An American reputation, tarnished by Mao, is officially restored:

SHANGHAI — On Aug. 2, 1949, with the Communists about to seize power in Beijing, the United States recalled its ambassador to China, John Leighton Stuart, a respected missionary, educator and diplomat.

Mao Zedong, the insurgent Communist leader who would take power two months later, quickly denounced Mr. Stuart as a symbol of failed American imperialism. Mr. Stuart’s departure effectively ended diplomatic ties between the United States and China for a quarter century.

Mr. Stuart died in Washington in 1962. He had written in his will that he hoped his remains would someday be buried in China, where he had been born the son of Christian missionaries in 1876 and had helped found a prominent university, but where he was no longer welcome.

For decades, the answer from Beijing seemed to be no.

But on Monday, 46 years after his death and after years of negotiations about the political implications of such a burial, Mr. Stuart’s ashes were laid to rest…

(h/t China Digital Times)

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….”

BEIJING — For three decades, China has fueled its remarkable economic rise by becoming the world’s workshop and unleashing a flood of low-priced exports. But faced with a possible global recession and weakening demand for Chinese exports, the question now is whether the ruling Communist Party can prevent the financial crisis from derailing the country’s economic miracle.

This question is pressing not just for China but also for the rest of the world. American officials and many economists say continued Chinese growth is vital to the global economy as the United States and Europe face severe downturns.

Yet to navigate the crisis, many analysts say, China will need to recalibrate its economic model, stoke domestic investment with heavy government spending and promote policies to increase consumer demand in a nation known for high savings rates…

Major reforms, resurrecting Deng Xiaoping’s goals, might shore up Hu’s legacy:

BEIJING — After days of uncertainty, the governing Communist Party on Sunday announced a rural reform policy that for the first time would allow farmers to lease or transfer land-use rights, a step that advocates say would raise lagging incomes in the Chinese countryside.

The new policy, announced by Chinese state media, is a major economic reform and is also rich in historical resonance, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the land reforms enacted by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, which were considered the first critical steps in the policies that have fueled China’s rapid economic growth.

For President Hu Jintao, whose tenure has disappointed some reformers, the new policy seems intended to position him as a worthy heir to Deng…

Joshua Hammer reviews Ian Buruma’s book, “The China Lover”:

In Japanese-occupied Manchuria in the 1930s, a teenage singer and actress named Yoshiko Yamaguchi rose to stardom in a series of propaganda films intended to celebrate Japan’s noble role in China. Acting under the pseudonym Ri Koran, Yamaguchi created a sensation in erotic melodramas like “China Nights,” about a love affair between a Chinese peasant girl and a heroic Japanese ship captain in wartime Shanghai. Yamaguchi’s career as a tool of the militarists continued until Japan’s surrender in 1945, when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces charged her with collaboration. (She was spared execution when she was able to prove her ethnic Japanese origins, which her bosses had kept secret.) Yamaguchi rebuilt her career from the war’s ashes, first as the star of pro-American films in occupied Japan, then as the Hollywood actress Shirley Yamaguchi, her new name inspired by Shirley Temple. Retiring from the movies in the late 1950s, Yamaguchi continued to reinvent herself, as a diplomat’s wife, as a journalist and as a prominent politician in the Japanese Parliament…

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.”

“BEIJING — A Chinese astronaut orbiting the earth lifted himself out of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft Saturday afternoon and performed the nation’s first spacewalk, another milestone in China’s space program.

The Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang made the nation’s first spacewalk on Saturday, floating outside the Shenzhou VII spacecraft for 18 minutes as it orbited the earth.
Zhai Zhigang pulled himself out of the orbital module about 4:40 p.m. Beijing time, latched himself to a handrail with two safety cords and then waved to a national audience during a live broadcast of the country’s third space mission with an astronaut.

‘I am here greeting the Chinese people and the people of the world,’ Mr. Zhai said, waving to a camera attached to the module…”

China cut interest rates and eased limits on lending:

“HONG KONG — After five years of tightening monetary policy to fight inflation, China abruptly reversed course on Monday, cutting interest rates and easing bank lending restrictions in response to signs that growth in the Chinese economy was slowing.

China’s restrictions on large movements of money in and out of the country and its immense reserves of foreign currency have insulated its financial markets from the troubles shaking Wall Street. But this has not been enough to protect China from a global economic downturn.

China’s exports have slowed sharply, particularly when adjusted for inflation and expressed in China’s currency. Real estate prices are weakening, particularly in coastal cities that depend on exports, and China’s stock market has lost three-fifths of its value since October.”