9th March 09

The Sydney Morning Herald

Hong Kong confident of weathering downturn with boosts to business, banks

Despite the market shockwaves, Hong Kong - rated for the 15th year in a row by the United States Heritage Foundation as the most free economy in the world - is lobbying hard for nations to resist the protectionist urge. Professor Chan said that while being an open economy made Hong Kong vulnerable, it also made it flexible enough to respond - and to emerge with stronger fundamentals. "This crisis is certainly about the financial system, but now it is also about confidence. This part of the hemisphere, I think, Hong Kong and Australia, has something to show the world."

The Age

China on alert as Tibetans set to mark uprising

CHINESE authorities have imposed a security lockdown in Tibet as the Himalayan region this week marks the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into exile. Beijing is desperate to prevent protests by monks and nomads after violent unrest last year embarrassed the leadership just ahead of the Olympics in the Chinese capital.

Keep an open mind on China investments

THE yellow peril is back. In early cold war days, it was the threat of Chinese communism delivered at the barrel of a gun. Now it's Chinese cash from the barrels of their state-owned companies. The recent alarm for Australia's national interest has been triggered by three proposed investments: Chinaclo into Rio, Hunan Valin into Fortescue and China Minmetals into Oz Minerals. All the Chinese players are state owned, and China, of course, is an authoritarian communist state.

The International Herald Tribune

A home on the Internet shelters Beijing's homeless

Now, for once, modernity has come to the aid of the homeless people of Qianmen in the somewhat unlikely figure of Zhang Shihe. Zhang, a 55-year-old blogger, is a marketing expert by day, good Samaritan by night. For the last year and a half, he has used the Internet to raise awareness of the plight of the neighborhood's homeless. Zhang was already an online folk hero when he took up their cause; he started blogging five years ago to publicize injustices he witnessed on Beijing's back streets or on treks into China's impoverished countryside. Netizens know him as Laohu Miao, or Tiger Temple. But the transients in Tiananmen Square call him Journalist Zhang.