BEIJING (Reuters) – The Communist Party boss of China’s southwestern city of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, has been removed, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday, following a scandal involving a senior aide who took refuge in a U.S. diplomatic mission last month.

Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang will replace Bo, Xinhua said in a brief report, and will also keep his vice premier portfolio.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao rebuked on Wednesday a high-profile contender for top leadership over a February incident in which a top aide took refuge in a U.S. diplomatic mission.

Bo Xilai, the ambitious Communist Party head of the southwestern municipality of Chongqing, has been the subject of much speculation since Vice Mayor Wang Lijun, his longtime police chief, went to ground in the U.S. Consulate in nearby Chengdu until he was coaxed out and placed under investigation.

BEIJING (Reuters) – With his easy laugh, undyed hair and casual style, Hu Chunhua is not one of your average Chinese leaders, who are better known for their rigid and dull uniformity.

Stepping out this week at China’s annual meeting of parliament, Inner Mongolia Communist Party boss Hu is one of the country’s rising political stars, and like other senior leaders mixing with the media this past week he has been forthcoming about challenges facing his region.

BEIJING, March 10 (Reuters) – A Chinese oil pipeline
being built through Myanmar has not been affected by fighting
between Myanmar forces and rebels, a Chinese security official
said on Saturday, adding that China had been trying to help find
a solution to the conflict.

A 17-year-old ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Army
(KIA), one of the Myanmar’s most powerful rebel groups, broke
down last June sending Kachins fleeing across the long border
with China into tent settlements.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Some foreign companies in China exploit their workers by forcing them to do overtime or underpaying them, the labor minister said on Wednesday, as controversy swirls over working conditions at a plant that makes Apple Inc’s iPhones and iPads.

Apple has faced a slew of bad press following deaths and reports of suicides at its China supply firms.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A contender for China’s top leadership, Bo Xilai used to strut though the annual parliament meeting like a bantam cockerel.

Feted for his crime-fighting skills and transforming smoggy Chongqing into a model of “red” socialist revival, Bo has come under an awkward silence at this year’s gathering of China’s National People’s Congress after a long-time aide disappeared into a scandal that has baffled and tantalised fans and foes.

BEIJING (Reuters) – A senior Chinese official pledged on Saturday to reach out to the youth of Taiwan to get them to identify more closely with China, as Beijing frets about pro-independence sentiment on the self-ruled democratic island it claims as its own.

The comments by Jia Qinglin, the Communist Party’s fourth-ranked leader, underscore China’s continuing fears about the future of the island which Beijing has vowed to bring under its control, with the use of force, if necessary.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Attackers wielding knives killed 13 people in China’s Xinjiang region before police shot seven of them dead, the government said, in the latest violence to strike the ethnically divided northwestern area.

Xinjiang’s government said the killings on Tuesday night occurred on a busy pedestrian street in Yecheng County near Kashgar, a city in the south of Xinjiang that has been beset by tension between the mainly Muslim Uighur people and Han Chinese.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China said on Thursday it would send a senior diplomat to Syria as it steps up efforts to mediate in the Syrian crisis after being scolded by the West and many in the Arab world for vetoing a U.N. resolution calling for Syria’s president to step down.

China and Russia this month blocked a draft U.N. Security Council resolution backing an Arab plan urging President Bashar al-Assad to give up power after 11 months of bloodshed between Syrian forces and protesters demanding reform.

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Tuesday it was urgent to prevent war and chaos in Syria and vowed to work through the United Nations to seek an end to civil strife in the country.

His comments came days after China and Russia blocked a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that backed an Arab plan urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit amid his government’s violent crackdown on opposition groups.