China"s Yellow River bombed to break ice

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China"s Yellow River bombed to break ice

Sina Weibo, "China"s Twitter," files for IPO in US

By Sophie Estienne ,AFP
March 16, 2014, 12:01 am TWN

NEW YORK — Weibo Corp., the Chinese microblogging service often compared with Twitter, filed Friday for a U.S. stock offering seeking to raise US$ 500 million.

The move will allow the popular Chinese-language social network to spin off from the Internet giant Sina, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing said Weibo had 129.1 million monthly active users in December and 61.4 million average daily active users.

The company did not indicate whether Weibo would file its IPO on the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange.

The lead underwriters will be Goldman Sachs Asia and Credit Suisse.

‘A cultural phenomenon’

“A microcosm of Chinese society, Weibo has attracted a wide range of users, including ordinary people, celebrities and other public figures, as well as organizations such as media outlets, businesses, government agencies and charities,” the SEC filing said.

“Weibo has become a cultural phenomenon in China.

“Weibo allows people to be heard publicly and exposed to the rich ideas, cultures and experiences of the broader world,” it added.

“Media outlets use Weibo as a source of news and a distribution channel for their headline news. Government agencies and officials use Weibo as an official communication channel for disseminating timely information and gauging public opinion to improve public services.”

The filing said Weibo’s initial public offering (IPO) will be part of a “carve-out from Sina,” but that Sina would “continue to provide us with certain support services” after it becomes independent.

“We will use approximately US$ 250 million of the net proceeds we receive from this offering to repay loans we owe to SINA,” the document read.

“We intend to use the remainder to invest in technology, infrastructure and product development, to expand sales and marketing efforts, and for working capital and other general corporate purposes.”

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Sina Weibo, "China"s Twitter," files for IPO in US

China"s January services growth slows to five-year low

BEIJING Sun Feb 2, 2014 10:43pm EST

Sales people negotiate with customers at booths selling mobile phones at a shopping mall in Beijing September 3, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon

BEIJING (Reuters) – Growth in China’s services sector slowed to a five-year low in January, an official survey showed, another sign of stuttering momentum in the world’s second-largest economy that could deepen investors’ concerns about emerging markets around the world.

The National Bureau of Statistics said the official non-manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 53.4 in January from December’s 54.6.

Monday’s reading was the lowest since December 2008, although it was still above the 50 point level that indicates growth.

The survey is the third in two weeks to show sluggish activity in China, and will affirm expectations that the country’s economic growth will soften into 2014.

The tapering of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s stimulus has been a negative for emerging markets, and investors have sold stock and currency investments and moved them to developed markets. Signs of slowing or weak activity in China and other major emerging markets are further hastening this shift.

NEW YEAR EFFECT?

The cooling growth in the services sector ahead of the Lunar New Year, China’s biggest holiday, echoed a slowdown in its factories and could see investors further pare their exposure to emerging markets.

Over the weekend, a government survey showed growth in Chinese factories slipped to a six-month low in January.

Though some economists cautioned the pull-back in production could be due to factories closing early to celebrate the Lunar New Year holidays, which began last week, others said anemic underlying demand also reduced output.

Monday’s data showed moderating confidence among service providers, with the business expectations sub-index fell to 58.1 from December’s 58.7, the lowest reading since February 2009.

Firms also drew slightly less business in January. A new orders sub-index nudged down to 50.9 from December’s 51.

Retailers and the air and rail transport sectors had strong months, with output sub-indices for all three above 60, while a drop below 50 points indicated a contraction in the real estate sector.

Slowing activity was accompanied by moderating price pressures. The sub-index for input prices fell to an eight-month low of 54.5, and the index for prices charged dropped to 50.1.

Analysts polled by Reuters expect China’s economy to grow 7.4 percent in 2014, slightly slower than last year’s 7.7 percent expansion and the weakest in 24 years.

(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing; Editing by John Mair)

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Reuters: Economic News

China"s January services growth slows to five-year low

The Political Plight of China’s Wealthy

The Political Plight of China’s Wealthy
http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

It is in the interests of China’s wealthy and the country’s government to promote transparency.

