NEW Former Australia-China Business Council head and Howard Government minister Warwick Smith expressed deep concern for Australia's role in the increasingly fraught US-China relationship.
China
Grim warning that Australia is just a 'little boat caught between two rocks' in the US-China trade war as Asian superpower's attitude switches from 'assertive to aggressive'
News items on anything Chinese and how it will affect Australia. 
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https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30810596
The palace of shame that makes China angry
There is a deep, unhealed historical wound in the UK's relations with China - a wound that most British people know nothing about, but which causes China great pain. It stems from the destruction in 1860 of the country's most beautiful palace.
It's been described as China's ground zero - a place that tells a story of cultural destruction that everyone in China knows about, but hardly anyone outside.
The palace's fate is bitterly resented in Chinese minds and constantly resurfaces in Chinese popular films, angry social media debates, and furious rows about international art sales.
And it has left a controversial legacy in British art collections - royal, military, private - full of looted objects.
By coincidence, one of the story's central characters is Lord Elgin - son of the man who removed the so-called "Elgin marbles" from Greece.
But there's a twist - a hidden side to this story - which I've been exploring as it involved my ancestor, Thomas Bowlby, one of the first British foreign correspondents.
Here is what Civilisation has done to BarbarityVictor Hugo
His torture and death at Chinese hands - and the revenge taken by Britain, destroying the old Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860 - was a moment, says one scholar, that "changed world history".
These days the site is just ruins - piles of scorched masonry, lakes with overgrown plants, lawns with a few stones scattered where many buildings once stood. The site swarms with Chinese visitors, taken there as part of a government-sponsored "patriotic education" programme
As everyone in China is taught, it was once the most beautiful collection of architecture and art in the country. Its Chinese name was Yuanmingyuan - Garden of Perfect Brightness - where Chinese emperors had built a huge complex of palaces and other fine buildings, and filled them with cultural treasures.
A new digital reconstruction by a team at Tsinghua University gives a vivid idea of what this extraordinary place looked like when, 155 years ago, a joint British-French army approached Beijing.
The army was sent towards the end of the Opium Wars to force Chinese imperial rulers to open up their country further to Western trade and influence. In command on the British side was the 8th Earl of Elgin, from one of the most famous families in British imperial history.
With him was Thomas William Bowlby of The Times. Elgin described Bowlby as "remarkably agreeable" and saw him as good for his image back in Britain, "the means of diffusing sound information on many points". The two men bonded on their journey towards China as cultural tourists, visiting the pyramids in Egypt.
Because of this military power, Bowlby was confident that imperial China's rulers - "effete and faithless Mandarins", he called them - would "soon be suing for mercy". Eager to witness the war's end, he set off with a delegation of British and French officials - as well as escorting Indian army troops - to negotiate what they assumed would be the Chinese surrender.
It was to prove a fatal miscalculation.
Meanwhile, French troops reached Beijing and the Summer Palace, where they began helping themselves to porcelain, silks and ancient books - or simply destroying what they found.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption A temple in the ruins of the Old Summer Palace, circa 1860
British troops joined in when they arrived shortly afterwards. "Officers and men seemed to have been seized with temporary insanity," said one witness. "In body and soul they were absorbed in one pursuit which was plunder, plunder." When Lord Elgin arrived, he initially recorded his horror in his diary. "War is a hateful business. The more one sees of it, the more one detests it."
But loot was an established part of army pay, and Elgin helped organise an auction of the many thousands of works of art and other objects that had been taken. The army tradition was to share out the spoils, with officers and other ranks taking their cut, and some of the cash used to compensate the families of dead or wounded soldiers.
That might have been the end of the pillaging and destruction. But then news emerged that the delegation that had gone to negotiate Chinese surrender had been taken prisoner. Some members, including the journalist Bowlby, were tortured and murdered.
"For three days the men were tied up, and for three days their bandages were soaked with water so that they would become tighter and tighter," says historian Vera Schwarcz. "Every time they begged for water their mouths would be filled with dirt." Eventually several prisoners died, their corpses hardly recognisable.
In response, Lord Elgin ordered the British troops to burn down the entire Summer Palace complex.
The destruction, he wrote later, was intended "to mark, by a solemn act of retribution, the horror and indignation... with which we were inspired by the perpetration of a great crime".
He was worried about his reputation back in Britain, too. "What would the Times (newspaper) say of me," he reportedly told a French commander, "if I did not avenge its correspondent?"
Burning all the magnificent buildings took several days.
The story continues on the site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzO7QP64dLk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrbkJGIVzOM
Forbidden City | Chinese imperial palace
This is a collection of buildings [Palaces] within one compound.
Emperors Bed Chamber
WA Premier investigates claims China tried to hack his computer with a 'spear-phishing' cyber attack - sparking fears Beijing is spying on governments across Asia and the Pacific
The report by Israeli cyber-security company Check Point said hackers known as Naikon targeted a worker in the office of the Western Autralian premier.
What is jade? 
JadeiteJadeiteThe English term "jade" is used to translate the Chinese word yu, which in fact refers to a number of minerals including nephrite, jadeite, serpentine and bowenite, while jade refers only to nephrite and jadeite.Chemically nephrite is a calcium magnesium silicate and is white in color. However, the presence of copper, chromium and iron gives colors ranging from subtle grey-greens to brilliant yellows and reds. Jadeite, which was very rarely used in China before the eighteenth century, is a silicate of sodium and magnesium and comes in a wider variety of colors than nephrite. 
