Melissa Chan

China's land grabs: A case study

As the autumn harvest draws ever nearer, villagers in Liuxiazhuang have found themselves, quite suddenly, landless.

Documents provided to Al Jazeera by township-level officials showed contracts the government entered into on September 10 - less than two weeks ago.  

Four days later, villagers at Liuxiazhuang received notices of the confiscation of parts of their farmland and the bulldozers promptly rolled in.  

This took place just weeks ahead of the autumn harvest, and the farmers could hardly believe they had not only lost their land, but their last season of crops.

Ordos: Boom town to ghost town

In 2009, the year of our first visit to Ordos, China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 9.1 per cent, and it was easy to see why.

We had seen the factories producing for the rest of the world, the Louis Vuitton stores popping up across the country, and even witnessed farmers in the cave dwellings of Gansu with their mobile phones.

However, with Ordos, we witnessed the other side of the coin: local officials in the provinces were hell-bent on boosting their regional GDP - often a criteria for their promotion.

If building a road pumped up GDP, then building a whole city would really propel GDP growth to unknown heights.

Reporting in China

A recent survey by the Foreign Correspondents Club of China had some discouraging numbers about reporting conditions in the country.  Ninety-four percent of journalists who responded felt the work environment had deteriorated over the last year.  Seventy percent had experienced harassment or violence of some kind.  And a whopping 99% said reporting conditions in China do not meet international standards.

While many people outside China might have a cognitive understanding that reporting here is difficult, there's less knowledge of just exactly what kind of difficulties we come across.  Our most recent reporting trip serves as a good example of the particular challenges the press corps here faces.

What Charlie Sheen tells us about China

The Global Times is the national English daily newspaper published by the Communist Party.  Its Chinese counterpart and the other major party paper, The People's Daily, provides official information on the policies and viewpoints of the government.

And this paper joined the likes of TMZ.com and People Magazine this week, by writing about Charlie Sheen.

The Global Times' op-ed excoriates the actor, jumping at the case of his two girlfriends he lives with and asking, "Is he too poor to set up his wives and mistresses in different houses?"  Like a good Chinese philanderer should.

It further points out "racism, spousal abuse, addiction, politics, mental illness, boasting about mistresses are all subjects best dealt with behind closed doors.