China – News Stories About China - Page 203

Tainted Imports Originate All Over the World

Jul 12, 2007 10:40 AM CDT

Tainted Imports Originate All Over the World

FDA stats on food alerts show China has plenty of company

(Newser) - Contaminated Chinese seafood is the latest high-profile export turning American consumers off their feed, but they might want to save some caution for Dominican produce and Danish candy, FDA stats suggest. Inspectors stopped more food shipments from India and Mexico than from China in the past year, the Times reports,...

China's Surplus Soars to $26.9B

Jul 10, 2007 2:59 PM CDT

China's Surplus Soars to $26.9B

Weak yuan is driving China's economy to a record expansion; trade surplus nearly doubled

(Newser) - China's trade surplus surged to a record $26.9B in June, an 87% increase since last year. Economists attribute the trade gap to China's significantly—as much as 40%—underpriced currency, the yuan, reports Bloomberg. Half of China's surplus is with the US, which recently began preparing legislation to sanction...

China Executes Ex-Food and Drug Czar

Jul 10, 2007 11:44 AM CDT

China Executes Ex-Food and Drug Czar

Regulator convicted of taking bribes to compromise food safety

(Newser) - China carried out a swift death sentence against the former head of its food and drug administration today, in an apparent reaction to concerns about the safety of its exports. Zheng Xiaoyu was killed just over 2 weeks after the supreme court rejected his appeal on a May conviction for...

7 + 7 + 7 = Wedded Bliss

Jul 7, 2007 8:07 PM CDT

7 + 7 + 7 = Wedded Bliss

Brides and grooms around the world meet at the altar on triply lucky day

(Newser) - Taking advantage of the most auspicious date the numerologically inclined may ever see, couples around the world flocked to marry today, inundating houses of worship, catering halls, hotels, amusement parks, and at least one Las Vegas fish tank. Divers dressed as mermaids attended the underwater couple, the AP reports, and...

China Opens Giant Public Loo

Jul 7, 2007 4:28 PM CDT

China Opens Giant Public Loo

Visitors take their pick from 1,000 toilet stalls

(Newser) - Time for tourists to ditch the Great Wall and head for the city of Chongqing in southwest China, which recently opened a startling new attraction: a sprawling public restroom. The free facilities lie behind an Egyptian facade that conceals 1,000 toilets spread over four stories and almost 33,000...

Chinese Goods Flunk Gov't Safety Tests

Jul 4, 2007 3:08 PM CDT

Chinese Goods Flunk Gov't Safety Tests

Nearly 20% of domestic consumer products can't meet quality standards

(Newser) - The Chinese government acknowledged today what people around the world suspected—many products manufactured by the world's largest exporter of consumer goods are unsafe. One-fifth of its manufactured wares fail to meet government safety standards, a regulatory agency said in a posting on its website. Despite the findings, which did...

Chinese Make Dino Soup

Jul 4, 2007 7:48 AM CDT

Chinese Make Dino Soup

(Newser) - Chinese villagers in Henan province dug up a ton of fossilized dinosaur bones, using them to make traditional medicines, including soup and poultices. The villagers, not entirely inaccurately, believed that they were ‘dragon bones’ from flying dragons. Once they learned of their value to paleontologists, the villagers donated the...

Thousands March for Democracy
in Hong Kong

Jul 1, 2007 1:03 PM CDT

Thousands March for Democracy in Hong Kong

Residents demand universal suffrage

(Newser) - Hong Kong observed the 10th anniversary of the handover to China today as tens of thousands took to the streets for the now-traditional annual pro-democracy rally. Beijing appears no more amenable to universal suffrage, however—Hu Jintao was in town to swear in the territory's new chief executive and his...

Hong Kong Poised to Become Asia's Big Apple

Jun 30, 2007 7:12 PM CDT

Hong Kong Poised to Become Asia's Big Apple

Port city turning into financial capital

(Newser) - Hong Kong is in decline as Asia's premier shipping hub, but the dip in dockyard activity is nothing to fret over, Newsweek reports. The city is on the brink of becoming one of the world's financial capitals—on par with London and New York. Economic shifts are reconfiguring the political...

Chinese PR Combats
Export Rap

Jun 30, 2007 11:05 AM CDT

Chinese PR Combats Export Rap

Enemies in Washington stymie effort to promote food products called unsafe

(Newser) - China is on a public relations blitz to keep its exports solvent after nonstop coverage of unsafe toothpaste, fish and even tires in the US, China's largest customer, last week. Beijing broke its pattern of protest over the coverage, shutting down 180 offending factories and promising consumers that tainted food...

