Free Republic

As skyscrapers around Hong Kong harbor erupted into a reverie of laser beams and giant digital displays during their synchronized nightly light show, one innocuous 28-story building near the water’s edge had stayed dark for months, clad in bamboo scaffolding for a face-lift. Then, in June, the renovated tower came to life, flashing giant Chinese characters that some in Hong Kong saw as a warning. “People’s Liberation Army,” it said.Many in this prosperous city had already feared that Hong Kong’s future as an open society as well as a semi-autonomous part of China was in jeopardy in the face of...

Five months after the first pictures surfaced in February 2014, the Type 055 cruiser testing rig at Wuhan has taken significant steps towards completion. The advantages of a land based test rig allow Chinese naval engineers to make cheaper adjustments and modifications to the electronics, compared to rebuilding an expensive cruiser on sea trials. Once launched, the Type 055 cruiser will be among the world's most powerful surface combatant warships, giving the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) a multipurpose warship useful for both blue water expeditionary warfare and anti-access/area denial missions. While much scaffolding remains, the photos show recent additions...

Chinese authorities have tightened already rigorous Internet controls by cracking down on online pornography and what state media called “rumormongers” and “slanderous content.” […] Xinhua said the government would also increase punishments for spreading rumors online, although it didn’t specify how it would do that. Already, Chinese courts can sentence people for up to three years in prison for writing online comments deemed defamatory. As part of the new campaign, the government has shut down websites and punished nearly 40 people it called rumormongers. …

One of ChinaÂ’s renowned ancient towns was under water on Wednesday as heavy rain hit the centre of the country, with tens of thousands of people evacuated from the area. The old town district of Fenghuang nestles on the banks of a winding river in a picturesque, mountainous part of Hunan province, and boasts stunning Qing and Ming dynasty architecture dating back hundreds of years. [Â…] According to ChinaÂ’s official Xinhua news agency, the Tuojiang river in the town had reached 1.1 meters above its previous highest recorded level, and several bridges had been damaged or destroyed. Â…

Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry showcased his guitar-playing skills when he hosted a lunchtime jam session during talks with officials in Beijing, China. In the Wall Street Journal news item about the performance, which was posted last night, reporter Sarah Larimer reached out to two guitar "experts," asking them to comment on Kerry's skills.

As diplomatic talks in China come to a close, one of the country’s biggest newspapers is warning citizens against a “new Cold War” with the United States. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/12/new-cold-war-chinas-top-paper-warns-slippery-slope/#ixzz37Gx5rNiO Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

(Reuters) - A Beijing court has ruled against Apple Inc by upholding the validity of a patent held by a Chinese company, clearing the way for the Chinese company to continue its own case against Apple for infringing intellectual property rights. Apple had taken Shanghai-based Zhizhen Internet Technology and China's State Intellectual Property Office to court to seek a ruling that Zhizhen's patent rights to a speech recognition technology were invalid. But the Beijing First Intermediate Court on Tuesday decided in Zhizhen's favour, the People's Daily state newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Chinese officials believe that Pres. Obama is “fundamentally weak and disinterested” regarding Chinese aggression, says Christopher Johnson, a former top CIA analyst and current senior advisor to the Center For Strategic & International Studies on China Studies. “They believe Obama is fundamentally weak and disinterested,” Johnson says, warning, “We need a lot more weight on the economic side, because that’s what keeps your relationship from tipping into a Cold War relationship.” The Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan and India all face illegal maritime or territorial claims by China, Forbes reports, citing China’s interest in taking over the natural resources...

The U.S. is looking for concessions from China to kick start international negotiations on liberalizing trade in high-technology products. […] Negotiations to update the 1996 agreement have been snared by China’s desire to protect dozens of new product categories. Some 70 countries participate in the agreement, accounting for much of global trade in that sector. …

German Chancellor Angela Merkel heads to China this weekend for her seventh visit, eager to deepen trade and investment ties between the export powerhouses of Europe and Asia. For the EU’s biggest economy, China is a crucial mass market, where companies want its technology and millions of newly prosperous crave German goods from Audi sedans to luxury home appliances. […] China is Germany’s number-two export market outside Europe after the United States. It sold goods worth €67 billion to China last year, while imports from the Asian giant topped €73 billion. …

China Now Claims Japan’s Okinawa 25 July 2012 The Global Times, the newspaper run by China’s Communist Party, ran an editorial this month suggesting that Beijing challenge Japan’s control of Okinawa, part of the Ryukyu island chain. Why would China want to start a fight over Okinawa? At the moment, China, Taiwan, and Japan are engaged in a particularly nasty sovereignty dispute in the East China Sea over five islands and three barren rocks called the Senkakus by the Japanese and the Diaoyus by the other claimants. The disputed chain is north of the southern end of the Ryukyus and...

