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Much of the delicate relationship between the army and the Communist Party leadership can be seen from a discussion last week between Vice-President Hu Jintao and a group of demobilized soldiers.

The opening bell rings and students in the classroom get back to their desks. They all stand up to greet their teacher as she comes in.

Beijing authorities have started a nationwide movement to discredit the Falun Gong as a quasi-terrorist sect bent on violating international telecom regulations and challenging modern civilization.

Beijing is trying to boost the morale of workers in the run-up to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress that will endorse the admission of private businessmen to the party.

Beijing has asked the United States not to send the wrong signals to Taiwan by playing up the military gap between China and the island.

Beijing is playing the Russian card even as it has blasted Washington for spreading the China Threat theory about the country's aggressive military policies.

If you haven't been to the gym lately -- don't be surprised if your boss wants to talk to you about it.

Police on the Indonesian island of Borneo say a survivor has been found from last week's crash of a cargo plane in a remote part of the jungle-covered territory.

President Bush offered his sympathies Friday to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai for the reported deaths of Afghan civilians in a U.S. raid earlier this week, a Bush administration official said.

Taiwan's president has voiced concern at China's long-standing threats to use force against the island just as it emerged the mainland had ordered 40 top-range warplanes from Russia.

Soaring temperatures have killed at least seven people in China as a heatwave sweeps across the country, state media has reported.

China's top judge has vowed a sweeping revamp of the country's courts in a bid to educate judges and wrestle them away from decades of ties to the ruling Communist Party.

Overseas factions of an outlawed spiritual movement have been accused of interrupting a television broadcast in China to air Falun Gong propaganda.

China is a land of smokers and a government supported tobacco monopoly with huge financial interests and tax revenue invested in the deadly industry.

Imported slimming pills from China are being blamed for at least four deaths and over 150 cases of illness in Japan, with health authorities bracing for a further increase in the number of casualties.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has arrived in Thailand as part of a nine-country Asia tour focussing on reducing tensions between India and Pakistan and continuing the global war on terrorism.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has arrived in Thailand as part of a nine-country Asia tour focussing on reducing tensions between India and Pakistan and continuing the global war on terrorism.

Pressure is mounting on the Chinese government to toughen safety legislation in the country's huge mining industry after a spate of accidents killed more than 170 laborers in the first week of July.

A fire that raged for almost 12 hours in a karaoke bar on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has killed at least 40 people, fire officials say.

As North Korea embarks on a fresh spurt of diplomacy, courting both the United States and Japan, word is leaking out that the secretive state is slowly dismantling a 50-year-old pillar of its socialist economy.

Two young escapees from Australia's Woomera detention center have entered the British Consulate-General in Melbourne.

Thousands of illegal Indonesian workers in Malaysia are heading home before new laws go into effect.

A massive explosion has ripped through a government building in Kashmir, killing at least three and critically wounding nine others, according to police and eyewitnesses.

As Chinese President Jiang Zemin's motorcade slipped out from the Hong Kong Convention Center, well hidden behind the bulk of the 27-storey Wanchai Tower some 100 members of a group Beijing has labeled an evil cult sat in silent meditation.

At least six Chinese women married to Taiwanese nationals have been requested to have abortions on visits home to the mainland, according to a Taipei Times report.

The former head of the United Nations administration in East Timor has been named as the new head of U.N. High Commission for Human Rights.

Millionaire U.S. adventurer Steve Fossett has successfully completed his first test flight of a glider he plans to fly into the stratosphere.

Fresh from circling the globe alone in a balloon, millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett has buckled down to his next challenge -- to fly a glider into the stratosphere.

Typhoon Rammasun has claimed two more lives in South Korea, bringing to four the death toll from the severe weather and flooding on the peninsula.

The world's largest living organism, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, is under threat from rising sea temperatures which threaten to kill off the colorful corals which form the reef.

As Godzilla lumbers towards his 50th birthday in two years time, Japanese studios are still making movies starring the world-famous monster.

Two British-based tankers carrying nuclear fuel have slipped through a Greenpeace flotilla of protest craft in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand under the cover of darkness.

Tung Chee-hwa begins his second term as Hong Kong's Chief Executive Monday with public confidence in his leadership continuing to slide.

Hong Kong's lawmakers have set the scene for a showdown between the government and the powerful civil service by approving a controversial bill to slash public sector pay packets.

Hong Kong Disneyland is turning out to be anything but fun and games.

Tens of thousands of civil servants in Hong Kong defied a government warning not to take to the streets Sunday to protest a pay cut law.

When Mary Painter came to Hong Kong in 1976 with her husband, a civil engineer, she was one of hordes of British who flocked to the colonial outpost.

In what would be the highest-level meeting between the United States and North Korea since October 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has signaled a willingness to meet with North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun later this month at the ASEAN regional forum in Brunei.

The commander of a British warship which ran into rocks off the Australian east coast has conceded that some level of human error was probably involved in causing the accident.

The former head of India's nuclear program, A.P.J. Kalam, has been sworn in as India's new president.

In another diplomatic mission aimed at easing tensions on the subcontinent, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says it is imperative for India and Pakistan to begin sustained dialogue in order to settle their differences.

An Indonesian court is expected to rule Friday in the sensational murder trial of Tommy Suharto, the youngest son of the former Indonesian president.

The United States' moves toward resuming military ties with Indonesia will strengthen a force which is seen as a crucial ally in its anti-terrorism campaign but which critics decried as undermining civilian supremacy in the fledgling democracy.

Indonesia's once mighty military -- which saw its powers reduced by democratic reforms following the ousting of former President Suharto -- is expected to regain lost ground under its new armed forces chief General Endriartono Sutarto.

An Indonesian man is being linked to the top echelons of the al Qaeda terrorist network with officials saying he allegedly helped bring hundreds of operatives from Europe to a training camp he set up in Indonesia.

In another sign of Indonesia's crackdown in the restive province of Aceh, Chief Security Minister Bambang Yudhoyono will investigate suggestions the region's peace talks negotiator is not impartial.

Intelligence officials tell CNN that Osama bin Laden wanted to move the base of operations for his al Qaeda terrorist network from Afghanistan to Southeast Asia in 2000.

Iraq is threatening to halve its imports of wheat from Australia in retaliation for Canberra's support of U.S. policies towards Saddam Hussein's administration.

In spite of Japan's decade-long economic troubles, growing numbers of Japanese have been lavishing their love -- and spending their money -- on their pets.

At the end of a hard day people across the world like to crack open a cold one. Although in Japan these days there's a subtle difference.