Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 1489

Dissident Chen Guangcheng visits Taiwan

The blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng is due to arrive in Taiwan on Sunday, a week after he suggested New York University was forcing him to leave because of pressure from Beijing. Chen escaped house arrest in his rural town in eastern China's Shandong province in April 2012. Chinese officials later let him move to the US with his wife and children in an arrangement negotiated with the

Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

What should have been a hushed scene of 800 Chinese students sitting their university entrance exams erupted into siege warfare after invigilators tried to stop them cheating.The relatively small city of Zhongxiang in Hubei province has always performed suspiciously well in China's tough ''gaokao'' exams, winning a disproportionate number of places at the country's elite universities.

Read more

Le Monde: The Chimerica dream

Sun Tzu, the ancient author of The Art of War, must be throwing a rice wine party in his heavenly tomb in the wake of the shirtsleeves California love-in between President Obama and President Xi Jinping. "Know your enemy" was, it seems, the theme of the meeting. Read more

Who wants to bet on 'Nicaragua Canal'?

A Hong Kong-based company that won a concession to design, build and manage a USD 40 billion canal to rival Panama's says it has been lured by an energy renaissance in the United States and its belief that world trade could double by 2030. Read more

Regime Forcing Rural Population Into Cities

The communist dictatorship ruling over mainland China has a new centrally planned plot in the works, a controversial scheme that seeks to force hundreds of millions of farmers from rural areas to regime-dominated mega-cities being built across the nation. Read more

"Chinese people — and especially the peasants — can expect extra doses of misery and brutality. Forced evictions, like forced

China fury at new Snowden claims

China on Sunday attacked the United States as an espionage "villain" after former spy Edward Snowden raised new allegations about the far-reaching extent of US cyber-snooping against Chinese targets. Read more

In China: an entire bookstore gets censored?

The Shanghai office of China’s national propaganda department recently issued a notice to the media banning it from publicizing the opening of Taiwan bookstore chain Eslite, which plans to open a 70,000-square-foot bookstore in Shanghai Tower, which will be the tallest building in China once it opens in 2015. Read more

Economy: President Xi versus President Xi

The country’s new leader, Xi Jinping, has ignited expectations of bold economic liberalization, but he has also cast himself as a resolute defender of Communist Party control, leaving even insiders uncertain about how far he will push changes. Read more

Economy: President Xi versus President Xi.

The country’s new leader, Xi Jinping, has ignited expectations of bold economic liberalization, but he has also cast himself as a resolute defender of Communist Party control, leaving even insiders uncertain about how far he will push changes. Read more

FBI to investigate the Chen Guangcheng case

The FBI has been asked to investigate allegations that the Chinese dissident
Chen Guangcheng was the victim of a spying plot using tracking devices installed
in an iPad and an iPhone given to him after he arrived in the United States. Read more