Media urge China to 'not interfere' in Iraq Many families have fled the ongoing violence in the Iraqi city of Mosul Media advise China to not interfere in Iraq, while criticising the US for "creating a mess" in the Middle East. President Barack Obama says the US will send 300 military advisers to Iraq to help fight Islamist-led insurgents. Sunni radical group Isis has taken control of several Iraqi cities and towns in the past few days, report say. Mr Obama said the US was prepared for "targeted and precise military action, if and when" required, but added that US...

Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers voted Friday in an unofficial referendum on democratic reform that has alarmed Beijing and sets the stage for a possible showdown with the government, with mass protests aimed at shutting down the Chinese capitalist enclave’s financial district. Tensions are boiling over in Hong Kong, which came back under Chinese control in 1997, over how to choose the city’s next leader. Since the end of British colonial rule, Hong Kong’s leaders have been picked by an elite pro-Beijing committee. Beijing has pledged to allow Hong Kongers to choose their own chief executive starting in 2017....

On May 30, 2014, The New York Times published a story by Ian Johnson about what seems to be a concerted government effort to clamp down on Christian churches in Wenzhou, the city with the highest percentage of Christians in China. It has long been known that there are regional differences in official attitudes toward religion, not always reflecting the views of the central government. It is conceivable that the events in Wenzhou could be a relatively local matter. But at any rate one aspect of the story makes one wonder: The provincial head of the Communist party who initiated...

Hong Kong does not enjoy “full autonomy” and must accept Beijing’s control and oversight, China announced on Tuesday, less than a week after more than 100,000 protesters gathered in the former colony to berate the Communist Party and demand greater democratic rights. In a lengthy and controversial “white paper”, China's powerful State Council claimed “comprehensive jurisdiction” over the former British colony, which returned to Chinese hands in 1997. Hong Kong held no “residual power” and while it enjoyed considerable independence from Beijing, “the central government has the power of oversight over the high degree of autonomy,” it added. …

As we have been reporting (and forecasting for the past several years), the Eurasian anti-US Dollar axis is rapidly taking shape, with recent events catalyzed and certainly accelerated by US foreign policy in Ukraine, which has merely succeeded in pushing Russia that much closer, and faster, to China. The latest proof of this came overnight when the FT reported that Russian companies are preparing to switch contracts to renminbi and other Asian currencies amid fears that western sanctions may freeze them out of the US dollar market, according to two top bankers. According to Pavel Teplukhin, head of Deutsche Bank...

Leaders of the Tiananmen Square protest movement 25 years ago told members of Congress today they were crushed that America didn’t step in to help back then, but they’re more troubled about what the U.S. government isn’t doing as human rights abuses in China increase to a rate not seen since that era. No Democrats showed up on the dais for the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations hearing, at which Chairman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) raised a range of concerns including persecution of anyone who tries to mark the massacre in China,...

A quarter century after the (Tiananmen Square pro-democracy) movement’s suppression, China’s communist authorities oversee a raft of measures for muzzling dissent and preventing protests. They range from the sophisticated—extensive monitoring of online debate and control over media—to the relatively simple—routine harassment of government critics and maintenance of a massive domestic security force. The system has proven hugely successful: No major opposition movement has gotten even a hint of traction in the 25 years since Tiananmen. President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping seems intent on ensuring things stay that way. […] Some degree of labor activism has been permitted, especially...

China is targeting popular smartphone-based instant messaging services in a month-long campaign to crack down on the spreading of rumors and what it calls “hostile forces at home and abroad,” the latest move to restrict online freedom of expression. The official Xinhua News Agency said the campaign started Tuesday and the services targeted included WeChat, a service run by TenCent Holdings Ltd, which incorporates social media functions that resemble microblog features and that has surged in popularity the last two years. Users can use such services to send messages to a select group of friends, or can follow public accounts,...

