Free Republic

A big economic slump has started in China as predicted. The rest of the world has came to know about it through none other than Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang. They disclosed to the world a steep rise in short-term interest rates, falling exports and a slump in the nation’s economic growth — undesirable facts and figures that those in power in Beijing would have concealed in the past. This is because the Xi-Li leadership has realized that the Chinese economy is in such dire straits that any further deterioration would cause a serious global impact....

A survey by New York-based magazine Conde Nast Traveler has ranked Guangzhou and Shenzhen among the world's top 20 most unfriendly cities. How many respondents have been to Guangzhou and Shenzhen? Condé Nast Traveler released the lists of the friendliest and unfriendliest cities in the world recently. According to its website, a total of 46,476 respondents were surveyed. China’s Guangzhou is considered the 11th unfriendliest city while Shenzhen is the 14th on the list. So what were exactly asked in this not-very-scientific survey to determine these embarrassing results for Guangdong Province? The survey didn't introduce how many respondents have been...

China has made great strides in the technological research into the control rod drive mechanism, a key piece of equipment for nuclear power plants, according to a ministry statement issued Wednesday. The Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) made the announcement in a brief statement, citing progress made in a government-funded research project carried out by state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN). CGN launched the "Research of Control Rod Drive Mechanism for Mega-Kilowatt-Class Pressurized Water Reactor" project in 2011 as part of the country's efforts to break foreign monopolies on bottleneck technologies. Scientists with the project have completed research...

BEIJING: Patients in China are swarming to acupuncture clinics to be given bee stings to treat or ward off life-threatening illness, practitioners say. More than 27,000 people have undergone the painful technique -- each session can involve dozens of punctures -- at Wang Menglin's clinic in Beijing, says the bee acupuncturist who makes his living from believers in the concept. But except for trying to prevent allergic reactions to the stings themselves, there is no orthodox medical evidence that bee venom is effective against illness, and rationalist websites in the West describe so-called "apitherapy" as "quackery". "We hold the bee,...

Chinese consumers are responding to a powerful new marketing tactic that plays to a widespread fear of food contamination - the promise of safe groceries sold online. Pledging produce direct from the farm, vendors have found food is becoming one of the fastest-growing segments of Internet retailing as they cash in on scares from cadmium-tainted rice to recycled cooking oil. The trend is adding momentum to a Chinese online retail boom driven by a rapidly expanding middle class, with companies such as COFCO Ltd and Shunfeng Express betting that a decent slice of a 1.3 billion population will pay for...

Neighbors of rocky villa claim the construction was illegal and could cause a building collapse. Until then, mountain views are an elevator ride away for Professor Zhang Lin. Top this one, Trump. A Chinese professor built a mountaintop getaway on top of a towering apartment building in Beijing. Professor Zhang Lin’s rock-covered villa had the height right — it sits 26 floors up — but the home is dispensed with the rest of the mountain, Yahoo! News reported. Neighbors say their building is crumbling beneath a man-made mountain in Beijing. The tower residents left to hold up their ambitious neighbor’s...

The Chinese want to join the shale gas revolution, even if it means drilling for oil in China’s earthquake hot bed in the Sichuan region, where nearly 70,000 died in an earthquake in 2008. Royal Dutch Shell Plc and China National Petroleum have started 'fracking' operations in the province. China hopes to boost annual shale gas production to 6.5 billion cubic meters by 2015, and reserves are estimated at about 1,115 trillion cubic feet, according to the US Energy Information Administration, higher than the estimated 665 trillion gas reserves on American soil. Europe's largest oil company plans to invest $1...

According to calculations by Dow Jones, the People’s Bank of China Bank of China and Chinese banks sold a net 41.2 billion yuan ($6.7 billion) of foreign currency in June. Others believe the amount of net sales that month was closer to 48 billion yuan. In any event, June’s net sale of foreign currency was not large. The statistic, however, is significant because it suggests that the liquidity crisis that month reversed strong capital inflows. In short, money is now leaving China. Prior to June, money was flooding into the country. Net purchases of foreign currency averaged 377.5 billion yuan...

(Reuters) - Multinational companies in China say they are being forced to pick sides in a turf war between two major financial regulators fighting over which agency will drive currency and capital account liberalization. The conflict between the People's Bank of China (PBOC) and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) risks undermining confidence in the country's commitment to pulling down barriers that will finally open up the economy, analysts say. As President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang try to build confidence in their reformist agenda through consensus and resolution, analysts say the last thing they need is key...

Management of Beijing's famous Summer Palace said the damaged heads of several Buddha statues was the work of Mother Nature and history not thugs, CRI reported. The original heads of the Buddha statues on the wall around the Wisdom Sea, which were reported as lost recently, were actually ruined by allied forces ravaging the park a century ago, management said, according to the report. Summer palace affixed news heads to the broken Buddha statues as part of a facelift in 1982 and 2006, but the patched heads all dropped later as they expanded in heat and contracted in cold due...