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The original Pekin Man as your own post shows was never brought to a lab and examined. In fact he supposedly vanished during a military action never to be seen again.

That's wildly false. Granted the original "Peking Man" (Chinese Homo erectus from Zhoukoudian) fossils never left China, and were lost with the baggage of the U.S. Marines evacuating ahead of the Japanese, but they certainly were studied extensively in laboratories. Davidson Black, and following his death in 1934 Franz Weidenreich, made highly accurate casts and sent them to scientists and institutions around the world. There were also photographs, measurements, detailed descriptions, and even X-rays. All of this record material was brought back to the United States by Weidenreich who left China ahead of the Marines in 1941. For instance here is one of the x-rays (and an ordinary photograph) of Skull XII:

Here's a better image of the same skull:

What's more further remains of Homo erectus have been excavated, in situ, at the original "Peking Man" site since the war, and we still have those fossils.

Indeed peices of a skull were found in 1966 that matched perfectly with casts of material found by Davidson Black in 1934. Here's a picture and description of that skull from chineseprehistory.org:

Skull V from Zhoukoudian has an interesting history. Portions of this skull-cap were first found in the 1930s. Along with the rest of the human fossil collection from Zhoukoudian these fragments were lost during World War II. Excellent molds of all the human specimens were made, however, and primary casts are still available at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and the American Museum in New York. In 1966 the frontal bone and a portion of the occipital bone of Skull 5 were found during renewed excavations at Zhoukoudian. They fit perfectly with casts of the original pieces found in 1934 and 1936, allowing for the reconstruction of a nearly complete skull-cap. Skull 5 is thought to come from younger deposits at Zhoukoudian and to show certain relatively advanced features compared to other crania from the site. In overall character, however, it does not differ significantly from previously known specimens of "Peking Man."

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Creationist Arguments: Peking Man (talkorigins)
www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_peking.html

Thanks to the InternetArchive we can still access the extensive information and resources at the recently defunct "ChinesePrehistory.org":
web.archive.org/web/20060428134041/http://www.chineseprehistory.org/

Good post.

Of course it doesn't mean anything.

Because these fossils have been called a "missing link" we are being told that they are a hoax. As are all other "missing links." Hoaxes all!

Never mind that "missing link" is a newspaper term, not a scientific one. Never mind that the term is wildly inaccurate -- the newspapers said it, its science! Please ignore the fact that about 99.9% of newspaper reporters are ignorant of the science they are reporting. (If they knew anything about science they wouldn't have to be reporters!)

Somewhere, some creationist website (for religious reasons) decided that Pekin Man is a hoax and that claim has been repeated endlessly on the creationist circuit, so that is what creationists believe. And that is what they parrot on these threads. They don't know this for a fact, they have not personally studied the subject, they have never handled the casts nor read the descriptions of the original scientists -- but they know that these fossils are a hoax! And the scientists who have studied the casts, spent their entire careers immersed in the subject, well, they know nothing. They are non-believers, "evilutionists."

What a crock. Perfect examples of Heinlein said:

Belief gets in the way of learning.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973