By Craig Whitlock in The  Washington Post,  June 3, 2010
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates departed for Asia on Wednesday but had to drop a big country from his itinerary after China, still smarting over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, gave him the cold shoulder.
Gates had been hoping for months to visit Beijing this summer, a destination that took on added importance at the Pentagon after North Korea — which sees China as its closest ally and diplomatic protector — was accused last month of sinking a South Korean warship with …

By Tariq Naqash in Dawn
MUZAFFARABAD, June 5: An official body dealing with the reconstruction of Muzaffarabad has taken exception to the alleged dumping of earth into River Neelum by a Chinese construction company, something which is being committed with impunity by many other contractors for long notwithstanding its hazardous impact on environment on the one hand and life of Mangla Dam on the other.
When contacted by Dawn on Wednesday, Brig (retired) Shiraz Baig, project director of Muzaffarabad City Development Project (MCDP), confirmed that he had sought explanation from the China …

Jane Macartney in the Times, Jan 3
Beijing:  A Chinese newspaper has defied a 21-year-old ban on all mention of the Tiananmen Square crackdown by publishing a cartoon that echoes one of the event’s most iconic moments.
The cartoon shows a little boy’s drawing on a blackboard of a row of tanks moving towards a stick figure. The national flag, which flies every day in front of the portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square, flutters below. Above the tanks the boy has drawn a torch, an apparent reference to the flame …

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
A man carrying a mini machine gun burst into a court in central China, killing three judges before turning the gun on himself.
The attacker, named as Zhu Jun, the 46-year-old head of security at a district post office, broke into a fourth-floor office at the court building in Yongzhou, Hunan province.
He had allegedly told his co-worker at the post office that he was taking the automatic weapon and two pistols for inspection by the city authorities before diverting to the courthouse.
All three judges in the office …

By Wieland Wagner in DER SPIEGEL, June 2
German businessman Mohammad-Reza Mouazzen wanted to expand his heavy equipment company into China. But it didn’t take long before he realized that the country’s economic miracle has a dark underbelly.
Expo 2010 is underway in Shanghai, and the luxury bars along the Huangpu River are filled with the delegations of Western companies drinking toasts to the new partnerships they have just formed with Chinese companies. In March, this was also where the Chinese adventure of M.C.M., a construction machinery dealer from the southwestern German …