Last Friday was the maiden voyage for China's first regional commercial jet, the ARJ-21. The test pilot was complimentary of the new jet's handling, but then again he probably wanted to keep his job. This humorous report explains that such compliments following a maiden voyage are a common practice in the airplane-making business.

The Shanghaiist reports on the city's newest and tallest tower - aptly named The Shanghai Tower. Upon completion (some six years from now) it will dwarf the Jin Mao (421m) and only recently built World Financial Center (491m) at a whopping 632m high over the span of 138 floors.

Chinese company, Zhejiang 001 Group has produced China's first ever solar-powered car in an initiative to help the country's increasingly serious energy crisis. The group has so far produced over 10 such cars and each of them will sell for 38,000 yuan renminbi (US$5,560).

Tibet Daily, a leading newspaper in the Tibet Autonomous Region, southwest China, has condemned the Dalai Lama and his supporters for their continued support of secession by violent means while waving the banner of "peace".

The China stock market continues to sizzle; and with fears that a bubble is developing it is only natural to ask “should investors outside of China worry about a correction or collapse in China’s stock market impacting global markets?”

It started as a pay dispute at a southern Chinese toy factory. But it quickly turned into a riot as laid-off workers tapped into a network of friends and unemployed laborers who flipped over a police car, stormed into the plant and smashed office computers.

Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The People's Bank of China cut interest rates by more than 1pc point as the economy crumbles and millions of jobs are predicted to go ahead of Christmas.

Getting an accurate read on what people in China think about the prosecution of Chen Shui-bian is difficult because Taiwan's former president isn't too highly thought of here. To the extent people have an opinion they seem to be glad he's in trouble because, well, Chen's a troublemaker.

Chinese-speaking residents — from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan — accounted for 28.2 per cent of Japan's 2.15 million registered foreigners at the end of December, while Koreas dropped to 27.6 per cent.