The recent weather problems, and crop failures, have begun to affect the Chinese economy.
BBC
Chinese inflation hit an 11-year high in January after rising price pressures were exacerbated by fierce snow storms, official figures show.
Soaring food prices were largely blamed for pushing consumer inflation up to 7.1% last month, from 6.5% in December.
Inflation in China [...]

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A nasty industrial accident in China, where growth comes before safety. A horrible way to die, I expect.
TimesOnline
At least 32 workers were killed and two injured today when they were buried in white-hot molten steel at a metal factory in North East China, officials said.
The mishap was triggered when a 30-tonne-capacity steel ladle sheared off [...]

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Tracking another sign that the collapse of China is coming, sooner rather than later.
BBC
A protest staged by thousands of rural workers in central China ended in violent clashes last week, reports say.
Several people were injured as up to 20,000 people clashed with 1,000 police in Hunan province on Friday, a local official told Reuters news [...]

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The stock market took a bit of a beating today.
Bloomberg
U.S. stocks plunged, wiping out about $600 billion in market value and erasing all of 2007’s gains, after a selloff in China spread and sparked the biggest rout in four years. Treasuries had the biggest jump since December 2004.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much [...]

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BBC
Chinese police say they have shut seven illegal “underground banks” accused of laundering over 14bn yuan ($1.75bn; £0.9bn) this year.
Forty-four suspects have been arrested in cases in Guangdong, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Shanghai, Liaoning and Heilongjiang, state media reported.
A total of 58m yuan has been recovered, economic crime investigator Han Hao told the Xinhua news agency.
The [...]

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BBC
The southern Chinese city of Guangzhou may cap the number of migrant workers it allows in because of the “social problems” they bring, state media said.
Government officials told the China Daily that one possibility was to stop some industries employing migrants.
China’s economic boom has largely been driven by the cheap labour which migrants from poorer [...]

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I’ve neglected my reporting on China for a bit. Here’s a sample of the current news.
BBC: China village fury at ‘land grab’
Chinese villagers have clashed with police after blockading a warehouse they said was built on illegally seized land, Hong Kong media reported.
Thousands of villagers in southern Guangdong province moved on the building on Wednesday [...]

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