| 0, 2009 | -
China was accused of cyberspying on American businesses and announced that its GDP had grown at a rate of nearly 9 percent in the third quarter.
| Source:
CNN
|
| 0, 2009 | -
China created a small black hole.
| Source:
FOX News
|
| November 19, 2009 | - Zookeepers at the Chongqing Wild Animal Park, China, were dismayed to find that the zoo's five white tigers had become so domesticated they were scared of the live chickens they were meant to eat.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| November 16, 2009 | -
President Barack Obama traveled to Shanghai,
China, where he addressed a town-hall meeting attended by members of the Chinese Communist Party Youth League, whose questions were pre-screened. The president described himself as “a big supporter of non-censorship.” The meeting, which the White House called the “marquee event” of Obama's trip to China, was not mentioned in official Chinese government news broadcasts. References to Obama's remarks on Chinese websites were removed within hours.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| October 28, 2009 | - Parents and teachers in the Guangdong province of China were upset by a new sculpture in a city park of an eight-inch girl with giant 16-foot breasts. “The little girls were scared and cried loudly,” said one kindergarten teacher, “asking me if they would grow those huge things.”
| Source:
Ananova
|
| September 18, 2009 | - Based on a single fossil smuggled out of China, paleontologists announced the discovery of the Raptorex, a roughly human-sized version of the Tyrannosaurus rex.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 14, 2009 | - Mudslides and floods caused by Typhoon Morakot killed 500 people in Taiwan. International aid for the victims was delayed because countries did not want to offend China, which claims dominion over the island, and because Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou initially refused foreign aid (a situation he blamed on a “typing error”).
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
Guardian
|
| August 2, 2009 | - Medical official Shi Bing Bing said that China's astronauts can be disqualified for 100 different reasons, including runny noses, ringworm, and bad breath.
| Source:
The Telegraph
|
| July 23, 2009 | - A Chinese couple got married wearing a coat of 1,000 living honeybees.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 22, 2009 | - Large areas of India and China were plunged into darkness for nearly 7 minutes during the century's longest total eclipse of the sun. Pregnant women were advised to stay home for fear that the eclipse would harm their unborn babies; tens of thousands waded into the Ganges, because it is auspicious to watch an eclipse while immersed in sacred waters.
| Source 1:
Boston Globe
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
New York Times
Source 4:
BBC
|
| July 6, 2009 | - At least 140 people were killed in Urumqi, in the Xinjiang region of China, when predominantly Muslim, Turkic-speaking Uighurs protesting discrimination clashed with Han Chinese and security forces.
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
WSJ
|
| June 5, 2009 | - To prevent any commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, Chinese officials filled the plaza with police officers, shut down 160 websites for “system maintenance,” blocked access to Twitter, and prevented activists from leaving their homes. “They won't even allow me to go out and buy vegetables,” said Ding Zillin, whose son was killed in the protests.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 2, 2009 | - A man in Shenzen lost his hand when it was torn off at the wrist during a tug-of-war match at a beach.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| May 31, 2009 | - The Tiananmen Square massacre would soon turn 20.
| Source:
The Wall Street Journal
|
| May 23, 2009 | - Traffic on Haizhu Bridge in the Chinese city of Guangzhou was stopped while a man named Chen Fuchao, who had amassed debts of $293,000 in a failed construction project, decided whether or not to jump. After five hours, a man named Lai Jiansheng broke through a police cordon, greeted Chen, and shoved him off the bridge onto an emergency air cushion. “Jumpers like Chen,” explained Lai, “are very selfish.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 18, 2009 | - After a Chinese government investigation determined that Love Land, the country's first sex-themed park, “had an evil influence on society,” the park was shut down, leading to the immediate demolition of a giant pair of women's legs wearing a red thong.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| May 7, 2009 | - The U.S. Navy reported that 12 crewmembers aboard the amphibious transport ship USS Dubuque had been diagnosed with influenza A (H1N1), bringing the total number of U.S. cases of the flu to 1,600, with 2,500 cases reported worldwide in 25 countries. Afghanistan, despite having no cases of swine flu, took its only known pig, a gift from China named Khanzir (which means “pig”), away from the friendly goats and deer with which it grazed at Kabul Zoo and placed it in solitary confinement.
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
BBC
|
| April 26, 2009 | - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control declared a public-health emergency over an outbreak of swine flu that has infected at least 20 people in California, Kansas, New York, Ohio, and Texas. The virus is believed to have originated in Mexico City, where more than 149 people, all aged between 20 and 40, have died, and at least 1,300 people have gotten sick. Mexico's government closed all schools, universities, and zoos, canceled church services, soccer games, and bullfights, and banned visits to beauty salons and juvenile detention centers. Swine flu has been found in Canada, China, France, Israel, New Zealand, and Spain, prompting the World Health Organization to consider raising the pandemic alert level from 3 to 4 out of 6.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Yahoo News
|
| April 14, 2009 | - Thousands of dolphins blocked Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden from attacking Chinese merchant ships.
| Source:
Xinhua
|
| April 5, 2009 | - A piglet in China was born with three eyes and two noses.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| April 2, 2009 | -
President Barack Obama traveled to Europe with his wife, Michelle, for the G-20 summit and the sixtieth anniversary of NATO, and met a number of foreign leaders for the first time, including Queen Elizabeth II (who, the press noted, actually touched the First Lady), Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, and Chinese President Hu Jintao. When Hu and French President Nicolas Sarkozy quarreled and refused to sign the summit's communique, Obama resolved their argument. “I'd suggest,” said one senior official, “we'd still be in there had he not done this.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
EW
Source 3:
ABC
|
| March 13, 2009 | -
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao expressed concern about the safety of his country's massive investment in U.S. Treasury bonds.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 28, 2009 | - Three people with “personal grievances” set themselves on fire in a car just outside of Tiananmen Square (where soldiers stand next to fire extinguishers to extinguish protesters), and in Sichuan province a Tibetan monk named Tapey was shot by police after he set himself ablaze.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
BBC News
|
| February 19, 2009 | - On her first Asian trip as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton urged China to keep buying U.S. debt and told the audience of “Awesome,” an Indonesian music show, that her favorite bands were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. She was later asked by Fox News if she preferred the Beatles' early “hand-clapping” phase or the “drug-fueled existentialism” of their later music. “The hand-clapping mode was what I first was captured by,” she said. “But then, as I went through my angst period and struggled with the challenges of living in the real world, the more existential message struck home.”
| Source 1:
CSM
Source 2:
The Washington Post
Source 3:
Fox
Source 4:
Bloomberg
Source 5:
Politico
|
| February 16, 2009 | - Walt Disney took control of the Ice Lantern Festival in Harbin, China, replacing dragons and other Chinese-themed ice scuptures with Disney characters. “This is beautiful,” said Li Jing, a 22-year-old visitor wearing cat ears in imitation of Tigger. “It brings my childhood memories back.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 14, 2009 | - Swimmer Michael Phelps apologized to the Chinese for taking bong hits at a frat party. “The past few days have been tough for me,” Phelps said in a video provided to Asian news sources by automaker Mazda, which sponsors him. “But I have received support and encouragement online from so many Chinese friends.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 4, 2009 | - Moments after replacing his cell phone's battery, a Chinese man was killed when the phone exploded, bursting an artery in his neck. The Shin Min Daily News, which first reported the story, suggested that the best way to avoid being hurt by exploding cell phones was to “avoid long telephone conversations.”
