July 2012

China has long been known as a place where the world’s dirtiest mines and factories can operate with impunity. Those days may not be over, but a growing environmental movement is beginning to make the most polluting projects much harder to build and operate.

The United States filed a trade complaint against China on Thursday for new duties it imposed on American-made cars and trucks. The move came as President Obama kicked off a campaign bus tour through the manufacturing heartland of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Ohio-built Jeep Wrangler is among the cars affected.

Forget about Angry Birds. One new videogame for China’s iPad users is all about the angry words flung back and forth between China and Japan over a series of small islands in the East China Sea. The new game, called Defend the Diaoyu Islands, challenges players to defend Chinese military positions on the disputed islands–which are also claimed by the Japanese, who call them the Senkaku–with a variety of weapons and obstacles.

Chinese government researchers called on the nation to ease its one-child policy as soon as possible to cope with an aging population and labor shortage. One option is allowing all people to have a second child, three researchers including Yu Dong from the State Council’s Development Research Center wrote in an article in yesterday’s China Economic Times, a newspaper affiliated with the center. “The longer time we take to adjust the policy, the more vulnerable we become,” the piece said.