Beijing China

Last night, our friend showed off her new Chanel Cocoon large tote in black lambskin, which her boyfriend had gotten her on his recent trip to Beiji...

Stories compiled by Gizem Yarbil, Connie Kargbo, Channtal Fleischfresser, Christine Kiernan, Ivette Feliciano, and Mohammad al-Kassim, and edited by ...

President Barack Obama is taking the right approach in treating China as a key partner on global challenges by emphasizing the need for joint...

Stories compiled by Gizem Yarbil, Connie Kargbo, Channtal Fleischfresser, Christine Kiernan, Ivette Feliciano, and Mohammad al-Kassim, and edited by ...

BEIJING, CHINA--The people of China and the world ant community signed a treaty that will establish close relations between the two civilizations....

China will oppose discussing the Goldstone report at the United Nations Security Council, Chinese members of parliament told a delegation of visiting ...

China will oppose discussing the Goldstone report at the United Nations Security Council, Chinese members of parliament told a delegation of visiting ...

China will oppose serving the Goldstone report to the United Nations Security Council and to the International Court in The Hague, according to Chines...

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Thursday that his country intends to strengthen its cooperation with Iran, an indication Beijing would oppose growing ...

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday sent a message to Iran that pursuit of nuclear capability will not go unpunished, approving legislation that allows state and local governments to curtail investments in international corporations doing business in Iran's energy sector.

The legislation also protects from shareholder lawsuits those investment managers who divest funds from companies that are involved in Iran's energy sector or have provided equipment for the transport of oil or liquefied natural gas from Iran.

The bill passed the House 414-6 and now goes to the Senate.

The bill does not impose new sanctions, said its author, Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.

"What it does is to make it very clear that Americans who are deeply concerned about the prospect of Iranian nuclear power, and other aspects of Iranian governance, that they are able to act on those (concerns)," he said.

WASHINGTON — Some 7,500 international tax dodgers have applied for an amnesty program that promises no jail time and reduced penalties for tax cheats who come forward, the Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday.

The tax dodgers were hiding money in more than 70 countries and on every continent except Antarctica. Accounts ranged from just over $10,000 to more than $100 million.

Response to the program has been unprecedented, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said.

"The whole idea of this program was to get people in and get them on the right side of the law," Shulman said.

The IRS long has had a policy that certain tax evaders who come forward before they are contacted by the agency usually can avoid jail time as long as they agree to pay back taxes, interest and hefty penalties. Drug dealers and money launderers need not apply. But if the money was earned legally, tax evaders can usually avoid criminal prosecution.

Hsin-Yin Lee, a former associate producer for Worldfocus, is now an international news editor at a Chinese newspaper. She describes a recent film that...

China celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing today, 60 yea...

China marks 60 years of communist rule with a massive military parade in Beijing....

COPENHAGEN — The International Olympic Committee is familiar with tough decisions. It gambled by giving the games to Beijing and even turned down New York after 9/11.

But the race to host the 2016 games – pitting Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo and Madrid – is still too close to call. Which means committee members will spend the next two days feeling like the most popular people on the planet.

Want to meet Michelle Obama? If you're on the committee and need a little pointer on which way to vote, it's not a problem. For added star power, the king of Spain, the president of Brazil and Oprah Winfrey have descended on Copenhagen.

Mrs. Obama, beating her husband to the Danish capital Wednesday, has a two-room suite in the IOC hotel, with cushy white leather furniture and an interactive table that, at the touch of a hand, shows how a Chicago Olympics might look.

The first lady went straight to work impressing the IOC, with plenty of attention to detail. To committee member Nicole Hoevertsz, appointed a day earlier as permanent secretary of Aruba's Council of Ministers, she offered congratulations on the new job.

COPENHAGEN — International Olympic Committee members were agonizing Wednesday over how to choose the host of the 2016 Games, with many said to be undecided just two days before the vote.

IOC members settling into their hotel in Copenhagen told The Associated Press that Tokyo, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Chicago are all capable of hosting the games and there is no clear favorite.

Samih Moudallal, an IOC member since 1998, said Friday's vote, when cities will be eliminated in successive rounds of secret balloting, will be like choosing between "four sons or your brothers."

"How do you choose between your brothers?" Moudallal told the AP, adding that he has yet to make his choice. "You have to use your mind and your heart together.

"It's a very difficult choice."

The billionaire founder of a popular search engine drew a big crowd Wednesday at Stanford University – and it wasn't one of the guys that started Google Inc. just a few miles from the campus they once attended.

About 600 students crammed into a lecture room to soak up the wisdom of Robin Li, who owns rare bragging rights over Google and its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Li, 40, is the chief executive and founder of Baidu Inc., a nine-year-old company that dominates Internet search in China like Google dominates the market in just about every other major country in the world.

The impressive feat earned Li rock-star treatment at Stanford, the place where Page and Brin conceived Google's technology as graduate students before dropping out to start their now-famous company in 1998.

Li, a China native who got his graduate degree from the University of New York at Buffalo, seemed to relish the adulation he received at his rivals' old stomping grounds.

A U.S. labor union and three paper companies have filed a new trade complaint over imports of Chinese paper, possibly fueling tensions between Washington and Beijing amid disputes over tires and other goods.