| Source:
The Telegraph
|
| January 22, 2009 | - Two men were sentenced to death in Shijiazhuang, China, for their role in the production of tainted milk that killed six babies,
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| January 2, 2009 | - Twenty-two Chinese dairy companies involved in the recent profusion of melamine-tainted milk sent a text-message apology to millions of cellular phones. “We are deeply sorry,” read the message, “for the harm caused to the children and the society.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| November 29, 2008 | - Wo Weihan, a 59-year-old biomedical researcher convicted of espionage by a Chinese court, was executed by a gunshot to the head. “I don't want people to think we hate China,” said his daughter. “We're just really disappointed and shocked by the criminal justice system.”`
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 22, 2008 | -
Quixing Park Zoo panda Yang Yang bit a college student. “I just wanted to cuddle him,” said the 20-year-old, “I didn't expect he would attack.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| November 21, 2008 | - The U.S. National Intelligence Council released a report to U.S. policymakers intended to prepare them for a future of waning U.S. influence as countries including China, India, and Russia grow in standing. The report suggests the dollar may be replaced as the world's major currency, and that demand for oil, food, and water “will outstrip easily available supplies” and lead to global conflicts. “Conditions will be ripe for disaffection, growing radicalism... youths into terrorist groups... all current technologies are inadequate. This,” it concluded, “is a story with no clear outcome.”
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
CNN
|
| November 20, 2008 | - A congressional advisory panel found that China has stolen “vast amounts of sensitive information from U.S. computer networks,” including government networks.
| Source:
CBS
|
| November 18, 2008 | - A Chinese-born scientist working in Virginia pleaded guilty to selling military secrets to the Chinese for their space program.
| Source:
Information Week
|
| November 9, 2008 | -
China announced a $585 billion economic-stimulus plan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2008 | - The British Food Standards Agency recalled edible sex toys, including chocolate and strawberry body pens and a chocolate lotion, after the Chinese-made products were discovered to contain trace amounts of melamine, an industrial chemical that can cause kidney failure.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 26, 2008 | -
Chinese
astronauts conducted the country's first-ever spacewalk. “After the Olympics, it's the most exciting thing that enhances our national pride and dignity this year,” said He Haihong, a Beijing sales manager.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| September 18, 2008 | - Global stock markets lost $3.1 trillion in four days, and American International Group (AIG), the world's biggest insurance company and a leader in the $62 trillion credit-default swap market, was nearly bankrupted. “The private market has screwed itself up,” said Representative Barney Frank (D., Mass.), “and they need the government to come help them unscrew it.” The Federal Reserve loaned AIG $85 billion at 11 percent interest and took control of the company, which was founded in China in 1919 and driven out thirty years later by Mao. AIG was replaced in the Dow Jones Industrial Average by Kraft, the makers of Cheez Whiz.
| Source 1:
Der Spiegel
Source 2:
The New York Times
Source 3:
The New York Times
Source 4:
Der Spiegel
Source 5:
Boston Globe
Source 6:
CNN
Source 7:
Bloomberg
|
| September 4, 2008 | - Xiguang, an elephant undergoing treatment on the Chinese island of Hainan, was off heroin and headed home.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| August 29, 2008 | - An Ohioan named China Arnold was convicted of microwaving her one-month-old baby, Paris Talley, to death.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 25, 2008 | - The Beijing
Olympics ended.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 13, 2008 | - Michael Phelps, the American swimmer who won eight gold medals in Beijing, revealed that he consumes more than 12,000 calories a day by eating three egg sandwiches with fried onions, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast, three chocolate-chip pancakes, two ham-and-cheese sandwiches, two pounds of pasta, and an entire pizza.
| Source:
New York Post
|
| August 12, 2008 | - The musical designer for the Beijing
Olympics admitted that Lin Miaoke, the nine-year-old Chinese schoolgirl who, suspended on wires, performed “Hymn to the Motherland” at the games' opening ceremony, lip-synched the song after Chinese officials decided that the actual singer, seven-year-old Yang Peiyi, was too ugly and buck-toothed to perform before billions.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| August 11, 2008 | - The Olympics began in Beijing, heralded on television by fake, computer-generated fireworks.
| Source:
All Headline News
|
| August 10, 2008 | - President George W. Bush told Bob Costas that China “is a big, important nation...it is important for this country to show respect for the people of the country.”
| Source:
CEP News
|
| July 23, 2008 | -
China was paying parents of victims of the recent earthquake in Sichuan province to sign statements to the effect that the Communist Party “mobilized society to help us”; Chinese newspapers were ordered to stop reporting on school collapses; and a poll ranked China as the most optimistic of 24 nations surveyed.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| July 22, 2008 | - A locust plague in Mongolia threatened to spoil next month's games in Beijing.
| Source:
Houston Chronicle
|
| June 30, 2008 | - A federal appeals court ruled that evidence against Hozaifa Parhat, a Chinese
Muslim held at Guantanamo Bay for six years, consisted of nothing more than the reassertion of his guilt in three top-secret documents. “Lewis Carroll notwithstanding,” wrote one judge, quoting “The Hunting of the Snark,” “the fact the government has 'said it thrice' does not make the allegation true.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| June 10, 2008 | - A corpse-laden “quake lake” in the Sichuan province of China was being drained.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| May 24, 2008 | - Aftershocks in the wake of the Great Sichuan Earthquake toppled thousands of buildings. At least 80,000 people were thought to be dead from the quake, up to 11 million people were homeless, and 69 dams were at risk.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The International Herald Tribune
Source 3:
CBCNews.ca
|
| May 19, 2008 | - A 7.9-magnitude earthquake centered in Sichuan Province, China, left 50,000 dead and 5,000,000 homeless. Outside Beichuan Middle School, where 1,000 students and teachers died, parents waited for the bodies of their children to be pulled from the rubble, lighting a single firecracker each time a body was found. A married couple lay under their workers' dormitory for 28 hours, their limbs crushed and entwined. “I tried bending my neck against the wall to kill myself,” said the husband after being rescued. Three minutes of silence and three days of mourning were observed throughout the nation, and the Olympic Torch relay was suspended. “Other people who know their relatives have died can call this a memorial day or a funeral,” said a farmer named Wang Hongchen, who wandered the ruins shouting his son's name, “but not me yet.” Predictions of a powerful new earthquake sent tens of thousands of Chengdu residents rushing to the streets in panic.
| Source 1:
Telegraph.co.uk
Source 2:
Nytimes.com
Source 3:
Nytimes.com
Source 4:
Reuters via NYTimes.com
|
| May 16, 2008 | - The invasion of tasteless Chinese truffles threatened the primacy of the European Perigord black truffle.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| April 28, 2008 | - A train collision killed 43 passengers in Zibo, China.
| Source:
Express India
|
| April 5, 2008 | - The 2008 Summer Olympics torch relay, a tradition that began in 1936 as a celebration of Nazi ideology, traveled to Dar es Salaam, guarded by China's 30-person paramilitary Sacred Flame Protection Unit; onlookers chanted “Tanzania is a peaceful country” as a police helicopter hovered overhead.
| Source 1:
The Guardian
Source 2:
The Washington Post
Source 3:
Times Online
Source 4:
All Africa
Source 5:
BBC News
|
| March 27, 2008 | - It was revealed that a Miami Beach company supplied U.S. allies in Afghanistan with defective, 40-year-old, Chinese-made bullets; the president of the company, 22-year-old Efraim Diveroli of Miami Beach, has been a defense contractor since he was 18. “I'm basically just working,” Diveroli explained on his MySpace page, “and chilling with my boyz.”
