China :: Top Stories

6 dead, 14 injured in bus fire near Beijing Six people, including five German nationals and a Chinese, died and 14 others were injured after a tourist bus rear-ended a container truck and caught fire today near Beijing, police said. The bus, whose had a license plate from Beijing, was carrying a group of German tourists and was driving on a pivotal expressway linking Beijing with Shanghai when the accident happened at 8:30 am, said police authorities in Tianjin. Police said the tour group was organized by the Beijing-based China Youth Travel Service. It said the identities of the victims were not immediately known. It was also unclear how many people were traveling in the bus. Witnesses said they saw a few people escaped from the flames. A photo posted by witnesses on the web showed the whole vehicle was engulfed in flames and dark smoke. The municipal government of Tianjin has demanded urgent treatment of the injured. The cause of the accident is under investigation. Bus catch...

Disgraced politician Bo Xilai will "face justice" for a litany of crimes, China said Friday as it announced the Communist Party would open a pivotal congress to select new leadership on November 8. The apparent decision to come down hard on Bo for alleged abuse of power, taking bribes and improper sexual relations was the latest turn in a scandal that has rocked the party ahead of a once-a-decade leadership transition. Both Bo's fate and the date of the congress have been the subject of intense speculation over whether China's biggest political intrigue in decades would unsettle the highly choreographed leadership change. The announcement on Bo was an unprecedented harsh public rebuke for a Chinese Communist official as authorities looked to lay to rest the damaging episode that shocked China and saw Bo's wife convicted of murder. "Bo Xilai's behaviour created serious negative consequences, seriously damaged the party and the countr...

  A full moon is seen in the sky above Changchun city, Northeast China's Jilin province on Sept 30, 2012, day of China's Mid-Autumn Festival , which falls on the 15th day of August in Chinese calendar. The festival is one of the most important festivals in China.It is an evening celebration when families gather together to light lanterns, eat moon cakes and appreciate the round moon. This day is also considered as a harvest festival since fruits, vegetables and grain had been harvested by this time and food was abundant. [Photo/Xinhua]     You might also like： Best places to appreciate moon in Mid-Autumn Festival Delicacy is no longer a piece of cake ...

A Chinese rocket on Saturday successfully launched a Venezuelan earth-observation satellite into orbit, state media said. The satellite, dubbed "Generalissimo Francisco de Miranda" after the major Venezuelan independence figure, was launched from the northwest Jiuquan base in the Gobi desert using a 'Long March' class rocket, said Xinhua. The launch comes four years after the first-ever Venezuelan satellite, named "Simon Bolivar" , which was built with Chinese help, was also put into orbit using a Chinese rocket. Last year, Venezuela announced the new $ 140 million satellite would be used to monitor troop movements on the country's borders and illegal mining, as well as study climate change and the environment. The two countries have forged close economic ties in recent years as leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has sought to reduce dependence on Washington, with top officials overseeing agreements worth billions of dolla...

Chinese oil companies such as CNPC are making the most of their technology, hard work and respect for local people to tap African oil reserves, as Zheng Yangpeng reports from Niger and Chad After a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Niamey, the capital of Niger, the small plane landed at a small airport. The airport, Jaouro, is dubbed jiaorou (which means "tender" in Chinese) among Chinese workers here. But conditions here are just the opposite of what its Chinese name implies. Lying in the heartland of the southern Sahara, the world's largest and roughest desert, the lonely base here is routinely subjected to scorching heat, sandstorms, scorpions, snakes, malaria and even robberies.   "] Niger's president Mahamadou Issoufou plugged his car with oil that was produced in his own country. [Photo/China Daily   None of this put off China National Petroleum Corporation, China's largest oil producer, which was determined to extract Niger's first barrel...

The Philippines has deployed 800 more Marines and opened a new headquarters to guard its interests in the disputed Spratlys islands, which China also claims, a senior military official said Sunday. Straddling vital shipping lanes and believed sitting atop vast reserves of mineral deposits, including oil, the Spratlys chain in the South China Sea has long been considered a flashpoint for conflict in the region. Apart from the Philippines and China, the Spratlys are claimed in whole or in part by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan. Lieutenant General Juancho Sabban, appearing to want to assuage Beijing in particular, said the deployment was only meant as a defensive measure and should not be seen as an aggressive move. "These two battalions which arrived recently will be augmenting protection of our islands," Sabban, who heads the military garrison which has jurisdiction over the Spratlys, told AFP. "We are just on a defensive posture and are e...