The complaint was announced Wednesday as U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, were attending a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 major economies in Pittsburgh.

The case accuses China, along with Indonesia, of improperly subsidizing exports of some types of coated paper that it says have flooded the U.S. market, wiping out thousands of American jobs.

It comes a week after Beijing filed a World Trade Organization challenge to Washington's decision to raise tariffs on imports of Chinese-made tires. The two governments also are involved in disputes over access to each others' markets for poultry, steel pipes, music and movies.

The complaint was filed by three paper producers and the United Steelworkers, a union for 6,000 of their employees. The companies are NewPage Corp., of Miamisburg, Ohio; Appleton Coated LLC, of Kimberly, Wisconsin, and Sappi Fine Paper North America, of Boston.

Mao Zedong's only grandson has become the youngest general in the People's Liberation Army at age 39, a Chinese newspaper said Thursday.

Military historian Mao Xinyu is the son of Mao's second son Mao Anqing, who died in 2007 at the age of 84. The younger Mao is a member of the main advisory body to the country's rubber stamp parliament and a fierce defender of his grandfather's legacy.

The state-run Changjiang Daily reported that the promotion came "recently" and said the move made Mao Xinyu the first PLA general born in the 1970s.

Known around the world as Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong led the bloody two decade-long revolution that overthrew Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and established the People's Republic of China in 1949. Mao retained an iron grip on power right up to his death in 1977, and his embalmed body continues to lie in state in a mausoleum on Tiananmen Square in the heart of the capital, Beijing.

Mao Zedong had a notoriously chaotic personal life, marrying four times and siring nine children, including a daughter by his last wife, Jiang Qing. His second wife, Mao Xinyu's grandmother, was executed by the Nationalists in 1930.

Months after abruptly resigning as Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin resurfaced in Hong Kong more moderate in tone and better versed in international affairs, possibly laying the first brick for a 2012 White House bid.

In her first overseas speech Wednesday, the former vice presidential candidate touched on a wide range of issues – from financial markets and Afghanistan to China-U.S. relations and health care – before a room packed with more than a thousand investors and bankers at an annual investment conference.

"I'm going to call it like I see it, and I will share with you candidly a view right from Main Street, Main Street U.S.A.," Palin said, according to a video of part of the speech obtained by The Associated Press. "And how perhaps my view of Main Street ... how that affects you and your business."

While she displayed some of her trademark folksy charm, the fireworks from her debut speech at the Republican National Convention last year were apparently missing. So, too, was the sharp partisan edge of the politician who toured the country as Sen. John McCain's running mate. She appeared more moderate, did not attack President Obama directly and avoided any major gaffes, attendees said.

"She has learned and grown from the election," said Melvin Goode, New York-based consultant who said he'd carried out some political polling for President Barack Obama in the past. "She was more level headed. ... She didn't criticize. I was waiting to see if she said anything derogatory about Obama, and she didn't."

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Wednesday that North Korea must scrap its atomic weapons programs before the divided Korean Peninsula can be unified with the signing of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.

Lee told world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly that North Korea, which conducted its second nuclear test in May, should return to stalled international nuclear disarmament talks "right away and without any preconditions."

Lee, whose tough policies on the North have stoked fury in Pyongyang, spoke as his country, the United States, China, Japan and Russia worked to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program. North Korea walked away from the talks in April to protest world criticism of a rocket launch.

Lee urged the North to come back to nuclear talks "to achieve a genuine peace on the Korean Peninsula and for its own sake as well."

In a description of Korean history likely to anger the North, Lee said in his speech that the South, with U.N. approval, "became the only legitimate government on the Korean peninsula."

Power company Duke Energy Corp. said Wednesday that it has struck its second deal in just over a month with a large Chinese power company to develop sources of low-carbon energy.

Duke and ENN Group say ideas for potential development between the two include commercial solar projects, coal-based clean energy, biofuels, natural gas, smart grid, energy efficiency and carbon-capturing algae.

The two made the announcement in New York while at the annual meeting of President Bill Clinton's global initiative to address global problems.

The companies have signed agreements to share information and also are evaluating a partnership to pursue commercial development of utility-scale solar photovoltaic projects in the U.S.

Duke signed a similar deal in August in Beijing with China Huaneng Group, China's largest electric utility.

A look at economic developments and activity in major stock markets around the world Wednesday:

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BEIJING – A deputy governor of China's central bank proposed the creation of a multinational sovereign wealth fund to help developing countries, in a report released ahead of this week's Group of 20 summit.

"Considerations can be (given) to setting up a 'supra-sovereign wealth investment fund' to help channel capital inflow into developing world so that these countries can serve as new engines in global recovery," said the official, Hu Xiaolian, in a paper on the G-20's Web site.

The paper gave no details of how such a fund might work. But Beijing has called repeatedly for a more diverse global financial structure, with a greater voice for developing countries, and a new global currency to reduce reliance on the dominant U.S. dollar.

In the upcoming October 1 celebration of the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing will be mobilizing over one hundred th...

Hosted by Tom Brokaw, this primetime special honored both the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing and the fall of the Berlin Wa...