China

China's economic growth rate fell sharply in the fourth quarter, sapped by weakening investments and exports that signal rockier times ahead for the world's third-largest economy, as well as the many nations that have come to rely on it. The Chinese government said today that its gross domestic product, or economic output, rose 6.8% in the final quarter of 2008 from a year earlier.

Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy F. Geithner on Thursday accused China of "manipulating" its currency, raising the risk of a new U.S.-China trade row. Geithner's comments helped spark a jump in Treasury bond yields, on fears that a trade dispute could dim China's appetite for Treasury debt -- at a time when U.S. financing needs are skyrocketing as the Obama administration ramps up spending to bail out the economy.

The World Trade Organization has largely sided with the United States in a dispute with China over product piracy, according to official documents released Monday. The ruling, which confirms an interim decision in October, takes Washington one step closer to being able to seek compensation from China for the billions of dollars that U.S. companies say they lose through piracy each year.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao brought cautious optimism to the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, predicting that his country will achieve its target of 8% economic growth this year despite the global financial meltdown. Wen called for enhanced U.S.-China cooperation to address the issue, even as he and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin obliquely criticized the United States, blaming a relentless pursuit of profit for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton needed a way to restore her reputation after the failure of her 1990s healthcare initiative, China provided the opportunity. As first lady, Clinton delivered a fiery speech on human rights at a women's conference in Beijing in 1995, winning a worldwide following while dismaying her Chinese hosts, who banned coverage in the country's official media.

The young woman with pigtails asked in a tiny voice how to get along on a baseball team with lots of bigger, more powerful men. "I've played a lot of baseball," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the woman and the other young people in an audience at the University of Tokyo. "I've played with a lot of boys. The most important advice is to do what's true to yourself."

Hozaifa Parhat, a fruit seller from China's Muslim west, spoke passionately before a Guantanamo tribunal about his love for America and swore he never planned to fight the United States. The Chinese, however, were another matter. "I left my country to try to get something, get back and liberate my people and get our country independence," the ethnic Uighur testified in November 2004.

The Chinese government has a New Year's greeting for Tibetans: Celebrate, or else. The Tibetan New Year, or Losar, is normally the most festive holiday of the year, when Tibetans burn incense, make special dumplings and set off fireworks. But this year, Tibetans have declared a moratorium on celebrating their own holiday, saying they will instead observe a mourning period for people killed last year during protests against Chinese rule.

With their floppy ears, shiny brown eyes and whimsical grins, they were the faces that launched a legal battle extending from Paris to Beijing. On Monday, a French judge ruled that the 18th century Chinese bronze heads depicting a rabbit and a rat can be auctioned off this week at Christie's in Paris as part of the estate of the late designer Yves Saint Laurent.

Xun Jia, a doctoral candidate in theoretical physics at UCLA, expected to find a job on Wall Street crunching complex financial formulas upon his graduation. But after meeting with 10 recruiters to no avail, the Chinese native is looking for new opportunities -- in the country he left behind. "I'm definitely considering moving back," said Jia, 27, who always envisioned himself establishing a career in the U.S. first but is now firing off his resume to contacts in China.