DEQIN, China — As the flames of anti-Chinese riots and protests engulfed many Tibetan areas of western China last spring, soldiers sent to the towns and villages of the deep river valleys around here encountered nothing but silence.

Political moderation is the norm in this corner of the Tibetan world. A steady flow of ethnic Han Chinese tourists has lifted incomes in recent years. Farmers convert old homes into guesthouses. Monasteries are erecting new buildings.

Perhaps nowhere is there a better example of the “middle way” attitude promoted by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Buddhist avatar who advocates a nonviolent movement for Tibetan autonomy within China but not outright independence…

CHANG’AN, China — Wang Denggui, father of three, arrived more than a year ago in the palm-lined streets of this southern town with a single goal: toil in a factory to save for his children’s school tuition.

But the plans of Mr. Wang and thousands of co-workers unraveled at noon on Nov. 1, when the Taiwanese chairman of their ailing shoe factory climbed over a factory wall to flee the country and his debts. That left several American shoe companies with unfilled orders and 2,000 workers without jobs.

“He just ran without telling anyone,” Mr. Wang said.

For decades, the steamy Pearl River Delta area of southern Guangdong Province served as a primary engine for China’s astounding economic growth. But an export slowdown that began earlier this year and that has been magnified by the global financial crisis of recent months is contributing to the shutdown of tens of thousands of small and mid-size factories here and in other coastal regions, forcing laborers to scramble for other jobs or return home to the countryside…

“BEIJING — Mainland China’s top negotiator on Taiwan matters arrived in Taipei on Monday, the highest ranking mainland official to visit the island since the end of the civil war in 1949.

His visit, for five days of talks aimed at reaching agreements on transportation and economic deals, signals a further warming of relations between the two governments.

The official, Chen Yunlin, the head of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, landed at the Taipei airport and went to the historic Grand Hotel, where he made a few remarks to a crowd of reporters. The talks are expected to begin on Tuesday, when Mr. Chen meets with Chiang Pin-kung, the chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, the main negotiating body for Taiwan.

‘The step is not easy and is a crystallization of the joint efforts of many compatriots across the strait,’ Mr. Chen said, according to Xinhua, mainland China’s state-run news agency….”

Chinese officials appear to have been caught in a Xinjiang cover-up:

“KASHGAR, China — Just days before the Olympic Games began in August, a truck plowed into a large group of paramilitary officers jogging in western China, sending bodies flying, Chinese officials said at the time.

They described the event as a terrorist attack carried out by two ethnic Uighur separatists aimed at disrupting the Olympics. After running over the officers, the men also attacked them with machetes and homemade explosives, officials said. At least 16 officers were killed, they said, in what appeared to be the deadliest assault in China since the 1990s.

But fresh accounts told to The New York Times by three foreign tourists who happened to be in the area challenge central parts of the official Chinese version of the events of Aug. 4 in Kashgar, a former Silk Road post in the western desert. One tourist took 27 photographs.

Among other discrepancies, the witnesses said that they heard no loud explosions and that the men wielding the machetes appeared to be paramilitary officers who were attacking other uniformed men.”

The Chinese government has admitted that poor school construction contributed the the casualty tally after May’s earthquake:
“BEIJING — A Chinese government committee said Thursday that a rush to build schools during the country’s recent economic boom might have led to shoddy construction that resulted in the deaths of thousands of students during a devastating earthquake in May.
Relatives and friends of those killed in the collapse of a school in Sichuan Province gathered in June. Some estimates said up to 10,000 students might have died.
The statement by Ma Zongjin, the chairman of an official committee of experts assessing damage from the May 12 earthquake, is the first time that a representative of the Chinese government has acknowledged that poor construction may have led to the collapses. Until now, officials in Beijing and in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, which suffered the most damage, had said the sheer force of the 7.9-magnitude quake caused the collapses.”

Away from the Olympics, amputee quake victims push themselves to get better:

“CHENGDU, China — Far from Beijing and its gathering of Olympic athletes, a small group of people here spend hours each day pushing their own physical limits.

Some are missing an arm or a leg. Others lost even more. They are all victims of the earthquake that devastated Sichuan Province in southwest China on May 12, and they are here at a medical center to learn to use prosthetic limbs.

Li Chunyang, 16, is one of the children pulled from the rubble of Dongqi Middle School in the town of Hanwang after being trapped for 52 hours. His left leg had been pinned under debris. It was amputated after his rescue.”

Edward Wong looks at China’s curious brand of patriotism:

“I thought about these questions as I looked for the market that Mr. Zhao had recommended. I bumped into a neighbor who suggested I go to another shop. Minutes later, I peered down the street where that shop was supposedly located. I asked a young man named Little Zhai where I could find a flag.

‘You have to go to a big supermarket like Carrefour,’ he said.

I thought I had misheard him. Was he telling me to buy a Chinese flag at Carrefour, the French supermarket chain that angry Chinese youth had urged everyone to boycott in the spring because of the French owner’s rumored ties to the Dalai Lama?

‘Yes, go to Carrefour,’ he said. ‘They definitely have flags.’

The earlier manifestation of patriotism seemed to have dissolved in a matter of months. …”

Police forcibly remove grieving mothers and journalists from the collapsed Dujiangyan school:

A standoff between the parents, many carrying framed photos of their dead children, and the police officers, dressed in black uniforms, lasted for several hours. In the end, the parents walked away.

…

“We trust the government officials to help us,” said Tian Wenyao, 40, who lost her 12-year-old son. “We have no other way — we have to trust the government.”

“But of course we’re angry,” she added. “Who wouldn’t be angry? In the morning, my child said to me, ‘Mama, I’m going to school.’ In the evening, he turned up a corpse.”