10th June 09

The New York Times

Prominent Chinese Mayor Implicated in Graft Inquiry

BEIJING — The mayor of Shenzhen, one of China’s most dynamic cities, has been detained as part of a graft investigation that threatens to overturn the local political establishment, the state media reported Tuesday.

Chinese Art Prices Show Signs of Stabilizing

That sale sent mixed signals. The 27 percent price fall mirrored the overall state of the contemporary art market; still, bidding was active, and the painting came through as the top lot of the afternoon’s offering of postwar and contemporary art, beating works by Damien Hirst, Keith Harding and Richard Prince. After its initial collapse, as the economic crisis struck, the Chinese contemporary market may be bottoming out.

The Age

The great firewall of China is rolled out

MILLIONS of school children may be first in line to try China's newest innovation in censorship technology: compulsory filtering software installed on every computer. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology instructed schools to install the censorship technology by the end of last month and has also told computer makers to install the software on each computer sold in China from July 1.

Asia Times Online

China discovers value in the IMF
By Peter Lee

China's fraught relations with the International Monetary Fund are driven by two conflicting agendas - the country's effort to gain unimpeded access to resources in the developing world on bilateral terms, and its interest in using the IMF's facilities as a international organization to issue Special Drawing Rights (SDR) assets to help Beijing diversify away from the US dollar.