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......

What did Mattel do to stop the toys? by Fons Tuinstra of China Herald: Even a hundred TV-shows cannot hide that something is seriously wrong in the way quality control is done in this country. And yes, there is now a fair amount of China-bashing going on, but that is very well deserved China-bashing. But the question what Mattel, and other companies, have been doing to stop this scandalous export of faulty products is a......

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: Imagethief is glad to hear via the China Daily that CCP members are taking public-relations courses to better equip them in their relations with the media. He imagines what one of these PR training tools, a role-played interview, might look like with senior party officials. Looks like he doesn't have much faith that things will change overnight. Beijing Newspeak writes on the difficulties......

Shanghai Daily columnist Wang Yong in his Op-Ed, At last a manly man who can sing trumps girly boys: For too long, many domestic TV entertainment channels have profaned music and the notion of competition by giving top honors to tomboys or sissy boys for being what they are - boyish girls and feminine boys - NOT for what or how they sing. The realm of music (which if not sacred should at least require......

Imagethief: Are Chinese journalists too credulous at press conferences? : Journalists everywhere have been guilty of occasional credulity. Nevertheless, it seems to me that China's media is at a rather different state of overall development than Western media. It also carries with it the legacy of having grown quite recently from filling a much different social role than Western media. This is not meant to be a comparative criticism, or a judgment on whether Chinese......

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: The TIME China Blog can't help but think of the beyond-terrific HBO series "The Wire" after hearing about the Chinese government's decision to shut down 180 food production centers. Will this decision signal real change in food quality and safety, or is it just akin to the authorities trying to put some "dope on the table for the 6 o'clock news?" So Yi......

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: Ben Ross, an ethnographer who has decided to work for one month as a trainee in a Fuzhou hair salon, continues his near daily account of his ongoing experiment. Here, he is surprised to find corruption seeping down into businesses as basic as hair salons. In this post, he breaks down the money flow and salary system of his coworkers, and estimates that......

Shanghaiist may be accused of going with the flow on occasions, and one of those areas might be to do with our narrow mindset on the lovely, cute and adorable panda. We've applied our finest available powers of research to bring you the following snippets on the flipside of China's panda tail, and yes, it is mucky in there. So let us be accused of panda-ring no more. Yes, this is reporting with bite. The......