Chinese Food Scandal Spreads

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong supermarkets stripped shelves of a popular cookie brand made in China on Friday after it and Macau authorities found traces of the industrial chemical melamine in Chinese-made baby cereal and crackers. It said in a statement Friday that it has found melamine in Heinz DHA+AA vegetable formula baby cereal and in steamed potato wasabi crackers produced by Silang House. It says both products were made in mainland China. Hong Kong's removal of the chocolate-filled cookies came after Macau's Health Bureau found Thursday the amount of melamine in the Koala's March brand was 24 times the safe limit. China's food safety crisis started with melamine-tainted infant formula, but has spread to dairy and other food products. Most recently, tests in Hong Kong and SingaporeChina.confirmed a famous Chinese candy brand was tainted. Melamine-laced milk has been blamed for the death of four babies and sickened more than 50,000 children in mainland

BEIJING (AP) — The European Union banned imports of baby food containing Chinese milk Thursday as a toxic chemical that was illegally added to China's dairy supplies turned up in candy and other Chinese-made goods that were quickly pulled from stores worldwide. The 27-nation EU adds to the growing list of countries that have banned or recalled Chinese dairy products because of the contamination. All European Union imports of products containing more than 15% of milk powder will have to be tested under the new rules due to come into force Friday.

China’s Milk Scandal

BEIJING (AP) — The number of infants Chinese health officials say were sickened by tainted milk powder doubled Monday to more than 1,200 as police announce the first arrests in the spreading scandal. The Health Ministry said a second infant had died of kidney failure after drinking Sanlu brand milk powder spiked with the industrial chemical melamine. The company says suppliers who sold the raw milk apparently added the chemical, normally used in plastics, to make the milk seem higher in protein. Vice Health Minister Ma Xiaowei told reporters at a news conference that 1,253 infants had been sickened — mainly after developing kidney stones — more than twice the number previously acknowledged. Of those 913 of the infants were only slightly affected, while 340 remained hospitalized and 53 cases were considered especially severe, he said.

China Building Boom Continues

BEIJING — The Olympic Games are over, leaving Beijing with stunning structures such as the Bird's Nest stadium and multiple new subway lines, but one of the greatest building booms in history is far from finished. Despite the global economic slowdown, the Chinese government is steaming ahead with large-scale projects to turn this rural nation into an urban, industrial powerhouse. The projects range from the world's fastest train and the world's largest Ferris wheel to legions of skyscrapers and thousands of miles of highways. China "is spending massive amounts on infrastructure," says Stephen Green, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai. Fixed-asset investment, a major pillar of the national economy, stands at 45% of the gross domestic product — a "world-record-breaking number," Green says. In comparison, Korea, JapanSingapore never broke 40% when they were developing at their fastest pace, Green says .

China

Chinese police sentenced two elderly women to a year of "re-education through labor" because they requested permission to protest during the Olympics in Beijing. "The two women, both in their late 70s, have never spoken out against China’s authoritarian government. Both walk with the help of a cane, and [one] is blind in one eye," The New York Times reports. "Their grievance, receiving insufficient compensation when their homes were seized for redevelopment, is perhaps the most common complaint among Chinese displaced during the country’s long streak of fast economic growth." China had promised to allow protests in designated areas during the international sporting events. "But with four days left before the closing ceremony, the authorities acknowledge that they have yet to allow a single protest," the Times says. "They claim that most of the people who filed applications had their grievances addressed, obviating the need for a public expression of discontent."

China Unrest

KUQA, China (AP) — Two women were among a squad of assailants that hurled homemade bombs at government buildings and police this week in violence that left 12 people dead in a Muslim region of China, officials said Monday. Police were still investigating whether the attackers belonged to an al-Qaeda-linked group that has threatened to disrupt the Olympic Games underway in Beijing, some 1,740 miles to the east, the official said. Tensions in Xinjiang have been simmering for decades between the Muslim minority Uighur people and the majority Han Chinese, but the direct involvement of women in perpetrating the violence is highly unusual. Authorities said 15 people launched attacks on 17 sites Sunday in Kuqa city and that ten assailants, one security guard and a passerby were killed. The attacks targeted government buildings, a police station and Han Chinese-owned shops.

Four security guards were stabbed today in China's restive Xinjiang region, state-run Xinhua reports. The news agency reports three of the guards died in the attack. "The attack was the third in eight days in Xinjiang, a vast desert region bordering central Asia that is experiencing its biggest spike in violence in years," AFP reports.

China Crackdown

Though the Chinese government has always persecuted house churches, a new reports indicates that the approaching Bejing Olympics have unleashed the first systematic crackdown, the Christian Post reports. The report, called "China: Persecution of Protestant Christians in the Approach to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games" by U.K.-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide and U.S.-based China Aid Association, documents governmental funding to the Ministry of Public Security for a campaign to eradicate house churches throughout China. Tactics used to crack down on unregistered Christians include: targeting well-established unregistered churches; sending landlords directives ordering them to not rent space to those engaging in religious activities; charging Christians in the Xinjiang region of separatism; expelling foreign Christians; targeting repression at the Chinese House Church Alliance; and carrying out the largest mass sentencing of house church leaders in 25 years.

Chinese Persecution of House Churches Intensifies

ASSIST News Service and the Institute on Religion and Democracy report that the Ministry of Public Security has received funding from the Chinese Central Government to increase their campaign of eradicating house churches throughout China. While the amount of funds allocated for this campaign is unknown, the steady increase of persecution against house churches continues to rise substantially across China, says the China Aid Association (CAA). The IRD said a sudden increase of incidents involving both the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) and the Public Security Bureau (PSB) is indicative of a crackdown. Whether or not the government is beginning a comprehensive effort to clear out house churches, local authorities of the government's enforcement apparatus are bearing down on Christians. In Xinjiang Province, officials have posted signs asking citizens to report any "evil cult activity," in this case meaning house churches, and two Christians in Xinjiang have been charged with the serious crime of being "separatists."

Olympian Persecution Coverup

With increased frequency, the Chinese government is persecuting house churches and banishing foreign Christians from the country, Baptist Press reports. The increased harrassment is presumably to squelch voices who might draw attention to the plight of religious minorities in the nation surrounding the Beijing Olympics. "We seem to be seeing a crackdown ahead of the Olympics. Whether that's to send a message to the church to lay low or whether it is to make sure that anybody who might cause international embarrassment is taken care of ahead of time, I don't know," Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs, told BP. "But we do see an increase in the level of arrests, the level of house church services being raided... We also have seen a number of foreigners who are Christians who... have been denied a new visa and told that they had to leave the country. So it's happening both amongst the house churches of native Chinese people as well as foreign Christians who are living and working in China." Only about 20 percent of China's Christians are part of the official approved church (Three-Self Patriotic Movement or Catholicism) while the other 80 percent go to unregistered or unofficial churches.

• JJ Commentary: China hopes to show the world its “new” softer face, but persecution and pollution speak otherwise