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Inside China: Chinese tourism on the uptick

Little attention has been given to one spectacular story out of China these days: the massive numbers of Chinese tourists who are spreading out around the globe. And the rest of the world finds itself overwhelmed and largely unprepared for the growing onslaught of happy Chinese masses eager to spend and explore.

Inside China: George Soros vs. China

China's leaders are furious with the liberal U.S. business magnate George Soros for telling the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week that "a hard landing is practically unavoidable" for the Chinese economy, and that monumental debt levels and deflation in China's slowing economy are to blame for the current global stock market turbulence.

Inside China: Taiwan’s referendum on China

Last Saturday voters in Taiwan overwhelmingly elected a Western-educated lawyer named Tsai Ing-wen of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to be the country's first female president. It was a watershed event in Taiwanese political history, not just for the lopsidedness of the result but, more importantly, for what it said about voter attitudes on an existential issue: the relevance of communist China to the island democracy.

Inside China: Seoul seeks a border with Beijing

China and South Korea ended another round of high-level maritime border demarcation talks in Seoul earlier this week. And just like the previous 14 rounds of talks on the same issue held between 1996 and 2008, the revived talks failed to produce a final agreement.

Inside China: Storm over Russia border rages

Last week, a seemingly innocuous news item in China's state media sparked an unexpected firestorm in China and Russia, exposing the shaky foundation upon which the much-hyped Beijing-Moscow united front challenging the West and the existing geopolitical order has been built.

Inside China: Luo Yuan: A profile in chutzpah

He is arguably China's most jingoistic senior military voice, heralded by some as a national hero while hated by many more for his unvarnished battle cries for military actions when tensions soar between Beijing and its many adversaries and rivals, including Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and most prominently, the United States.

Inside China: Toxic voice of history

One of China's most outrageously cool superstars is a high school history teacher, wildly popular among the nation's young, who follow him online and offline in the tens of millions. Ironically, he is also one of the nation's most censored public intellectuals.

Inside China: Marxism: The opium of the Chinese masses

Last week, Beijing hosted the inaugural "World Congress on Marxism," accompanied by much celebratory fanfare in the capital city. Over 400 luminaries, government officials and scholars from the United States, Egypt, Cuba, North Korea and more than a dozen other countries were flown in for the proletarian extravaganza. The event lasted for two days and it will be held every other year in Beijing, the newly self-anointed center of global Marxism studies.

Inside China: The Nobel conundrum

Like all communist governments obsessed with finding every piece of tangible evidence to prove their all-around greatness, China has yearned to have genuine homegrown Nobel Prize winners to showcase the achievements of the vanguards of the Chinese proletariat. Yet, several Chinese laureates later, Beijing is finding out that Nobel glory can also be a double-edged sword.

Inside China: The knifing of the People’s Liberation Army

At the massive Sept. 3 military parade in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping -- who meets President Obama in Washington as part of his state visit Friday -- made a surprising announcement that the PLA would cut its troop strength by 300,000, or 13 percent, to about 2 million troops.

Inside China: Chinese parade, Russian games

As China gears up for a communist-style extravaganza with a military parade and ceremonial grandiosity next week to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II, Beijing is determined and eager to show off its military might to the world. It's also making a clear attempt to isolate Japan from the international community and send a special message of China's military might to its most distinguished guest, Russia's equally bombast-loving President Vladimir Putin.

Inside China: Tianjin explosions cover-up exposes Beijing’s own toxic fault lines

The blasts that rocked the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin on Aug. 12 are said to have released a destructive power equivalent to an earthquake of 2.3 magnitude on the Richter scale. But the political aftershocks have been even more devastating to the Chinese government, revealing design flaws in the communist system's ability to control information and some glaringly negligent safety regulations.