Bird flu claims second victim in China

A man in southwest China who contracted the bird flu virus died on Sunday, health authorities said, the second human death from the virulent disease in the country in just under a month.

The news comes after neighbouring Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia also reported deaths from avian influenza, and after chickens tested positive for the H5N1 virus in Hong Kong,…

China Proposes Evaluating Restaurant Food Safety With Smiley Faces

In China, vinegar, pork and milk have all been hit with contaminated food scares recently. To combat unsafe food in restaurants and delis, the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) has proposed posting cartoon faces — a happy face, stern face or sad face — on restaurants based on how well the establishments do on safety inspections,…

Starbucks Plans Huge Expansion In China

Starbucks Corp., the world’s largest coffee retailer, plans to triple its coffee shops in China during the next four years and step up expansion elsewhere in Asia, an executive said Tuesday.

Starbucks plans to operate 1,500 outlets in China by 2015 from a current 470, the company’s Asia Pacific president Jinlong Wang said. The company also expects to open…

China gets serious about solar energy

Earlier this month, the Chinese government announced plans to establish its first nationwide feed-in tariff (FIT) for solar projects.

The FIT, yet to be enacted, would guarantee solar developers a payment of 1 yuan (about 16 cents) per kilowatt-hour for projects that feed into the grid and about 1.15 yuan per kilowatt-hour based on the timing and location of…

Why China is the new Silicon Valley



There is a deeply ingrained mindset among those who work in China’s increasingly hot technology sector that foreign Internet companies are doomed to fail here.

It’s true that non-Chinese players have yet to experience success in capturing significant market share in the country. Google more or less failed. So did eBay and Yahoo along with Facebook and Twitter (yes, Facebook…

China is governed by scientists, what about the US?

Did you know that China is governed by scientists? Yes, both the Chinese President and his Premier are engineers. In addition, 8 out of China’s top 9 government officials are scientists.

Now, let’s compare that to the US, where Congress has 535 legislators, with only 22 of them boasting any kind of science or…

Razer Switchblade will launch in China first

Gone are the days when cool new products launched first in the U.S. or Japan and then hit the global marketplace.

Yes, this time around U.S. and Japanese gamers will have to make do with watching the upcoming debut of Razer’s Oaktrail-powered Switchblade in China on YouTube.

As Nicole Scott of Netbook News notes, the sexy Switchblade will eventually make…

Google challenges Great Firewall, maintains some traction in China

Only a year ago, Beijing threatened to kick Google permanently out of China over a disagreement over censorship laws.

Fast forward to the present and Mountain View says its dealings with Chinese advertisers are growing – even as the company loses ground in China’s search market.

Although the future of Google search in China looks relatively bleak at…

Compass

A compass is an instrument containing a freely suspended magnetic element which displays the direction of the horizontal component of the Earth’s magnetic field at the point of observation. Magnetic Compass The magnetic compass is an old Chinese invention, probably first made in China during the Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.). Chinese fortune tellers used lodestones (a mineral composed of an iron…

Latest China Web Crackdown Targets ‘Hostile’ Overseas Forces

China is apparently planning to step up its efforts to crack down on online crime.

Wang Chen, head of China’s Information Office of the State Council, has promised severe punishment for those perpetrating crimes over the Internet, which in China includes the distribution of pornography. He specifically mentioned information from “overseas hostile forces” as one of the effort’s main targets.

His…

Oral Rehydration Therapy

Oral rehydration therapy (ORT) involves the replacement of fluids and electrolytes lost during an episode of diarrheal illness. Diarrheal illnesses are pervasive worldwide, and they have a particularly large impact in the developing world. Children under the age of five are the major victims and account for over 3 million deaths a year due to dehydration associated…