News stories by Antoaneta Bezlova, page 3

China’s 'no strings attached' financial assistance to developing countries in Africa and Asia has come under scrutiny during the recent high-level talks between Chinese and US leaders.

In recent days, China’s mainland intellectuals have publicly displayed a wave of patriotic support for the Xinjiang cause. They have expressed anger against 'hostile foreign forces', whom they blame for inciting the recent violence in the ethnic Muslim area.

China has welcomed Obama administration’s efforts to lead a global movement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but it has spawned concerns in Beijing that international pressure to cap emissions could mount, thus slowing the pace of its economic growth.

The story of ethnic strife engulfing China’s far-western province of Xinjiang may have been relegated to the inner pages of the country’s state-controlled newspapers, but it found space on the front pages of almost every other Chinese daily.

When China’s population control was imposed in 1980, it was meant to be a temporary measure which the government promised to phase out in three decades. It was intended to halt the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

Beijing’s last minute climb-down on its latest Internet-censorship effort this week highlights the possibility that Chinese communist mandarins’ main challenge in the future lies not in quelling political dissent, but reigning in its tech-savvy educated elite.

Beijing has reined in China’s unbridled dam-building spree, issuing warnings to power-hungry developers that stimulating the economy in a time of crisis should not be used as an excuse to forego environmental reviews of big hydroelectric projects.

As the December deadline for reaching a global climate deal in Copenhagen approaches, China is claiming leadership - rallying emerging economies to defend their rights to development and strike bargaining positions with rich nations.

Dismissive of warnings that the Korean peninsula stands on the brink of war, China contends North Korea’s recent provocative actions are yet another illustration of brinkmanship aimed at attracting the U.S. attention. Beijing decried the North’s nuclear tests in late May, but remains uncommitted to tougher sanctions against the impoverished Stalinist nation.

Tiananmen Square is history. Or at least that is the belief shared by many on the campus of China’s top university.