Facing public outrage over smog-choked cities and filthy rivers, China's leaders are promising to clean up the country's neglected environment _ a pledge that sets up a clash with political pressures to keep economic growth strong.
The man in line to oversee China's massive but rapidly slowing economy for the coming decade speaks English and comes from a generation of politicians schooled during a time of greater openness to liberal Western ideas than their predecessors.
Chinese patrol boats have harried the Japanese coast guard many times a week for more than a month in an unusually relentless response to their latest maritime spat.
Where can a pop star score a hit by talking about the U.S. Electoral College for 33 minutes? In China, where Gao Xiaosong's straightforward explanation of the system drew more than 1 million hits in four days.
A victory by protesters against the expansion of a chemical plant in Ningbo proves the new rule in China: The authoritarian government is scared of middle-class rebellion and will give in if the demonstrators' aims are limited and not openly political.
China's hopes for a smooth, once-a-decade political transition have been shaken by a lurid new scandal involving the death of a senior official's son, who crashed during what may have been sex games in a speeding Ferrari.
Pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest known pottery in the world, archaeologists say.
A former scientist at Sandia National Labs in New Mexico has pleaded not guilty to charges of stealing research to share with China.
U.S. and U.K. universities still sit at the head of the class in world higher education, but emerging schools in Asia and elsewhere threaten to shift the global balance of academic power, a major study shows.
