As the U.S. braces for a killer storm, which thanks to climate change we should get used to, China is dealing with more neighborhood-level environmental challenges. We appear to have had yet another victory for NIMBY (not in my backyard) protesters, this time in the city of Ningbo, where the government has suspended work on [...]

Today’s English-language, foreign China news was dominated by a discussion of . . . English-language, foreign China news. No wait, hear me out. You see, a certain major newspaper from the U.S., often known as the Gray Lady, published an in-depth research piece on the family finances of a certain China government official.

Most of the big stories today could be described as “news that looks suspiciously like things we’ve seen before.” But that’s quite all right. Means less work for me explaining what it all means. Pretty soon I won’t even have to bother with commentary of any kind, and the entire production of this blog will [...]

What? You ask. No links page dominated by the U.S. election, territorial dispute or stats on China’s economy? That’s right. Today’s a throwback to the “good old days” of relatively normal news. Let’s start off by going to the movies:

OK, so we’ve all had quite enough of the U.S. never-ending election, yes? The good news is that it actually does end, albeit briefly, and that end date is coming up in two weeks. The toning down of the China bashing started today with the last presidential debate.

I had an Intertube emergency last night, so this is coming out about 12 hours later than usual. Just as well. After an extremely long day/night, I was so tired after finally getting home that I would have been an easy choice for an extra on The Walking Dead. I took my Net outage as [...]

Seems like all I do these days is write about the U.S.-China relationship. Things could be a lot better, but bilateral relations aren’t as bad as the rhetoric might suggest. I blame the election/leadership change and expect that things will quiet down later this year.

A relatively busy news day. The big story was the economy, not because anything specific happened, but rather in terms of chatter. The government dumped third quarter stats on our heads, so the news machine shifted into high gear. The big number was GDP (7.4%, on an annualized basis); Q3 by itself was much better [...]

So I hear that there was a debate in the U.S. between Obama and Romney. Haven’t seen it, probably won’t bother. Apparently they talked about China a bit, though, so I will probably take a peek at the transcript tomorrow and see if there is anything interesting there to blog about. From the news coverage [...]

It wasn’t so long ago that Beijing was totally and completely ignoring the ridiculous amount of China bashing that was flying around the U.S. presidential campaign. At the time, during the Republican primaries, Mitt Romney was really the only one that was spewing the “tough on China” stuff, so I suppose it made sense to [...]

Having a day when most of the China news was reporting on and reaction to the latest batch of macroeconomic statistics was . . . well, kind of relaxing. Moreover, the data was mixed, so there wasn’t even much in the numbers to get excited about. Considering the media hurricane we’re going to have next [...]

Still a great deal of chatter out there on the Huawei/ZTE situation in the U.S. Amazing how both the “Protectionism!” and “Government Stooges!” sides both tend to reach conclusions without actually discussing the actual situation. Maybe that’s always the case with these trade and investment disputes, and I’ve never noticed it before? A scary thought. [...]

A slightly longer than usual set of links for you today as I skipped on yesterday’s Daily Twit. For some reason, my Internet speed slowed to a crawl last night, and I found myself sitting here waiting several seconds for web pages to load. We’re talking dial-up/modem type stuff. Can’t do it anymore. I gave [...]

Yes, the air is crisp and cool, and you can almost taste the nationalist fervor as the holiday week approaches. Officially, Saturday will be a work day, then the holiday will run from Sunday to the following Sunday, October 7. Eight days of fun and patriotic contemplation. I will be holding down the fort here [...]

We’ll soon be rid of two nettlesome matters that have graced The Daily Twit far too often of late: the China-Japan dispute over the Diaosenkakyu™ Islands and the U.S. presidential election campaign. Both of these appear to be headed into the final stretch. First, the maritime dispute, and although there was more disturbing news on this [...]

I think we’ve gotten to the point of saturation with the China-Japan islands dispute. The Twitterati this afternoon was so bored that several of us became fascinated by this photo of a couple of giraffes being transported along a Beijing highway to God knows where. Theories include the Beijing Zoo or a new exclusive restaurant [...]

Three stories in particular today rose out of the disgusting pile of muck that I like to call my Inbox, although only one of them is actually timely news. That’s right, I’m deliberately wasting your time by feeding you links of questionable importance. First up is the verdict in the Wang Lijun trial, the police [...]

So I looked over my list of China news stories I flagged throughout the day for this post, and it occurred to me that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the articles cover ongoing topics. In other words, nothing much new happening over here, just updates. Maybe that’s a good thing. What with [...]

If there’s one thing you gotta admire about the Chinese government, it’s the ability to control these nationalist demonstrations. Today was no exception, as yesterday’s well-coordinated anti-Japanese protests were dialed down and things got back to normal. It’s actually rather surprising when one considers that China experiences many thousands of unplanned, unscheduled and unwanted “mass [...]