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In many provinces, laws are being revised to indemnify Good Samaritans against being sued if their efforts fail: a chief reason why Chinese say they are reluctant to try to help. How do you turn Bad Samaritans good?

Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist whose secret detention earlier this year stirred an international outcry, has been given two weeks to pay $2.4 million in back taxes and penalties, he said Tuesday.

China's high-flying economy is starting to lose altitude. The big question is whether the world's economic superstar will shrink gradually - or so fast that it harms a fragile global economy....

China is set to launch a unmanned spacecraft on Tuesday to dock with a capsule orbiting the Earth, as part of its work to build a space station.

Chinese search engine Baidu reports an 80% surge in profits for the third quarter, boosted by increased advertising sales.

Toyota over the weekend broke ground for a technical center near Shanghai that will prepare for shifting production to China of tightly guarded technology used in its hybrids and other alternative-energy vehicles—but not its latest technology.

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.

They are calling it the death that awakened the conscience of China. A 2-year-old girl crushed by two vans last week and then ignored by 18 passersby as she lay bleeding on the street died at 12:32 a.m. Friday of systematic organ failure at a hospital in the southern Guangdong province. By midday, there were 2 million condolence messages flooding the Internet for the girl, whose name was Wang Yue, or Yueyue for short.

Is China on course to surpass the United States as the world's space superpower and stake a claim on the moon in the next 15 years? Billionaire space executive Robert Bigelow is deeply worried about that scenario — and he says Americans need a "kick in the ass" to respond to the challenge.

Gruesome footage of a toddler falling victim to two successive hit-and-run accidents and then ignored by many passers-by at the scene last week in southern China continued to galvanize the nation Monday, prompting a fierce debate on the state of morality in Chinese society.