BBC website "unblocked in China"

People in China are able to access English language stories on the BBC News website in full, after years of strict control by Beijing.

The Communist authorities often block news sites such as the BBC in a policy dubbed the "great firewall of China".

But BBC staff working in China now say they are able to access news stories that would have been blocked before.

However, the firewall remains in place for Chinese language services on the website and for any links in Chinese.

'Without hindrance'

Beijing has never admitted to blocking access to BBC news stories - and there has been no official confirmation that the website has been unblocked.

But Chinese users trying to access pages on the site have almost always been redirected to an error message telling them: "The connection was reset."

It now appears that this is no longer the case, and access to the site is much easier.

Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website, says this is a welcome development.

"We want BBC News to be as accessible in China as anywhere else in the world," he said.

"We will endeavour to continue working with the Chinese authorities to improve our access in other areas."

Technology experts say such a development would not be possible without the approval of internet service providers - which are under strict supervision by Beijing.

Surprised readers

Statistics show that traffic to the website from China has been much higher than usual.

Typically fewer than 100 people read stories from Chinese computers - but on Tuesday that figure jumped to more than 16,000.

And comments have been flooding in to BBC forums from all over China.

Ross Brown in Qingdao, Shandong province, wrote: "We were just discussing with some of our Chinese colleagues about the fact BBC website was blocked, went on to show them and we see this latest news. Excellent news."

Many of the comments came from readers of the website who have spent years accessing the stories by linking their computers to others based outside of China.

Tibet difficulties

The Chinese authorities had promised to give foreign journalists more freedom in the run-up to this summer's Olympic Games.

But analysts say that recent outbreaks of unrest in Tibet have made this promise more difficult for Beijing to uphold.

The BBC and other media organisations still find reporting from Tibet very difficult - foreign journalists were refused permission to enter the region during the recent protests.

The websites of UK newspapers the Times and Guardian - as well as video-sharing site YouTube - were blocked or partially blocked during the unrest.

This week the Chinese government has arranged a trip for foreign media organisations to Tibet - but the BBC's request to be included was rejected.

Although no official ban has ever been announced, the BBC News website has been blocked for almost a decade.

The Chinese language website has been blocked since its launch in 1999.

BBC News.

"Earthquake Lights" recorded 30 mins before Sichuan quake began, a phenomenon never recorded before this

View the 2 videos regarding a phenomenon, known as “Earthquake lights”. Which have been known to happen at times of earthquakes & recorded through out history, but never recorded (visually) until the earthquake in Sichuan last week. Bizarre colorful (luminous/glowing) cloud phenomenon in the sky was observed about 30 mins before the May 12, 2008 Sichuan earthquake took place. This was recorded in Tianshui, Gansu province ~450kmnortheast of epicenter, by someone using a cell phone.

These clouds seemed to be glowing or somewhat luminous and seemed to resemble some characteristics of the Auroras. They were probably formed by some kind of charged particles released from the powerful seismic events below. Well, I am no expert anyways. See if any scientists are willing to give a full explanation.



Link to the second video.

Why did so many new buildings fail?

'Some survivors said the whole building just sank into the earth'

In a sea of mud, tree limbs and rocks at what used to be Beichuan county's only high school, an old four-storey building is incongruously marooned.
Some roof tiles are broken, but otherwise, there is no obvious damage.

"That's where I studied more than 30 years ago," said a 50-year-old man, who gave his surname as Wang. He graduated in 1977.

Mr Wang has been glued to the rubble for more than 40 hours, waiting for a miracle to bring back his daughter, Wang Xiaolan, who was on the first floor of the new school building when Monday's quake struck.

More than 80 per cent of concrete structures in Beichuan - 34km from the quake epicentre - collapsed, and only four out of every 10 people survived. "She's probably dead," a dazed Mr Wang said in a toneless voice. "They've been pulling out bodies, and some survivors said the whole building just sank into the earth within a couple of minutes."

