« July 20, 2008 - July 26, 2008 | Main | August 3, 2008 - August 9, 2008 »
The relationship between Sudan and China is widely believed to be a marriage anointed in oil: China needs it and Sudan has it, and the two have been in business for years. But the Sudanese say their bond with China runs deeper than any oil well and goes back more than 100 years -- to a man who proved the adage 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.'
Maj. Gen. Charles Gordon was known as 'Chinese' Gordon to his fans -- none of whom were even a little Chinese.
The Chinese recruited a German coach, Joseph Capousek, under whose tuition Germany had won 18 Olympic golds for canoeing and kayaking in four Olympics.
In June, Capousek was sacked as Chinese team coach, allegedly because he was not getting good enough results. He believes he fell out with the sports officials partly because he criticised their obsession with winning, saying it was counterproductive, as it put too much pressure on athletes.
'For China, to win gold is political, it's very important,' he said. 'Everybody talks about gold in China. If you win bronze or silver, you are a loser.' After he lost his job, he discovered that while the German version of his contract said he should aim to win gold, the Chinese-language version said he was obliged to do so.
China is readying to move into Africa on a scale that far outstrips its acquisitions on the continent to date, according to the South African bank that is laying the groundwork.
High-level groups of bankers from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and Standard Bank, respectively China and Africa's biggest banks, are examining potential targets in Africa's oil and gas, telecoms, base metals and power sectors...
Clive Tasker, chief executive of Standard Bank's business in Africa excluding South Africa, said the resultant deals were likely to be at least as large as ICBC's $5.5bn (£2.7bn, €3.5bn) purchase last year of a 20 per cent stake in Standard - itself the largest foreign direct investment in post-apartheid South Africa.
A South Korean TV channel breached established norms by telecasting footage of a rehearsal for the Olympic Games' opening ceremony on Tuesday...
...We are disappointed that they did that,' Sun Weide, spokesman for the BOCOG, said. Though the footage cannot give people the full picture of the grand opening ceremony, it is against universally accepted norms...
...The South Korean TV channel SBS telecast part of the rehearsal that was held on July 16. A second rehearsal was held on Wednesday, and two more are scheduled for Aug 2 and 5.
The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could 'report freely' during the Games, Olympic officials acknowledged Wednesday.
It is almost show time in Beijing for the Olympic Games; China fought hard to get the games, and has spent at a level without precedent on preparations that have remade its capitol and wide swaths of the country.
Many hoped the world spotlight on the Olympics would also remake Chinese policy on human rights issues from Darfur to Tibet to its own legal system.Now, with the opening ceremony in Beijing just days away, August 8, we're asking how those efforts have gone. What that leverage has meant.
President Bush held private talks with five prominent Chinese dissidents on Tuesday, and urged China's foreign minister to relax restrictions on human rights, as part of an intensifying White House effort to put pressure on Beijing before Mr. Bush travels there in a little over a week for the summer Olympic Games.
Mr. Bush received the dissidents -- Harry Wu, Wei Jingsheng, Rebiya Kadeer, Sasha Gong and Bob Fu -- in the White House residence, where he 'assured them that he will carry the message of freedom as he travels to Beijing'...
First, the big number: 253 million Internet users. That of course puts China over the top to claim the number 1 spot [most internet users of any country in the world].
Beijing finally cooled on Tuesday as a brief heavy shower embraced the city around noon after a hot and humid week.
The rain, though lasting only 10 minutes, will hopefully help restore confidence in the city's air quality, according to Guo Hu, Beijing Meteorological Observatory director...
...His confidence was shared by many as the city goes through every detail to fulfill the dream of billions on its 10-day countdown to the August Olympics.
In a related sense, slow ticket sales highlight the widely held belief - among most Shanghainese - that they could hold a better, more 'international' Olympics than the one being put on by those backcountry Beijingers.
Contrary to popular perception both inside and outside China, Beijing's air pollution problem is not primarily due to increases in personal vehicle use.
One week to the day after two bus bombs killed two and injured 14 on two number 54 buses on Renmin Xi Lu in Kunming, the city was on edge once more as rumors of another explosion Monday night - this time a K2 bus - spread like wildfire via text messages and phone calls.
In a marketplace already saturated with images of sports in action, highlighting athletes' parents is helping a few Chinese advertisers stand out from the chest-thumping crowd. Coca-Cola has aired a TV ad featuring parents of famous athletes such as diver Guo Jing Jing. They ride motorcycles, parachute in from the skies above and go through other extremes to be with their kids. Johnson & Johnson has run ads profiling the mothers of two champion athletes.
There's a twist to some of the ads, though: the 'parents' are actors. While Mr. Liu's parents have said in past interviews that their son liked to drink milk when he was growing up, they're not actually the people shown in the family portrait of the Satine ad. Instead, actors who look somewhat like Mr. Liu's parents, filled in, with the approval of Mr. Liu and his parents.
Standing 400m wide ... and occupying an area of over 220,000 square meters, you would think the Beijing Olympic Green Convention Center would be the architectural centerpiece of the Olympic Boulevard.
But I bet you've never even noticed it.
The other day, I helped carry boxes at the new American Apparel (AA) at the Sanlitun Village. The new shop is scheduled to open before the Olympics along with another branch at the World Trade Center. These will be the first two AAs in China.
* 512/512 connection: 7,712.50 yuan (USD 1,131.20)
* 1M/512 connection: 9,156.25 yuan (USD 1,342.95)
* 2M/512 connection 11,700 yuan (USD 1,716.05)
Three days ago Zhang Xuewen, a Beijing webmaster, was sentenced to one year fixed term imprisonment on charges of spreading obscene articles. To increase his website's traffic and earn ad revenue, Zhang provided his visitors with several pornographic pictures and movies.
As the president of a small guarantee company in Wenzhou--which like many so-called guarantee firms in this East China province acts in fact as an illegitimate private lender--Fang Peilin travels between a local banking regulator and a financial affairs office every day, asking about news about microcredit companies that will reportedly be allowed to set up.
Many companies are aspiring to become among the first microcredit firms in China, says Fang, who owns the company called Fangxing. 'For enterprises like us, the best way is to seek a place in the first batch, because future policies might become more stringent regarding illegitimate private lending.'
Chinese media are playing down reports of a third bus blast in southwestern Kunming tonight - exactly a week after two explosions killed two people in the city.
A witness said he heard a loud blast shortly before 9pm local time and saw police and ambulance staff gathered around a damaged vehicle only 200 metres from the scene of one of the previous incidents.
Barack Obama has a half-brother living in Shenzhen who runs an Internet company that helps Chinese companies export to the US.
More vehicles could go off the roads and all construction sites and some more factories in Beijing and its neighboring areas could be closed temporarily if the capital's air quality deteriorates during the Olympic Games.
The Beijing authorities are likely to announce the special measures for the Aug 8-24 Games soon, the city's environment authority said yesterday.
Li Xin, a senior engineer who has drawn up the plan for the Beijing Environmental Protection Buearu, said: 'We will implement an emergency plan 48 hours in advance if the air quality deteriorates during the Aug 8-24 Games.'