Few economists have had a more distinguished career than Martin Feldstein. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard in 1961, he became a fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. In 1977, he won the John Bates Clark Medal, the most prestigious award in American economics. He went on to become chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Reagan administration and is now a member of President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Promoting travel to the U.S. as a job creator, President Barack Obama wants to make it easier for people from other countries to visit the 50 states and spend money at their hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and other businesses. Obama planned to discuss the economic benefits of tourism to the U.S. and the latest steps he is taking to boost it at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, on Thursday. Obama acted two years ago to speed the processing of tourist visas for visitors from China and Brazil, steps that have dramatically reduced the length...

Amid a bitter crisis in relations with the West over Ukraine, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has turned to China to form a new alliance. Putin, who called Russia’s biggest neighbor his “reliable friend”, is in Shanghai to agree on a widely anticipated multibillion-dollar natural gas sale. A deal would give Moscow an economic and political boost at a time of Western sanctions, although China has been warned by the US to avoid taking steps that might offset the ban. …

More than 1,000 dog deaths may now be linked to toxic jerky treats according to the Food and Drug Administration. And the agency says since 2007, there have been almost 5,000 complaints of pet illnesses related to the treats.

Chinese police broke up a dinner party attended by activists in the eastern city of Hangzhou Tuesday night and detained a dozen people, according to an activist who attended the dinner. Activist and blogger Wang Wusi said he and another 10 people were released after spending about two hours in police custody. He said police held Wen Kejian until Wednesday morning, when he was released although without his cell phone or computer. Wen is a signatory of Charter 08, a document calling for democracy and the end of one-party rule in China. …

Demolition teams began destroying parts of a Chinese church that has become a symbol of resistance to the Communist Party’s draconian clutch on religion, activists and witnesses said on Monday. Sanjiang church in Wenzhou, a wealthy coastal city known as the “Jerusalem of the East”, made headlines earlier this month when thousands of Christians formed a human shield around its entrance after plans for its demolition were announced. Church members accused Communist leaders in Zhejiang province of ordering an anti-church crackdown and claimed there were plans to completely or partially demolish at least 10 places of worship. …

Just as the global economy has all but recovered from debt-fueled crises in the United States and Europe, economists have a new worry: China. They see a lending bubble there that threatens global growth unless Beijing defuses it. That’s the view that emerges from an Associated Press survey this month of 30 economists. Still, the economists remain optimistic that Beijing’s high-stakes drive to reform its economy—the world’s second-largest—will bolster Chinese banks, ease the lending bubble and benefit U.S. exporters in the long run. […] The source of concern is a surge in lending by Chinese banks. The lending was initially...

Gov. Jerry Brown took the stage at a downtown San Francisco luncheon Saturday to tout his legislative record, plug some upcoming projects and note the changing demographics of California.

China's navy commissioned 17 new warships last year, the most of any nation. In a little more than a decade, it's expected to have three aircraft carriers, giving it more clout than ever in a region of contested seas and festering territorial disputes. Those numbers testify to huge increases in defense spending that have endowed China with the largest military budget behind the United States and fueled an increasingly large and sophisticated defense industry. While Beijing still lags far behind the U.S. in both funding and technology, its spending boom is attracting new scrutiny at a time of severe cuts...

The president of General Motors said Sunday that the company and local partners are boosting production capacity for GM-brand vehicles in China to 5 million. Speaking at the Beijing auto show, Dan Ammann said the company also expects sales of its Cadillac luxury cars to double to 100,000 next year. General Motors Co. and its Chinese partners are in the midst of what the company has said is a $12 billion investment program through 2017. …

Faced with growing public anger about a poisonous environment, China’s government released a yearslong study that shows nearly one-fifth of the country’s farmland is contaminated with toxic metals, a stunning indictment of unfettered industrialization under the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule. The report, previously deemed so sensitive it was classified as a state secret, names the heavy metals cadmium, nickel and arsenic as the top contaminants. It adds to widespread doubts about the safety of China’s farm produce and confirms suspicions about the dire state of its soil following more than two decades of explosive industrial growth, the overuse of farm...

