US arms sales to Taiwan are very likely to be discussed when Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平), who is expected to become China’s next leader, visits Washington next month.

As announced this week, Xi will meet in the White House on Feb. 14 with US President Barack Obama and US Vice President Joe Biden.    [FULL  STORY]

Five Nobel Peace Prize winners have launched a campaign urging the release of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, a fellow Nobel recipient, a statement from the group said Friday.

The plea comes a day before the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize is to be presented in Oslo, Norway, and a year after Liu’s award ceremony, which he was unable to attend.    [FULL  STORY]

cnn
By Fareed Zakaria, CNN

We’re clearly moving to a Post-American world. This is a world that is not dominated by the United States but not dominated by anyone else yet either.

The 21st Century is up for grabs and how the United States does depends on how well it can marshal the key ingredients of economic and societal success.

In the 20th Century, the key ingredients were labor and capital.

In the 21st Century, the key ingredients will be ideas and energy.

Ideas will be critical because manufacturing has been commoditized. That means that anyone can make anything. The only thing that distinguishes someone today is if that person or organization has new ideas and innovations. We need to create a better mousetrap every week. We need to do something different and unique.

Energy will be critical simply because everybody is growing quickly and everyone needs a supply of energy. Countries that have figured out the energy puzzle are going to do better and better.

So who’s better suited for this new world?    [FULL  STORY]

(Reuters) – Republican lawmakers are “playing with fire” by contemplating even a brief debt default as a means to force deeper government spending cuts, an adviser to China’s central bank said on Wednesday.

The idea of a technical default — essentially delaying interest payments for a few days — has gained backing from a growing number of mainstream Republicans who see it as a price worth paying if it forces the White House to slash spending, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

But any form of default could destabilize the global economy and sour already tense relations with big U.S. creditors such as China, government officials and investors warn.

Li Daokui, an adviser to the People’s Bank of China, said a default could undermine the U.S. dollar, and Beijing needed to dissuade Washington from pursuing this course of action.

“I think there is a risk that the U.S. debt default may happen,” Li told reporters on the sidelines of a forum in Beijing. “The result will be very serious and I really hope that they would stop playing with fire.”    [FULL  STORY]

(Reuters) – Washington scrambled on Thursday to assess whether security had been compromised after Google Inc revealed a major hacker attack targeting U.S. officials that the Internet giant pegged to China.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addresses the Washington Conference on the Americas at the State Department in Washington May 11, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

“These allegations are very serious,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

“We take them seriously; we’re looking into them,” Clinton told reporters a day after the Internet giant said it had disrupted a campaign aimed at stealing passwords of hundreds of Google email account holders, including senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists.

Google’s announcement fuels debate in Washington over China’s intentions in cyberspace, which the United States has identified as a potential flashpoint for future conflict.    [FULL  STORY]

(Reuters) – Suspicion that some individual or entity in China was behind a recent cyber attack on Lockheed Martin is growing among experts and agencies looking into the incident.

“It’s unclear at this point precisely who conducted the attacks, but given past history with these sorts of things, there’s a strong tendency to look east. The Far East, in fact, and a country that not so long ago hosted the Olympics,” said one U.S. official who asked for anonymity, but was reluctant to point the finger at China by name.

Official and private U.S. cyber-security told Reuters that forensic tracing of attacks like the one that caused Lockheed temporarily to instruct employees to curb remote access to company networks was notoriously difficult, and that clever hackers usually lay elaborate false trails to cover their tracks.

But a U.S. official familiar with progress on the investigation said there was increasing suspicion the Lockheed hack originated with “someone in China.”    [FULL  STORY]

(Reuters) – Hackers likely based in China tried to break into hundreds of Google mail accounts, including those of senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists, the Internet company said on Wednesday.

The unknown perpetrators, who appeared to originate from Jinan in Shandong province, recently tried to crack and monitor email accounts by stealing passwords, but Google detected and “disrupted” their campaign, the world’s largest Web search company said on its official blog.    [FULL  STORY]

China is blocking mention of Inner Mongolia on Chinese microblogs and social networking sites, as part of an effort to clamp down on protests that broke out last week in the region.
Two of the most popular microblog services operating in China no longer allow users to search for the term “Inner Mongolia.” Sina’s and Tencent’s microblogs have 140 million and 160 million users, respectively.

Social networking site Renren, nicknamed “Facebook of China”, is also preventing users from posting about “Inner Mongolia.” Renren users who have registered China’s Inner Mongolia region as their hometown also reported that their friends cannot fully view their user pages.

The censorship comes after protests erupted in the region when an ethnic Mongolian shepherd was run over by an ethnic Han truck driver, according to human rights groups. Ethnic Mongolians in the region have taken to the streets, prompting authorities to declare martial law in some of the cities.    [FULL  STORY]

Hong Kong, May 29 (CNA) More than 1,000 people took to the streets Sunday demanding the rehabilitation of the June 4 pro-democracy movement that was brutally crushed 22 years ago in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China, organizer of the march, said about 2,000 people joined the activity as the 22nd anniversary of the 1989 massacre approached. But police estimated the number at around 1,000.

The demonstrators gathered at the Victoria Park, in front of a Goddess of Liberty statue, holding a banner that read “Attempts at rehabilitating the June 4 Revolution are not yet successful and more efforts are required to build a democracy in China.”    [FULL  STORY]

Apparently there’s a new type of chain gang — a virtual one. According to The Guardian, Chinese prisoners are forced to play hours upon hours of “World of Warcraft,” farming virtual gold that the prison guards can then sell in the real world for nonvirtual cash.

Liu Dali, a former prisoner at the Jixi labor camp in northeast China, told the Guardian that he spent his days breaking rocks and digging trenches and his nights playing video games. That might sound like a decent gig to hardcore gamers who spend hours playing “World of Warcraft” and other massive multiplayer online role playing games, but it wasn’t such a pleasant experience for Dali, whose name was changed to protect his identity.

The prisoners are allegedly being forced to “gold farm” by guards.

According to Dali, 300 prisoners participated in the virtual chain gang, playing 12-hour shifts: “The computers were never turned off.” Prison guards were reportedly able to sell the virtual currency for up to 6,000 yuan a day, which is about $930 — not a bad sum.    [FULL  STORY]