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
Miami Herald
Source 3:
MySpace
|
| March 17, 2008 | - Tibet's exiled government said that hundreds of Tibetans had died in clashes with the Chinese government in Lhasa, while China put the number of dead at thirteen.
| Source 1:
AFP
Source 2:
The Hindu News Update
|
| March 17, 2008 | -
China dismissed as “downright nonsense” the Dalai Lama's claim that China has enacted a “rule of terror” as well as “cultural genocide” in Tibet.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| February 21, 2008 | - The United States claimed to have successfully shot down a disabled and toxic spy satellite; China and Russia said the action was actually an excuse to test anti-satellite missile systems.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| February 3, 2008 | - In China, where hundreds of thousands of people traveling for the Lunar New Year remained stranded by winter storms, a woman was trampled to death in a stampede to board a train.
| Source:
Storm-hit China calls for 'faith'
|
| January 18, 2008 | - President George W. Bush called for $145 billion in tax cuts, describing the measures as a “shot in the arm” for the U.S. economy, which caused stock values to plunge in Australia, Tokyo, Hong Kong, China, and across Europe. “There's something approaching panic in the market,” said an analyst with Bank of America. “The short-term risks,” explained Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, “are to the downside.”
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| January 9, 2008 | - The World Bank said that the prosperity of China and other emerging markets would help soften the coming global economic downturn.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| January 7, 2008 | - The Chinese government expelled more than five hundred people from the Communist Party for violating the country's one-child policy.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 2, 2008 | - Pat Robertson predicted that China will convert to Christianity. “God's going to give us China,” he said. “China will be the largest Christian nation on earth.”
| Source:
Huffington Post
|
| December 8, 2007 | - A new National Intelligence Estimate by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Iran ended its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, in contrast to a 2005 report that claimed with “high confidence” that such a program was still active. Former CIA officials explained that at the time the earlier report was written the agency's Iran Task Force had been reduced from nearly a hundred analysts and officers to fewer than a dozen, and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, attempting to explain why the earlier report was not “so wrong,” reminded reporters that Iran is “very good at this business of keeping secrets.” “It is all right,” responded Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “It is enough that you are confessing to your mistakes.” In Iowa,
Democratic candidates debated the Iranian nuclear threat as well as the safety of toys made in China. “My toys,” said Senator Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), “are coming from Iowa.” At a dinner in Des Moines, a reporter summarized the Iranian nuclear report for Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who hadn't heard the news. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, also recalled that he was still learning about the AIDS virus in 1992, when he proposed putting AIDS patients in quarantine.
| Source 1:
WP
Source 2:
White House
Source 3:
LAT
Source 4:
NYT
Source 5:
WP
Source 6:
LAT
Source 7:
Politico
Source 8:
AP via Yahoo
|
| December 7, 2007 | - There was talk of breeding the last known female Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle, an 80-year-old displayed behind bulletproof glass at a zoo in Changsha, China, with the last known male, a 100-year-old who lives in Suzhou. “The main problem,” said a herpetologist, “is really to get a viable sperm sample from the old male.” Methods under consideration include a series of electric shocks and manual massage.
| Source:
The Sydney Morning Herald
|
| November 12, 2007 | -
Chinese pork provider Pengcheng held a public pig-carcass-shaving to demonstrate that its meat would be sanitary and safe to eat at next year's Olympic Games; rival meat purveyors Qianxihe Group were raising special organic-fed Olympic pigs that are treated with traditional herbal medicines and given two hours of exercise each day.
| Source:
ChinaView.cn
|
| November 8, 2007 | - Soon after “Aqua Dots,” a China-made bead toy aimed at children four and older, was named Australia's toy of the year, 4.2 million units were recalled because chemicals in the tiny beads, when metabolized, turn into the date-rape drug GHB.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| October 29, 2007 | -
General Motors announced it would open a new research center into alternative fuels and vehicles in Shanghai.
| Source:
Forbes.com
|
| October 20, 2007 | - The Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal. “We are furious,” said Zhang Qingli, secretary of China's Party Committee of Tibet Autonomous Region. “If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| October 20, 2007 | - The Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal. “We are furious,” said Zhang Qingli, secretary of China's Party Committee of Tibet Autonomous Region. “If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award, there must be no justice or good people in the world.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| October 18, 2007 | - Iranian and Chinese companies won contracts worth $1.1 billion to build power plants in Sadr City, Iraq,.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 18, 2007 | - Iranian and Chinese companies won contracts worth $1.1 billion to build power plants in Sadr City, Iraq,.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 9, 2007 | - The Republican candidates for president gathered in Dearborn, Michigan, for a debate on the economy. Mitt Romney, who was born in Detroit, bemoaned the “one-state recession“ gripping Michigan; Duncan Hunter repeatedly blamed the loss of American manufacturing jobs on free-trade policies with “communist China”; Ron Paul attributed the large profits of hedge-fund managers to a conspiracy among politicians, banks, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the military-industrial complex to inflate or destroy currencies and swindle the middle class; and John McCain advised Paul to read ”The Wealth of Nations." The candidates generally agreed that taxes are too high. “We’re taxed to the max,” said Sam Brownback. Mike Huckabee touted his Fair Tax proposal to abolish the IRS and to tax consumption as a way to shift the tax burden onto drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and illegal immigrants. Paul and Tom Tancredo refused to pledge to support the Republican nominee in the general election.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 22, 2007 | - Contestants on “American Idol”-style talent shows, said China, must henceforth demonstrate “perseverance, maturity, confidence, and health.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 7, 2007 | - A routine X-ray of a Chinese woman's body uncovered 26 sewing needles, presumably placed there during her infancy by her grandparents, who were disappointed that she was not a boy.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| September 5, 2007 | - A corrupt official in China was caught plagiarizing his trial apology from another corrupt official.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 4, 2007 | - Mattel recalled 11 more Chinese-produced lead-laced toys.
| Source:
RTT news
|
| September 3, 2007 | - The British government complained that the Taliban was using weapons that had been made in China,.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| August 30, 2007 | -
China declared its one-child policy an environmental weapon in the fight against global warming.
| Source:
Alertnet.org
|
| August 29, 2007 | - Two brothers survived in a collapsed Beijing coal mine for five days by eating coal and drinking their own urine. “You can only take small sips,” said Meng Xianchen, “and when you've finished, you just want to cry.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 16, 2007 | - Citing America's $1 trillion debt to China, Senator Joe Biden warned, “We have to get off that sucking off of that breast which is China.”
| Source:
Des Moines Register
|
| August 16, 2007 | - A couple in China named their baby “@.”
| Source:
AP via SFGate.com
|
| August 12, 2007 | -
China Public Security, a U.S.-financed company contracted by the People's Republic, was outfitting the city of Shenzen with 20,000 surveillance cameras and issuing identity cards to record each citizen's name, address, employment status, education, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical-insurance status, reproductive history, and landlord's phone number. “If they do not get the permanent card,” said a China Public Security executive, “they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 4, 2007 | -
China declared that Tibet's living Buddhas must seek permission from the government before being reincarnated.
