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Sep 12, 2011

China cbank reaffirms policy, inflation too high

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s central bank said on Monday that inflation, which fell in August from a three-year high, is still too high and it would maintain its monetary policy settings despite heated debate among economists about a possible relaxation.

Data last week showed China’s annual consumer inflation eased to 6.2 percent in August from 6.5 percent in July, domestic demand held up well and exports remained resilient to the European debt crisis and a slowing U.S. growth.

Sep 12, 2011

China inflation too high, prudent policy in place – PBOC

BEIJING, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Chinese inflation is still too
high and the country needs to maintain its prudent monetary
policy, the central bank said on Monday.

“Some factors driving up prices have been controlled to an
extent, but they have not been fundamentally eliminated,” the
People’s Bank of China said.

Sep 9, 2011
via FaithWorld

China’s war on terror alienates Xinjiang’s Muslim Uighurs

Photo

(A Uighur man sits at a street market in Kashgar, Xinjiang province August 3, 2011/Carlos Barria)

The filthy back alleys and packed mosques of the remote far western Chinese city of Urumqi are one of the more obscure front lines in the U.S.-backed war on terror, launched after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Streets crawl with baton-wielding riot police and heavily armed SWAT teams brought in for a trade fair in a tense reminder that China considers the region fertile ground for terrorism and Islamic radicalism, a claim many scoff at.

Sep 9, 2011

Insight: China’s war on terror widens Xinjiang’s ethnic divide

URUMQI, China (Reuters) – The filthy back alleys and packed mosques of the remote far western Chinese city of Urumqi are one of the more obscure front lines in the U.S.-backed war on terror, launched after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Streets crawl with baton-wielding riot police and heavily armed SWAT teams brought in for a trade fair in a tense reminder that China considers the region fertile ground for terrorism and Islamic radicalism, a claim many scoff at.

Aug 31, 2011

China says attacks thwarted as Pakistan president visits Xinjiang

URUMQI, China (Reuters) – China has thwarted attacks by suspected Uighur militants in its restive far western Xinjiang region, state media said Wednesday, as Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari visited for a trade fair where he promised to work with Beijing to fight terrorism.

Zardari was in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi nearly a month after Chinese officials blamed an attack in the city on militants trained in Pakistan.

Aug 31, 2011

Pakistan’s Zardari seeks to allay Chinese concerns on terrorism

URUMQI, China (Reuters) – Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has promised to work closely with China in the fight against terrorism, state media said, nearly a month after Chinese officials blamed an attack in the troubled far-western region on militants trained in Pakistan.

Zardari made the comments during a meeting on Tuesday with Zhang Chunxian, the Communist Party chief of the restive region of Xinjiang, at the start of a trade expo in the capital, Urumqi.

Aug 26, 2011
via FaithWorld

China charges Tibetan Buddhist monks with homicide in self-immolation case

Photo

(Kirti Monastery, February 2003/Jialiang Gao)

A court in southwest China has charged three Tibetan monks with “intentional homicide” for hiding a fellow monk and prevented him from getting treatment after he set himself on fire, state news agency Xinhua reported Friday. Overseas rights groups say that the monk, named Rigzin Phuntsog, committed the act to protest against government controls on the restive region of Tibet.

His death triggered protests in Aba, a mainly ethnic Tibetan part of Sichuan province that erupted in defiance against Chinese control three years ago. The court in Aba will next week hear the case against monks Tsering Tenzin and Tenchum from the Kirti Monastery for “plotting, instigating and assisting in the self-immolation of a fellow monk,” Xinhua said.

Aug 26, 2011

North Korea’s Kim repeats to China he willing to resume talks

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-il told his neighbor and biggest patron China on Friday that he was willing to return to stalled nuclear talks “without precondition,” China’s Xinhua news agency reported, following a similar pledge to Russia.

China has been pushing its reclusive and impoverished neighbor to resume talks, though Seoul, Washington and Tokyo say that Pyongyang must first show it is serious about denuclearizing.

Aug 25, 2011

China replaces Tibet’s hardline top official

BEIJING, Aug 25 (Reuters) – China announced on Thursday that
it had replaced its hardline top official in the restless
Himalayan region of Tibet three years after it was hit by
protests, with a relative unknown who has not spent any previous
time working in minority areas.

Chen Quanguo, 55, who had been Communist Party chief of the
northern province of Hebei, will take over from Zhang Qingli as
Tibet’s Party boss, the official Xinhua news agency said in a
brief statement.

Jul 29, 2011

China high-speed crash shows leaders struggle to keep up

BEIJING (Reuters) – The backlash over a train crash that killed at least 40 people has handed a stinging lesson to China’s ruling Communist Party, struggling to keep up with a public whose thirst for candour and accountability is outrunning traditional top-down controls.

The popular anger unleashed by last Saturday’s high-speed rail accident in eastern China and echoing this week across the Internet and in an emboldened press, has shown that China’s heady economic growth has not inoculated leaders from widespread popular distrust of secretive and remote officialdom.

    • About Ben

      "I started working at Reuters in 2002 as an equities reporter in Shanghai, before moving to Beijing in 2005 to work on the general news and politics file. My primary areas of coverage are China's relations with Southeast Asia and Taiwan, the development of China's military, and ethnic minority issues in China."
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