The building where Wang Xiaolan, a 23-year-old English teacher, was conducting a class with first-year high school students was built in 2004. It is one of the three buildings on the campus that tumbled into piles of rubble.

"All of them were built after 2000," Mr Wang said. "It's strange that the old buildings remained intact but new ones collapsed."

The only other concrete structure left standing is a four-storey residential building 100 metres away. Brown flower pots still sit on a small balcony on its top floor.

"That was built in the 1970s for school teachers," Mr Wang said. "The quality of the architecture - from the frame, steel, cement to bricks - everything, was much better back then."

As buildings came crashing down, questions are being asked whether corruption and shoddy construction are to blame for such a heavy toll.

Victims' families have started pointing fingers at local officials who are suspected of pocketing money budgeted for construction and at private real estate companies that had saved money by cutting corners on the project. When Premier Wen Jiabao was inspecting the township on Tuesday, Mr Wang was among the crowd, gripped by an urge to heckle him about the so-called tofu projects.

But he shook his hand instead, without saying anything. "I still can't get my head around it. My daughter was eating dinner with me on Sunday night, but the next day she's gone for good. How could that happen?"

Liu Yongzhi, 32, a worker at the Dongfeng Steam Turbine Plant, said he would ask Mr Wen why most public buildings in his town of Hanwang - 60km east of the epicentre - had toppled. The factory imploded into two metres of rubble, he said.

"It sounds unbelievable, but we were one of the top three steam turbine makers in the country," he said. "It vanished within a couple of seconds." Two schools affiliated with the factory were also destroyed, leaving 200 children buried.

A seven-storey, modern building in the township of 20,000 - which served as major entertainment spot for local cadres - also imploded, Mr Liu said. Several senior officials playing cards in a tea house on the second floor were killed.

Mr Liu's home - a single-family tiled house he built himself - withstood the quake.

"I laid down a really solid foundation for my place," he said. "There's not a single crack."

SCMP. May 16, 2008.

Thousands perish in quake

About 8,500 people were confirmed killed - with the death toll expected to keep climbing - after an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale rocked Sichuan and affected more than a dozen other provinces yesterday.
The quake struck at 2.28pm in Wenchuan county, less than 100km from the Sichuan capital of Chengdu , in what was the strongest to strike the mainland in more than three decades.

The tremor was felt in 16 provinces and municipalities including Beijing and Shanghai, according to the China Earthquake Administration. It was also felt in Hong Kong, and as far away as Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan.

Last time the mainland was hit by an earthquake measuring 7.8 was in July 1976 when more than 270,000 peopled died in the northern city of Tangshan , Hebei province .

In Sichuan, 8,533 people have been confirmed dead. In Beichuan county alone, 3,000 to 5,000 people were believed to have been killed and more than 10,000 injured, Xinhua reported.

Nearly 900 students in Juyuan township in the city of Dujiangyan, about 100km south from Wenchuan, were buried and feared dead after their school building collapsed in the quake. At least 50 of them were confirmed dead last night.

In nearby Shifang city, hundreds of people where buried when buildings at two chemical plants fell down, triggering the leakage of over 80 tonnes of liquid ammonia which forced about 6,000 residents to abandon their homes, the State Administration of Work Safety said, without providing casualty figures.

In Wenchuan county, at least 15 people were killed and 160 were injured, the local government said. Accurate casualty figures are hard to collect due to severed communications and transport links.

Outside Sichuan, preliminary official estimates put the death toll at 61 in Shaanxi , 48 in Gansu , 50 in Chongqing and one in Yunnan . Stampedes were reported in some primary and middle schools in Gansu.

Xiong Xuesong, a 35-year-old engineer, said he felt the first real panic in his life when quake struck while he was shopping in a four-storey Chengdu supermarket among 400 or so shoppers.

