China, Taiwan | featured news

Chinese regulators have fined South Korean companies LG and Samsung and four Taiwanese companies on charges they fixed prices of flat panel screens sold to Chinese manufacturers.

China's "Beijing Blues" has won the best film award at Taiwan's Golden Horse Film Festival, an event considered the Chinese-language Oscars. Hong Kong's Johnnie To is taking home the best director's award. "Beijing Blues" portrays the lives of the ordinary urban dwellers through the work of a squad of plainclothes crime-hunters.
At Saturday's ceremony, To won the award for directing "Life Without Principle," a movie about ordinary citizens' struggles in hard economic times.

A vivid mural in an Oregon town that depicts a Tibetan monk's immolation and promotes independence for Taiwan has created a dust-up with China.

The sign inside the mausoleum of Chiang Kai-Shek tells visitors to “please bow or show your respects” to the general who fought a bloody civil war against Mao Zedong and then fled China for Taiwan, where he spent years plotting to retake the mainland from its Communist rulers.

A group of Japanese activists swam ashore and raised flags early Sunday on one of a group of islands at the center of an escalating territorial dispute with China.

The death toll from Typhoon Saola rose on Friday to 44 in the Philippines and Taiwan as storms and Typhoon Damrey made landfall in China, where two died and about 770,000 were evacuated. The Philippines recorded 39 deaths in floods and accidents caused by Saola’s torrential rains and strong winds, the Office of Civil Defence said. At least two people were missing and feared dead.

At the 228 Memorial Museum, a shrine to the victims of a 1947 massacre by Chinese troops, staff were in mourning Sunday following the re-election of Ma Ying-jeou, a president they think wants to turn Taiwan over to China.

In unusual praise for China, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Sunday that Beijing deserved credit for its relatively mild response to Washington's announcement last month of a $5.8 billion arms sale to Taiwan.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman said Monday that Beijing “firmly opposes” the Obama administration’s plans to upgrade Taiwan’s aging fleet of F-16 fighter jets, but the measured tone suggested Chinese leaders may want to avoid sparking a full-scale confrontation with Washington over the issue.

China will have 2,000 missiles aimed at its rival Taiwan by the end of the year, several hundred more than the current number, despite fast-warming trade ties between the two sides, an island defense study said.