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Raymond Li
Like most young people today, Zhang Kun has spent a lot of time hanging out at internet cafes. The 26-year-old from Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, liked watching online porn as a teen, until one day he stumbled on a video link that prompted him to search for the truth, and eventually transformed him into a campaigner for civil society.
Xie Zhongchao, a dealer at an open-air scrap market on the northern outskirts of Beijing, is at a loss when asked what he will do after the site is soon demolished.
Former premier Wen Jiabao has insisted on his innocence and integrity in a letter to a Hong Kong newspaper columnist in a bid to contain damage from claims that his extended family accumulated massive wealth during his tenure at the top.
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The sudden death of China Railway Group's president has triggered investor concerns over the heavy debt burden of the nation's railway builders, which analysts say will be hard to shake off in the near term.
The Ministry of National Defence denied that the PLA was already moving ahead with plans to set up a joint command headquarters to improve co-ordination between different military branches, state media reported.
The massive vote-buying scandal that has already decimated the local people's congress in one Hunan city exposes deep-rooted problems in the country's legislative system, analysts said.
Li Chongxi, the chairman of the provincial committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, is the third senior Sichuan official to fall under suspicion this year in what analysts describe as a widening investigation into Zhou Yongkang (inset) and his supporters.
The sight of a bust of Mao Zedong being worshipped alongside deities at shrine in local homes and restaurants is a startling reminder to visitors that they are in Shaoshan , birthplace of the late Chinese leader still affectionately referred to as Chairman Mao 37 years after his death.
When Mao Siping, a former rice farmer in Shaoshan in Hunan province, decided to try his luck at a local souvenir market touting memorabilia of the late Chairman Mao Zedong to tourists 20 years ago, he said at best he made 10,000 yuan (HK$12,600) a year.
From red pork dishes to badges and little red books, almost everything bearing the mark of Mao Zedong is popular on the mainland, as businesses try to make money from the man and his controversial legacy.
Comedians delight in offending. What makes them different from louts is their willingness to make fun of themselves. Sanctimony, in their eyes, is the only true blasphemy. But dancing on the grave of an enemy is hard to do gracefully, as performer Guo Degang has no doubt recently realised.
A deputy national police chief with close ties to former security tsar Zhou Yongkang has become the latest target in a widening corruption probe that has shaken the highest levels of the ruling Communist Party.
The national college entrance exam, or gaokao, has been a bittersweet experience for millions of mainlanders. Those lucky enough to have passed went on to college and left with a degree which for years has been a sure guarantee of a good career.
The air quality index in the capital was as high as 356 at 9pm, ending a week-long streak of blue-sky days. Anything worse than 300 is considered "severe", the highest rating on the six-level rating system.
Wang Yuanyuan, the director of the Beijing Dance Theatre, was traumatised when the mainland tour of her ballet production The Golden Lotus was suspended by regulators last year. She has now become much more cautious through fear of falling foul of the censors again.
China has referred to Nelson Mandela as an old friend of Chinese people in a tribute to the former South African president who died on Thursday at the age of 95.
China could follow the dangerous path of several African countries where more women than men fall prey to the Aids epidemic if the country fails to enact powerful measures to tackle the problem, particularly among vulnerable groups, women's rights advocates warn.
Wang Weijun said he felt a kick in his stomach each time he saw his daughter sitting alone in the last row of her middle school classroom. But he said he always swallowed his complaints. Wang's daughter, Kaijia, is 16 and has lived with HIV since 1999.
Wang Peian, the deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said that allowing couples to have a second children when only one parent was an only child represented a minor change. He even disputed using the word "relaxation" to describe it.
Communist Party leaders across the country could eventually move into official residences as part of a plan to tackle official corruption, although experts said the change would mean little without greater disclosure of officials' wealth.
Beijing's initial US$200,000 donation to the typhoon-ravaged Philippines fell far short of both China's economic clout and its ambitions to be a major world player.
