Today's Top Stories

温家宝：推进官员财产申报公开制度 (Sina via Xinhua)

Sina editors decided to highlight Wen Jiabao's commitment to press ahead with reforms aimed at improving the transparency of assets held by officials when linking to a Xinhua-sourced text of the premier's response to questions from business leaders at the opening of yesterdays "annual meeting of the new champions" in Dalian - organized by the World Economic Forum.

Meanwhile, domestic commentators such as Yu Jianrong, a prominent expert in rural issues at China's Academy of Social Science (CASS) and an advocate of political reform, drew attention to the fact that domestic media appeared to not be reporting elements of the Wen's speech that focused on the need for political reform.

Yu re-tweeted a post made by a Chengdu-based lawyer called Liao Rui last night - adding a comment saying that Sina wouldn't dare to delete the lawyer's post as Wen Jiabao is not only the premier, he's also a member of the standing committee of the Communist Party's politburo - and if Sina may sometimes choose to ignore the government, they'd never dare to disobey the party!

Professor Yu, has been recently been caught up in a war of words with prominent self-styled "science cop" Fang Zhouzi over Yu's appearance as a "special protect" source in U.S embassy cables sent from Beijing recently revealed by unredacted cables made public by Wikileaks. Apparently the two have some history - see this ESWN post from 2005 for the back story

新疆2起暴力恐怖案一审宣判4人被判死刑 (Sina via Tianshannet)

A report posted to Tianshannet late last night revealed that a court in Xinjiang had sentenced 4 people to death and 2 others to 19 years in prison on Tuesday for their role in two separate attacks that took place in the far-western city of Kashgar in July. AFP have the details in English here.

Last week the Turkistan Islamic party claimed responsibility for the attacks along with other incidents that have taken place in the region in recent months.

For an overview of the underlying tensions in the region, take a look at this longer piece that Reuters published last week.

海洋局称蓬莱油田仍漏油 每日均发现小范围油带 (Sina via The Beijing News)

China's State Oceanic Authority (SOA) says that oil is still leaking from the Penglai oil field - the site of an oil spill from a rig jointly owned by the ConnocoPhillips and CNOOC which was ordered to cease production last week. According to The Beijing News, quoting the latest SOA report, the leaks near platform C are small and only average 3.6 liters per day.

李双江之子打人事件和解 受伤夫妇称已接受道歉 (Sina via Beijing Times)

A report in today's Beijing Times claims that the couple involved in a altercation with the 15-year old son of a famous military singer and another youth have reached an agreement with the pair and that they will not pursue the case any further. For more background on the scandal see China Smack or China Real Time Blog.

Weibo Buzz

People still talking about the question posed by prominent CCTV host Rui Cheng'en's to the newly arrived American ambassador to China in Dalian yesterday. According to reports, Rui ask Gary Locke whether the reason he chose to fly economy class to China was because he wanted to remind the American people how much money they owed China?

This is not the first time Rui has attracted attention at an international press conference, late last year he also made headlines when he attempted to ask a question of Obama after the US president had asked for questions from a local South Korean journalist.

We interviewed Rui Cheng'en about the incident here.

Many people also forwarded a quip from a prominent media commentator, former sports journalist and potential "independent candidate" Li Chengpeng (李承鹏) who suggested that Rui should "ask local officials why they fly first class, is it because they want to remind the Chinese people of how much money the owe them?"

How to Help Old People Who Have Fallen Down Without Fear of Being Sued

Another popular post making the rounds is a comic that instructs people how to deal with old people who try to make money off strangers by pretending to fall and then accusing the good samaritan who comes to their aid of knocking them down in the first place - the advice is to pretend to be a music student! - click here to find out why that would make a difference and here to find out why people would fear such an unlikely thing to occur in the first place.

Highlights from Twitter

Jeremy Goldkorn @danwei translates a joke doing the rounds on Weibo ... Why can’t we have more than one restaurant?

Adam Minter writes for Bloomberg about how the Li Yang domestic violence case has sparked public discussion about violence towards women in China with some pushing for new legislation to deal with the issue.

FTChinese has translated Arthur Kroeber's latest article on the political economy of the RMB into Chinese (人民币的货币政治经济学)

Parting Shot

Twitter, despite still being blocked on the mainland, now has a Chinese-language interface.