China, Asia | featured news

U.S. sales of warplanes, anti-missile systems and other costly weapons to China's and North Korea's neighbors appear set for significant growth amid regional security jitters.

Thousands in Hong Kong protested on Tuesday against the city's leader Leung Chun-ying as pressure mounts against the Beijing-backed politician who has been embroiled in an illegal construction scandal since taking office in July.

Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping gave his backing on Thursday to Hong Kong's embattled leader, Leung Chun-ying, who is under heavy criticism in the territory over unauthorized building works at his home.

The dozens of vehicles that roared into northeast India this week on a rally from Indonesia symbolize deeper ties between the South Asian giant and Southeast Asia, but the dreadful roads along several parts of the 8,000 km (5,000 mile) journey also show how much remains to be done.

On 11 October, when the Nobel Committee announced that they had decided to award this year's Nobel Prize for Literature to Mo Yan, the Chinese writer was in hiding in his hometown Gaomi, of Shandong province, some 600km (370 miles) from Beijing.

Tony Clift's family has plowed the rich black soil of Australia's Liverpool Plains for six generations. The thought of selling never crossed his mind — until a Chinese company came to town. Shenhua Watermark Coal offered to buy farms at unheard-of prices. The decision wasn't easy, Clift says. His pioneer ancestors settled the land in 1832. But farming is a business nowadays, and selling his 6,500 acres (2,600 hectares) made business sense.

Chinese archaeologists say they have unearthed the palace of China's first feudal emperor, best known for the terracotta warrior army guarding his tomb.

A fire in a clothing factory apparently caused by arson killed 14 people in southern China on Tuesday, state media reported.

Russia and China urged North Korea on Monday not to go ahead with a plan for its second rocket launch of 2012, with Moscow saying any such move would violate restrictions imposed by the U.N. Security Council.

Shin Cheol-soo no longer sees his future in the United States. The South Korean businessman supplied components to American automakers for a decade. But this year, he uprooted his family from Detroit and moved home to focus on selling to the new economic superpower: China.