By Elizabeth C. Economy for The Diplomat

January 26, 2014

Technically, the news that many rich people in China have personal ties to China’s top leaders is not really news anymore. Nor is it news that many rich Chinese have placed their assets in offshore accounts or even that many rich people in China get that way through peddling influence or corruption. After all, the top fifty members of China’s National People’s Congress boast a combined wealth of $ 94.7 billion, making their American congressional cousins across the Pacific – whose top fifty members are worth only $ 1.6 billion – look positively poverty stricken. The link between politics and money in China is well-established.

So why all the excitement over the recent release of a report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that 22,000 (out of 1.3 billion) people in China have established offshore companies to hold – or hide – their wealth? Certainly there is the titillation factor. There is always a market for information about the super-rich: how they got their money and how they spend it – particularly when some of the rich are the sons and daughters of senior officials. There is also the issue of the “offshore” accounts in the British Virgin Islands, which to a layperson immediately sound suspicious. Even though every news article on the topic carefully mentions the fact that there is nothing necessarily illegal about these offshore tax havens, guilt is already established in the minds of many. (And, of course, there is some reason for this: a number of senior Chinese officials have already been tried in court and found guilty of using these accounts to hide millions of dollars in embezzled funds.) In addition, amassing personal wealth in China has always been a source of political vulnerability. Despite the obvious attraction of making money for many Chinese, the country’s ideological underpinnings have never fully supported it: it was denigrated by Confucianism and reviled by Communism. During the first decades of Communist rule, to be labeled a “capitalist running dog” meant a life of ongoing vicious political reprisals. Even Beijing’s more recent campaign against several politically outspoken billionaire bloggers carried a whiff of this same witch hunt mentality: questioning the political loyalty of those with money.

What could be seen as surprising, however, is that the Chinese government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to shut down any mention of the report’s findings. Beijing’s much ballyhooed anti-corruption campaign is the signature policy of an otherwise fairly anemic political reform effort by the new leadership. A report that lays bare 22,000 potential corruption cases should be celebrated, not censored. Part of the problem is that President Xi Jinping, himself, is likely unhappy that the face of his brother-in-law has been plastered in the pages of the ICIJ report as one of those with significant offshore holdings. But even beyond any personal considerations, the real challenge for Beijing is that the report represents a substantial loss of power for the Chinese leadership. With transparency comes knowledge – not just for the seven men in the Standing Committee of the Politburo but for the 1.3 billion people they govern. The report offers the Chinese public the opportunity to hold Beijing directly accountable; when the Chinese leadership pronounces the guilt of one official, the Chinese people can ask about one hundred others. By censoring the list, China’s leaders are trying to control who is found guilty and when.

In the end, it is in the interest of both China’s wealthiest citizens and the Chinese government to promote transparency and publication of the list. How else to disentangle the influence peddling inherent in traditional guanxi from meaningful corruption? How else to promote the rule of law and ensure that these 22,000 wealthy Chinese with offshore holdings do not become fodder for politically motivated attacks? And above all, how else to ensure that the Chinese people believe their leaders are holding themselves to the same standards to which they seek to hold everyone else?

Elizabeth C. Economy is C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an expert on Chinese domestic and foreign policy and U.S.-China relations and author of the award-winning book, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future.  She blogs at Asia Unbound, where this piece originally appeared.

The Diplomat

Read more about The Political Plight of China’s Wealthy and other interesting subjects concerning Asia at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Japan"s Abe says China"s prosperity rests on trust, not tensions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said China’s continued economic growth will require building trust, not tensions, with other countries, according to an interview broadcast on Sunday.

Reuters: Top News

Japan"s Abe says China"s prosperity rests on trust, not tensions

Japan"s Abe says China"s prosperity rests on trust, not tensions

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said China’s continued economic growth will require building trust, not tensions, with other countries, according to an interview broadcast on Sunday.

Reuters: Top News

Japan"s Abe says China"s prosperity rests on trust, not tensions

There is an 8-Year-Old Girl With Lung Cancer, and China"s Smog is to Blame

There is an 8-Year-Old Girl With Lung Cancer, and China’s Smog is to Blame Image Credit: AP

In the first case of its kind, an eight-year-old girl in China has become the youngest person in history to be diagnosed with lung cancer. Local doctors believe that China’s skyrocketing levels of air pollution are to blame. While rare, this case highlights the extreme degree to which China is undercutting its own economy and health with an outdated and inefficient growth model.