| Source:
Times Online
|
| August 2, 2007 | - An online video game that allows players to torture and kill corrupt officials and their children proved so popular in China that the game's website crashed.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| July 19, 2007 | - A Beijing
journalist was detained for fabricating a story about street vendors stuffing their dumplings with cardboard.
| Source:
CNN
|
| July 16, 2007 | - In China, where flooding has killed hundreds of people this summer, the rampant Yangtze River had caused Dongting Lake to overflow, leading two billion rats to flee to the Hunan countryside, where there are few predators to reduce their numbers, as the snakes have been eaten by southerners and the owls have been used for medicine. Besieged farmers were poisoning the rats, beating them with hammers, and sending them, live, by truckload to restaurants in Guangzhou, where diners pay 136 yuan for a kilogram of ratmeat.
| Source 1:
National Geographic
Source 2:
ABC News
Source 3:
Sydney Morning Herald
|
| July 10, 2007 | -
China executed Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of its State Food and Drug Administration, for taking bribes to approve untested medicines including an antibiotic reported to have killed ten people.
| Source:
NYT
|
| July 2, 2007 | -
China sentenced a former official to death for corruption and for approving counterfeit drugs, admitted that nearly 20 percent of the goods it produces are substandard, and announced that it was searching for oil in Sudan.
| Source 1:
BBCnews.com
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
BBCnews.com
|
| June 20, 2007 | - One and a half million Thomas the Tank Engine toys produced in China were recalled after they were found to contain lead paint.
- One and a half million Thomas the Tank Engine toys produced in China were recalled after they were found to contain lead paint.
| Source:
IHT
|
| June 8, 2007 | - In China, a spike in the price of pork tenderloin and bacon caused people to begin eating more fish.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 7, 2007 | -
China was in the grip of “Web 2.0 madness.”
| Source:
CNET
|
| May 31, 2007 | - It was reported that Xiang Xiang, a five-year-old panda bred in captivity and released into the wild, was found dead in February. Wild pandas are suspected.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 30, 2007 | -
China and India were preparing to race to the moon.
| Source:
Financial Times
|
| May 20, 2007 | -
China announced that it would invest $3 billion in the New York‒based private equity group Blackstone.
| Source:
The New York Time
|
| April 19, 2007 | - One centimeter of snow accumulated on the drought-stricken Qinghai-Tibetan plateau in what China claimed to be the first artificial snowfall.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| March 29, 2007 | -
China was considering using its vast harvest of rape to create biodiesel. “The government,” said Agriculture Ministry official Wang Shoucong, “should foster research work to nurture high-yield rape.”
| Source:
PTI via Hindu
|
| March 21, 2007 | - To test the integrity of ten local hospitals, journalists in Hangzhou, China, replaced their urine samples with tea; six of the hospitals diagnosed the reporters with urinary tract infections.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! Lifestyle
|
| March 19, 2007 | - In Beijing, weather officials were now using the word “mai,” meaning “haze,” to denote a denser concentration of pollutants than “wu,” which means “fog.”
| Source:
The Economist
|
| March 8, 2007 | -
China accused the United States of trampling on Iraq’s sovereignty and violating the rights of its own citizens.
| Source:
Boston Herald
|
| March 1, 2007 | - In a videoconference with Hong Kong investors, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said that America might sink into recession by year's end; a frenzied worldwide sell-off ensued. The Shanghai Composite lost 8.8 percent of its value in a day, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 3.3 percent, its worst drop since September 17, 2001. “Alan Greenspan really needs to sit down,” said one economist, “and be quiet.” Others marveled at the ability of “the Maestro” to cause upheavals even in retirement; Greenspan later held another videoconference, for which he charges fees of $150,000, and said that a recession was ”not probable.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
AP
Source 3:
NPR
|
| February 15, 2007 | -
Chinese authorities sentenced businessman Wang Zhendong to death for his role in duping 10,000 investors out of $390 million in a giant ant-farming scam.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 7, 2007 | - A spokesperson for the Chinese government said the West bore an “unshirkable responsibility” for climate change.
| Source:
Financial Times
|
| February 2, 2007 | - A Chinese man whose genitals were eaten by a dog when he was a child was said to be happy with a new penis built from his chest muscles and hip bones.
| Source:
Xinhua
|
| January 19, 2007 | -
McDonald's opened its first drive-thru window in China.
| Source:
AP via Breitbart
|
| January 18, 2007 | - The coffee chain was challenged by a Chinese state TV personality, who claimed that its presence in Beijing's Forbidden City “trampled over Chinese culture.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 7, 2007 | - Desperate to protect themselves from crime, many South Africans were attending martial arts classes taught by Bruce Lee's top student, Grandmaster Richard Bustillo. “I was born in 1975 and Bruce died in 1973,” said one pupil. “He was a Chinese guy but maybe he came back as an African?”
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| November 22, 2006 | - The Yellow River turned red for the second time in a month.
| Source:
BBC
|
| November 21, 2006 | -
Chinese
scientists revealed that showing pornography to pandas has helped increase the captive panda population; Vassar scientists said that they had successfully mated robot
fish.
| Source 1:
AP via Australian
Source 2:
Xinhua
|
| November 15, 2006 | -
Forests were expanding in Spain, Ukraine, Vietnam, and China.
| Source:
Times Online
|
| October 30, 2006 | - In Beijing, volunteers giving out free hugs were detained by police. “Embracing is a foreign tradition,” said one citizen. “Chinese are not accustomed to this.”
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| October 26, 2006 | -
Chinese president Hu Jintao was purging disloyal party members.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 23, 2006 | - An “unknown discharge” turned a half-mile section of China's Yellow River “red and smelly.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 16, 2006 | -
China insisted that the U.N. request, rather than require, countries to inspect North Korean cargo. An American expert called the sanctions “kabuki theater,” and North Korea called them a “declaration of war.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 12, 2006 | -
Chinese
Wal-Mart workers unionized.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| October 8, 2006 | - In China's Shanxi and Shaanxi Provinces, families with dead sons complained that corpse brides were in short supply.
| Source:
scotsman.com
|
| September 29, 2006 | - Men boxed kangaroos in Shanghai's fourth annual Animal Olympics.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| September 27, 2006 | - The Chinese organ market remained robust due to a spike in executions. Many prisoners, said an official, had volunteered to give up their organs as a “present to society.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 25, 2006 | -
China announced plans to ship thornless red roses to markets worldwide.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 18, 2006 | - The recipient of a penis transplant in Guangzhou, China, requested doctors remove the organ after he and his wife began experiencing “severe psychological problems.”
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| August 30, 2006 | - A woman in Hohhot, China, crashed her car into another vehicle while allowing her dog to drive.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| August 29, 2006 | - Researchers warned that countries with unnaturally high male-to-female population ratios, such as China and India, could foster violence, organized crime, and terrorism.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 23, 2006 | -
Chinese law enforcement officials cracked down on striptease performances at funerals in Jiangsu province, arresting five and setting up a hotline where people could report “funeral misdeeds.”
