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China’s censors have restricted the spread online of a personal essay written by former premier Wen Jiabao about his late mother that some dissidents said could be construed as criticism of President Xi Jinping’s leadership. The essay, titled “My Mother”, was initially published by a Macau newspaper in a series of instalments around the tomb-sweeping festival this month. The essay was reposted by mainstream Chinese media outlets at the weekend but has since disappeared from those websites. Wen’s essay began spreading on WeChat. “This essay violates WeChat’s public account platform rules, and has been banned from being shared,” a pop-up...

AFP - Brazil hopes to sign a bilateral accord with China to promote trade in their national currencies at next week's BRICS summit of the world's five emerging powers, Trade and Industry Minister Fernando Pimentel said Thursday. The initiative was tentatively agreed last June with the signing of a memorandum of understanding after a meeting of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and then Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao during the UN summit on sustainable development in Rio. Pimentel said that at the BRICS summit in Durban, South Africa on Monday and Tuesday "we plan to turn this memorandum into a final...

The New York Times says Chinese hackers repeatedly penetrated its computer networks over the past four months, stealing reporters’ passwords and hunting for files on an investigation into the wealth amassed by the family of one of China's leaders. … The attacks coincided with a Times’ investigation into how the family and relatives of Premier Wen Jiabao built a fortune worth more than $2 billion. …

Wen Jiabao's £1.68bn family wealth: China furious at US exposé New York Times website blocked after disclosing web of assets in new embarrassment for Communist party Tania Branigan in Beijing The Guardian, Friday 26 October 2012 22.00 BST China has lashed out at a US newspaper report that premier Wen Jiabao's family has amassed vast wealth worth at least $2.7bn (£1.68bn), censoring the New York Times website and questioning the paper's motivations. The story said Wen, widely seen as the humane face of China's top leadership, was not directly linked to the holdings. But the association with such a fortune...

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's lawyer has responded to the bombshell allegations in Friday's New York Times. In a statement translated by the South China Morning Post: I. The so-called “hidden riches” of Wen Jiabao’s family members in the New York Times’ report does not exist. The statement goes on to specifically refute allegations, before hinting at legal action: VI. We will continue to make clarifications regarding untrue reports by the New York Times, and reserve the right to hold it legally responsible. The NYT story specifically said that Wen's extended family had more than $2.7 billion in hidden assets,...

SKIERNIEWICE, Poland -- Chinese companies have wowed the world with superhighways, high-speed trains and snazzy airports, all built seemingly overnight. Yet a modest highway through Polish potato fields proved to be too much for one of China's biggest builders. The A2 highway between Warsaw and Berlin was supposed to be an opportunity for Chinese construction to shine on a European stage after years of megaprojects at home and in the developing world. Poland badly wanted the project completed before the European soccer championships starting June 8, which Poland is hosting for the first time with Ukraine. Instead, a key 30-mile...

Who’s Your Buddy?Well, if you’re a member of the US International Longshoremen’s Association, that would be Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Yes, you heard me correctly; an American union (snort) awarded the leader of communist China the title “Best Friend of the American Worker.” China Daily reports: ILA Vice President William McNamara said his association was honored to give the award to Premier Wen to thank China for its great contributions to creating more job opportunities for American workers. The award ceremony coincided with the 10th anniversary of the first direct vessel call to the Port of Boston by China Ocean...

China resisted pressure yesterday from South Korea and Japan to censure North Korea publicly for the sinking of a warship, calling only for regional tensions over the incident to be defused. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao gave no sign that China is ready to back United Nations Security Council action against its ally over the sinking, following a summit with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. "The urgent task now is to defuse the impact of the Cheonan incident, change the tense situation and avoid clashes," he told a joint news conference on the southern resort...

/begin my translation Chinese PM on an Early Morning Photo-op Visiting Chinese PM Wen Jiabao doing his early morning exercise of jogging, taking a shot at baseball and playing badminton around 6 AM, May 29, at an exercise field on a flood basin of Han River near Apgujong, Seoul. /end my translation

Why did Chinese premier Wen Jiabao choose to publicly humiliate Barack Obama at Copenhagen? In their eyes, and those of much of the world, he has lost face, and with it, power and influence. While getting widespread play overseas, this story has been kept very quiet by our disinterested, nonpartisan media (I haven't seen it mentioned in any major U.S. outlet). After promising to meet the Messiah at 7:00 p.m., Premier Wen stiffed him in favor of a meeting with the leaders of India, South Africa, and Brazil. Rather than wait, a no-doubt infuriated Obama stalked into the room in...

