News stories by Antoaneta Bezlova

More than 60 years after foreign colonial powers left the bustling hub of Shanghai, China is truly recapturing the wayward city.

Courteous and efficient, Xing Xina is dealing with the long queue of bank customers in front of her without a hint of resentment.

As China moves up in the world and the need for investment in its own infrastructure declines, Chinese investors and financiers are eyeing lucrative contracts in less developed countries, winning bids to build dams, power plants and highways from Burma to Uzbekistan and Angola.

Economic figures have now confirmed what analysts have long predicted would be the defining event of 2010. After 30 years of spectacular growth, China is poised to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy and firmly establish itself as the leading source of global growth.

If Asia, already unsettled by China’s economic rise, needed a reminder that economic power would be followed by more political assertiveness, then none was more compelling than Beijing’s unconcealed sway on Cambodia to expel 20 Uyghur asylum seekers over the weekend.

As western nations and the values of liberal capitalism received a battering in the financial storm, China’s emergence as a pillar of economic stability and growth has fed a new craze in all things Chinese — from language to philosophy and culture.

China and the United States are wrestling to claim leadership during the upcoming climate change talks in Copenhagen, unveiling proposals to cut greenhouse gases one after the other this week and setting the stage for some tough negotiations. But gauntlets thrown, both face challenges in achieving their pledged targets.

His victory speech is a smash hit on Internet sites; his image vies for popularity with those of communist China’s founding father Mao Zedong, and his book is a runway bestseller in this country’s big cities. But as China prepares to welcome him as the first black president of the United States, keen anticipation is mixed with unease.

Brushing off accusations that its investment is denuding Africa of precious natural resources, China has pledged 'going all-out' to help African countries overcome poverty and fight new threats like climate change.

For China choosing to act on climate change is not simply agreeing to effect changes in the way its robust economy is being run. Chinese leaders have to choose between two equally unattractive options—put the brakes on growth to choke off pollution and face an array of scary scenarios, from unemployment swell to social unrest.