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo News
|
| August 1, 2006 | - An epidemic of bird flu among geese in northern China was driving up the price of badminton shuttlecocks.
| Source:
CNN
|
| August 1, 2006 | - In China 50,000 dogs died in Yunnan province when government-authorized “killing teams” crept into villages at night and beat the dogs to death.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| July 24, 2006 | -
Chinese scientists were preparing to test an artificial sun.
| Source:
UPI
|
| July 21, 2006 | - A school headmaster in China burned down 10 classrooms when the dog
meat he was cooking burst into flames.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| July 18, 2006 | - The Chinese government announced that it would begin issuing identity numbers to fresh vegetables.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 3, 2006 | - Floods killed dozens of people in Romania, Pakistan, China, and the northeastern United States.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 26, 2006 | -
China announced that media outlets would be fined up to $12,500 if they reported on any “sudden events” without prior authorization.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 15, 2006 | - It was reported that for two years China has deployed a fleet of Golden Champion “death vans” to allow rural communities to carry out lethal injections.
| Source:
USA Today via AOL
|
| June 6, 2006 | -
Donald Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defense, traveled to Vietnam, where he complained that Russia is a bully and China is secretive; he also observed that when Vietnam's first university was founded in 1070 American Indians were still living in mud huts. “That's impressive,” he said.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 5, 2006 | -
Surgeons in Shanghai successfully removed a baby boy's third arm.
| Source:
AP
|
| May 31, 2006 | - In China
doctors were trying to determine which left arm to remove from a three-armed baby.
| Source:
BBC
|
| May 7, 2006 | -
Chinese
scientists said that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau were evaporating. "The melting glaciers," said Dong Guangrong, "will ultimately trigger more droughts, expand desertification, and increase sand storms." One such storm recently dumped over 300,000 tons of dust in Beijing; technicians cleaned away some of the dust by firing seven rocket shells filled with silver iodide into the air to produce four-tenths of an inch of rainfall.
| Source 1:
The Independent
Source 2:
China View
|
| May 1, 2006 | - A Chinese man used eBay to buy an old MiG fighter jet to decorate his office.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 25, 2006 | -
Chinese
bra producers were offering larger sizes to meet increased demand.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| April 24, 2006 | -
China announced that it would ban heavy snorers from its army.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 20, 2006 | -
Chinese President Hu Jintao visited with President Bush in Washington, D.C. A Falun Gong protester interrupted the welcoming ceremony; President Bush apologized to Hu, and also called on Hu to appreciate the value of the yuan.
| Source 1:
AP via Yahoo! News
Source 2:
BBC News
|
| April 19, 2006 | -
British
doctors criticized China for harvesting organs for transplant from thousands of executed prisoners.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 6, 2006 | -
Australia agreed to sell uranium to China.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| April 5, 2006 | - In China a woman was selected from 70 volunteers to live for seven days in a cage with Internet access and 300 birds.
| Source:
All Headline News
|
| April 3, 2006 | -
Chinese
Internet users were spending two billion hours online each week.
| Source:
Forbes
|
| March 22, 2006 | -
China announced a new 5 percent tax on disposable chopsticks.
| Source:
ABC News Online
|
| March 21, 2006 | - A group of U.S. senators visited China to push for an increased valuation of the yuan; without such a change the Senate plans to vote for tariffs on Chinese imports. "We would like to get an idea from our Chinese hosts," said Senator Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), "what the future is going to be like."
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 8, 2006 | - The U.S. State Department issued a report criticizing human rights abuses in China, North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. It also criticized the rights records of Jordan and Egypt, two countries where the United States has sent detainees to be interrogated. The report noted that the United States' "own journey towards liberty and justice for all has been long and difficult," and is "far from complete."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Independent
|
| January 29, 2006 | - A firecracker explosion killed 16 people during a New Year celebration in China.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 25, 2006 | -
Google agreed to censor its Chinese search results to please the Chinese government.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 15, 2006 | -
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il rode an armored train to China, where he toured hi-tech firms.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 13, 2006 | - A soon-to-be revealed world map was offered as evidence that Chinese sailors discovered America; the map is said to be a 1763 copy of the 1418 original made during the reign of Emperor Yongle.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 6, 2006 | - Yao Wenyuan, the final surviving member of the Gang of Four died.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 6, 2006 | - It was reported that street vendors in Shanghai were secretly replacing mutton with cat meat.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 2, 2006 | - Wives in China were suing their husbands' mistresses to reclaim gifts the mistresses had received from the husbands.
| Source:
China Daily
|
| December 31, 2005 | - U.S. financial giant Citigroup was attempting to purchase about 85 percent of the state-owned Guangdong Development Bank of China.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 30, 2005 | - A judge ruled that it was illegal for the Bush Administration to continue to imprison several Chinese
Muslims at Guantánamo Bay. Nine months ago a tribunal determined that the prisoners in question were not actually enemy combatants, but U.S. law will not allow them to be sent to China because China persecutes Muslims, and no other country wants the prisoners. The judge also noted that he had no power to enforce his own ruling.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| December 17, 2005 | - It was reported that agents from the Department of Homeland Security visited a college student in New Bedford, Massachusetts, soon after he requested a copy of “Mao's Little Red Book” through interlibrary loan—although many librarians felt the story might be a hoax.
| Source 1:
The Standard-Times
Source 2:
BoingBoing
|
| December 9, 2005 | - Police in Guangdong, China, fired into a crowd of demonstrators who were protesting the sale of government land for a wind-power plant; villagers said that at least ten people had been killed.
| Source:
SFGate.com
|
| November 28, 2005 | -
Earthquakes struck Iran and China.
| Source:
The Arizona Daily Star
|
| November 20, 2005 | - President George W. Bush visited China, where he went to church.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| November 17, 2005 | -
China announced that it will vaccinate 14 billion poultry against bird flu.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| November 11, 2005 | - In China the death sentence of entrepreneur Yuan Baojing was suspended after Yuan’s wife transferred $6.12 billion in shares to the government.
| Source:
News.telegraph
|
| November 10, 2005 | -
California
voters rejected four initiatives proposed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. “If I was to make another Terminator movie,” said Schwarzenegger, “I would tell Terminator to travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have another special election.” Schwarzenegger then visited China, where he was greeted by hundreds of flag-waving children.
| Source 1:
ABC News
Source 2:
BBC News
|
| October 25, 2005 | - In China eight elementary school children were killed and 45 injured in the stampede that started after someone yelled "ghosts are coming."
| Source:
IOL.CO.ZA
|
| October 20, 2005 | -
Babies were up for auction on eBay's Chinese subsidiary, Eachnet. Boys were going for $3,450, while girls cost $1,603.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| October 12, 2005 | - A Chinese man was killed and eaten by the six black bears he was raising for their bile.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| October 12, 2005 | -
Chinese
porridge was increasingly popular in the San Francisco area.
| Source:
SFGate.com
|
| October 12, 2005 | - Archaeologists in China discovered a 4,000-year-old bowl of noodles.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| October 3, 2005 | - At dozens of students at a police training school in southeast China were swept away by typhoon Longwang.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 24, 2005 | -
China was preparing to send the manned Shenzhou VI spacecraft into orbit.
| Source:
Red Nova
|
| September 12, 2005 | -
China announced that the death tolls from natural disasters would no longer be classified as state secrets.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 5, 2005 | - Fifty-five countries offered aid to the United Stateswith the disaster created by Hurricane Katrina. Cuba offered 1,100 doctors, Iran offered humanitarian aid, China offered $5 million, and Venezuela offered fuel at a reduced cost. The United States was performing a “needs assessment” to decide whose help to accept.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| August 22, 2005 | -
Chinese authorities were criticizing the televised Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest for its worldliness.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| August 15, 2005 | - 39 people in China died after eating contaminated pork.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 9, 2005 | - A Chinese artist was criticized for grafting the head of a human fetus onto a bird's body. “I thought putting them together like this,” he said, “was a way for them to have another life.”
