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Focuses on the Great Wall of China, and the threats that nature and economics pose to its existence. Issue of cultural preservation as the 2008 Beijing, China Olympics approach; Details on reconstruction efforts, including on the Old Dragon's Head, the wall's eastern terminus; Threats of tourism and indifference to the wall; Details on the western tip of the wall, in Inner Mongolia, which has been sucked into the ground by the Gobi desert; Efforts of British preservationist William Lindesay to save the wall.

Focuses on the future of Afghanistan, as the Taliban regime is forced from power. Response of Afghans to their increased freedom; Comment that the Afghans are not really free, because the country's political future remains uncertain; Role of other countries, including the United States, in assembling a coalition government to lead Afghanistan; Refusal of the Northern Alliance to share power; Analysis of the U.S.-led bombing campaign and the Taliban's unexpectedly rapid retreat from key cities.

Discusses warlords in Afghanistan. Control of politics and government by the warlords; Capture and execution of Abdul Haq by the Taliban; Outlook for the United States-led war against the Taliban; Comments of former U.S. national-security adviser Robert C. McFarlane concerning the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency; Outlook for government in Afghanistan.

Focuses on the mid-air crash of a United States spy plane with a Chinese jet fighter off the coast of China. Details of diplomatic relations between the two countries with 24 U.S. airmen in Chinese custody and a Chinese pilot missing at sea; How George W. Bush views China as a competitive rival; China's concern about public reaction and anti-American outbursts; Demand that the U.S. apologize and take responsibility for the incident; Outlook for the standoff.

Byline: Melinda Liu China's 'red restaurants' turn the Cultural Revolution into dinner theater. It's a typical Saturday night at the Red Scene restaurant, which is packed with well-to-do Chinese diners. [...]

You're Hired! When Lobsang Sangay was sworn in as the next prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile last week to take over the Dalai Lama's political duties, it marked a [...]

To those conditioned to think that a beautiful young woman married to a multibillionaire twice her age could be motivated only by money, Wendi Deng Murdoch--as the world now knows--has [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu The City of Dali is a traveler's Dream: a taste of old China in an idyllic setting. But is it destined to be ruined by tourism? For [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu And Isaac Stone Fish Artist Ai WeiWei is freed. But China continues its harshest crackdown on political dissidents in decades. It was his most closely watched performance, [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu; With Lisa Movius in Shanghai The Chinese repressed personal style during the Mao Years. Now they're ready to express themselves with elan. When Angelica Cheung was growing [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Jin Xing was once a man and a soldier. Then he had a sex-change operation, and became a mother and one of China's premier dancers. Jin Xing, [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu It's probably best not to even try making sense of Beijing's pronouncements on the 14th Dalai Lama and other Tibetan spiritual leaders: you'll only make your head [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Parallels between Tahrir Square in 2011 and Tiananmen Square in 1989 haven't been lost on China's media censors. Last week two of nation's biggest Internet portals, Sina.com [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu With China in the spotlight last week during President Hu Jintao's U.S. visit, Beijing's spinmeisters launched a campaign to present its friendliest face to America. Through mid-February, [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Hu Jintao's wife is, by many accounts, stern but low-key, the latest in a long line of near-invisible first ladies of China. Since the death of Mao's [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu As bad as North Korea's behavior was in 2010, the coming year could be even worse. The North Korean regime is in a state of upheaval as [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Chinese officials used to say their alliance with North Korea was 'as close as lips and teeth.' Now, as Pyongyang continues to bite the hand that feeds [...]

