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Fudan University in Shanghai is to study China's historical figures such as Confucius and the early emperors through modern DNA technology, Beijing Times reports. The studies follow the latest findings published on Monday on Cao Cao, a warlord who lived nearly 2,000 years ago in final years of the Eastern Han Dynasty. It debunked rumors that Cao's father Cao Song was fostered by comparing the DNA of Cao's living descendents and that found in the teeth of Cao's grandfather. Han Sheng from Fudan University, who led the Cao Cao research, says it is a breakthrough in the fields of both...

At least six people have been confirmed dead and another six were injured after a blast triggered by liquid nitrogen occurred late Monday night in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The Xinjiang regional bureau of work safety said on Monday that the blast happened at around 11:30 p.m. in a plant owned by Xinjiang No. 8 Steel Structure Co. Ltd. The source said that five workers were killed on the spot. One of the seven injured died in hospital. The cause of the blast is still under investigation.

Days after a terrorist attack at the historic Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, China for the first time expressed strong support for "counter-terrorism" cooperation with India and Russia at a meeting here Sunday. Sources told The Indian Express that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi "red-flagged" the issue on his own as he held talks with External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the 12th Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral meeting. Wang reportedly said that the attack at Tiananmen Square involved jehadist elements. The RIC joint statement, released after the meeting, made a mention of the...

UNITED NATIONS — China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam are among the nations running unopposed for seats on the Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s highest rights watchdog body, a prospect that has independent human rights groups crying foul. On Tuesday, the General Assembly will elect 14 new members to the 47-seat, Geneva-based council, which can shine a spotlight of publicity and censure on rights abuses by adopting resolutions — when it chooses to do so. It also has dozens of special monitors watching problem countries and major issues ranging from executions to drone strikes. New York-based Human Rights Watch pointed...

David Cameron has delayed the Treasury’s Autumn Statement on the economy in order to conduct a major diplomatic visit to China. The Prime Minister will visit China in the coming weeks, ending a diplomatic row that had seen Britain struggling to make high-level contact with the Chinese leadership after Mr Cameron last year held a private meeting in London with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet. On Monday night a Treasury spokesman said: “Tonight the Prime Minister announced that he will lead a delegation to China in early December. As a result the Autumn Statement will now be...

A Korean medical tourism information session involving 12 hospitals from Seoul’s Gangnam district took place at Yangyuan Hotel in Dalian City, China on Friday. The event brought together more than 300 people, including citizens and officials from local medical tourism agencies, and local hospitals. The participants attentively watched presentations by medical doctors from Korean hospitals, including Samsung Seoul Center, MizMedi Women`s Hospital and BK Plastic Surgery Hospital, who are widely recognized for excellence in their respective fields of medicine. The event was organized to attract Chinese patients who have growing interest in quality medical service amid China’s robust economic growth....

China's top two oil and gas companies have accelerated shale gas exploration. PetroChina Co, China's largest oil and gas producer, announced on Friday that its first shale gas project in Daqing, Heilongjiang province, started test runs in early October. Sinopec Co, the country's largest refiner, said it has discovered enough shale gas resources for commercial scale production in Chongqing on Oct 28. The company said its shale gas block in Chongqing has reached the maximum daily output of 547,000 cubic meters. Insiders said the top two oil and gas companies – PetroChina Co and Sinopec Co – have accelerated their...

BEIJING, Nov. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- China‘s new leadership is poised to tolerate slower growth as it tries to shake off its long-term GDP mania and put social progress and environmental welfare at the top of the nation’s agenda. Under the existing "GDP growth is the king" performance evaluation plan, local government leaders have strong incentives to push investment, without any regard for the quality of peoples' lives or environmental capacity. An encouraging message from China's leadership was President Xi Jinping's call for putting an end to the performance evaluation system based on GDP growth during a recent field trip to...

Li Keqiang, in a speech released last week, said a 7.2% annual increase in China’s gross domestic product creates 10 million new jobs a year. The premier, therefore, believes each percentage point of growth produces 1.4 million jobs. Morgan Stanley’s Ruchir Sharma, writing in the Wall Street Journal just before the release of Li’s speech, told us that each percentage point of growth results in 1.6 million to 1.7 million new jobs. Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that last year China’s GDP jumped 7.7%. Applying Sharma’s formula, the economy should have created 12.3 to 13.1 million new jobs in...

(Reuters) - Tan Yingyu is one of China's 200 million migrant workers and like many he is stuck: he does not want to return to his village but also cannot become a legal resident in the city of Chengdu, where he has worked for nearly 20 years. His dilemma highlights a key issue for China's reformist leaders as they look for ways to encourage more people to move to cities to help turn a credit- and investment-driven economy into a consumer-powered one. If rural Chinese are given formal rights to their land, they could cash in its value and feel...

