A foreigner who knocked down a woman with his motorcycle in Beijing on December 2 -- he's pictured above being grabbed by the victim -- apparently was working "without a permit" in Beijing and has been deported. Talk about escalating fast. Also, he had been driving the motorcycle without a license, so he was fined 5,000 yuan. Oh, and his father was deported as well for working without a permit. What did either of them actually do?
UK Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Beijing yesterday to boost China-UK relations -- to "appease" Beijing, as Western media types would put it -- and to back a new EU-China free trade agreement. A few days before, on November 29, Cameron opened a Sina Weibo account, with the first message reading: "Hello my friends in China. I'm pleased to have joined Weibo and look forward to visiting China very soon."
For the second time three days, a pipeline ruptured in a Chinese city. On Sunday, it was a gas pipeline in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province that injured three people.
Spain, which recognizes universal justice -- meaning its court magistrates walk eternally with backs bowed under the burden of universal injustice, the weight of sadness -- issued a warrant on Tuesday for the arrest of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and four others "as part of a probe into alleged genocide in Tibet," reports AP and Al Jazeera.
The US will have a new ambassador to China in early 2014. Gary Locke, who has served in that role since July 27, 2011, said this morning that he will step down "to rejoin my family in Seattle." SCMP has the full text of Locke's statement.
If you haven't been following the story of Bloomberg vs. the New York Times, start here. That's NYT's article, built around an anonymous source within Bloomberg, claiming that Bloomberg editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler spiked a sensitive China story due to pressure.
One of O. Henry's most famous stories is "The Last Leaf," a tale of hope, perseverance, and sacrifice. In it, a young girl dying in a New York hospital believes that once the last leaf falls from a vine outside her window, it'll be time for her to go. "Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," her friend, Sue, tells her, but she believes it, and so, lying in bed, she counts down the leaves. Five. Four. Three. Two...
