Tag: China

BEIJING: Ahead of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Pakistan, Beijing has inaugurated the first air cargo route linking Islamabad with border town Kashgar, in northwest Xinjiang province.
The cargo service operates once a week and the frequency will be increased to daily flights depending on freight volume, said an official from Kashgar, which is a known as Kashi Prefecture Government. Kashgar is an oasis town east of the Taklamakan Desert and a trading hub along the ancient

BEIJING: China on Saturday denounced a visit by two Japanese local lawmakers to disputed islands in the East China Sea at the heart of a territorial row between the two Asian powers.
The chain of isles, known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan, has been an integral part of China since ancient times, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a statement. "The misdeed by the two local Japanese representatives violates China's territorial integrity," she said in the

BEIJING: China's central bank on Friday increased the amount of money that lenders must keep on reserve for the third time in one month, a move to mop up excess cash in the economy and rein in inflation. But the decision to raise banks' required reserves rather than interest rates means that officials have opted for a milder form of monetary tightening for the time being, suggesting that they believe price pressures are still well within their ability to control.
The 50 basis

TOKYO: Japan's chief delegate to six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament will visit Beijing at the weekend for talks with his Chinese counterpart, the foreign ministry in Tokyo said on Friday.
Akitaka Saiki, who heads the ministry's Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau, will meet on Saturday with Wu Dawei, China's special representative for Korean Peninsula affairs, amid pressure on Beijing to rein in its close ally.
Inter-Korean tensions have escalated after

BEIJING: China will not yield to outside pressure on jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, striking a combative tone the day before the award is due to be formally bestowed.
Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu denounced what she said were "double standards" applied to China's legal system, and criticised the US House of Representatives for calling on China to release Liu and his wife, Liu Xia, who is under house arrest.
China

SEOUL: The top US military officer accused China Wednesday of ducking its responsibility to curb its close ally North Korea in the wake of the North's "inhumane" and deadly attack on a South Korean island.
Admiral Mike Mullen also announced plans for more joint military exercises with South Korea and said the South has the right to respond as it sees fit to any future attacks.
Asked at a press conference in Seoul if he had asked the South to exclude the option of air strikes

BEIJING: China does not want to "replace" the United States from its dominant role in the world, and the world should not fear China's rise, the country's top diplomat wrote in an essay.
State Councillor Dai Bingguo said that China would not engage in an arms race, as the country's resources were better spent on development and ensuring its people had enough to eat. "The notion that China wants to replace the United States and dominate the world is a myth," Dai wrote in the

BEIJING: China is likely to raise interest rates in the coming days in a demonstration of the government's resolve to tame inflation, an official newspaper said on Tuesday.
In a banner headline across its front page, the China Securities Journal said this weekend offered a "sensitive window" for a rate rise, which would be the country's second following a surprise increase in October, the central bank's first rate hike since 2007.
An increase in rates would also put flesh

LONDON: Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Czech president Vaclav Havel on Sunday demanded "the unconditional release" of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, in an article published by a British newspaper.
Ahead of the Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo on Friday and writing in The Observer, Tutu and Havel said the dissident's imprisonment was "sadly emblematic of the Chinese government's intolerance to individual expression".
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in October

PARIS: Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry on Tuesday urged the United States to "properly handle" fallout from a slew of leaked cables that revealed Beijing, long seen as North Korea's protector, would accept a reunited Korean peninsula.
Cables revealed by the WikiLeaks website quoted US diplomats as saying that China increasingly doubts its own influence over Pyongyang and considers the regime's nuclear programme to be "very troublesome."
"We hope the US side will properly

BEIJING: The total number of reported AIDS deaths in China has jumped by nearly 20,000 since an official estimate last year, state media said Monday as Beijing vowed to step up efforts to curb its spread.
Deaths linked to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) since its emergence in China in the 1980s reached 68,315 by the end of October, state television said, citing figures from the health ministry. That compares with a tally of 49,845 reported deaths released by the

GUANGZHOU: An "extraordinary" Asian Games on Saturday closed after 15 days of thrills and spills that saw China reinforce its sporting credentials and Japan slip further behind.
On the last day of action at an Asiad unprecedented in size and scale, China fittingly won the last gold at stake when their women's volleyball team toppled South Korea 3-2 in a thrilling finale.
Zhou Chunxiu earlier added yet more gold to their glittering haul by defending her women's marathon title

BEIJING: China warned Friday against military activity in its exclusive economic zone, ahead of weekend US-South Korean exercises intended as a show of force against Beijing's ally North Korea.
"We hold a consistent and clear-cut stance on the issue. We oppose any party to take any military actions in our exclusive economic zone without permission," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement. Beijing said Thursday it opposed the war games, which come after North

GUANGZHOU: Powerhouse China made Guangzhou its most successful Asian Games ever on Friday as Bangladesh beat Afghanistan to win not just the cricket but their first gold medal in Asiad history.
When Feng Lanlan clinched the women's 68kg karate title it pushed China's total golds to 184, shattering their previous best at the Beijing Asiad in 1990, a tally no other country has reached since the Games began in 1951
Guangzhou had already become their most dominant in terms of

GUANGZHOU: World champion Maryam Jamal failed dismally in her bid for a middle distance double Wednesday as a fired-up Pakistan won its first men's Asian Games hockey gold in 20 years.
The Pakistani breakthrough, their first major title since the World Cup in Sydney in 1994, went some way to compensate for their cricket team being stunned by Afghanistan in the semi-finals.
On Day 13, China has its sights firmly set on shattering its best-ever gold medal haul, which stands at

TOKYO: Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Wednesday called on China to use its influence over North Korea to ease tensions on the divided peninsula, after Pyongyang's deadly shelling of a South Korean island.
Kan also held a telephone conversation with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak in which he underlined Japan's strong ties with Seoul and Washington and agreed to work closely together.
The government also hinted it would consider tougher sanctions against Pyongyang

GUANGZHOU: World champion Maryam Jamal comfortably defended her 1,500m Asian Games title on Tuesday as Somdev Devvarman and Peng Shuai delivered tennis gold to India and China.
The Ethiopian-born Jamal, running for Bahrain, lived up to her top billing on the track to win a slow-paced race she never looked like losing with Vietnam's Truong Thanh Hang a shock silver medallist.
Jamal said she planned to bid for a golden double, as she did at the last Games in Doha four years