Must-read China news by Danwei

This 38-year-old British soprano may not be a household name in the western world, but she's a superstar in North Korea where she has given dozens of concerts and appeared countless times on the rigidly state-controlled television.

Suzanne Clarke has performed every year since 2003 in the culturally and politically isolated country, where she has sung everything from Mozart to Gershwin and from Verdi to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

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Alibaba, the huge web trading site part owned by Yahoo! is none too picky about what is sells, and the fuss is growing. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has recently launched a campaign to boycott Yahoo! due to their promotion of shark fin sales.

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Cantonese and English are languages from different ends of the earth. They look different, sound different, and on the face of things have little in common. But in Hong Kong, they come together in our daily lives in some colourful and unexpected ways.

In a series of special features, Radio 3's June Ng and Hugh Chiverton will be finding out what lies between the two tongues. As they work, they'll be blogging some highlights and asking some questions.

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According to China’s chief economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, the cost of pork in supermarkets has fallen for two weeks in succession. Outside the pig farms, the other barometer being watched by the central government is the grain harvest in the northern autumn. The signs at the moment are that it will be good.

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When Qufu held its International Confucius Culture Festival the local government cracked down on the stubble burning to avoid the embarrassment of smoke veiling the proceedings. The authorities threatened fines of 4,000 yuan (US$532) and 15 days detention for farmers caught flouting the ban. But even that failed to stop the practice. Local farmers ended up playing a 24-hour game of cat and mouse with the authorities, waiting until the police had ceased their patrols to start burning the crop stubble.

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A senior Chinese official said here Tuesday that researchers and technicians are making final preparations for the launch of the country's first moon orbiter, Chang'e I, at the end of October.

Zhang Qingwei, minister in charge of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), who is attending the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said in an interview with Xinhua.

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Li's resume says that in 1993 he translated for Richard Bush, the current director of the Brookings Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, who used to advise Congress about U.S.-China relations. His resume also says Li was interviewed by BBC, ABC, RTHK, NHK and other foreign press. In China, this is another way to say how famous he is. But so far there's no available independent reports to verify Li's resume and his legend.

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I've never been particularly sympathetic to Chinese claims that pollution control is a first world responsibility that a developing country - like China - cannot be expected to share. That's ridiculous. China could install and operate pollution control equipment on every one of its steel mills (the technology is simple, well-known, and easily built and installed) - and still have lower steel-making costs than the developed world. However, there is another, more complicated side to this story suggesting that - even if China suddenly met developed world steelmaking environmental standards - it would still be the world's dirtiest steelmaker.

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Now with the moon orbiter almost on the launching pad, China's chief scientist for the moon program Ouyang Ziyuan says this is a sure thing for the Chinese who started the process in a difficult way but worked consistently over the years.

Ouyang's work on the moon started 25 years ago with a half-gram moon rock sample, a gift from former US President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski during his trip in 1978.

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Hu Jintao, China’s Communist party chief, on Monday vowed to introduce greater democracy to the world’s largest political organisation but reminded members they must “always agree” with their leaders.

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Mr. Li's list also cited shipments of more than 430 Hummer trucks, models H2 and H3, manufactured by General Motors Corp. of Detroit - and imported into China by unknown third-party suppliers - that Mr. Li's office says didn't meet Chinese safety requirements. "The shape of the front, large headlights don't have clear-cut boundaries between bright and dark" so that "when two cars are driving toward each other, it could have a negative influence on the driver's vision, to cause dazzling," according to Aqsiq. The government also cited problems with smaller amber-colored lights on the vehicles and markings on the speedometer that didn't meet Chinese standards.

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