For most of the thirty-five or so years that I’ve been in the China-watching business, the easiest question of all to answer has always been: “Tell us what will happen next?” Easy because the best answer has consistently been: “Pick a point sufficiently high on the chart, ten years out, and China will reach that.” It might not have followed a straight path in actuality, but at the end of the ten years, the extrapolation – which was always somewhere between 8-10% — was pretty nearly always essentially right. True, some years, 1989, for example, were more challenging than others,...

(Reuters) - China's investigations aimed at rooting out corruption have now extended to the shipping industry, with China COSCO Holdings (1919.HK)(601919.SS) saying that one of its top executives is the subject of government inquiries. COSCO, China's largest bulk shipping company, announced on Friday that its vice president, Xu Minjie, had resigned - a day after it said he was "under investigation by the relevant authorities", phrasing used in China to describe corruption investigations. The company's brief statement to the Shanghai stock exchange on Friday said that there were no disagreements between Xu and the board but gave no further details....

Next, starting college is often difficult- moving away from home for the first time. But what if you could stay at home and learn? Chinese Nobel laureate Mo Yan has taken a job as honorary principal of a new online university which was founded on Wednesday. Let’s find out more. China’s ever-expanding group of online writers are getting more attention, including that of Nobel laureate Mo Yan. Writers and senior editors from major literary websites have been invited to join this newly established online university.  Mo Yan, Author, said, "When the Internet started to thrive, I thought I would...

The best warfare strategy is to attack the enemy's plans, next is to attack alliances. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War A growing chorus of nations is decrying Washington's unrestrained cyber espionage. However, there is only one country with both the means and motivation for using mounting international resentment to challenge American hegemony. The NSA surveillance of America's allies has opened up two vital fronts in which China can erode American global dominance. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying has claimed the rhetorical high ground, calling cyber security "a matter of sovereignty". She said Beijing is eager to address...

BEIJING: A 10-year-old Chinese boy jumped 30 floors to his death after failing to write a self-criticism letter demanded by his teacher, state media reported on Thursday. The fifth-grade primary school student had been ordered to write a 1,000-character apology by his teacher for talking in class, China National Radio (CNR) reported on its website, citing a neighbour. The educator allegedly told him to jump out of a building after he failed to complete the task, the report quoted relatives and the neighbour as saying. "Teacher, I can't do it," was found written in one of his textbooks, CNR said....

BEIJING: Four domestic Chinese flights were diverted on Thursday after bomb threats were received, state media reported, days after an attack rocked Tiananmen Square in the capital. The official Xinhua news agency reported that an unidentified suspect had been arrested in connection with the false threats, which affected four flights to and from Changsha in the central province of Hunan. Searches of the aircraft found no explosive devices. It was not immediately clear whether the suspect was the same person responsible for a multiple bomb threat made two days earlier, also at Changsha airport. According to central broadcaster CCTV, Tuesday's...

While talk of political dysfunction in the United States dominated many of the conversations at this year's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, another topic was causing anxiety: China's economic slowdown and its implications for the region. China's so-called economic miracle has powered growth in Asia for years, helped deepen trade ties and spread much-needed capital to its neighbors. But now, it looks like slowing growth in China could spill across borders to less-developed parts of the continent. The World Bank just downgraded its forecast for the increase in China's GDP this year to 7.5% from 8.3%. Its estimate for the...

China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC), China's biggest offshore oil and gas producer, announced on Wednesday new gas and oil discoveries in the Bohai Sea. The findings come from the Lvda 5-2 North and Kenli 9-5/9-6 wells, in the Bohai Sea's Liaodong Bay and the Laixi structure, respectively. The production of Lvda 5-2N-2 well was tested at over 1,000 barrels per day, and Kenli 9-6-2 well at around 200, the CNOOC said. The company also revealed total assets in excess of 1 trillion yuan (163 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of September.

Expats are invited to a high-end job fair on Saturday, with more than 7,000 vacancies at companies, schools and hospitals in neighboring Zhejiang Province. The event, organized by the Zhejiang Province Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, features 300 companies and organizations offering 3,000 kinds of jobs in 60 sectors. These include, education, new materials, mechanical engineering, solar energy, electronics, telecommunications, trade, finance, medicine, chemistry, textiles, construction, agriculture and marine resources. College teachers, scientific researchers and management talents in the tertiary education field are most in demand, accounting for nearly half of all the job openings. Education institutes attending include...

Despite piles of newspapers and magazines on display, Beijing newsstand owner Mr. Xia uses his mobile phone to browse the news online. "If I did not sell drinks and phone cards, I would be at a loss every day," he said. His newsstand, in west Zhongguancun, Haidian district, feels stale. The kiosk is less than 10 square meters, sells cold drinks, cigarettes, chewing gum and so forth, and looks like a mini grocery store. Xia, 32, begins to work at 7 a.m. every day and returns home about 8 p.m., rain or shine. "It's hard to make money selling just...