    It's no longer a case of the longer the shelf life the higher the price. That was true of moon cakes until last year. Rules have changed, so have perceptions. The norm this year is, the shorter the shelf life the higher the price. Some supermarkets are even promoting their products through slogans such as "our moon cakes go off soon". The new Food Additives Usage Standards implemented last year banned 27 food additives. The new rules allow the use of only 10 kinds of milder additives in moon cakes. More importantly, they stipulate the ceilings for the use of additives. As a result, the shelf life of moon cakes, representative of Mid-Autumn Festival, has been reduced from 120 to 60 days this year. Moon cakes with a shorter shelf life should be good news for consumers. A woman in Chongqing, for example, reportedly found a dust-covered packet of moon cakes in her storeroom last year. Their tender crust and fillings looked no different from the fresh ones. The...

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called on Saturday for his people to unite in support of the Communist Party and its outgoing leader, President Hu Jintao, ahead of a pivotal congress to usher in new leadership. The announcement comes amid a damaging political scandal involving Bo Xilai, a senior party boss who is to stand trial for a litany of crimes including abuse of power and improper sexual relations. "Let us rally more closely around the CPC central committee with comrade Hu Jintao as the general secretary," said Wen in a speech that came two days before the 63rd anniversary of the proclamation of People's Republic. Hu will handover power as head of the party to Vice President Xi Jinping during the congress on November 8, but will remain the country's president until next March. The congress will allow the party to "open new perspectives on development," Wen told an audience of some 2,000 diplomats and officials gathered at the Great H...

  Long queues of cars move on a highway in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu province, on Sept 30, 2012. China issued a toll-free road policy in August, allowing passenger cars with seven seats or less to travel for free on toll roads during major holidays. The policy also led to traffic jams in many parts of the country. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING – Traffic snarled at major expressway toll gates across China before dawn on Sunday, as governments started to pilot a new policy to lift road tolls for passenger cars taking highways from midnight. Sunday is the first day of China's eight-day holiday bridging Mid-Autumn Festival on Sunday and the National Day Holiday from Monday to Sunday. Most expressways in the country are going toll free for passenger cars with fewer than seven seats during the holiday period. The Beijing Traffic Management Bureau reported long queues of cars appearing at 6 am on Sunday in front of toll gates for all 17 expressways ...

China's apparent decision to throw the book at disgraced politician Bo Xilai is aimed at killing support for a leader at the core of a scandal that tarnished the Communist Party and threatened its cherished unity, analysts said. China said Friday that the former rising political star would "face justice" for a litany of crimes including abuse of power, bribery and "improper sexual relationships" -- an unprecedented rebuke for a top Communist official. Allegations of graft and other lurid details in a scandal that has already seen Bo's wife convicted of murder have caused divisions within the secretive party ahead of a sensitive leadership transition, observers said. Residual support for the charismatic Bo has worried a Chinese leadership that insists on total allegiance to the course set by the party, and the attack on Bo is meant to exterminate it, they said. "Bo Xilai could have become a populist hero, which would have been bad ...

              You might also like： Top 10 Chinese brand in 1980s China in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) The unknown cultural revolution Chinese lives through a Tencent photographer's lens Angry Chinese mob attacks U.S. ambasador vehicle ...

    You might also like： Fatty Girl Successful loses weight: She's hot Sexy photos of Zhang Xinyu "Most Beautiful 90s-Generation Rail Cop" Loses Legs Trying To Prevent Suicide Sexy actress Lan Yan's 3-D bikini photos Beauty-producing countries top 10 ...

Mid-Autumn Festival is a special occasion for overseas Chinese, including those in the United States and the United Kingdom, to keep their heritage alive and introduce the younger generation to a celebration that can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty (21st-16th century BC). A Russian woman, who works at Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant at Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, displays her paper-cutting during a party to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival on Sept 26. [Photo/China Daily] So what is the origin of the festival and how do overseas Chinese celebrate it? The Western Han philosophical classic, Huainanzi, attributes the origins of Mid-Autumn Festival to the legend of the star-crossed lovers Hou Yi and Chang E. After Hou, the imperial archer, was awarded the elixir of immortality for shooting down nine of the 10 wayward suns, his beautiful wife, Chang, took the potion and floated to the moon. She, the moon goddess, still lives there and is reunited with her husband, god of the ...

China witnesses holiday travel peak A staff member guides vehicles at a tollgate in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, today. More than 660 million people are expected to travel during the week-long Mid-autumn festival and National Day holiday starting today, an increase of 8.8 percent from the same period last year, according to the Ministry of Transport.

The Saturday edition of the People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China, published a commentary asserting that China has never engaged in any form of arms race and will not do so. After China's first aircraft carrier was delivered and commissioned to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy on September 25, some overseas media were inclined to discuss a possible military threat posed by China, the commentary said. "It is nothing but a vain attempt to spread rumors about China starting an arms race or to lure China into engaging in an arms race," it added. The commentary argued that it is not inappropriate for China to have its own carrier, as it was the last of the permanent members of the UN Security Council to acquire one and is only the 10th country in the world to do so. Although China has grown stronger, it will never bully the weak, the commentary said. "China was once bullied by foreign invaders equipped with bom...