China News

China will complete the construction of its first four strategic oil reserves by the end of this year, a senior government official said yesterday.

The official Xinhua News Agency says former Chinese leader Hua Guofeng has died at the age of 87.

Hua ruled China for only a few months after he succeeded communist founder Mao Zedong in 1976. Deng Xiaoping pushed Hua aside as a prelude to reforms that launched an economic boom.

State broadcaster CCTV says Hua died Wednesday. Xinhua says the cause of death was an unspecified illness.

Published by Jon Land for 24dash.com in Communities Tuesday 19th August 2008 - 1:03pm 'Mystery lodger' link to Chinese student murders The brutal murder of two Chinese graduates took a new twist today as ...

A report says about 1,200 people have evacuated their homes after a 5.3-magnitude earthquake hit southern China near its border with Myanmar.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency says no deaths were reported in Wednesday morning's quake, but many homes collapsed.

A report on the U.S. Geological Survey's Web site says the quake's epicenter was about 140 miles west of the popular tourism city of Dali in China's Yunnan province.

The chief of publicity with Yingjiang County's Communist Party committee told Xinhua that many homes in the epicenter of Sudian Township collapsed.

A gas explosion tore through a coal mine in northeast China on Monday, leaving 24 workers trapped, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The morning blast occurred at the Baijiagou mine in Faku, a county in the northeast province of Liaoning, Xinhua said.

Fifty-six other miners escaped without injury, it said.

China's mines are the world's most dangerous with more than 3,700 deaths a year in explosions, fires and floods. Many accidents are blamed on small mines with low safety standards, or those operating illegally.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese customs officials stopped four American missionaries and confiscated more than 300 Bibles they were trying to bring into the country, state media and a member of the group they belong to said.

Patrick Klein, founder of the missionary group Vision Beyond Borders, and three volunteers were detained on Sunday at Kunming airport in southern China, but were eventually released, regional coordinator Dyann Romeijn said.

"They confiscated all of the bibles, 315 in total, and were told that only one per person was allowed," she told Reuters.

China's state sports system ruined the Olympic chances of Liu Xiang, the country's greatest athletics star, through excessive pressure and training, his first coach told the Telegraph.

After performing her uneven bars routine Monday, she saw her name in second place and glanced over the scores, assuming she was at least one- or two-tenths of a point behind He Kexin of China. But, upon closer inspection, she noticed something strange about the gymnast in first and the gymnast in second. “Dad, I think we have the same score,” she told her father, Valeri, as she nudged him. He answered: “Oh. Yeah.”

The Kung Fu pupils in the opening ceremony of the Olympics have spent the last year cooped up in a military camp outside Beijing. Conditions have been bad. "They weren't even given enough food," says their trainer. This news adds to the criticism of the Beijing Organizing Committee.

Several members of the United States track team became ill at the team’s pre-Olympic training center in Dalian, about 300 miles east of Beijing, and food poisoning was the likely cause, according to a coach for three Olympians.

Ultra-nationalist Chinese fans are reported to be booing rival competitors at recent Olympic events. Similar incidents over the years have sometimes escalated to violence. Commentators say that staunch Chinese nationalism is being used by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to preserve its grip on power. Olympic organisers spent millions of dollars on workshops for unruly Chinese fans in July of this year, in an apparent attempt to avoid repeating ugly scenes which would lead to embarrassment for the hosts. This included teaching fans to not only cheer for Chinese competitors and boo the opposition. According to the experiences of attendees at recent sporting events posted on the internet however, the ill behaviour has continued. For example, in the women’s individual archery finals between South Korea and China, Chinese fans jeered the opposition with “boos,” and by blowing whistles while she was shooting. They were later quelled by officials.

Internet critics, made bold by their uncensored criticism of the Games' opening ceremony, are seeking new targets Michael Sheridan, Beijing The mystery of the half-filled stands at many events at the 2008 ...

Fri, Aug 15, 2008 A bus veered off the road and plunged into a ravine in central China, killing 15 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said Friday.

Aug. 17 - Maya-hunters find a new system of caves and underground temples in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

Soldiers operating the huge scroll that formed the centrepiece of last week's Olympic opening ceremony had to stay hidden under the structure for up to seven hours, wearing nappies because they were not allowed toilet breaks, state media reported on Friday. Nearly 900 soldiers were hidden underneath the scroll, many of them moving giant printing blocks with Chinese characters, the Beijing News reported. "The performers for Chinese character parts went into the models underground at 2 pm, and after getting in there they could not come out," the newspaper quoted choreographer Han Lixun as saying. "The underground area was so hot, there were 897 people there, and they had to wait until they finished their performance," Han said.

BEIJING – For a long time, elements of the Chinese government itself thought women’s gymnast He Kexin was born Jan. 1, 1994, which would make her 14 and too young to compete in these Summer Olympics. Whether it was repeated mentions in the government-controlled media – including a new one uncovered Friday by the Associated Press – or on official gymnastic meet registration forms and websites, He was “this little girl” and a “new star.” As recently as December 2007, in provincial gymnastics meets and news reports that covered it, she was a 13-year-old prodigy, too young for the 16-year-old Olympic age limit for gymnastics. Then, suddenly, she wasn’t.

Another section of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony has been exposed as faked - the children supposedly representing the country's 56 ethnic groups were in fact all from the same one, the majority Han ...

Just nine months before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government's news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, which would have made her ineligible to be on the team that won a gold medal ...

BEIJING : After the Chinese women's gymnastics team won its first-ever Olympic gold medal on Wednesday, its diminutive gymnasts celebrated on the arena floor, hopping and hugging and mugging for the cameras.

's news agency, Xinhua, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13, which would have made her ineligible to be on the team that won a gold medal this week.