China

The Chinese government is cracking down on foreign reporters and activists, in the fear that people in China will try to imitate the “Jasmine Revolution” that toppled Tunisia’s government and led to uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

President Obama travels to Manitowoc, Wisconsin Wednesday where he will tour a renewable energy company. If he wanted to hear about the ups and downs of doing business in China, he could also stop by the Manitowoc Company, which makes industrial cranes, and is constantly trying to stay one step ahead of its Chinese competition.

As the U.S. wrestles with a healthcare overhaul, China is in the process of revamping its healthcare system, to cover all of its 1.3 billion citizens with quality care by 2020. Here & Now’s Martha Bebinger recently traveled to China and tells us what she saw. You can see a slideshow of her trip.

As part of his U.S. visit, China’s president, Hu Jintao, meets with members of Congress today, many of whom have been speaking out against alleged human rights abuses in the country. While some have been this trip as a meeting of equals, how far has China really come in matching America’s global power?

Liu Xiaobo is being honored today in Oslo, Norway, as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. But the democracy activist is not at the ceremony. He is in China, serving an 11-year prison sentence on charges of subversion, after he co-wrote a petition calling for political reform in the country.

China’s real estate bubble sparked a construction boom that now appears to be going bust. There are at least a dozen Chinese cities where thousands of business districts and apartments sit empty in virtual ghost towns.

Miao Wang is a Chinese-American filmmaker who went back to her hometown of Beijing to tell the story of the city’s rapid transformation ahead of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Her new film is “Beijing Taxi,” and she focuses her camera on three taxi drivers, who offer candid assessments of how their lives have changed along with the city.

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China introduced its one-child policy more than 30 years ago to curb its exploding population. When the policy went into effect, China’s economy was on its knees. Now it’s booming and many influential figures in China are saying it may be time to relax the policy. The BBC’s Jon Humphries reports.

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