"Suddenly the building swayed. The floor became soft. Tiles fell off from walls and goods from shelves. Seconds later, some people started to scream. All this happened in one or two minutes. But it seemed to be much longer," Mr Xiong said. "We found our way out with the help of shop staff. Hundreds of people were already standing in the street, talking about the earthquake. It was not until then I realised it was a quake."

Mr Xiong said there were no warnings before the quake and people were not told how long the aftershocks might continue.

A total of 313 aftershocks shook Sichuan in the three hours after the quake, provincial authorities said.

The disaster will test Beijing's emergency response system and relief efforts for the third time this year, following the blizzards in January and February which caused overwhelming transport chaos and a train crash in Shandong last month that killed 72.

President Hu Jintao ordered "all-out efforts" to save quake victims, while Premier Wen Jiabao arrived at Chengdu to direct the rescue work.

CCTV footage showed Mr Wen on a plane to Sichuan, calling officials to go to the front line to serve the people. "It is an especially severe earthquake disaster. The most important things are calm, confidence, courage and strong leadership," he said.

The Chengdu Military Area Command mobilised 5,000 troops and armed police to help disaster efforts in Wenchuan.

Tian Yixiang, an officer with the emergency office of the PLA, told Xinhua the troops would help local authorities assess the situation and carry out relief work.

Heavy rain and thunderstorms prevented helicopters from flying into the hardest-hit areas, and the China Meteorological Administration warned that disaster relief efforts would be hampered by bad weather over the next three days.

Mobile phone services in Sichuan and Shaanxi were affected by the earthquake, and fixed-line services were cut in some areas of Sichuan and Gansu.

The Three Gorges Dam was not affected by the quake, an official said.

SCMP. May 13, 2008.

Shanghai villagers told to make way for Disney park

Work on Shanghai's Disneyland - set to pose serious competition to the struggling Hong Kong Disney park for the crucial mainland tourist trade - could begin as early as the first half of next year, villagers living on the site have been told.

This emerged little more than two weeks after the city's mayor, Han Zheng , announced that Beijing's approval had been sought for the park to go ahead.

If the start date is confirmed it would mean the first phase would be operating soon after the 2010 World Expo shoves the city into international spotlight.

About 4 sq km of land belonging to four villages in the Chuansha area of Pudong have been earmarked for the park, according to villagers who have been told they will have to move to nearby Shilong.

About 3,200 families, many of them farmers, live in the four villages - Qigan, Zhaoxing, Jiajia and Xueqiao, about 40 minutes' drive from the city centre.

Residents said leaders of their village production teams, who told them about the plans, had said Qigan and Zhaoxing were earmarked for the first phase and they would have to go by early next year.

The Hong Kong government would not comment on whether it knew of the plan before Mr Han's disclosure on March 6.

A non-executive director of Hong Kong Disneyland is understood to have been told informally during a visit to Shanghai in February.

The Shanghai city government was also non-committal, with a spokesman saying: "We don't have any particular department to deal with questions about Disney."

Alannah Hall-Smith, Disney's vice-president for corporate communications in Asia Pacific, said: "There is no deal and there is no announcement."

A Qigan resident, giving his name only as Mr Hua - the village's clan name - pointed to a field in front of him, saying: "This is where they said a Disneyland will be built. The whole area, about 4 sq km."

He said he had "no special feeling" about the plans, although he didn't want to move. "They've been talking about it for 10 years but nothing has happened so far," he said.

A woman said most people did not want to move.

"We have a quiet and inexpensive life here," she said. "We farm and eat what we produce, and things are also cheap here. They said the Disneyland in Hong Kong was too crowded and a new one was needed to be built in Shanghai. Is it true?"

Despite the imminent move, villagers say there has been no word on compensation.

Mr Han broke the news about the Disney plan on the sidelines of the National People's Congress meeting in Beijing.

He said the project would be divided into several stages to reduce commercial risk and avoid any extreme impact on the Disneyland in Hong Kong, which is battling to meet its attendance targets.

