America's North Shore Journal

Officially, China is made up of 56 nationalities: one majority nationality, the Han, and 55 minority groups. The 2000 census revealed a total official minority population of nearly 104m, or approximately 9% of the total population.

Around a dozen cases, 3 deaths, as pneumonic plague kills up its heels in NW China.

China no longer publishes the figures for how many riots take place each year, but most people put the figure at around 80,000 and the vast majority go totally unnoticed.

A Chinese soldier was shot dead outside a military garrison in the south-western city of Chongqing, state media have reported.

China plans to step up naval patrols in disputed waters in the South China Sea to protect its interests, Chinese state media quoted an official as saying.

That trade surplus with the U.S.? China is using part of it to buy oil from the Russians. After the infrastructure is built, maybe the Chinese will just step in and take it.

“The numbers are terrible. The environment is awful,” said Ken Peng, an economist at Citigroup.

“The pressure on unemployment will be huge,” he added.

The broadcaster apologized Tuesday for the confusion and congestion caused by Monday night’s fire, which struck its new, still-unoccupied, 30-story building, being built to house CCTV’s television studios and the luxury Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the state-owned Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

Parts of China are experiencing their worst drought in half a century, threatening the water supply of millions of people and putting the winter harvest at risk, state media reported.