A plan to establish an organization that promotes Chinese languages and culture in Vietnam has drawn criticism from Vietnamese scholars, who say Beijing is trying to invade the country with its ideology. The agreement to set up a Confucius Institute in Hanoi was reached during Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang’s visit to Vietnam this month. The plan has sparked heated debate, however, on social networks in Vietnam.

Just a week after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's trip to Beijing, where he signed a Border Defense Cooperation Agreement, China has reminded India of its other border conflict: Arunachal Pradesh. The Hindu reports that China opened a new highway that links Medog, Tibet’s so-called “last isolated county,” with the rest of China. The Global Times called Medog “the last roadless county in China” – it did not mention India at all.

China's domestic security chief has blamed a Muslim Uighur separatist group for planning a "violent terrorist incident" this week on Beijing's Tiananmen Square that killed five people and injured dozens of others. Meng Jianzhu, a member of the 25-member Politburo with responsibility for domestic security, said Friday that the incident had been organized by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. The group is based in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Recently Yazheng Huang warned that, because of dysfunction in the U.S. financial and political system, the United States is likely to lose its lead in technological innovation to China. Huang argues that state support for science in China is likely to exceed that in the United States soon, and this will eventually allow China to overtake the United States.

Though it has received comparatively little attention, one of the most profound geopolitical trends of the early 21st century is gathering steam: China’s pivot to Central Asia. As American military forces withdraw from Afghanistan and gaze toward the Asia-Pacific, and while Washington’s European allies put NATO’s eastward expansion on the back burner, Central Asia has become China’s domain of investment and influence.

If such a thing is possible, Shanghai today beckons even more powerfully than it did in the past, playing a critical role among the great cities of the world beyond anything that could have been imagined. Shanghai’s future shines brilliantly, given its own dynamic economy and the larger Chinese economy of which it is a critical part. However, as China’s most prosperous city, Shanghai should not be afraid to strike out on its own or, more accurately, to define the terms of its development in its own way and according to its own history and understanding of its future.

The New Express's campaign to get Chen Yongzhou, 27, released from police detention last week attracted international attention, including CPJ's. On Wednesday and Thursday last week the Guangzhou-based New Express ran front page, big character headlines calling for their reporter's release. The paper's editors had thoroughly vetted Chen's stories and they had found only one factual error, they said in support of his reporting.