| Source:
Chinese Artist Defends Fetus Artwork
|
| August 8, 2005 | - A suicide bomber detonated a bomb in Fuzhou, China, killing himself and and injuring over thirty people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 7, 2005 | - And North Korea would not make changes to its nuclear program, despite the efforts of China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and South Korea.
| Source:
VOA.com
|
| July 13, 2005 | - An explosion in a Chinese coal mine killed eighty-one miners.
| Source:
China View
|
| June 29, 2005 | -
China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation was planning to buy
Huffy Bikes.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| June 27, 2005 | -
China decided to outlaw sexual harassment.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| June 13, 2005 | - A flash flood in China killed ninety-two people, most of them young children.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 31, 2005 | -
Microsoft opened a new Chinese Internet portal that forbids some users from publishing personal home pages with the words "demonstration," "democratic movement," and "freedom."
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| May 26, 2005 | - Three hundred thousand residents of Beijing have been moved out of their homes to make room for the 2008 Olympics; some of those who protested the evictions have been jailed.
| Source:
Times Online
|
| May 22, 2005 | -
China put a halt to the practice of using naked women for plates in sushi restaurants.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| May 18, 2005 | -
China planned to launch forty grams of pig
semen into space.
| Source:
News in Science
|
| May 17, 2005 | -
Wal-Mart announced that it would export $18 billion worth of Chinese goods.
| Source:
Forbes
|
| April 21, 2005 | - A study by the Union Hospital in Hong Kong found that Chinese men have normal-sized penises.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 17, 2005 | - One hundred thirty-seven million people were overweight in China.
| Source:
Medical News Today
|
| April 16, 2005 | -
Soot was darkening China's skies.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 10, 2005 | - Thousands of Chinese rallied to protest Japanese history textbooks.
| Source:
The Australian
|
| March 30, 2005 | - In Shanghai, a man stabbed and killed another man for selling their jointly owned imaginary
cyber-sword without sharing the proceeds.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| March 21, 2005 | -
Pollution has killed all but thirteen river dolphins in China's Yangtze River.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 18, 2005 | -
Ukraine revealed that, between 1999 and 2001, local arms dealers had smuggled eighteen nuclear-capable Kh-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| March 16, 2005 | - The Department of Homeland Security was preparing for: the detonation of a ten-kiloton nuclear device; a biological attack with aerosolized anthrax; an outbreak of pneumonic plague; a flu pandemic starting in south China; the spraying of a chemical blister agent over a football stadium; an attack on an oil refinery; the explosion of a tank of chlorine; a 7.2-magnitude earthquake; a major hurricane in a metropolitan area; three Cesium-137 dirty bombs going off in three different cities, each contaminating thirty-six city blocks; the detonation of improvised bombs in sports stadiums and emergency rooms; liquid anthrax in ground beef; a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak; and a cyber attack on the nation's financial infrastructure.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 14, 2005 | -
China took steps to stop an invasion of red ants.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 9, 2005 | - The world held China in ever-higher esteem.
| Source:
People's Daily Online
|
| March 3, 2005 | -
China condemned the United States' human-rights record.
| Source:
People's Daily
|
| February 20, 2005 | -
Chinese scientists announced the development of a new process that turns sewage water and mud into organic fertilizer and pesticide.
| Source:
Xinhuanet
|
| February 15, 2005 | - A mine explosion in Fuxin, China, killed 203.
| Source:
Chinese mine explosion kills 203
|
| January 29, 2005 | - Commercial flights opened between China and Taiwan for the first time in 55 years,
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 27, 2005 | -
China overtook the United States as Japan's biggest trading partner,
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| January 11, 2005 | - The parents of a baby born on January 6, and officially named the 1.3 billionth citizen of China, turned down sponsorship deals from diaper makers. “Zhang Yichi is too young, and too many commercial activities will have negative impact on the boy's healthy growth,” said Zhang Tong, the boy's father.
| Source:
China Daily
|
| January 7, 2005 | -
China said it would make aborting a female fetus a crime.
| Source:
CBC
|
| December 17, 2004 | - and General Motors sued a Chinese automaker for cloning the Chevrolet Spark.
| Source:
The Wall Street Journal
|
| November 23, 2004 | -
China was planning to launch 100 satellites by 2020.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| November 22, 2004 | - Fifty-five died in an iron mine fire in the Chinese province of Hebei.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 1, 2004 | - There was violence between Han Chinese and Hui Muslims in central China.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2004 | - Paleontologists in China discovered 130-million-year-old fossils of Dilong paradoxus, an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, with impressions of feathers all over its body.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 26, 2004 | -
China opened its first Formula One raceway.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2004 | - The United Nations Security Council passed another resolution asking the Sudanese government to prevent its proxies from slaughtering people in Darfur (China, Algeria, Pakistan, and Russia abstained). The resolution, which for the first time formally invokes the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, says that the council will "consider" sanctions if the genocide continues.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2004 | - Jiang Zemin retired as head of China's military.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| September 6, 2004 | - There were floods and landslides in southwest China.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 3, 2004 | -
Chinese zookeepers were showing videos to a giant panda in an attempt to teach her how to take care of her two cubs.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| July 7, 2004 | - Avian flu reappeared in Thailand and China and Vietnam.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| May 26, 2004 | -
China sent one of the Buddha's fingers to Hong Kong.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 7, 2004 | -
Chinese researchers found evidence that SARS is spread by sweat.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| May 6, 2004 | - Fifteen Chinese warehouse workers were crushed to death by an avalanche of garlic.
| Source:
BBC
|
| April 29, 2004 | -
President Bush declined to investigate China's unfair trade practices.
| Source:
Cleveland Plain Dealer
|
| April 29, 2004 | -
SARS continued to spread in China.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| April 26, 2004 | -
China announced that Hong Kong will not be allowed to elect its next leader in 2007, contrary to the city's Basic Law, which was enacted when Britain turned over the territory in 1997; China's Standing Committee of the National People's Congress said that an election would create social and economic instability. Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's current chief executive, called on the people to remain "calm and rational."
| Source:
BBC
|
| April 23, 2004 | - A railway station exploded in North Korea soon after Kim Jong Il, on his way home from China, passed through in his special armored train, which was a gift to his father from Joseph Stalin; much of the surrounding community was damaged or destroyed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 22, 2004 | -
SARS returned to China.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| March 15, 2004 | -
China amended its constitution to say that "the state respects and preserves human rights." Another amendment declared that "private property obtained legally shall not be violated."
| Source:
Boston Globe, Cybercast News
|
| March 2, 2004 | -
China issued a report condemning the United States for its human-rights violations and its "military aggression around the world."