WASHINGTON -- After a day spent frantically darting around Copenhagen trying to locate world leaders, getting snubbed by China's premier and crashing a meeting where he had initially been kept out, President Obama heralded a last-minute, largely toothless UN global-warming summit deal that drew fast fire from all sides as a sham. Almost no one was happy with the outcome of the two-week confab and even the president, who was slammed by liberals and Republicans alike, along with other world leaders, admitted that the pact doesn't legally commit any of the nations involved -- the point of the summit in...

North Korea wants to placate key benefactor China by offering to return to disarmament talks and it is unclear whether it really intends to give up its cherished nuclear deterrent, analysts said Tuesday. Leader Kim Jong-Il told visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao late Monday the North is willing to return to six-nation nuclear disarmament negotiations -- on condition it first holds talks with the United States to improve "hostile relations". Some analysts expressed scepticism about the North's conditional offer to return to six-party dialogue, almost six months after it quit the forum and announced it would restart its bomb-making programme....

BEIJING, Feb. 27 -- The Communist Party cautioned China's increasingly impatient reformers and intellectuals Tuesday that political liberalization and democracy are still a long way off despite the rapid pace of economic change over the past two decades. The warning, in an article attributed to Premier Wen Jiabao in the official People's Daily newspaper, constituted the party's first known response to a bubbling up of political debate as China prepares for an annual session of its legislature and an important Communist Party congress that is scheduled for this fall. Most of the debate has remained behind closed doors, in keeping...

The Clinton Years: The Gathering Storm Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA, delivered the following speech at Restoration Weekend, which took place at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix February 23-26, 2006: It’s good to be with all of you. Many of you are old friends whom I’ve met with over the years. It’s great to be able to share a few thoughts with you about national security and specific projects I’m working on. You know, in my 20 years in Congress, the one thing I’ve come to understand about our country’s history is that the success of our country’s security has really...

BEIJING, MARCH 5: China will channel its surging economic growth to narrow the chasm dividing its rich cities and restive countryside, Premier Wen Jiabao told parliament on Sunday in a speech tempering optimism with stark warnings. In setting out government goals for the coming year, Wen promised “continuity and stability” in general economic policy, including the currency exchange rate and monetary policy. But he said more wealth and investment must go to farmers and other struggling groups to ensure China’s stability and growth. Wen praised China’s performance in 2005 in a speech to nearly 3,000 delegates of the National People’s...

VIENNA, Austria - The United States and Europe have agreed on a compromise plan to accept expanded nuclear activities by Iran, but only if the enrichment process — a possible pathway to nuclear arms — is moved to Russia, senior officials and diplomats said Thursday. If accepted by Iran, the proposal could end a tug-of-war over whether to refer the Islamic republic to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. The officials and diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for discussing the strategy, said the plan would allow Iran to continue converting raw uranium into the gas that is spun...

China's Stealth War on the U.S. July 20, 2005 Los Angeles Times Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu of the Chinese People's Liberation Army caused quite a stir last week when he threatened to nuke "hundreds" of American cities if the U.S. dared to interfere with a Chinese attempt to conquer Taiwan. In 1998, an official People's Liberation Army publishing house brought out a treatise called "Unrestricted Warfare," written by two senior army colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. This book, which is available in English translation, is well known to the U.S. national security establishment but remains practically unheard of among...

Arms Proliferation: Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, who recently visited Iran, reportedly is seeking nuclear weapons. Will they come from Russia with love?Maybe — if Russia continues to run a weapons bazaar where rogue nations are given special-shopper privileges.Already, it appears Russia has acted as a broker by greasing the way for North Korea to transfer technology that will let Iran build missiles with a 2,200-mile reach. That puts several European capitals, including Athens, Rome and Berlin, within Tehran's range.Russia also is supporting Iran's "nuclear power" program, having sold it a reactor. Which is to say Russia supports Iran's nuclear-weapons program.All...

Does this sound familiar? EXCERPTS FROM THE NAKED COMMUNIST Former FBI agent, Cleon Skoussen, in 1958, in his book, THE NAKED COMMUNIST, revealed among other things, these long term goals of the communist agenda. The information is in the Congressional Record August 1963 and in the Communist Manifesto: U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the U.S. would be a demonstration of moral strength. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war. Provide American aid...

Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh arrived in Moscow Monday. The main subject of his negotiations is the upcoming discussion of Iran’s nuclear program by the IAEA. Moscow has more or less decided to support Tehran during the decisive voting at IAEA in a week — support which could cause the Kremlin a lot of problems. This is extremely important for the new Iranian authorities. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad swept to victory during July’s presidential elections in Iran. However, until now he has been a very obscure figure in the political arena. Tehran’s foreign partners have only been able to judge the character...