Earlier this week in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized China's "deplorable" human rights record and characterized the Chinese government's attempt to suppress democratic reform as a "fool's errand", citing the recent revolutions in the Middle East as an example .

At the Guardian, Tania Branigan profiles dinosaur hunter Xu Xing and describes ground-breaking fossil discoveries at digs around China.