China, Asia | featured news

China recently established a larger army garrison and expanded the size of an ostensible legislature to govern a speck of land, known as Yongxing Island, more than 200 miles southeast of Hainan. The goal of that move, Mr. Wu said, is to allow Beijing to “exercise sovereignty over all land features inside the South China Sea,” including more than 40 islands “now occupied illegally” by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Stocks closed Friday higher even as a raft of weak data from China signaled a slowing global economy.

Stocks are opening lower on Wall Street, deflated by signs that the global economic meltdown is being felt across Asia... China reported sharply lower growth in its exports. The so-called fiscal cliff, when U.S. government spending cuts and higher taxes kick in on Jan. 1, looms larger now that the distraction of earnings season is over.

Chinese authorities have released a woman sent to a labor camp for challenging the sentences handed down to the men who abducted, raped and prostituted her 11-year-old daughter. Tang Hui was ordered last week to serve 18 months in a labor camp for "disturbing social order and exerting a negative impact on society." The crusading mother's case has aroused widespread public outrage and thrown a spotlight on China's controversial reeducation through labor camps.

The one-day murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai, concluded with prosecutors telling the court that she slipped poison into a glass of water to kill British businessman Neil Heywood after he got drunk. Gu killed Heywood, they argued, because he threatened the security of her Harvard University son.

China's industrial output and fixed-asset investment are expected to show signs of picking up in data on Thursday, indicating that the economy is starting to stabilize after sliding for six straight quarters.

The son of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai says he is confident the "facts will speak for themselves" when his mother stands trial for murder Thursday in the country's most sensational political scandal in decades.

Is it possible for the butler, who hasn't met with his lawyer yet, to get a fair trial in the poisoning of Neil Heywood, associate of political wife Gu Kailai? The lawyer for one of the defendants in China's most sensational murder case is emphatic: The butler did not do it.

China blasted the United States on Saturday for its recent public criticism and urging of diplomacy to address territorial disputes in the South China Sea, saying the U.S. statement shows "total disregard for the facts" and sends "a seriously wrong message."

China will open the murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Communist Party Politburo member Bo Xilai, on August 9, two sources said on Friday, a case at the center of a scandal that has rocked the government and could bring Gu the death penalty.