China's ruling Communist Party opens a Congress to usher in a new group of younger leaders. Rediff.com's takes a sneak peek inside Beijing's Great Hall of the People, which hosts one of the most-talked about political event, across the globe.
China's 2.8 million strong People's Liberation Army, the world's largest standing military, would continue to be part of ruling Communist Party of China, and resolutely oppose any attempt to separate from it, a military official said on Tuesday.
Ahead of the ruling Communist Party of China's key Congress to elect a new leadership, calls for political reforms in China's one-party system are getting louder, with a top official saying the CPC can no longer "dodge" the issue citing obstacles.
Kenneth Lieberthal, senior fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at think tank The Brookings Institution and an expert on China, talks to Aditi Phadnis on the changes China is likely to see under the new leadership
'India and China are at new inflection points, domestically and internationally. India needs to throw up a new leader whose vision is clear, experience laden with wisdom and articulation brimming with restraint and tolerance,' says Ambassador K C Singh.
The widening gap between rich and poor continues to pose a challenge to stability in China, with the latest figures showing that the Gini coefficient reached 0.438 in 2010, which exceeds UN warning levels, the International Institute for Urban Development said in its report in Beijing.
As the Lok Sabha debates a no-confidence motion brought against the Narendra Modi government by the opposition, the 28th such motion to be admitted in the Lower House, data compiled by a think tank shows all previous ones have either been defeated or remained inconclusive.
China's top graft buster followed up a series of inspections of elite sports training centres by reiterating its warning against corruption in the run-up to the Rio Olympics on Monday.
'The logical step is to challenge the very legitimacy of the Chinese claim over Tibet,' recommends Inspector General Gurdip Singh Uban (retd).
'Tibet remains a prickly issue between the giant Asian nations. China still claims more than 80,000 sq kilometres of Indian territory in the Northeast. Why? Just because Beijing refuses to acknowledge the McMahon line which separates India and Tibet, and this, simply because the 1914 Agreement delineating the border was signed by the then government of independent Tibet with India's then foreign secretary (Sir Henry McMahon),' says Claude Arpi.
This is a high-stakes strategic conflict between a power which wants to preserve the status quo in its favour and one which wants to usurp that throne. The rest is all theatre, says Harsh V Pant.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi has convened a meeting of the party's strategy group on September 8, the sources said. Opposition leaders are keen that various like-minded parties should work closely with each other to take on the government in Parliament.
'If a 'two-front war' develops, Iron Brother may only turn out to be a drag on the PLA, since Pakistan is in no position to wage a war with India,' argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Describing the pace of change in China as truly astounding and outstanding, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday said that India had much to learn from the way the Communist nation had approached economic reforms and liberalisation. Gandhi said the world today recognised the reality of an Asian renaissance and the re-emergence of China and India. She said that the two countries must work and prosper together as the world is big enough to accommodate the growth of both.
Ahead of his visit to New Delhi, China's new Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday said India and China "must shake hands" to make Asia an "engine of the world economy". Addressing the 100-member Indian youth delegation at Zhongnanhai, the imperial gardens housing the headquarters of China's ruling Communist Party and central government, Li spoke warmly about his visit to India 27 years ago as the leader of a youth delegation.
'The mood in Beijing is already nervous and feverously watchful.' 'Developments in China will be scrutinised as intensely and nervously as the ones in Washington,' says Claude Smadja.
China launched a fresh broadside against Dalai Lama, accusing him of perpetuating feudalism and warned that any attempts to separate Tibet from the country are doomed to fail, on Saturday.
With adoption of the new method the size of China's economy last year was about $130 billion larger than previously estimated.
China has completed the 1,000-km oil pipeline to oil-rich Kazakhstan, boosting the communist giant's energy security.\n\n
China's new Communist Party leader Xi Jinping will formally take over as president in early March when the country's legislature opens to elect the leaders at various levels.
China's ruling Communist Party on Tuesday confirmed that Congress president Sonia Gandhi has accepted President Hu Jintao's invitation to visit the country, saying the event will further enhance friendship between leaders of the two countries.
Taiwan considers itself a sovereign state -- but China views the self-ruled island as a breakaway province. Beijing has not ruled out the possible use of force to achieve unification.
The Confederation of Indian Industry on Thursday relaunched its operations in China on a larger scale by opening its east Asia regional representative office in Shanghai, the commercial capital of the Communist nation.
Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, almost half of all Americans view China as more of a "threat" than an "ally" while Indians and South Koreans are inclined to see the Communist giant in the same way, a new poll shows.
"We should safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country and achieve full unification of the motherland. This is the aspiration of all Chinese people. This is also in line with fundamental of the Chinese nation," he said in an apparent reference to Taiwan which China claims as part of it.
While Wuhan and 17 others cities in Hubei province remained the epicentre of the viral disease outbreak with most of the deaths having taken place there, the cases have started rising steadily in most of the Chinese provinces and cities, including Beijing.
A disgruntled ex-convict, arrested for the recent serial bomb blasts targeting China's ruling Communist Party's provincial headquarters in Taiyuan, carried out the attack to "take revenge on society", police said on Friday.
Referencing to a decline in manufacturing in democratic countries such as India and the US in recent years as production shifted to China, Gandhi said the shift had produced mass inequality and anger which needed urgent attention and dialogue.
The $33 billion Beijing-Shanghai high-speed train will start commercial operations today.
Rumours that Mr Xi was a market reformer appear to have been exaggerated.
China on Friday officially launched the world's first dual-mode mobile phones, which function in both GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) networks.
China's new leader Xi Jinping was on Wednesday elected as the member of the nation's legislature, the National People's Congress, which was all set to choose him as the president early next month.
'Even if there is no full-scale war, Galwan-like skirmishes cannot be ruled out.'
China's ambitious reform road map could transform the country's economy, but it conceals a return to old-style authoritarianism.
While the official media is silent on the issue, Chinese blogs and websites are much kinder to the banned Maoist rebels, writes China expert D S Rajan.
The pledge, reported by state media, was the first public comment by top leaders on the violence that has left 156 people dead in the city of Urumqi.
Hu, 60, succeeds Jiang Zemin, 76, who held two consecutive five-year terms as Chinese president.
China is India's longtime "strategic challenge" but not a "threat", a group of strategic and defence experts said today.