Every minute, there are six new cases of cancer in China, and every year there are two million related deaths a year. In 2010 alone, there were an estimated 1.2 million in premature deaths. These were largely due to air pollution, which is the largest environmental risk. Such loss of damage and cost to future economic activity is believed to have cost China $ 230 billion in 2010. Other examples of China’s pollution woes include a case from October of this year, when toxic smog forced the 11 million strong city of Harbin to shut down. The smog caused visibility to drop to ten meters, causing schools to cancel classes and airports to close. Such incidents are also alarming China’s neighbors as factories and power plants in China have caused increased acid rain to fall on Seoul and Tokyo.

Such telling statistics have been occasionally censored in certain official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reports, since they could be damaging to the party’s reputation and growth strategy. China’s method of economic development is important because not only is it officially institutionalized, but also economic growth is what provides the legitimacy on which the CPP rests.

Over the last 30 years, the CCP’s shift from socialism to state capitalism has lifted over 500 million Chinese out of poverty. In the late 1980s, Deng Xiaoping created a new incentive system in which provincial and local officials are judged and promoted based on two criteria: continual economic growth in their jurisdiction and suppressing dissent. Central plans for economic growth and tight competition to be promoted resulted in local officials trying to outdo their peers’ growth in provincial and city GDPs.

In rural China, land is still collectivized and peasants lease the land and are without private property rights. Because of this, local official often seize their land for development, providing little compensation while selling the land at high rates to private or, more often, state-run companies.

These perverted incentives also cause officials to support or turn a blind eye to projects that are less energy or cost efficient, but boost short-term GDP and are quick to complete. Examples of this include little to no insulation in most new buildings and the use of long outdated turbine technology in power plants.

The result has been soaring economic growth fueled by an artificial stimulus of land and house prices without great concern for future growth, the environment, or local dissent. Real estate, housing, development, and their related industries now account for about a third of China’s economy and real concerns have emerged that the CCP’s political incentives are creating a housing bubble on the scale of America’s infamous 2008 one.

Putting this another way, imagine for a moment if American governors and mayors were judged over how much economic growth they could create and that they were given free use of imminent domain to achieve such growth. They could send the policy to seize as much land to give to Walmart or General Motors as they’d like and all they have to do was provide a meager penance as compensation. That is the source of China’s environmental and future economic woes; citizens have no legal recourse and politicians have no incentive to think in the long term.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection is also very weak. In fact, state owned companies block or ignore regulations on a regular basis. Also, half-hearted efforts by President Hu Jintao to include a into the evaluations of local officials has made no difference. Initially designed to take into account the cost of pollution, the measure was scrapped because of the many of the new growth calculations were close to zero in several provinces.

While environmental degradation as a side effect of the industrialization is the norm throughout history, and arguably nearly impossible to avoid, there is no comparison to China’s juggernaut. Never before has a state had economic growth and environmental problems on such a massive scale, and thus there is no previous case to go by. And so far, China has made some progress but the results are mixed and the long-term outcome uncertain.

On one hand, China has undertaken a $ 200 billion green and nuclear energy initiative and has begun experimenting with cap and trade as theoretical solutions in some special zones. Also despite how bad things are, most of China’s cities are “no more polluted than Japan’s were in 1960 … [and] air quality is improving at about the same rate as Japan’s did in the 1970s.”

Yet at the same time, many other parts of China’s environment are much worse, such as the Yellow River in the north, which serves 50% of all Chinese and irrigates 60% of all farmland, and is in grave overuse. Pollution has also caused almost 500 million Chinese to be without access to safe drinking water.

Thus, it is difficult to tell what lies in China’s environmental future and whether Beijing is unable or unwilling to change its top-down incentives for short-term growth despite the cost.

Either way, China’s top-heavy model of growth is due for an overhaul.

