Below are some recent headlines from mainstream media and blogs. If you read a huge variety of English language media, you can get an idea of the complexity of China's increasingly diverse society. Of course, most people in the West do not read a huge variety of sources for China information.

Corrupt officials, diseases and international media
The Economist has published a story titled AIDS in China — Blood debts. The article, about the lack of accountability for lives ruined by HIV contaminated blood donation equipment, is pretty bleak. It is subtitled "Tens of thousands of lives devastated. Not a single official held to account". However, the story also contains this:

New regulations on reporting in China by the foreign press may help to shed more light. The rules, which took effect on January 1st and are intended to facilitate coverage of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008, mean resident correspondents no longer require government approval for reporting trips in the provinces. Mr Zhu and several other villagers in Shuangmiao watched in surprise as a group of local officials trying to stop your correspondent from interviewing him apologised and retreated after an intervention by the foreign ministry in Beijing.

China's slow entrance into the international trading system
Richard McGregor of The Financial Times reports: Stronger renminbi finds key backing. Exceprt:

The Chinese ministry responsible for promoting exports has backed a further appreciation of the renminbi, removing one of the last remaining institutional lobbies in Beijing against a stronger currency.

You know a country has plenty of rich people when...

Xinhua reports: China discourages travel to South Pole. Excerpt:

The Chinese government has warned its citizens to "think carefully before signing up for a trip to Antarctica", said officials from the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), the National Tourism Administration (NTA) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs...

...The cost is around 100,000 yuan (about 12,500 U.S. dollars) and since the region is not an approved destination for Chinese travel groups, tourists' safety and other benefits cannot be secured, according to the official.

About a really rich person
Blazing a Paper Trail in China is New York Times story by David Barboza about Zhang Yin, a female Chinese entrepreneur who has made millions by buying waste paper in the U.S.A., taking it to China and recycling it for use as corrugated cardboard, a common packing material. Excerpt:

Zhang Yin is now among the richest women anywhere in the world, including Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart and eBay’s chief executive, Meg Whitman. Her personal wealth is estimated at $1.5 billion or more, with members of her family worth billions more.

Sex, now more popular than ever
Beijing women lead sexiness survey
From Xinhua: "The results are in: Beijing women have a sexier self-image than their counterparts in Shanghai and Guangzhou." There's also this item on Xinhua: Student-written book teaches sex.

The last of the old revolutionaries
From The Financial Times: Bo Yibo, Chinese revolutionary, dies at 98. Excerpt:

Bo Yibo, Chinese communist revolutionary and one of the last and most influential of the “Eight Immortals” who dominated the nation’s politics in the 1980s and early 1990s, has died at the age of 98.

In a one-paragraph report on Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency said Bo died on Monday evening of an undisclosed illness.

Bo was an “excellent member of the Chinese Communist party, a great warrior for communism, a remarkable proletarian revolutionary and a brilliant leader of our party’s economic work”, the agency said.

Bo’s death highlights the disappearance from the political scene of the individuals who forged the 1949 revolution, but his political legacy survives in the form of his favoured son Bo Xilai, China’s current minister of commerce.

Reality TV and the Olympics
From Stars of New Chinese Reality Show Just Want to Direct Olympic Rowers in The Wall Street Journal by Mei Fong:

China's first reality television show for wannabe Olympians makes its debut today on prime-time television, in a bid to drum up fervor for the Beijing 2008 Games...

...Now the effort is going on air with "China Olympic Coxswain Competition," a nationally televised search for two new members of China's Olympic rowing team. The show is to be aired on state-owned national broadcaster China Central Television twice weekly for two months.

Drawing from parts of "Survivor," and "The Apprentice," the show is a series of contests to select coxswain, the people who will help steer the men's and women's teams of eight rowers in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The contest is designed to stimulate interest in rowing, which isn't one of China's favorite sports, while promoting Olympian ideals such as egalitarianism and openness, say organizers.

A lot of bad stuff happening far away from Beijing
From ESWN: Death of a Shanxi journalist; The Mass Incident in Dazhu County (see also follow up What Happened At The Nest Business Hotel).