Mr Han made a similar announcement in Beijing in 2006 but the plan was put on hold after the then-Shanghai party chief Chen Liangyu was implicated later that year in a corruption scandal involving social security funds.

Apo Leong, director of Asia Monitor Resources Centre, said: "Disney should comply with international standard on resettling those affected. It should discuss it with the people, instead of just telling them to leave. It also needs to comply with international environmental standards."

SCMP. Mar 24, 2008.

Hong Kong-born Ma Ying-jeou wins Taiwan's Presidential Vote

TAIPEI (AFP) — Taiwan's opposition candidate Ma Ying-jeou surged to a landslide victory Saturday in a presidential election dominated by concern over the economy and hopes for better ties with China.

"This is a victory for people who hope for change and openness and reform," he told his jubilant Kuomintang (KMT) supporters after trouncing ruling party chief Frank Hsieh by almost 17 percentage points.

Soft-spoken and Harvard-educated, Ma has promised to work for closer ties with Beijing, including a peace treaty to end decades of hostilities, and to revive Taiwan's stuttering economy.

US President George W. Bush sent his congratulations to Ma, saying his win was a new chance for China and Taiwan to resolve their differences.

"I believe the election provides a fresh opportunity for both sides (China and Taiwan) to reach out and engage one another in peacefully resolving their differences," he added in a statement.

The vote had been closely watched by Beijing and Washington for signs of a new approach after eight years of recurring tensions under outgoing President Chen Shui-bian.

Final official figures by the election commission showed that Ma won 58.45 percent of the vote, and Hsieh 41.55 percent.

"Your voices are heard. People have the right to demand a better life. Only change can bring hope, only change can provide opportunities," Ma said as his supporters partied with songs, dancing and firecrackers.

At the same time, Hsieh conceded defeat in front of despondent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters at his own headquarters.

"We accept defeat. It's my own defeat, it's not the defeat of the Taiwanese people. Please don't cry for me," he said.

Ma will formally take over on May 20, when Chen steps down after serving a maximum two terms.

His victory gives the KMT overall control of the nation, as they had also crushed the DPP in parliamentary elections in January on the back of economic malaise and weariness at the strained relations with China.

Soochow University professor Liu Bih-rong, who specialises in cross-strait relations, said predicted relations with China would now improve at a faster pace.

"It shows that the Taiwanese people have given the KMT the mandate to open direct links and push for the one common market with China," he told AFP.

Ma told a press conference he would strive to improve relations with both China and the United States, but that before any peace treaty with Beijing it had to dismantle the more than 1,000 missiles targeted on the island.

Otherwise, "we have already reached some consensus on the normalisation of economic ties, direct air links, and on allowing more Chinese tourists, and it will be relatively easy to reach an agreement on those issues," he added.

China still claims Taiwan for itself and has threatened an invasion if it declares independence, confining the US-allied island to a murky limbo of de facto but unrecognised sovereignty.

The two have had virtually no direct links since the island split from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war.

Ma has proposed an overhaul of economic ties to allow Taiwanese companies access to the vast mainland market while permitting Chinese investors to pump funds into the economy here.

The island is the world's 17th largest economy, mainly on the back of its information technology sector, but is losing jobs and investment to mainland China, while incomes are stagnant.

Separately, two referendums on joining the United Nations failed to muster enough turnout to make them valid, with less than 36 percent of voters making the effort.

The referendums were controversial because Taiwan lost its UN seat in 1971 to China, which has blocked its 15 attempts since then to rejoin.TAIPEI (AFP) — Taiwan's opposition candidate Ma Ying-jeou surged to a landslide victory Saturday in a presidential election dominated by concern over the economy and hopes for better ties with China.

"This is a victory for people who hope for change and openness and reform," he told his jubilant Kuomintang (KMT) supporters after trouncing ruling party chief Frank Hsieh by almost 17 percentage points.

Soft-spoken and Harvard-educated, Ma has promised to work for closer ties with Beijing, including a peace treaty to end decades of hostilities, and to revive Taiwan's stuttering economy.

