Blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng succeeded in escaping from house arrest in a rural area of China’s Shandong province. From an unknown location, he issued a YouTube appeal to Premier Wen Jiabao.
China and Russia team up for joint maneuvers in the East China Sea, while the US and Philippines do the same in the South China Sea. The drills follow confrontations in the South China Sea between Chinese, Philippine and Vietnamese forces.
A Beijing court sentenced activist lawyer Ni Yulan and her husband Dong Jiqi to two years in prison on charges of “inciting a disturbance.” The couple had assisted victims of government land seizures, including those displaced by the Beijing Olympics.
Just before last month’s notorious purge of Bo Xilai, populist Chinese Communist Party chief in Chongqing, World Bank President Robert Zoellick lectured the People’s Republic at a Beijing meeting that its economic model is “unsustainable.”
Japan’s last nuclear power plant will close in April as reactors are shut for safety checks. Meanwhile, the mayor of Hakodate on Hokkaido called on the Industry Ministry to freeze a nuclear plant slated for the town of Oma in Aomori prefecture.
Investigators found that 5,200 metric tons of gravel contaminated in the Fukushima nuclear disaster was shipped to over 200 companies, making its way into apartment buildings, schools, and temporary homes for evacuees.
The Chinese government’s new white paper outlining its plans for the next five years in space broaches placing a human being on the Moon—as tensions with US allies again mount in contested areas of the South China Sea.
Amid concern about stability on the Korean peninsula after the passing of Kim Jong Il, few recall that the DPRK saw a brief wave of protests over economic conditions back in February—just as the Arab Spring was gaining ground.
Online accounts say three were killed as security forces used batons and tear gas to clear a blockade of an expressway in Shantou prefecture by hundreds of protesters opposing construction of a coal-buring power plant.
Security forces have blocked roads leading to the village of Wukan, in China’s Guangdong province, after residents chased out police. Villagers are demanding the central government intervene over a land grab by local officials.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company released a study finding that melted fuel at the Fukushima No. 1 reactor has nearly reached the steel wall under the concrete at the base of the containment structure—with a full meltdown possibly imminent.
Waves of wildcat strikes continue to spread across China’s industrial heartland, with factories paralyzed in Guangdong province and job actions spreading to Zhejiang and Shanghai. Management has been forced to negotiate with workers’ councils.
