News stories by Antoaneta Bezlova, page 4

Cashing in on huge public interest in one of the deadliest earthquakes of recent history, China has officially endorsed ‘disaster tourism’ as a form of economic subsidy to devastated areas. Home debris and whole sections of partially wiped out cities and villages during last year’s massive earthquake in southwestern China will now be open to tourists, the state media announced this week.

The global economic crisis has helped China and the European Union mend their recent rift over Tibet and human rights, but the two sides remain distrustful of each other’s intentions. Beijing complains that the EU’s crowded agenda makes it lose sight of the bigger picture in dealing with China. Brussels for its part, believes China is exploiting the EU’s divisions and treating the 27-state bloc with ‘diplomatic contempt’ on a range of issues from trade to the Dalai Lama.

Painstaking efforts by Chinese leadership to maintain the cloak of official silence over the crackdown of a 1989 pro-democracy movement backfired this week when Hong Kong released explosive clandestine memoirs of an ousted reformist party leader.

China is battling hard to contain the spread of the swine flu after stringent border checks and draconian quarantine measures of Mexican nationals failed to prevent the virus from entering the country.

Beijing has confirmed that its more assertive stance in recent territorial spats with its neighbours is a prelude to a more forceful projection of China’s rising military and diplomatic clout in the region and beyond.

Rebuked in the past for its sluggish response and attempts to cover up the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), China’s measures to curb the spread of the swine flu virus are earning opposite marks of being extreme and 'unjustified.'

At first it was nothing out of the ordinary. A book intriguingly tilted ‘China is not happy’ was expected to generate buzz because it claimed to detail the world’s most populous nation and aspiring superpower’s resentment of foreign abuses.

Beijing’s decade-old flirt with lucrative gambling in the booming casino town of Macau has gone decidedly sour.

China’s entrepreneurial south has always been Chinese leaders’ favourite spot for conducting experiments. Ever since markets advocate Deng Xiaoping launched experimental economic zones in the country’s south in 1992, paving the way for China’s emergence as an export powerhouse, the industrious Pearl River Delta has established itself as the epitome of daring in this nominally communist country.

The timing of North Korea’s rocket launch on Sunday, designed as a show of strength, was as provocative as the launch itself. It occurred on the day U.S. President Barack Obama made a speech calling for an end to nuclear arms and committed himself to reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.