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| February 26, 2004 | -
China accused Hong Kong's leading opposition party of being unpatriotic.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 13, 2004 | -
Chinese officials cancelled the opening of the Vagina Monologues in Shanghai.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 1, 2004 | -
China reported a new SARS case after the patient had already recovered.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| January 8, 2004 | - A second case of SARS was reported in China, in a waitress who works in a restaurant that serves civet; the first SARS patient, who has apparently recovered, has had no known contact with civets, but there were reports that he had recently thrown a mouse out his window using chopsticks.
| Source:
New Scientist, New York Times
|
| January 7, 2004 | -
Chinese authorities were drowning civet cats in chemicals, electrocuting them, and burning them in hopes of preventing further SARS cases; rats, raccoon dogs, and hog badgers are also being exterminated.
| Source:
New York Times, Associated Press
|
| December 27, 2003 | -
China reported a new SARS case.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| December 27, 2003 | - Hundreds of Chinese were killed by poison gas emitted from a natural gas well.
| Source:
Financial Times
|
| December 25, 2003 | -
China said it had broken up a Taiwanese spy ring.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 4, 2003 | -
China warned Taiwan that it was nearing an "abyss of war."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 14, 2003 | - Thirteen million trees were damaged in a freak
snowstorm in Beijing.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| October 16, 2003 | - A Chinese astronaut orbited the earth but failed to spot the Great Wall from space.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 14, 2003 | - American doctors revealed that they had made an infertile woman pregnant using nuclear transfer, a technique similar to cloning that involves taking genetic material from the mother's fertilized yet defective egg and putting it in a healthy egg from another woman that lacks a nucleus. The babies that were fashioned using the technique, which is banned almost everywhere but China, where the experiment was carried out, all died before birth.
| Source:
Nature.com
|
| October 7, 2003 | -
Japan was investigating an orgy in China involving 400 Japanese tourists and 500 Chinese prostitutes.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 16, 2003 | -
Chinese troops were said to be massing along the North Korean border.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | -
Chinese
police were told that they can no longer torture
crime suspects.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| July 5, 2003 | - A primary school in China was fining children five yuan per incident for farting in class.
| Source:
Undernews
|
| May 16, 2003 | -
China threatened to execute people who knowingly spread SARS.
| |
| December 31, 2002 | -
China banned piranhas.
| |
| July 16, 2002 | - A swarm of locusts descended on Beijing, where they were promptly gathered by the bagful, deep fried, and eaten.
| |
| December 18, 2001 | -
China, which officially became a member of the World Trade Organization, was continuing its crackdown on Uighur Muslims, whom it was executing in large numbers.
| |
| December 11, 2001 | -
Chinese zoos were planning to give Viagra to some endangered impotent tigers; “cage life” was blamed for their condition.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | -
China was planning to put a man on the moon.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | -
China held its first conference on AIDS; an anonymous patient gave a brief speech from a dark stage lit only by green glow sticks.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | -
Prostitutes in China were giving student discounts.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | -
China was admitted to the World Trade Organization.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | - American doctors were concerned about the ethics of treating people who had received organ transplants in China, where executed prisoners are the most common organ donors.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - Pabst Blue Ribbon put up billboards in Tibet with the following text written in Chinese and Tibetan: “Pabst Blue Ribbon celebrates the 50th anniversary of the peaceful liberation of Tibet.” One of the billboards stands across the street from the traditional winter residence of the Dalai Lama, who has been living in exile in India since he fled the Chinese occupation in 1959.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | - The president flew to
Shanghai, China, for the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation summit.
He rode around in a limo and pronounced the city “mind-boggling” and “miraculous.” He wore a traditional Chinese silk jacket; it was blue with gold trim.
He noted that “there is no isolation from evil.” At a joint press conference with President Jiang Zemin, President Bush answered questions about anthrax.
“These are evil people and the deeds that have been conducted on the American people are evil deeds,” he said.
“And anybody who would mail anthrax letters, trying to affect the lives of innocent people, is evil.” The president also cautioned that the anthrax attacks could turn out to be “a hoax.” Preliminary analysis of the anthrax found in New York and Florida showed that the bacteria was “professional grade” and all from the same strain.
| |
| October 16, 2001 | - Thousands of children in public and private schools across the country simultaneously pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America in what might have been the largest mass recitation in history outside the People's Republic of China.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | - A dam collapsed in China.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | -
Chinese factories were working day and night to manufacture flags for American patriots.
| |
| September 18, 2001 | -
Chinese
farmers asked for 5,000 snakes, 20,000 sparrows, and 200,000 frogs to help them fight a plague of locusts.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | -
Bush Administration officials contradicted previous statements that they would let China build up its nuclear arsenal if Beijing would simply drop its objections to the missile-defense boondoggle. Russia was beginning to approach the subject with a certain irony. “If they have the money to build the most excessive response to the least probable threat situation, that's okay,” said Vladimir Lukin, deputy speaker of parliament.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | -
China's deputy health minister finally admitted that the country is facing an AIDS epidemic; over the first half of this year, HIV infections rose nearly 70 percent compared with the same period last year.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | -
China decided it was time to start screening donated blood for HIV.
| |
| July 24, 2001 | - Human-rights groups were putting the finishing touches on Peekabooty, anticensorship software that would defeat all Web filters and allow Internet users in countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, and North Korea access to government-censored sites.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | -
Chinese president Jiang Zemin went to Russia to sign a treaty of friendship and cooperation.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | -
China was chosen to host the 2008 Olympic Games.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | -
Chinese
police arrested a butcher named Guan Jiadong who hacked to death four health inspectors and wounded three others after they tried to confiscate his meat.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | -
China executed more people in the last three months than the rest of the world did in the last three years, Amnesty International reported.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | - Negotiators said that all major obstacles to China's entry into the World Trade Organization had been overcome.
| |
| July 3, 2001 | - Wang Guoqi, a former Chinese army doctor, testified before Congress that he removed corneas, skin, and other body parts from executed prisoners; in one case, Wang said, he was forced to remove the skin from a man who was still breathing.
| |
| June 5, 2001 | -
China's official news agency reported that 3 million Chinese drink their own urine every day.
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| May 8, 2001 | - The United States
Army was forced to recall hundreds of thousands of black berets that were made in China.
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| May 8, 2001 | -
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered that all routine contact with the Chinese military be suspended, then revoked the order after the White House got upset, which led to speculation of a power struggle within the Republican cabal. “We're going to review all opportunities to interface with the Chinese,” President Bush clarified.
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| May 1, 2001 | -
President George W. Bush said that the United States would do “whatever it took” to defend Taiwan if it were attacked by China.
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| April 24, 2001 | -
Pat Robertson told a reporter that China was “doing what they have to do” when officials force women to have abortions, because otherwise “the population would be unsustainable”; Robertson later clarified his statement and said that he hadn't meant to condone forced abortion at all.
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| April 17, 2001 | - The Dutch legalized euthanasia; Germany's
Roman Catholic Church denounced the decision and warned against adopting a “culture of death.” China executed 89 people in one day.
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| April 10, 2001 | -
Japan approved a new history textbook that, according to critics in China and elsewhere, fails adequately to criticize Japanese conduct in World War II.
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| April 10, 2001 | - The United States and China were negotiating an apology for the spy-plane accident in which one Chinese pilot died; American officials visited the crew of the American plane, who were still being held by the Chinese, and handed out candy.
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| April 3, 2001 | - A U.S. warplane bombed targets in Iraq; a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet but landed safely in China.
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| April 3, 2001 | -
President Bush, apparently worried that all his talk about recession might make people think he had caused it, told 120 high-tech executives, whose net worth has dropped significantly in recent months, that the future was “incredibly bright.” Chinese paleontologists found the largest dinosaur footprints ever, right next to large deposits of dinosaur dung.