NephriteNephriteNephrite is found within metamorphic rocks in mountains. As the rocks weather, the boulders of nephrite break off and are washed down to the foot of the mountain, from where they are retrieved. From the Han period (206 B.C.E. - 220 C.E.) jade was obtained from the oasis region of Khotan on the Silk Route. The oasis lies about 5000 miles from the areas where jade was first worked in the Hongshan (in Inner Mongolia) and the Liangzhu cultures (near Shanghai) about 3000 years before. It is likely that sources were known that were much nearer to those centers in the early periods and were subsequently exhausted.Worn by kings and nobles in life and death"Soft, smooth and glossy, it appeared to them like benevolence; fine, compact and strong - like intelligence" —attributed to Confucius (about 551-479 B.C.E.)Jade has always been the material most highly prized by the Chinese, above silver and gold. From ancient times, this extremely tough translucent stone has been worked into ornaments, ceremonial weapons and ritual objects. Recent archaeological finds in many parts of China have revealed not only the antiquity of the skill of jade carving, but also the extraordinary levels of development it achieved at a very early date.Jade was worn by kings and nobles and after death placed with them in the tomb. As a result, the material became associated with royalty and high status. It also came to be regarded as powerful in death, protecting the body from decay. In later times these magical properties were perhaps less explicitly recognized, jade being valued more for its use in exquisite ornaments and vessels, and for its links with antiquity. In the Ming and Qing periods ancient jade shapes and decorative patterns were often copied, thereby bringing the associations of the distant past to the Chinese peoples of later times. 
Jade coiled dragon, Hongshan culture, China, c. 3500 B.C., 4/6 x 7.6 cmJade coiled dragon, c. 3500 B.C.E., Neolithic period, Hongshan culture, 4.6 x 7.6 cm, China © 2003 Private Collection © Trustees of the British MuseumThe subtle variety of colors and textures of this exotic stone can be seen, as well as the many different types of carving, ranging from long, smooth Neolithic blades to later plaques, ornaments, dragons, animal and human sculpture.Neolithic jade: Hongshan cultureIt was long believed that Chinese civilization began in the Yellow River valley, but we now know that there were many earlier cultures both to the north and south of this area. From about 3800–2700 B.C.E. a group of Neolithic peoples known now as the Hongshan culture lived in the far north-east, in what is today Liaoning province and Inner Mongolia. The Hongshan were a sophisticated society that built impressive ceremonial sites. Jade was obviously highly valued by the Hongshan; artifacts made of jade were sometimes the only items placed in tombs along with the body of the deceased.Major types of jade of this period include discs with holes and hoof-shaped objects that may have been ornaments worn in the hair. This coiled dragon is an example of another important shape, today known as a "pig-dragon," which may have been derived from the slit ring, or jue. Many jade artifacts that survive from this period were used as pendants and some seem to have been attached to clothing or to the body. 
British Museum logo© Trustees of the British Museum
https://www.gemrockauctions.com/learn/how-tos/how-to-test-jade-if-its-real
Well this is a bit different!
Man is shocked to discover his newborn twins have TWO different fathers in a 'one in 10 million' chance
The parent, who remains unidentified, made the shocking discovery after taking the newborns to undergo a DNA test as part of the standard procedure to register their births in China.
Married couples who wish to break up must wait for a month before their request can be officially approved, the bill proposes. Officials believe the 'cooling-off period' can help avoid 'impulsive separation'.
Very sad for his wife and son. RIP
China's ambassador to Israel, 58, is found dead in bed at his Tel Aviv apartment just three months into the job
Du Wei, 58, was appointed envoy in February in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. He previously served as China's envoy to Ukraine.
Made an apple and rhubarb crumble yesterday, so talking to a friend in the US, she sounded surprised and said 'Oh you have rhubarb too' I thought that strange that she thought the US was the only place for Rhubarb so I looked up the history of the plant and sure enough it dates back to China only 2,700 years ago!
The roots were used in ancient Chinese medicine. Long before it became a weird and wacky culinary marvel, rhubarb’s roots were believed to aid in digestion. The roots were cultivated as far back as 2,700 B.C. for their bowel-emptying properties, and of course this led folks to believe rhubarb cured various stomach ailments. While the science is still out on that one, the belief persisted, appeared in various tales of miracle cures for emperors and kings, and spread throughout Europe.
https://www.history.com/news/rhubarb-a-love-affair
https://www.lovethegarden.com/uk-en/article/rhubarb-rheum-x-hybridum
The Chinese ex-girlfriend, known by her surname Zhao, was left devastated after being dumped by her partner of over a year. A picture shows the alleged boyfriend looking at the pile of onions.
A 20-ton chuck of China's Long March 5B rocket fell to Earth Monday and a report finds that if re-entry had occurred 15 minutes sooner, the piece would have crashed into New York City.
Good One!
RnR you have posted this on the wrong thread! LOL
tee heee!! Not sure what Trump would think of that though.
The Emperor sitting on his Throne.
Photo: Newman Tours
The Yuyuan Garden, is Shanghai’s best example of an ancient Chinese garden. Built by Pan Yunduan, a governor of Sichuan during the Ming Dynasty, this garden was meant to be a place that his father could relax in his old age.