US President George W. Bush sent his congratulations to Ma, saying his win was a new chance for China and Taiwan to resolve their differences.

"I believe the election provides a fresh opportunity for both sides (China and Taiwan) to reach out and engage one another in peacefully resolving their differences," he added in a statement.

The vote had been closely watched by Beijing and Washington for signs of a new approach after eight years of recurring tensions under outgoing President Chen Shui-bian.

Final official figures by the election commission showed that Ma won 58.45 percent of the vote, and Hsieh 41.55 percent.

"Your voices are heard. People have the right to demand a better life. Only change can bring hope, only change can provide opportunities," Ma said as his supporters partied with songs, dancing and firecrackers.

At the same time, Hsieh conceded defeat in front of despondent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) supporters at his own headquarters.

"We accept defeat. It's my own defeat, it's not the defeat of the Taiwanese people. Please don't cry for me," he said.

Ma will formally take over on May 20, when Chen steps down after serving a maximum two terms.

His victory gives the KMT overall control of the nation, as they had also crushed the DPP in parliamentary elections in January on the back of economic malaise and weariness at the strained relations with China.

Soochow University professor Liu Bih-rong, who specialises in cross-strait relations, said predicted relations with China would now improve at a faster pace.

"It shows that the Taiwanese people have given the KMT the mandate to open direct links and push for the one common market with China," he told AFP.

Ma told a press conference he would strive to improve relations with both China and the United States, but that before any peace treaty with Beijing it had to dismantle the more than 1,000 missiles targeted on the island.

Otherwise, "we have already reached some consensus on the normalisation of economic ties, direct air links, and on allowing more Chinese tourists, and it will be relatively easy to reach an agreement on those issues," he added.

China still claims Taiwan for itself and has threatened an invasion if it declares independence, confining the US-allied island to a murky limbo of de facto but unrecognised sovereignty.

The two have had virtually no direct links since the island split from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war.

Ma has proposed an overhaul of economic ties to allow Taiwanese companies access to the vast mainland market while permitting Chinese investors to pump funds into the economy here.

The island is the world's 17th largest economy, mainly on the back of its information technology sector, but is losing jobs and investment to mainland China, while incomes are stagnant.

Separately, two referendums on joining the United Nations failed to muster enough turnout to make them valid, with less than 36 percent of voters making the effort.

Agence France-Presse

Blizzards hit China

A woman prays at a village in Pingshi, China's northern Guangdong province, more than 300 km (186 miles) north of Guangzhou, China, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008. Workers rushed to restore power Tuesday to regions of China hard-hit by snow and ice storms, in a struggle that state media said has already cost the lives of 11 electricians.

A general view of a village near Pingshi, 320 km (199 miles) north of China's southern city of Guangzhou in Guangdong province, two days before the Lunar New Year of the Rat February 5, 2008. Emergency crews struggled to restore power to parts of southern China blacked out for more than 10 days by heavy snow as forecasters warned of no quick end to the worst winter weather in 50 years.

More pictures available at Yahoo! News Photos.

Weekend snow storms wreak havoc across the mainland

The worst snows to hit parts of the mainland for 50 years killed at least a dozen people at the weekend, state media said, with thousands more injured as they headed home for the Lunar New Year holiday.

The conditions brought traffic to a standstill in eight provinces, cut off a key rail link and left thousands of vehicles marooned on icy highways, reports said, with the cold snap causing power cuts across more than half the country.

A bus that overturned on an icy freeway in eastern Jiangxi Province left five dead early on Sunday, including at least two children, Xinhua news agency said, with sub-zero temperatures forecast for the next three days.

Heavy snow in south central China, meanwhile, snarled roads, railways and airports with the bad weather expected to worsen as millions of travellers head home for the Lunar New Year holiday, known elsewhere as Chinese New Year.

In the mountainous Guizhou Province in the southwest, a hospital in the capital city of Guiyang has received at least 1,500 patients in the last five days, most suffering fractures after falling on slippery roads.