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| March 20, 2001 | -
Chinese prime minister Zhu Rongji apologized for the school explosion that killed 38 young children who were making fireworks.
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| March 13, 2001 | - Forty-one young children in China who were busy making firecrackers to raise money for their school were blown to bits when their gunpowder exploded and destroyed their school.
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| March 13, 2001 | -
China's prime minister denied that the eighth graders were making fireworks and claimed instead that a crazed suicide bomber had caused the explosion.
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| March 6, 2001 | -
China ratified the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
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| February 27, 2001 | - Workers were scrubbing the streets of Beijing and festooning the city with fake flowers, hoping to make a good impression on Olympic officials.
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| February 13, 2001 | -
Japan banned a Chinese soft drink that contains 64.3 mg of sildenafil, the active ingredient of Viagra, per serving; a Japanese Viagra tablet contains 25-50 mg of sildenafil.
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| February 13, 2001 | - Political violence continued in Afghanistan, China, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Kashmir, Liberia, Nigeria, Palestine, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere.
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| February 6, 2001 | -
Chinese
television broadcast footage of five Falun Gong members setting themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square; one of them was a twelve-year-old girl, who was shown in close-up crying “Mama! Mama!” The girl's mother, who supposedly told her that she would not feel the flames and would be instantly sent to paradise, died.
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| January 30, 2001 | - The new government symbolized by George W. Bush continued to insist that it would deploy a national missile defense system despite the fact that the program, developed with equal parts fraud and wishful thinking, would upset the balance of terror with Russia—not to mention the world-historical irony that it might easily drive China to sell missile technology to the very “rogue” nations the program seeks to neutralize.
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| January 23, 2001 | - Kim Jung Il, the dear leader of North Korea, made a surprise visit to China, where he toured the Shanghai Stock Exchange and a Buick plant.
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| January 23, 2001 | -
China received $28 million in reparations from the United States for the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
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| January 23, 2001 | -
Chinese were paying top dollar for lucky cell-phone numbers.
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| 0, 2000 | -
China celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the socialist People's Republic of China under the democratic dictatorship of the Communist Party and Chairman Mao,
| Source:
AFP via Google
|
| December 26, 2000 | -
Britain approved rules allowing researchers to clone human embryos; German officials called such practices “cannibalism.” Cheap Chinese
pigskin miniskirts were appearing in malls all over America.
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| December 19, 2000 | -
China committed Cao Maobin, a prominent union organizer, to a psychiatric hospital.
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| December 5, 2000 | -
Starbucks' new coffee shop in Beijing's Forbidden City was forced to remove its sign.
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| November 28, 2000 | -
China promised to stop selling missile technology to companies trying to develop nuclear weapons and also to obey the rule of law.
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| November 28, 2000 | -
Starbucks Coffee opened a store in China's Forbidden City, right next to the Palace of Heavenly Purity.
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| November 21, 2000 | -
China banned a gathering of poets.
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| November 14, 2000 | - Thousands of Chinese
voted in a mock U.S. election in Beijing; Al Gore won by a 2 to 1 margin.
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| November 7, 2000 | - Fifty thousand Chinese attended a performance of Verdi's Aida, which featured a cast of 2,200 and a trained elephant, Bactrian camels, lions, tigers, and Olga Roanko, a Russian soprano.
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| October 31, 2000 | -
Republican partisans were running a knock-off of the famous “Daisy” commercial used by LBJ against Barry Goldwater in 1964; the ad claimed that Clinton and Gore sold the nation's security to the Red Chinese.
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| October 24, 2000 | - Three Falun Gong members died while in the custody of Chinese
police; 57 have died in custody since the government banned the meditation cult last year.
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| October 10, 2000 | - Thousands of Chinese who worked as slaves for Japan in World War II filed suit in California against Japanese companies that might have profited from their servitude; Japanese military occupiers enslaved over ten million Chinese on the mainland and some 50,000 in Japan.
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| October 10, 2000 | - Hundreds of members of the Falun Gong, a banned Chinese meditation cult with mildly apocalyptic doctrines, were beaten and arrested in Tiananmen Square.
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| October 0, 2000 | - The 184th person died in Uighur-rights protests in China; the families of dead “innocents” will be granted 200,000 yuan by the government.
| Source 1:
CNN
Source 2:
China
|
| September 26, 2000 | - The U.S. Senate
voted to lift restrictions on trade with China.
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| September 26, 2000 | - The Vatican announced that on October 1, the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China by Mao Tse-tung, the Pope will canonize 120 Chinese Catholics whom it considers martyrs; the Chinese foreign ministry said that this would “seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.” Several Chinese Protestant leaders insisted that China's Christians faced little persecution.
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| September 5, 2000 | - Some 7,000 Chinese
bears were being farmed for bile on 247 licensed bear farms: farmers insert a tube into a live bear's gall bladder to extract the bile, which is sold as a traditional medicine.
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| September 5, 2000 | - Veterans of the Tiananmen Square massacre sued Li Peng, the chairman of the Chinese National People's Congress, in a New York court. China demanded that the suit be dismissed.
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| September 5, 2000 | - A large group of religious leaders met and exchanged business cards at the United Nations; the Dalai Lama was excluded for fear of angering China.
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| August 29, 2000 | -
China was engaged in a $7 million American public relations campaign; the traveling exhibits and displays were partially paid for by corporations that do business in China.
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| August 29, 2000 | -
Scientists and farmers in China discovered that simply planting several varieties of rice together doubles the crop's yield and eliminates rice blast, a fungus that destroys millions of tons of rice each year.
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| August 22, 2000 | - An FBI agent admitted that he had given false testimony in a bail hearing for Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist who has been held without bail for nine months for mishandling nuclear secrets; civil rights groups argue that Lee was singled out for prosecution because of his Chinese ancestry.
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| August 15, 2000 | - The contents of a top secret report on the likely consequences of the anti-missile program were leaked to the news media, confirming numerous public statements by Chinese and Russian government officials that they would deploy more missiles.
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| August 15, 2000 | -
China's annual summer crackdown on political dissent continued; observers said it was unusually severe this year.
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| August 15, 2000 | - Some 2,000 local Chinese
Communist Party Secretaries were recalled for further indoctrination and training.
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| August 8, 2000 | -
Chinese protestors set fire to Hong Kong's immigration office, after dousing its lobby with gasoline, injuring fifty.
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| August 8, 2000 | - Organizers of the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders failed to invite the Tibetan Dalai Lama because doing so would offend China.
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| July 25, 2000 | -
Russia and China again warned that America's proposed national missile defense system would cause a new arms race.
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| April 0, 2000 | -
China began to quarantine Mexicans.
| Source:
The Wall Street Journal
|
| January 9, 2000 | - World leaders converged in Pittsburgh for the G-20 summit, as did protesters. City officials freed 300 prisoners so that they would have 1,000 cells available, but ended up arresting only 149 people in two days. The protesters held demonstrations against pollution, global warming, automobiles, homophobia, African debt exploitation, corporate subsidies, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, child labor, the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the Burmese junta, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's presence at the summit. Anarchists in black sang, to the tune of the Beatles' “Yellow Submarine,” “We all live in a fascist bully state.” “I feel like it's real exclusive,” said 15-year-old Rosi Lowe of the summit, “and doesn't represent the entire world.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Post-Gazette
Source 3:
MSNBC
|
