China, Asia | featured news

A Chinese government think tank is urging the country's leaders to start phasing out its one-child policy immediately and allow two children for every family by 2015, a daring proposal to do away with the unpopular policy....

China's economy will likely "look good" early next year, but the medium- to long-term outlook is worrisome as the country loses its labor-cost edge, a state researcher said.

China reserves the right to take strong countermeasures if Japan "creates incidents" in the waters around a group of disputed uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, a Chinese vice foreign minister said on Friday.

The New York Times says access to its website is being blocked inside China after it published an investigation into wealth accumulated by relatives of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

Shintaro Ishihara, the firebrand governor of Tokyo whose obsession with a set of disputed islands prompted Japan’s latest spat with China, declared on Thursday that he was quitting local politics to start a national party, a move that could escalate the territorial dispute and shift allegiances in Japan’s soon-to-be-called elections.

China’s military spending has been rapidly spiraling upward, and the growing amounts are unnerving Beijing’s Asian neighbors and policy planners in the Pentagon, who are openly wary about the country’s long-term intentions.

Chinese Internet users who watched live streams of Monday’s U.S. presidential debate heard President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney criticizing China with some of their toughest language of the campaign – which many Chinese assume the candidates will dial down once the election is over.

America is no longer the land of opportunity -- China is, says Stan Grant. But while some people get it, U.S. politicians seem bent on casting China as the bad guy.

Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba has defended the central government’s decision to buy the Senkaku Islands, stating in a BBC interview in London this week that if Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara had made the purchase, as originally intended, things would be much worse by now. While Genba feels it was the best choice for Japan to control the territory disputed with China, he argued that if the hawkish, nationalist Tokyo Governor had gained control personally, he would have followed through on his publicized plans of landing and developing on the islands, actions that would have outraged China to no end.

New economic data from China on Thursday showed that the world’s second-largest economy after the United States expanded at its slowest pace since 2009 during the third quarter of this year — though surprisingly strong data for the month of September also showed that the deceleration may, for now at least, have come to an end.