The local government said bad weather had also stranded more than 40,000 passengers in at least 5,000 broken-down vehicles on highways between Guizhou and the neighbouring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

'We're trying to provide them with food and water, but several have passed out in the cold, including a new mother and her one-month-old baby,'€ said Huang Zhengfu, secretary-general with the prefectural government.

Elsewhere, up to 150,000 passengers were stuck at the Guangzhou railway station, the southern end of the key rail link to the capital Beijing, with numbers expected to grow to up to 600,000 by Monday, the Southern Metropolitan Daily reported.

The city has issued emergency orders to help cope with the swelling crowds and called on local universities and other public facilities to provide shelter for stranded passengers, it said.

Lunar New Year, which falls on February 7, is China's most important holiday, when millions of people travel for annual family reunions.

Authorities expects more than 2.2 billion trips will be made by either rail, air or bus during the Lunar New Year travel period that runs from January 19 to March 2.

According to Xinhua, up to 60,000 people in 20,000 vehicles were stranded on a stretch of highway in the central Hunan province, one of the worst hit areas where seven people have died.

Senior government officials held an emergency teleconference late Sunday to discuss the power disruptions, Xinhua said.

'So far, 17 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have suffered blackouts, and power grids in central China's Hubei, Hunan provinces and south China's Guizhou and Guangdong provinces have been seriously damaged,'€ Xinhua quoted Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan saying.

According to China Central Television, seven airports in the hardest hit regions, including those in the major cities of Changsha, Nanjing and Hefei were closed on Saturday due to icy conditions.

Some airports were expected to reopen soon, but the one in Changsha would remain shut throughout Sunday, reports said.

Major highways in Guizhou, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Fujian and Anhui provinces reopened by around noon Sunday, but were expected to be closed in the evening, with more heavy snow and freezing rain forecast throughout the region, the China News Service said.

Due to icy roads, long-distance bus travel was largely curtailed for much of the last week in the areas hardest hit by the snowfall.

State television showed footage of thousands of motorists and long-distance truck drivers stranded on stretches of road as heavy snow brought traffic to a standstill.

SCMP Jan 28, 2008

A merchant ship sank 800 years ago raised from the sea

A merchant ship that sank 800 years ago loaded with thousands of pieces of porcelain was raised from the bottom of the South China Sea with its relics yesterday morning in a salvage project unprecedented in international underwater archaeology.

The Nanhai No1, 30.4 metres long and 9.8 metres wide, which dates to the early Southern Song dynasty, was sealed in a huge steel basket before being lifted. It will be placed in a glass-walled pool at a specially built museum in nearby Yangjiang, Guangdong.

"We have packed the Nanhai No1 into the basket to test the operations every day for several months," said Feng Shaowen, head of the Yangjiang Municipal Cultural Bureau, who heads the project.

The barge carrying the ship will take 24 hours to reach the 130,000 square metre China's Silk Road on the Sea Museum, where water temperature, pressure and other environmental conditions inside the huge glass pool are the same as those where the ship has lain on the sea bed.

Qiu Licheng, deputy director of Guangdong's Institute of Archaeology, said: "We need to provide exactly the same conditions as the seabed to protect the wreck and its porcelain from damage. The wreck weighs more than 3,000 tonnes, including its load of relics and the surrounding silt."

Mr Qiu said it was unprecedented and risky to move an entire wreck to another place to continue archaeological research.

"The wreck is the biggest and most complete ancient vessel found so far," Mr Qiu said. "It will also provide plenty of first-hand information about China's navigation history, porcelain technologies and other useful materials."

Archaeologists estimated that at least 60,000 to 80,000 porcelain items were on board when the vessel sank.

The wreck was discovered by the Guangzhou Salvage Bureau when it was helping a British ocean exploration company search for wrecks off Yangjiang in 1987. China's first underwater archaeological training base was established in Yangjiang in 2003.