John Grover

Senior at Bowdoin College. Love all things political, especially international relations. Am a moderate conservative who draws upon a classical liberal understanding of the social contract. Hope to join in building a better world through the State …

PolicyMic

There is an 8-Year-Old Girl With Lung Cancer, and China"s Smog is to Blame

Half of China"s Antibiotics Now Go to Livestock

Source: Tyson website

Newsflash, from a recent Public Radio International report: China’s teeming factory meat farms have a drug problem. To make animals grow quickly under cramped, feces-ridden conditions, animals there get fed small, doses of antibiotics—creating ideal breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens that threaten people.

A research team led by scientists from China and Michigan State University recently found “diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine farms,” as the title of the paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, put it. According to a recent analysis by a Beijing-based agribusiness consulting firm, more than half of total Chinese antibiotic consumption goes to livestock.

The trouble, of course, is that by scaling up and concentrating meat production and fueling the process with antibiotics, China’s emerging meat industrialists are merely following the US model. It is shocking that half of China’s antibiotic use takes places on farms—but here in the United States, livestock operations suck in a staggering 77 percent of total antibiotic use. It’s worth reprinting this Pew Charitable Trust chart I dropped into a post on this topic in February:

Pew

Now, it’s hard to compare the US and China numbers precisely. The ratio of farm-to-human use of antibiotics obviously tell us as much about trends in human antibiotic use as they do about farm use. As the chart above shows, US antibiotic consumption for medicinal purposes has held steady for a decade. Meanwhile, Time reported last year, per capita human antibiotic use is 10 times higher in China than in the United States, and “70 percent of inpatients at Chinese hospitals received antibiotics; the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a maximum of 30 percent.” So one reason a lower percentage of antibiotics go to farms in China is because so damned much is being used for human medicine there.

But there’s no doubt that both nations are shoveling massive amounts of antibiotics into livestock farms—a trend that coincides with the industrialization and scaling up of those farms.

Take poultry. The following chart gives a good indication how the US poultry industry has been dramatically concentrated into fewer and fewer large operations. Note that as recently as 1950, 80 percent of US farms kept chickens—farms at that time tended to be diversified operations that mixed crops and livestock. Thereafter, the percentage of farms keeping a flock began to decline dramatically, and by 1992, less than 6 percent did. Meanwhile, of course, US chicken production was expanding dramatically, meaning those remaining chicken farms tended to be massive operations.

USDA

And here’s one from the Pew Environment Group’s blockbuster 2011 report .” Note that between 1950 and 2007, the number of US farms keeping chickens dropped by 98 percent, even as the total number of chickens produced increased by a factor of 15. (A a “brolier” is a chicken grown for meat rather than eggs.)

Pew Environment Group

What caused the shift in 1950? One major factor was the introduction of routine antibiotics. As USDA researchers put it in this report, scientists in the 1940s and ’50s discovered that small doses of antibiotics made animals grow faster. “Not only did antibiotics serve as growth stimulants, they had great value in disease control,” the USDA report states. “This enabled flocks to be grown in confinement.”

And this development, of course, helped give rise to the vertically integrated chicken industry we know today, dominated at the top by giant processing firms Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride (owned by the Brazilian meat giant JBS), and Perdue. These companies tightly concentrate what was once the nationally dispersed activity of chicken production—and the pollution it gives rise to—into a few Southeastern and mid-Atlantic states.

And Chinese environmental activists should read it closely, because something similar is afoot in China today. The nation still has lots and lots of small chicken producers—as in the mid-century United States, diversified operations featuring a mix of crops and livestock. But as the USDA recently reported, China is shifting toward “larger-sized and more standardized commercial [poultry] production,” adding the following chart to illustrate. Note the slow erosion of small operations, and the explosive growth of ones featuring 100,000 or more birds.

USDA

So China appears to be where the United States was in the 1960s—early in the process of wiping out small poultry farms in favor of massive ones. Interestingly, the same US meat giant giant that spearheaded that process here, Tyson, is helping the process along in China, too. (See this classic 1994 New York Times piece on “How Tyson Became the Chicken King.”)

According to its website, Tyson operates four large-scale poultry operations in the country, including a “fully integrated poultry complex with live production operations and processing capacity.” Here’s more:

The company operates the entire live production chain, including breeder production, hatchery, broiler and feed production. At Tyson Nantong, we’ve built modern farm and processing facilities according to our rigorous global food production standards.

