Philippines, China in South China Sea standoff

China and the Philippines have been locked in a month-long standoff at Scarborough Shoal, a small uninhabited reef in the South China Sea. The standoff is part of a larger regional struggle for control of several small, possibly oil-rich island chains in the region. Incredibly, though China’s southernmost tip is Hainan Island, it claims almost the whole of the South China Sea as its own. Meanwhile, Chinese oil company CNOOC has begun exploring for oil in another disputed island chain. Anti-Chinese sentiment is beginning to swell. Who is going to tell the Chinese just how ridiculous their claims are? ENGLISH:

Chen Guangcheng leaves US Embassy. What next?

Blind activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng has said he wants to leave China, just 24 hours after leaving the US Embassy on Wednesday ‘by his own volition.” His change of heart came after finding out that Chinese officials had threatened to beat his wife if he sought asylum in the US. Chen spent six days in the US Embassy in Beijing after escaping from house arrest in his home province of Shandong last week. (See NMA’s previous coverage on Chen’s escape.) He left to get treatment at a Beijing hospital after China gave the US reassurances it would guarantee his safety and legal rights. Chen’s decision to leave the Embassy coincided with the arrival in Beijing…

Chen Guangcheng’s escape, F-16s rile US-China relations

US-China relations are in a lurch after high-profile Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng escaped to the US embassy and Washington announced it may sell F-16s to Taiwan — just days before a planned visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Last week, Chinese lawyer and activist Chen Guangcheng, who is blind, climbed over his wall to escape from house arrest. Chen Guangcheng then somehow managed to get from Shandong province, all the way in eastern China, to Beijing, where the activist found refuge in the US embassy. Now the Obama administration has announced it is considering selling F-16C/D fighter aircraft to Taiwan. China is not happy. Should the US…

Iron Man 3: Made in China – a Disney-Chinese collabo

Iron Man 3 will be made with a Chinese partner, Disney has announced, in Hollywood’s latest effort to tap into the growing Chinese film market. The film will be co-financed by Chinese company DMG Entertainment, which will be responsible for scenes shot in China. DMG will also distribute the film in China. “We know Chinese audiences love Iron Man. So we are going to add Chinese elements and a Chinese story into Iron Man 3,” Stanley Cheung, Disney’s general manager for Greater China, told the BBC. Iron Man 3 is scheduled to be released in the US in May 2013. Co-productions with Chinese firms skirt import quotas, as China only lets in 20 foreign films…

Bo Xilai: The downfall of a ‘princeling’

Former Chongqing Mayor Bo Xilai seemed destined for the top echelon of Chinese politics until his spectacular fall from grace last month. Bo, the son of famed Communist Party figure Bo Yibo, made his name as leader of the port city of Dalian before taking over the western metropolis of Chongqing. Ably abetted by his lawyer wife Gu Kailai, Bo’s four-year spell in charge of Chongqing was marked by his populist policies, a war on organized crime, welfare largesse for the poor and a return to veneration of Mao Zedong and China’s revolutionary era. But the Bo fairytale started to unravel a few weeks ago when his crime-fighting police chief Wang Lijun attempted to defect…

Edinburgh panda mating FAIL: No Sunshine 4 Sweetie

Edinburgh Zoo’s giant pandas have failed to mate this year despite the best efforts of the Scottish zoo to encourage them to procreate, dashing hopes that a baby panda would be born this year. Sweetie and her male mate Sunshine arrived in Scotland from China last December and had been kept in separate enclosures until this week, when experts decided the time to mate had arrived. Female pandas ovulate once a year, with only a 36-hour period in which they can get conceive. Despite showing an interest in each other, the duo failed to take advantage of their short ‘window of opportunity.’ Now Sunshine will have to wait another year to take his chance. What…

Xi Jinping wooed by Obama White House

Xi Jinping, expected to succeed Hu Jintao as China’s president, was in Washington after a stop in Iowa to meet with President Barack Obama and other White House officials. Xin Jinping, who is currently the Chinese vice president, discussed economic policies and America’s trade deficit with China. Obama and Xi spent nearly 90 minutes together in what commentators described as a “getting-to-know you moment” or a “date night,” and Xi invited Obama to visit China again. What did Xi and Obama do? NMA imagines how their “date” went …

Asian Americans lose as California schools pursue Chinese students

Funding for University of California schools has been slashed in recent years, and UC schools are looking to students to make up the difference. This means cutting spots reserved for California students in favor of out-of-state or international students, who pay full tuition. The University of California, San Diego, for example, will be accepting 500 fewer in-state students this year. Some of these slots will be filled by students from China. The number of Chinese students at UCSD increased 12-fold from 2009 to 2011 to almost 200, while the number of Asian-American Californians enrolled fell 29 percent to 1,230. UC San Diego tuition is $13,234 for California residents and $22,878 for non-residents. Although an American…