Byline: Andrew Bast And Melinda Liu East Asia may be reveling in its unprecedented economic growth, but old-fashioned territorial feuds continue to fester. The latest reminder came last week at [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Beijing's announcement that it will shutter more than 2,000 polluting steel mills, cement plants, tanneries, and other industrial energy hogs by the end of September may seem [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Beijing's announcement that it will shutter more than 2,000 polluting steel mills and other industrial energy hogs by Sept. 30 might look like one more sign that [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu New turf battles have erupted in the rivalry between Hong Kong and Shanghai over which metropolis will be the Wall Street of China. The conventional wisdom has [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu and Isaac Stone Fish The success of cross-dressing comedian Little Shenyang shows that sexual humor is coming out of the closet. Is China ready for raunch? Comedy [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu and Marije Vlaskamp White-collar workers are china's newest underclass. At first glance, Guo Yilei looks like a Chinese success story. Born to a poor peasant family in [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Chinese travelers are embracing the sites in their own country-- especially those offering a foreign or global perspective. Two of China's most scenic destinations are locked in [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu The island welcomes tourists from the mainland, and their money. Chinese traveling abroad began as a trickle in the '90s, but now they're flooding Asian destinations like [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Next month's eye-popping World Expo heralds the city's resurgence--and perhaps a bruising new chapter in U.S.-Sino relations. A new and supremely confident symbol for the city of [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Farms matter more than skyscrapers. Leaning Bridge Village is less than 150km from Beijing, but might as well be light-years removed from the capital's glittering towers. Nestled [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu It would be understandable if foreign business leaders are confused by the signals Beijing is sending these days. On the one hand, Premier Wen Jiabao cordially greeted [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu When china's film board announced it would pull the wildly popular Hollywood film Avatar and replace it with a domestic biopic about Confucius--the ancient philosopher whose ethos [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu The blockbuster Avatar is obliterating records around the globe, including in China. After just three weeks in theaters the movie had earned $76 million, making it the [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Why china is no longer interested in following America's lead. China's America watchers have fallen on tough times. Back in their profession's glory days, in the 1980s [...]

Byline: Sharon Begley; With Daniel Stone in Washington, Melinda Liu in Beijing, and Jason Overdorf in Delhi The 192 countries flocking to Copenhagen next month wonCOt reach consensus on climate [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu Washington wants Beijing's help in Afghanistan. Last week, the U.S. got China to agree to cooperate on ensuring that neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan is used as a [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu War requires both blood and treasure, and in Afghanistan, Beijing has invested plenty of the latter without risking any of the former. It's been betting big on [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu China has launched a concerted effort to bring home top talent from the United States. For nearly 15 years, china has been trying to engineer a 'brain [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu China has a near stranglehold on the so-called rare earths, metals like yttrium and lanthanum that are essential for everything from hybrid cars to iPods to precision-guided [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu; With Marije Vlaskamp in Beijing and Nick Mackie in Chongqing As China prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of communist rule this week, the one-party system looks [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu China's leadership could be called the gang of engineers--eight of the nine members of the Communist Party's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee studied engineering, including President Hu Jintao [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu The Chinese take their side of paradise very seriously, and by paradise we mean the island of Hainan, a.k.a. 'the Hawaii of China.' The beaches are kept [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu When a little-known Chinese company agreed to purchase Hummer from General Motors in June, the deal was initially seen as another symbol of a rising China's might. [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu The latest shock wave emanating from the global financial crisis is the series of bloody protests sweeping China's minority enclaves--most recently Xinjiang, where Muslim Uighurs constitute the [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu The latest victims of the global financial crisis are casualties of the violent unrest sweeping China's minority enclaves--most recently in Xinjiang, where Muslim Uighurs constitute the largest [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu When congress included a 'Buy American' clause in the $787 billion stimulus package, mandating the use of U.S.-made iron and steel in stimulus-funded projects, critics decried it [...]

Byline: Duncan Hewitt and Melinda Liu Gay organizers had good reason to hope that Beijing, despite its hostility to most forms of activism, would tolerate Shanghai's first-ever gay-pride celebration last [...]

Byline: Melinda Liu China is now the world's largest market for cars; Chinese leaders aim to own the biggest piece of it. American tastes dominated the world's automotive market for [...]