Russia is rolling out two major projects—a gas pipeline and a Crimea deep water port—with China, as EU countries and the US weigh options on economic sanctions. Russia’s ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, told EUobserver on Wednesday (16 April) that work on the “Power of Siberia” pipeline and the Chinese construction of a 25-meter-deep port in Crimea are proceeding as normal despite the Ukraine crisis. Describing the pipeline as a “mega-project”, he said it will pump 60 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas a year from the Kovykta and Tchayandinskoe gas fields to Russia’s far east, with a branch...

Nothing is going right for Hangzhou at this moment. Walmart will be closing its Zhaohui store in that city on April 23 as a part of its overall plan to dump marginal locations—about 9% of the total—in China. Thanks to the world’s largest retailer, another large block of space in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, will go on the market at a time when there is generally too much supply. The problem is especially pronounced in the city’s premium office market. Hangzhou’s Grade A office buildings at the end of 2013 had, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, an average...

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered a two-pronged warning to Asia Pacific nations Sunday, announcing that the U.S. will send two additional ballistic missile destroyers to Japan to counter the North Korean threat, and saying China must better respect its neighbors. In unusually forceful remarks about China, Hagel drew a direct line between Russia’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region and the ongoing territorial disputes between China, Japan and others over remote islands in the East China Sea. “I think we’re seeing some clear evidence of a lack of respect and intimidation and coercion in Europe today with what the Russians...

Against the backdrop of Russia’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimean region, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday a key message he will deliver to leaders in Tokyo this weekend is that the U.S. is strongly committed to protecting Japan’s security. Hagel said it is understandable for nations to be concerned as they watch the events unfold in Ukraine, where Russian troops are still massed along the border. The issue reverberates in Asia where China, Japan and other nations are locked in bitter territorial disputes, including over disputed islands in the East China Sea. …

Thousands of Chinese Christians have mounted an extraordinary, round-the-clock defence of a church in a city known as the 'Jerusalem of the East' after Communist Party officials threatened to bulldoze their place of worship. In an episode that underlines the fierce and long-standing friction between China's officially atheist Communist Party and its rapidly growing Christian congregation, Bible-carrying believers this week flocked to the Sanjiang church in Wenzhou hoping to protect it from the bulldozers. Their 24-hour guard began earlier this week when a demolition notice was plastered onto the newly-constructed church which worshippers say cost around 30 million yuan (£2.91...

The continued threat of economic boycotts targeting Israel hasn’t deterred China from forging ahead with a new freight rail link through Israel. The planned link could provide an alternative to the Suez Canal. The project would connect the 300-plus kilometers between Eilat on the Red Sea and Ashdod Port on the Mediterranean. And it could be the chance for China to gain a foothold in the region. …

FULL TITLE: Beijing hotel workers already 'fed up' with Obama entourage in 3400-square-foot, $8,350-per-night suite inconveniencing 'pretty much everyone' – and the first lady's mother is 'barking at the staff' Michelle Obama and three of her family members are staying in a $8,350-per-night Beijing presidential suite, but despite a 24-hour butler and other perks that come with the lodging, her entourage has inconvenienced 'pretty much everyone' and made the hotel staff 'fed up,' a well-placed hotel staffer has told MailOnline. The sumptuous pad at the Westin Beijing Chaoyang hotel – its website calls the room 'an oasis of comfort –...

While much of the world was busy watching Russia swallow Crimea, few realized that an also dangerous territorial tit-for-tat had begun to unfold earlier this month more than 5,000 miles away in the South China Sea. At Second Thomas Shoal, a handful of Philippine marines have long been stationed and re-provisioned on the rusting deck of the BRP Sierra Madre, a Philippine naval ship half-sunk into the reef in 1999. Ever since, the vessel and the marines have served to embody Manila's claim of sovereignty over the shoal. More recently, China has tried to raise the salience of its own...

