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Tom Lasseter

China charges wife of disgraced party boss Bo Xilai with murder

Gu Kailai, the wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, has been formally charged with killing a British businessman, state media reported Thursday, in another twist of the biggest scandal to hit China’s elite in recent years. | 07/26/12 14:59:02 By - By Tom Lasseter

Doubts about death toll from Beijing-area rain fuel new suspicions about China’s leaders

It took just one glance at a jumble of cars mired in the brown waters covering the G4 expressway late on Monday afternoon to cast doubt on Chinese government estimates that only 37 had died in flash flooding over the weekend. | 07/24/12 19:03:32 By - By Tom Lasseter

Foxconn, maker of iPads, is emblematic of China’s labor market

The company is a marker for the gap between Beijing’s aspirations to increase quality of life and household spending, and a labor market rooted in tough conditions and wages that have risen but are still relatively low. | 07/16/12 16:21:30 By - By Tom Lasseter

Rape charge against local Chinese official again raises questions of corruption

Atop the building that houses this city’s Chinese Communist Party committee, a string of Chinese characters proclaims the duties of leadership: be efficient, pragmatic, upright and, echoing Mao Zedong, work for the people. | 06/25/12 16:05:18 By - By Tom Lasseter

Chen Guangcheng’s mother, brother talk after China pulls security from Dongshigu

For 19 months, plainclothes guards had roughed up or chased away journalists and activists who tried to visit Chen Guangcheng in his home village of Dongshigu. Then in the middle of the night last weekend – June 2, by most accounts, two weeks after Chen had flown to exile in the United States -- the sentry huts at the front of the village were torn down and the rings of surveillance dismantled. On Saturday, his brother and mother spoke to a reporter. | 06/09/12 14:46:43 By - By Tom Lasseter

Case of Chen Guangcheng, blind legal activist, raises question of who really runs China

The plight of a blind man whose only obvious crime was advocacy on behalf of his fellow Chinese is a reminder of a question that remains unanswered about the way China is governed: Why doesn’t Beijing stop the rampant abuse of power by local officials? Are they acting at the behest of the central government, driven to maintain order at any cost? Or are some local powerbrokers left to develop their own fiefdoms, which simply get out of hand? | 05/31/12 18:25:11 By - By Tom Lasseter

China’s Chen Guangcheng is safe in U.S., but worry persists for friends, family

Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, whose daring escape to the American embassy in Beijing last month sparked a diplomatic crisis, flew out of China Saturday, arriving 13 hours later in Newark, N.J., to begin a fellowship at New York University. | 05/19/12 21:25:10 By - By Tom Lasseter

Security cordon still rings blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng’s home village of Dongshigu

Blind legal advocate Chen Guangcheng is 400 miles away in a Beijing hospital, waiting for his passport to travel to the United States, but the extensive network of guards put in place to keep supporters from visiting him in his home village is still in place. Chen says it’s because local officials don’t want word to spread of how he and his family had been abused before he fled to the U.S. Embassy last month. | 05/18/12 14:57:13 By - By Tom Lasseter

China expels Al Jazeera correspondent; news channel closes its English bureau in Beijing

A reporter for Al Jazeera’s English-language channel with a reputation for hard-hitting journalism has been expelled from China, the station announced on Tuesday. It was believed to be the first expulsion of a foreign correspondent from China in almost 14 years. | 05/07/12 23:00:33 By - By Tom Lasseter

Blind lawyer Chen says Chinese officials have promised to issue passports so he can study at NYU

American diplomats were not allowed to meet with blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng over the weekend, but Chinese authorities on Monday told him they will issue the documents he needs to leave the country so that he can study in the United States, Chen told McClatchy. | 05/07/12 15:54:56 By - By Tom Lasseter

Blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng can apply for visa to study abroad as U.S., China reach deal

It remained to be seen how China’s rulers would handle their end of the bargain – state media on Friday called Chen “a tool and a pawn” of the West. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin also released a statement saying that Chen could submit an application to study overseas “like any other Chinese citizen,” an apparently positive signal about his prospects of leaving for America. | 05/04/12 15:45:15 By - By Tom Lasseter

Chen Guangcheng in Beijing hospital says he’d like to leave China, but U.S. options are few

As American officials scrambled Thursday to manage an embarrassing and potentially damaging crisis arising from a deal with Chinese authorities over the fate of blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, a key question came to the fore: Had American officials abandoned Chen by allowing him to leave his refuge at the U.S. Embassy without any way of ensuring that China would treat him well? | 05/03/12 19:32:01 By - By Tom Lasseter

Supporters of Chen Guangcheng say U.S. abandoned him by letting him leave embassy

A U.S.-brokered deal for crusading Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng to leave the protection of the American Embassy in Beijing appeared to be headed for disaster Wednesday night as allegations surfaced that he did so only because China’s government used his family as hostages. The turn of events had many human rights observers questioning a deal that relied on trusting China to protect a dissident whom its officials had abused for years. | 05/02/12 17:02:56 By - By Tom Lasseter

With activist's escape, human rights abuses are at center of U.S.-China talks

The daring escape of a legal activist from extrajudicial house arrest apparently to American diplomatic protection is likely to force U.S. and Chinese officials to confront a subject this week that both sides have approached only cautiously in recent years: China’s abysmal record on human rights. | 04/30/12 16:35:06 By - By Tom Lasseter

Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng escapes house arrest, activists say

A Chinese legal crusader, blind since childhood, has escaped from extrajudicial house arrest in eastern China and has been smuggled to Beijing, according to a rights group that has tracked his case closely and claimed to be in contact. | 04/27/12 15:52:00 By - By Tom Lasseter

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