Asia | featured news

When I started to write my book The Chinese Dream three years ago, people in the United States did not even believe there was a middle class in China. Today, China’s middle class is already larger than the entire population of the United States and is expected to reach 800 million in fifteen years.

A city twice the size of some countries. In China it's not just possible, it's being planned. It would be a city bigger than Wales, but it’s perfectly in line with China’s building mantra: go big or go home. Planners are proposing to merge nine cities around the Pearl River Delta in southern China, from Guangzhou to Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, reports The Telegraph.

South Korea agreed on Thursday to hold high-level military talks with rival North Korea, marking a major breakthrough in a crisis on the Korean peninsula and heightening the prospect of renewed aid-for-disarmament talks.

China's gross domestic product in the fourth quarter grew 9.8% from a year earlier, faster than the third quarter's 9.6% rise, which may increase market expectations for further tightening on monetary policy.

At an elaborate color-guard ceremony welcoming President Hu Jintao of China, President Obama on Wednesday spoke of “universal rights.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao urged an end to a "zero sum" Cold War relationship with the United States and proposed new cooperation, but resisted U.S. arguments about why China should let its currency strengthen.

The United States and China have reached a critical juncture in their relationship and must work to establish more effective cooperation, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

China's yuan currency remains "substantially undervalued" and it is in Beijing's own interest to let it appreciate more rapidly to ward off inflation risks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said he asked President Hu Jintao why the test was conducted during his visit.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the country was within five years of developing a missile with the potential of hitting Alaska or the West Coast.