According to a May article in the US trade publication WattAgNet, Tyson hopes to leverage recent avian-flu scares in China to increase its market share there:

Tyson Foods has implemented strong biosecurity measures to help quell these [avian flu] concerns. Tyson is continuing plans to develop its own growout houses in China, rather than buying birds from outside sources…

“We believe our modern methods and processes will make our chicken the preferred product and we’ll be in a position to benefit in the long-term,” said [Tyson Foods Chief Operating Officer Jim] Lochner.

Similar trends hold in pork—the US pork industry scaled up and industrialized hog production, driven in part by antibiotic-laced feed. US-grown retail pork routinely tests positive for antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

And now China is following suit. The recently proposed, still-pending sale of US pork giant Smithfield to the Chinese conglomerate Shuanghui has generated plenty of attention (including from me). But China has been steadily scaling up its own pork industry for a decade. Long before its proposed sellout to Shuanghui, Smithfield had a relationship with another sprawling Chinese food-processing company, Cofco. Back in 2008, Cofco bought 5 percent of Smithfield’s shares, with the explicit goal goal of bringing US-style hog production techniques to China. “We hope we will learn from Smithfield its technology and management advantages in the production chain from livestock breeding to quarantine to consumer table,” a Cofco spokesperson told Reuters at the time.

Meanwhile, Chinese pork farming is changing rapidly. As recently as 2001, an analysis by the Dutch bank Rabobank found about three-quarters of China’s hogs came from small backyard operations. By 2010, that figure had fallen by half—and the percentage of its hog supply emerging from factory-like facilities tripled, reaching 15 percent.

All of which brings us back to that study by Chinese and Michigan State University researchers—the one that found “diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine farms.” Can that be any surprise, given that China is transforming its meat production after the US model?

Tom Philpott Feed | Mother Jones

Half of China"s Antibiotics Now Go to Livestock

I was framed, says China"s Bo as he mounts feisty defense

1 of 15. Bo Xilai (C), former Communist Party chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing, is escorted into court by two police officers during his trial in Jinan, Shandong province, August 22, 2013, in this still image taken from China Central Television (CCTV).

Credit: Reuters/China Central Television (CCTV) via Reuters TV

By John Ruwitch

JINAN, China | Thu Aug 22, 2013 6:56am EDT

JINAN, China (Reuters) – Fallen politician Bo Xilai put up a feisty defense on Thursday as he faced China’s most political trial in decades, saying he was framed in one of the bribery charges against him and had admitted to it against his will during interrogation.

The 64-year-old former Communist Party chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing has been charged with illegally taking almost 27 million yuan ($ 4.41 million), corruption and abuse of power and will almost certainly be found guilty.

Bo’s denial of one of the charges and strong language as he made his first public appearance since being ousted early last year were unexpected. But observers said he could have struck a deal with authorities to show he was getting a fair trial in exchange for a pre-arranged sentence.

President Xi Jinping is seeking unstinted support from the party as he seeks to push reforms that will rebalance the economy, and will want Bo’s trial to be finished quickly and with a minimum of fuss.

“He (Bo) is clearly going along with this trial,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch. “The outcome has been already decided. There’s probably an agreement already between Bo and the party as to what the outcome will be.”

Bo’s downfall has pitted supporters of his Maoist-themed egalitarian social programs against the capitalist-leaning economic road taken by the leadership in Beijing, exposing divisions within the ruling party as well as Chinese society.

Bo was one of China’s rising political stars and his trial in the eastern city of Jinan marks the culmination of the country’s biggest political scandal since the 1976 downfall of the Gang of Four at the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Appearing somber, a clean-shaven Bo, whose hair looked like it was still dyed black, stood in the dock without handcuffs, according to television pictures. He was dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and stood with his hands crossed in front of him, flanked by two policemen.

Foreign media were not allowed to attend the trial and Bo’s remarks were carried on the court’s official microblog, so are likely to have been highly edited. Still, the transcripts provided by the court mark a level of openness that is unprecedented for a trial in China.

“Regarding the matter of Tang Xiaolin giving me money three times, I once admitted it against my will during the Central Discipline Inspection Commission’s investigation against me,” Bo said, referring to the party’s top anti-graft body.

“(I’m) willing to bear the legal responsibilities, but at that time I did not know the circumstances of these matters: my mind was a blank,” he added.

