit-laden badgering (or as Osnos describes it on his blog, to play the role of "informative tackling dummy".) more ›

Evan Osnos of the New Yorker revisits the process by which Ai Weiwei was approached by the government to build the studio in 2008, given resources and encouragement to complete it by last year, then told in July that it would be demolished. "We get this paper and it says that the studio has to be destroyed. I thought it was some kind of mistake... There was never any paper to explain what had changed but several people who work with him told me that it was because of my political involvement.” Osnos concludes, "Knocking down the studio of China’s most uncooperative public intellectual is the kind of spectacularly counterproductive public-relations move that makes one wonder how China’s economy is run so professionally when other parts of the state are not." Ai Weiwei managed to reach the studio Wednesday afternoon in time to catch the last few stages of demolition. We posted some pics as they were being uploaded from the scene, you can see all of them here and here. more ›

Leading Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is being profiled on The New Yorker's Evan Osnos' blog this week. more ›

Pictured is the Geely Beauty Leopard, a sporty sedan from the first Chinese automaker to display a car at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It sells in China for US$15,125 and comes standard with a karaoke player. Geely cars aren't available for sale in the U.S. yet, and if they ever will be, it won't be for a couple of years. Same goes for the cute little Chinese Chery cars (profiled by Peter Hessler in The New Yorker), expected to cross the Pacific in 2007. But, according to this TIME story, making waves in America won't necessarily be easy for Chinese car companies: more ›