China
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By Damien Gayle UPDATED: 15:16 GMT, 11 January 2012 Hong Kong, one of the world's richest cities, is abuzz with a luxury property boom that has seen homes exchanged for record sums. But the wealth of the city has a darker side, with tens of thousands priced out of housing altogether and forced to live in the most degrading conditions. These pictures by British photographer Brian Cassey capture the misery of people - some estimates put the figure as high as 100,000 - who are forced to live in cages measuring just 6ft by 2 1/2ft. Yan Chi Leung is mentally ill and lives in the 6ft by 2.5ft wire cage at the bottom of this stack of three Kong Sui Kao, 64, sits in his home in a room with 19 other cages
Hong Kong's cage homes: Tens of thousands living in 6ft by 2ft rabbit hutches
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN : Today marks the official launch of one of most anticipated memoirs of any top Bush administration official. I’m talking about former Vice President Dick Cheney’s 576-page memoir, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir .
Ex-Bush Official Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: "I am Willing to Testify" If Dick Cheney is Put on Trial
His gold medal-winning performance was the highlight of his career, and he seemed certain to make the cut for the 2004 Athens Olympics until he broke his left Achilles tendon in training in 2002. He never fully recovered, missed the games, and in 2005 he retired with a 38,000 yuan (£3,650) pay-off from the government in his home province of Hebei. "The money meant the local team no longer had to take any liability for my future," he said. "After I left the sports system, I got a job as a food delivery boy, but after a while my injury got worse and worse so eventually I couldn't run or even walk for long periods".
Top Chinese gymnast found begging on the street
Car Accidents | China | Economy
CHONGQING, China — One dark night last December, a woman begging for money in a suburb of China’s largest city was hit by a truck. For more than an hour, she lay on the side of street moaning and crying for help. Nobody responded to her pleas.
Tiananmen protesters still jailed in China, 22 years on - TrustLaw
Source: reuters // Reuters By Sui-Lee Wee BEIJING, June 3 (Reuters) - Twenty-two years after China's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests, at least five people remain in jail for joining in the tumult. For China's ruling Communist Party, the 1989 demonstrations that clogged Tiananmen Square in Beijing and spread to other cities remains a taboo topic, all the more so this year when the government has launched a campaign to stamp out dissent after the uprisings in several Arab countries. The anniversary of the suppression of the student-led movement falls on Saturday, and three men who joined in the protests, Jiang Yaqun, 75, Miao Deshun, 48, and Yang Pu, 47, remain in Beijing's Yanqing prison, where sick inmates are held.
Eight of the nine top Chinese government officials are scientists. This same sort of ratio is found at all levels of the Chinese government. Did you know that the president of China is a scientist? President Hu Jintao was trained as a hydraulic engineer. Likewise his Premier, Wen Jiabao, is a geomechanical engineer.
Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists
IN THE odd way these things work in China, word has trickled out that on April 7th an appeal court in Zhejiang, a famously entrepreneurial coastal province, conducted a five-hour hearing on a death sentence handed down to Wu Ying, a prominent 29-year-old businesswoman, on fraud charges. Before her arrest Ms Wu had seemed to personify the miraculous business success that could be achieved by people from even the most humble background in modern China. The revelation that she faces execution is the latest in a string of dramatic events surrounding her case, including the arrest of several prominent bankers and officials from information she is said to have given, and her own reported suicide attempt. Details are murky because much of the case, including the appeal, has taken place behind closed doors, with restrictions on direct press coverage. That, however, has not stopped Chinese newspapers and internet opiners from discussing avidly a case that has clearly caught the public interest.
Chinese business: When fund-raising is a crime
Satellite images pulled from Google Maps showing empty Chinese ‘ghost-cities’ surfaced and went viral yesterday, capping months of allegations that there are allegedly over 64 million brand new vacant apartments in China, enough to house over 200 million people. The almost post-apocalyptic images of excess property are said to be the result of Chinese government pressure to increase internal economic activity and hence net GDP by any possible means, even building entire cities even when it’s unnecessary. Patrick Chovanec of Tsinghua University explained to English language Al-Jazeera TV : ‘Who wants to be the mayor who reports that he didn’t get 8% GDP growth this year? Nobody wants to come forward with that.
Scallywag & Vagabond » Savage Predator » Google’s Satellite Images Reveal Chinese ‘Ghost Cities’
"China Is Communist in Name Only." Wrong. If Vladimir Lenin were reincarnated in 21st-century Beijing and managed to avert his eyes from the city's glittering skyscrapers and conspicuous consumption, he would instantly recognize in the ruling Chinese Communist Party a replica of the system he designed nearly a century ago for the victors of the Bolshevik Revolution. One need only look at the party's structure to see how communist -- and Leninist -- China's political system remains. Sure, China long ago dumped the core of the communist economic system, replacing rigid central planning with commercially minded state enterprises that coexist with a vigorous private sector. Yet for all their liberalization of the economy, Chinese leaders have been careful to keep control of the commanding heights of politics through the party's grip on the "three Ps": personnel, propaganda, and the People's Liberation Army.
5 Myths About the Chinese Communist Party - By Richard McGregor