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Human rights advocates are calling on the Chinese government to cancel the criminal trials of two men who pushed for official investigations into the causes of widespread school collapses during the devastating 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province. The trial of one man, Huang Qi, began Wednesday but adjourned without a verdict. Mr. Huang, a well-known blogger and civil rights campaigner, is accused of possessing state secrets, which carries a sentence of five years to life. The second defendant, Tan Zuoren, a writer and also a prominent rights advocate, faces a potential five-year sentence for subversion and is to go on trial Wednesday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Government officials on Friday shut down the office of a prominent lawyers' group known for taking on cases involving civil rights and corruption. It was the latest attempt by the government to clamp down on lawyers willing to challenge officials and other powerful figures in court. The group of volunteer lawyers, called Gongmeng, or Open Constitution Initiative, represented parents suing Sanlu Group, a large dairy company, over tainted milk that led to the deaths and illnesses of children across China in 2008. In May, it released a report that said economic policies by the government had resulted in the marginalization of Tibetans over the decades, leading to the widespread protests and riots in Tibetan areas last year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prominent Chinese intellectuals and writers have signed a petition calling for the release of a well-known ethnic Uighur economist in Beijing who was apparently detained last week during a bloody outbreak of ethnic violence in western China. The economist, Ilham Tohti, 39, who had written critically about government policies toward the Uighurs, is the best known person to be detained so far in relation to the ethnic strife. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The lynch mob first set upon the lame Uighur shoeshine boy in the narrow alley, sticks and knives in hand. Then it turned to the two men working at the reception desk in the Light of Dawn hotel. The men dashed into the rear bedroom and locked the wooden door. It quickly gave way to the dozens of ethnic Han men hacking and kicking and punching at it. One knife blow fell on Abulimit Asim's head, then another. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For the past year, Liu Qichao has focused on one thing, and only one thing: the gao kao, or the high test. Fourteen to 16 hours a day, he studied for the college entrance examination, which this year will determine the fate of more than 10 million Chinese students. He took one day off every three weeks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Just 45 days old and swaddled in pink, Sang Ruifeng already has a purpose in life: to bring to justice those responsible for the death of his 11-year-old brother. Ruifeng will have to ensure, his father said, that the Chinese government gives a full accounting for why thousands of students died in school collapses during the earthquake that devastated southwest China one year ago. The brother that Ruifeng never knew was among 126 students crushed to death in Fuxin No. 2 Primary School outside this lush farming town. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When an underground fire killed 35 men at the bottom of a coal shaft last year, the telltale signs of another Chinese mining disaster were everywhere: Black smoke billowed into the sky, dozens of rescuers searched nine hours for survivors, and sobbing relatives besieged the mine's iron gate. But though the owner and local government officials took few steps to prevent the tragedy, they succeeded, almost completely, in concealing it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Shou Xuejun was a popular man one afternoon early this month. As a finance official in this town of ancient canals and textile factories, he got to hand out shopping vouchers worth nearly $30 apiece to 20 elderly residents. Chen Jue, 87, could hardly believe her good luck. ''Can these vouchers really buy things?'' she asked, amazed, at a community center decorated with a six-foot-high photograph of Mao. ''The government is very good to us! I will buy flowers, and I will also buy goldfish.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As they awaited their fates in holding cell No. 9 of the Puning County jail, Li Qiaoming and a half-dozen fellow inmates played ''elude the cat,'' a Chinese hide-and-seek that might be better described as Marco Polo without the pool. Mr. Li put on a blindfold, groped for quarry and soon was lying on the floor with a fatal head injury. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An agency of the Shanghai government said over the weekend that an infant formula made by a subsidiary of Danone, the French food and beverage company, was not contaminated with melamine, a toxic substance that was found in the products of at least 22 Chinese dairy companies last fall. But a mother in southern China said in a telephone interview on Monday that she and other parents still suspected that Danone's infant formula led to their babies developing kidney problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A prominent Chinese writer known for provocative, antiestablishment Web postings was stabbed and wounded during a book reading on Saturday. The writer, Xu Lai, a newspaper reporter, novelist and blogger whose satirical Internet postings are widely followed by students, journalists and the Chinese literati, may have been singled out for his writings, his friends and associates said. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After days of articles in Chinese newspapers saying that some children were sickened by infant formula produced by the French food and beverage giant Danone, the government said Thursday that it would investigate whether the company's Dumex formula was tainted with melamine. The newspaper accounts provided no evidence of contamination, and Danone executives on Thursday rejected the assertions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China said Wednesday that judicial authorities in Tibet had imposed prison terms for 21 additional people convicted of participating in the deadly riots last March, bringing the total number punished for the mayhem to 76. The new punishments, announced by Xinhua, the official news agency, came three months after the first batch of 55 convicted rioters were sentenced to terms ranging from three years to life for crimes that included robbery, arson and disturbing public order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's national television network on Tuesday blamed an illegal fireworks display by its employees for igniting a blaze that destroyed a futuristic luxury hotel and theater here. In a statement posted on its Web site, the network, China Central Television, said the illegal pyrotechnics on Monday, the final night of the Lunar New Year celebrations, were staged too close to the unfinished Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which is part of the network's headquarters complex. The network apologized for ''the severe damage the fire caused to the country's property.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social unrest is not uncommon across the Chinese hinterland. There were an estimated 120,000 strikes, protests or riots last year, most of them incited by popular dissatisfaction over government corruption, the illegal confiscation of land or workers agitating for unpaid wages. But a clash between the police and residents in rural Guizhou Province on Sunday may be the first disturbance inspired by a dragon dance, or at least a thwarted one. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Oakley Qiao had every reason to feel confident when he began his job hunt last September. He was a student at one of China's top graduate business schools. He already had a few years of work experience. Students applying for jobs at the same time the previous year had gotten two or three offers by the winter, sometimes for a starting salary 20 times the average Chinese annual income. But on Tuesday, Mr. Qiao walked away empty-handed from the campus of Peking University to take a train northeast to his frigid hometown. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A group of lawyers said Tuesday that they had filed a lawsuit against 22 dairy companies to seek compensation for the deaths or illnesses of hundreds of children who consumed milk products tainted with a toxic chemical. The filing is a rare instance in which Chinese lawyers are proceeding with a class-action product liability case. The lawsuit was filed Friday with the Supreme People's Court in Beijing on behalf of the families of 213 children, said Lin Zheng, an administrator for a group of lawyers who have volunteered to represent the victims' families. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The parents of a baby who died last May from drinking tainted milk formula have accepted a cash payment from the dairy company at the center of a nationwide scandal, a lawyer representing the parents said Friday. The parents, Yi Yongsheng and Jiao Hongfang, are the first to receive compensation for the death of a child from tainted milk. They have accepted more than $29,200 from Sanlu Group, the manufacturer of the baby formula that their 6-month-old son was drinking before he died, said the lawyer, Dong Junming. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A group of Chinese parents whose children were poisoned by tainted domestic dairy products said they would reject a government-sanctioned compensation package. Instead, they said they would press for long-term health care for the victims and demand medical research into the illnesses that still afflict tens of thousands of children. The parents, who have gathered 250 signatures since Sunday, have become an irksome challenge to officials seeking to quell public anger over the widespread contamination of the nation's dairy supply. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The local police stopped parents who were trying to travel secretly from southwest China to Beijing this week to ask the central government for a full investigation into school collapses that killed their children during the May earthquake, several of the parents said Thursday. A leader of the grieving parents, Sang Jun, who lost his 11-year-old son, said in a telephone interview that he had been detained overnight and released only after more than 60 other parents gathered at the gates of the town government building to demand his release. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Citing official statistics on one aspect of China's security crackdown last year around the Beijing Olympics, a report published Sunday in an official newspaper said that more than 1,100 people had been indicted in the western region of Xinjiang on suspicion of ''endangering state security'' in the first 11 months of last year. That is an extraordinarily large number of indictments on that charge, which covers inciting separatism and espionage, and can carry the death penalty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The cluster of temples at the heart of this dusty, traffic-clogged town are picturesque reminders of China's faded Buddhist past. On a recent day, dogs warmed themselves in the winter sun as a few toothless devotees bowed before smiling Buddhas. The only sounds were the occasional clanging of wind chimes and the splash of coins tossed into a mucky pond. While soothing to some, the tranquillity is galling to Guandu's city fathers, who recently spent $3 million to rebuild the four temples. They had become schools and warehouses during an earlier era, when the Communist Party sought to suppress nearly all religious activity, including that by Buddhists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Li Wanzhi has learned to do certain things with just one arm. Dressing herself, for example. That was easy. Washing clothes was something else entirely. For that, she needed the help of her mother-in-law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

He lost his wife of 35 years when their home collapsed during the earthquake in May. She lost her husband of 20 years the same day in a cascade of debris at a construction site. They are distant relatives from the same town whose eyes still tear up when they talk about their dead spouses. But within months of the earthquake, which was the deadliest natural disaster to befall China in more than three decades, Jiang Zhongfu, 60, began courting Zhu Xiaoqiong, 42. Last month, he moved into Ms. Zhu's prefabricated housing cube in a refugee camp in these scarred hills. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A group of parents whose children were among the 127 killed in the collapse of an elementary school during the May earthquake that devastated western China have confirmed that they filed a lawsuit against government officials and a construction contractor. The lawsuit is the first filed by grieving and angry parents who say shoddy construction cost the children their lives. Radio Free Asia reported the lawsuit in early December, but China's official news media have not mentioned it. This weekend, the parents confirmed the filing in telephone interviews. They said the court has yet to tell them whether it will hear the case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Local officials in Shandong Province have apparently found a cost-effective way to deal with gadflies, whistle-blowers and all manner of muckraking citizens who dare to challenge the authorities: dispatch them to the local psychiatric hospital. In an investigative report published Monday by a state-owned newspaper, public security officials in the city of Xintai in Shandong Province were said to have been institutionalizing residents who persist in their personal campaigns to expose corruption or the unfair seizure of their property. Some people said they were committed for up to two years, and several of those interviewed said they were forcibly medicated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hu Jia, a soft-spoken, bespectacled advocate for democracy and human rights in China, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Europe's most prestigious human rights prize, on Thursday. The award was a pointed rebuke of China's ruling Communist Party that came as European leaders were arriving in Beijing for a weekend summit meeting. Mr. Hu, 35, was given the prize by the European Parliament despite warnings from Beijing that his selection would harm relations with the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After days of uncertainty, the governing Communist Party on Sunday announced a rural reform policy that for the first time would allow farmers to lease or transfer land-use rights, a step that advocates say would raise lagging incomes in the Chinese countryside. The new policy, announced by Chinese state media, is a major economic reform and is also rich in historical resonance, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the land reforms enacted by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, which were considered the first critical steps in the policies that have fueled China's rapid economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]