A monk set himself on fire Sunday in an ethnic Tibetan area of northwest China, the country’s official news agency reported. […] Qinghai neighbors Tibet. More than 100 people have self-immolated in Tibetan areas since 2009 to protest Chinese restrictions on Buddhism and denigration of the Tibetans’ spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who lives in India. …

The Obama administration is stepping up its attempts to court China’s support for isolating Russia over its military intervention in Ukraine. With official comments from China appearing studiously neutral since the Ukraine crisis began, President Barack Obama spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping late Sunday in a bid to get Beijing off the fence. The call was their first known conversation since Russian forces took control of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow Crimea region. It came amid signals that Russian President Vladimir Putin was hardening his position on Crimea, which is due to vote on joining Russia in a referendum this weekend that...

Chinese millionaires on Tuesday pleaded for the Canadian government not to throw away the immigration applications of thousands of Chinese nationals as part of its plans to end a backlogged investor program. At a news conference, 10 investor applicants delivered their crestfallen message—that their faith in Canada as a “trustworthy country,” with its attractive rule of law, environment and welfare system, was wavering. Last month, Canada announced its intention to terminate its immigrant investor program and eliminate the longstanding backlog of applications—amounting to more than 65,000 people, most of whom are Chinese. It said immigrant investors pay less in taxes...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has put himself in charge of a new body to coordinate cybersecurity, in a sign of Beijing’s concern over its vulnerability to online attacks and desire to control the Internet. […] Xi also is quoted as saying online opinion must be properly guided. China has 618 million Internet users, the most of any country. …

A government panel will urge Japan to allow its military to help allies that come under attack, in a major reversal of the country’s ban on collective defense under its pacifist constitution. […] Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants Japan to play a greater role in international peacekeeping and step up its defense posture, mainly because of potential military threats that Japan sees from China and North Korea. As China’s influence rises and that of the United States fades in the region, Japan is trying to expand its defense alliance outside of its “cornerstone” ties with Washington and has signed defense...

More than even Italy or France, China guzzled almost 2 billion bottles of red wine last year. Red wine consumption has skyrocketed in the country since 2007, partially because the color red signals good fortune, experts say.China has surpassed France and Italy to become the biggest consumer of red wine in the world. According to a joint report out of Vinexpo and The International Wine and Spirits Research (IWSR), Chinese oenophiles tipped back the equivalent of 1.865 billion bottles last year (or 155 million 9-liter cases).

Authorities in eastern China have banned live poultry sales after an increase in the number of people infected with the H7N9 strain of bird flu, state media reported Tuesday, with the busy Chinese New Year travel period already under way. So far this year, H7N9 has killed 19 people in China and infected 96, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. …

Beijing’s skyscrapers receded into a dense gray smog Thursday as the capital saw the season’s first wave of extremely dangerous pollution, with the concentration of toxic small particles registering more than two dozen times the level considered safe. The air took on an acrid odor, and many of the city’s commuters wore industrial strength face masks as they hurried to work. The city’s air quality is often poor, especially in winter when stagnant weather patterns combine with an increase in coal-burning to exacerbate other forms of pollution and create days-long periods of heavy smog. But the readings early Thursday for...

Following Japan's proclamations that it will take over another 280 'disputed ownership' islands, it appears the increasingly dis-approved of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's path of militarism and provocation is working. As China Daily Mail reports, citing experts, China intends to take back Zhongye Island - 'illegally' occupied by the Philippines, according to the Chinese. The Chinese navy has drawn a detailed combat plan to seize the island and the battle will be restricted within the South China Sea. Philippines military is building up on the island and the Chinese see as 'intolerable' the "arrogance" relying on US support.

When her mind is clear, Gong Qifeng can recall how she begged for mercy. Several people pinned her head, arms, knees and ankles to a hospital bed before driving a syringe of labor-inducing drugs into her stomach. She was seven months pregnant with what would have been her second boy. The drugs caused her to have a stillborn baby after 35 hours of excruciating pain. She was forced to have the abortion by officials in China’s southern province of Hunan in the name of complying with national limits on family size. […] Since the abortion more than two years ago,...

Fourteen people have died after a stampede at a mosque in northern China. The incident happened at the mosque in Guyuan, a city in the Ningxia region, the Xinhua News Agency said, while people were handing out traditional cakes during an event to commemorate a religious figure. …

Photo Op of the year: PLAN's 1st Carrier Battle Group (CVBG) CV Liaoning and her "entourage" return to Qingdao after a 37-day training exercise at sea. Note the company of three Shang class nuclear attack subs among this over-the-top photo o