China Fuels Boom in Backyard Fireworks

Jun 29, 2007 3:58 PM CDT

China Fuels Boom in Backyard Fireworks

Cheap exports drives U.S. trend for do-it-yourself shows

(Newser) - Inexpensive fireworks imported from China have led to a resurgence in do-it-yourself, backyard fireworks displays in the US, even as public shows have been scaled back due to post 9/11 regulations. Fireworks sales are soaring in this country, with revenue up to $900M last year, reports the Wall Street Journal....

FDA Flags Chinese Seafood

Jun 28, 2007 6:12 PM CDT

FDA Flags Chinese Seafood

Officials put the brakes on imports of species tainted with unapproved drugs

(Newser) - Add farmed seafood to the list of unsafe goods imported from China. The FDA will detain three varieties of fish as well as shrimp and eel, the agency said today, after tests revealed the presence of antibiotics and antifungals that aren't approved in the US for use in aquaculture. The...

Chinese Use Texting to Keep Protest Alive

Jun 28, 2007 12:56 PM CDT

Chinese Use Texting to Keep Protest Alive

Activists wielding cell phones and blogs circumvent censorship

(Newser) - Chinese activists used text messages and blog posts to organize and publicize a huge protest against the construction of a chemical plant, demonstrating continuing ingenuity in skirting government strictures against dissent in the media. Construction of the plant in the coastal town of Xiamen was put on hold following a...

Toothpaste Scare Widens—Again

Jun 28, 2007 7:41 AM CDT

Toothpaste Scare Widens—Again

Tainted tubes from China turn up in Georgia prisons, hospitals

(Newser) - The Chinese toothpaste scare is far from over and is more than just a scare. Tainted tubes have turned up, as expected, in discount stores—but officials have also found them in institutions such as prisons and hospitals, the Times reports. Nearly 1 million tubes containing varying amounts of a...

China Closes 180 Food Plants

Jun 28, 2007 3:51 AM CDT

China Closes 180 Food Plants

Dangerous chemicals added to products from candy to pickles; most not exported

(Newser) - The Chinese government has shut down 180 food manufacturing plants for racking up a whopping 23,000 violations in the last six months, most of them for using chemicals and industrial materials as food fillers to cut costs. Almost all were small and unlicensed, making it unlikely their products, worth...

China Shutters Scores of
Food Factories

Jun 27, 2007 12:49 PM CDT

China Shutters Scores of Food Factories

Crackdown spreads to plants using industrial chemicals in edibles

(Newser) - The Chinese government has closed 180 factories that were using dangerous and illegal ingredients, such as formaldehyde, in food products. The relatively large number of plants casts serious doubt on Beijing's insistence that the recent rash of tainted products originated with a small number of sources, the AP reports: A...

China Raises Profile in Africa

Jun 27, 2007 9:28 AM CDT

China Raises Profile in Africa

UN peacekeepers, volunteers, economic efforts reflect Beijing's new commitment

(Newser) - China is increasing the number of UN peackekeepers it sends to Africa and raising its profile on the continent, creating a kind of "peace corps" to address problems from job shortages to health care, the Christian Science Monitor reports. China, itself a developing nation, appears determined to both do...

Chinese Kids Tire of Communism

Jun 26, 2007 11:09 AM CDT

Chinese Kids Tire of Communism

Mandatory Marxist indoctrination a tough sell to modern youth

(Newser) - Chinese kids are bored stiff with the Communist philosophy still force-fed in their university system. Classes in Marxism have been mandatory since Mao, but cell-phone-weilding students entranced by China's burgeoning capitalist infrastructure are having trouble relating. "It's something like fiction," one student says of the readings in Das ...

Murdoch Kowtows to China

Jun 26, 2007 8:45 AM CDT

Murdoch Kowtows to China

Business and political interests raise issues for publisher's media

(Newser) - Rupert Murdoch's imperial ambitions in China have been marked by relentless cozying to its communist regime—motivated by equal parts opportunism and sinophilia—the Times reports. Murdoch's China outlets have toed the party line energetically, and the mogul, whose wife is a high-powered mainlander, has even personally lashed the Dalai...

Internet Users Slam Chinese Censorship

Jun 20, 2007 4:32 PM CDT

Internet Users Slam Chinese Censorship

As top sites are banned, web surfers rail against 'Great Firewall'

(Newser) - Frustration with government curbs on the Internet is growing among China's 140M web users. Wikipedia has been banned, and the censors recently shuttered photo-sharing web site Flickr, after a user uploaded a picture of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Tens of thousands of human monitors and an elaborate filter system...