“MAD DOG”

Bo was charged with receiving about 21.8 million yuan ($ 3.56 million) in bribes from Xu Ming, a plastics-to-property entrepreneur who is a close friend and is in custody, and Tang, the general manager of Hong Kong-based export company Dalian International Development Ltd, the court said.

Bo called Tang “a mad dog” who wanted to “frame me out of consideration for his own interests”.

“This evidence has little to do with my criminality,” Bo said. “I was just hoodwinked. I thought it was all official business.”

Bo also denied receiving bribes from Xu.

“The entire process is fabricated, I have never admitted to this 20 million yuan from the beginning to the end,” Bo said.

Bo received the bribes from Tang through his wife, Gu Kailai, and his son, Bo Guagua, the court said, citing the indictment.

It was the first time that authorities had named the younger Bo in the case against his father. Guagua is now in the United States, pursuing a law degree at Columbia University.

Bo Guagua was not immediately available for comment.

Tang’s whereabouts are unclear. A secretary at Dalian International’s office in Hong Kong said she had not seen Tang since May or June last year. There was also no one at his last known residential address in Hong Kong.

Written evidence from Gu was provided to the court in which she said she had seen a large amount of cash in safes at two of their residences, money which matched the amount alleged given to Bo from Tang.

Bo said that testimony was “laughable”.

Bo’s gutsy lambasting of the prosecution’s questions has won him admiration from many Chinese following the case online, even if it was always part of the plan agreed between Bo and the party.

“He knows exactly what to say and what not to say,” said Zhang Sizhi, who defended Mao Zedong’s widow Jiang Qing during the Gang of Four trial in 1980. “It seems some sort of understanding was reached ahead of time.”

Bo’s trial will last for two days and the verdict is likely to be in early September, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Court spokesman Liu Yanjie said Bo was “emotionally stable and physically healthy” during the trial.

The Jinan Intermediate Court said on its microblog feed that five of Bo’s family members attended the hearing. In another picture published by the court, Bo’s siblings appeared to be in court. The court said over 100 people filled the courtroom.

Underscoring popular support for Bo, a handful of supporters protested outside the courthouse for a second day to denounce what they said was politically motivated persecution. Police, who had blocked off the courthouse, hustled them away.

Bo also embezzled 5 million yuan from a government project in the northeastern city of Dalian, where he served as mayor, the court said.

The charge of abuse of power against Bo relates to the murder case involving Gu, the court said. Bo was a rising star in China’s leadership circles when his career was stopped short last year by the scandal involving Gu, who was convicted of the November 2011 murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, a business partner and family friend.

Bo’s former police chief in Chongqing, Wang Lijun, has also been jailed for trying to cover up the case. Bo was furious with Wang when he was told that his wife was a murder suspect, and sacked him despite not having party authority to do so, sources with knowledge of the case have said.

Neither did he report the matter to his bosses in Beijing, all of which led to the abuse of power charge, they said.

Bo could face the death sentence, though a suspended death sentence is more likely, which effectively means life imprisonment, or a 20-year term.

His guilt is an almost foregone conclusion given that prosecutors and courts come under Communist Party control.

(Additional reporting by Judy Hua in JINAN; Sui-Lee Wee, Hui Li, Megha Rajagopalan and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; and James Pomfret in HONG KONG; Writing by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Ben Blanchard and Nick Macfie)

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Reuters: Most Read Articles

I was framed, says China"s Bo as he mounts feisty defense

I was framed, says China"s Bo as he mounts feisty defense

JINAN, China (Reuters) – Fallen politician Bo Xilai put up a feisty defense on Thursday as he faced China’s most political trial in decades, saying he was framed in one of the bribery charges against him and had admitted to it against his will during interrogation.

Reuters: Top News

I was framed, says China"s Bo as he mounts feisty defense

China"s troubled Xinjiang hit by more violence: state media

BEIJING (Reuters) – More than a hundred people, riding motorbikes and wielding knifes, attacked a police station in China’s ethnically divided western region of Xinjiang, state media said on Saturday, in the latest unrest to hit the region in the past week.

Reuters: Top News

China"s troubled Xinjiang hit by more violence: state media