Profiles of Chinese affected by the world financial crisis:

WANG HAO, GEOLOGICAL ASSISTANT, MU COUNTY, TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION

I work for a copper exploration company, a joint venture run by a British mining firm and a Chinese mining bureau.
I feel the economic pressure in this industry. Metal prices are going down and I am worried that investors in Europe and the US will also reduce their exploration activities in China.
What people think about the metal sector thousands of miles away affects my livelihood here - even though I feel very removed from it.
I work and live in an extremely rural area. The scenery is beautiful, especially in the summertime. It’s getting cold now and the landscape is barren. We are planning to shut down the project temporarily because it is simply too cold….

Adiga’s novel focuses on a character who writes angry letters to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao:

“You know, India and China have now come into their own, and the fiction that comes out of these countries should reflect that fact. What that means is, writers from those countries need to be more critical and more harsh in looking at those countries, because they no longer need protection.”

Disheartening news of an attempted cover-up:
“The Chinese company at the centre of a milk contamination scandal is reported to have asked for government help to cover up the extent of the problem.
The official People’s Daily said the Sanlu Group asked Shijiazhuang city government to help ‘manage’ the media response to the case.
It made the request in August, weeks before the contamination of milk with melamine became public knowledge.
It comes as a new list of tainted milk products is published.”

A BBC documentary on the dollar-a-day half of China.

“According to some experts, nearly half of Beijing’s population are now migrant workers. 19-year-old Jiang Xiaoli is part of what is perhaps the biggest migration that’s ever taken place anywhere. Her home province is one of the poorest in China, and now she’s found a job as a domestic worker in the capital…”
“She get up 6 in morning, to clean up the house, and until the baby sleeps about 10 in the evening, she cannot have a rest…”
…
“Now Jiang Xiaoli sends most of her money home. She’s replaced her parents’ small, old black-and-white tv with a bigger color one, and she’s also paid for her two younger sisters to go to school. The family couldn’t afford it before. But Xiaoli’s paid a price for being away from home, too. As we’ve been chatting, there have been tears streaming down her face…”

The BBC has found the first evidence that China is supplying arms to Sudan’s government forces and training fighter pilots, contravening the UN arms embargo on Darfur:

“Panorama traced the first lorry by travelling deep into the remote deserts of West Darfur.
They found a Chinese Dong Feng army lorry in the hands of one of Darfur’s rebel groups.
The BBC established through independent eyewitness testimony that the rebels had captured it from Sudanese government forces in December.
The rebels filmed a second lorry with the BBC’s camera. Both vehicles had been carrying anti-aircraft guns, one a Chinese gun.
Markings showed that they were from a batch of 212 Dong Feng army lorries that the UN had traced as having arrived in Sudan after the arms embargo was put in place.
The lorries came straight from the factory in China to Sudan and were consigned to Sudan’s defence ministry. The guns were mounted after the lorries were imported from China.”