BEIJING — Much like in the rest of the world, the coming "doomsday" supposedly preordained by the Mayans to strike earth Friday at the end of a 5,125-year calendar has been something of a running joke in China.

The subject this week has been easily a top-10 trending topic on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, with users sharing hundreds of thousands of jokes, cartoons and other comments about the end of days.

One popular doomsday cartoon shared by Taiwanese alternative rock singer Ashin, showing a mock weather report predicting fire and brimstone for Friday, was forwarded more than 109,000 times and drew almost 25,000 comments.

Not everybody thinks the end of the world is funny, though. A poll conducted by Ipsos-Reuters in 21 countries earlier this year claimed that as much as 20 percent of China’s population believed that the Mayan calendar correctly predicted this month as the end of the world. That percentage was markedly higher than in the second country on the list, Turkey (at 13 percent), or in the United States (12 percent).

The government is taking one aspect of the doomsday talk seriously; it has reportedly rounded-up members of a religious group calling for the toppling of the Communist Party. 

The group, known as the “Almighty God,” has called for a "decisive battle" to slay the "big red dragon," a reference to the Book of Revelation and the organization’s name for the Chinese Communist Party.

Nearly 1,000 members of the sect have been arrested, The New York Times reported. NBC News could not independently verify the number of detentions, but Chinese state media also reported that authorities had detained around 1,000 members over some seven provinces, Reuters reported.

This is not the first time that China has dealt with a fast-moving Christian cult it deems a risk to party rule. In fact, according to the newspaper, “Almighty God” has its roots in a sect that claimed it had 300,000 adherents called "Lightning from the East," according to Time Magazine in 2001.

Lightning from the East propagated the belief that Jesus had returned to earth in the form of a 30-year old Chinese woman who had written a third testament of the Bible and promised salvation from the coming apocalypse for all who joined her.

AFP - Getty Images, file

Lu Zhenghai of Xinjiang said he wasn't necessarily worried about "doomsday," but he thought "something" bad would happen today. So he built this ark.

Money from fear
Many Chinese, meanwhile, have seen opportunities to cash in on the apocalyptic mania.

After watching the Hollywood disaster film "2012," in which China leads the way in building arks to save the rest of the world, Liu Qiyuan, a former furniture maker living just outside Beijing, began conceptualizing scaled-down arks that could be marketed to consumers equally concerned about the end of days.

With the help of 10 workers, Liu designed and built metal spheres covered in fiberglass and fitted with an on-board engine. Supposedly strong enough to handle a battering from a catastrophic tsunami or earthquake, the capsules are designed to house 14 survivors and enough food and water for five months at sea.

The cost of such peace of mind is $50,000 each. Even if the end of the world does not come Friday, Liu is optimistic that he will recoup his reported $288,000 investment by marketing his life capsules to China’s navy.

One man who has gone all-in on his disaster convictions is Lu Zhenghai from China’s far western province of Xinjiang. For the past two years, Lu has been working to build an ark measuring 65 feet and weighing around 80 tons that could comfortably hold 50 people and a two-year stock of food and medicine.

"I don’t believe in the doomsday, but I do believe something is going to happen on December 21st," Lu told NBC News, "I don’t know what could happen and where, but I want to be ready just in case."

Having left his job, cashed-in his savings and sold his apartment to help pay for this family refuge, Lu has been living at his parents’ home with his wife and daughter as he makes final preparations on the ark. The vessel has already cost over $240,000 to build.

Though Lu talks happily about progress on the ship, he seems far more excited to talk about the media attention and visitors his ark has been attracting.

"Hundreds of people have come to see my ark," Lu said, adding that a Hong Kong television station was planning to film the ark, presumably mere moments before disaster strikes the earth.

NBC News’ Yanzhou Liu contributed to this report.

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Wang Wei / EPA

Nobel Prize-winning writer Mo Yan holds a press conference in his hometown of Gaomi, in China's Shandong province, on Friday.

BEIJING -- State media gave the official stamp of approval Friday over the decision to award the Nobel Prize for literature to Chinese novelist Mo Yan, giving him front-page coverage across the country.

The warm coverage of the award is unsurprising considering the prestige and recognition that China's ruling Communist Party will collectively bask in as a result.

But in another sense, the warm reception for the awarding is striking considering the anger and hysteria drummed up by Beijing following the 2010 awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned political dissident, Liu Xiaobo.

In the two years that have followed Liu’s win, which was heavily censored in state media, China has maintained a chilly relationship with the Nobel committee and its home country of Norway. Meetings with Norwegian ministers and trade delegations have been canceled and important talks regarding the eventual opening of the Arctic Sea route have been halting.

China even went so far as to develop its own ill-fated peace prize, while exports of Norway’s famed salmon fell victim to the frigid political atmosphere between the two countries.

China’s first Nobel-winning writer?
But Mo’s victory seems to have thawed the relationship long enough for China to celebrate the writer, who state media has hailed as the country’s first winner of the prize.

"This is the first Chinese writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature," gushed China’s People’s Daily newspaper. "Chinese writers have waited too long, the Chinese people have waited too long."

But critics of the Communist regime point out that Gao Xingjian, who won in 2000 in part for his critical writing of the government, was China’s first winner of the Nobel for literature. He had been exiled to France by the time the prize was awarded.

Mo Yan, which means "don't speak," is actually a pen name. The 57-year-old Mo's real name is Guan Moye.

Mo has been favorably compared to American author William Faulkner and is perhaps best known in the West for his 1987 book, Red Sorghum. That book heavily relied on his experience growing up in a farming community in China's northeastern province of Shandong.

That honest connection to the rural experience has been a central thread through much of Mo’s writing, according to Dai Wei, a professor of literature at China’s Jinan University.

Special coverage of China: Behind the Wall on NBCNews.com

"Mo's topics are typically about rural life and his own life experiences, his stories are very close parallels to the real circumstances he lived through," Dai told NBC News. "He often writes about suffering. ... Some people think he glorifies suffering for Westerners, but everything he writes is based on real experience."

'The dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature'
Mo latest book, Frog, tells the dark story of a midwife who enthusiastically goes about her work enforcing China’s family-planning laws through forced abortions and sterilizations. The story, a searing critique of China’s one-child policy, won China’s Mao Dun Literature Prize last year.

"A writer should express criticism ... at the dark side of society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression," Mo said in a speech at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair.

Chinese author Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize in literature

But despite the critical and popular acclaim and Mo’s willingness to confront sensitive social issues in China, Mo’s victory has not come without criticism.

“Giving the award to a writer like this is an insult to humanity and to literature,” declared noted Chinese artist and activist, Ai Weiwei to the British newspaper The Independent. "It’s shameful for the committee to have made this selection which does not live up to the previous quality of literature in the award."

Ai’s diatribe toward Mo appears to be rooted in part to his work on a book last year to celebrate the 70th anniversary of a speech given by Mao Zedong.

More book reviews and news on TODAY.com

Mao’s speech, known as the "Speech at Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature" set the guidelines for appropriate subject matter for Chinese writers and artists of that revolutionary period, calling upon them to focus on and espouse the merits of Communism and threatening punishment to those who did not bend to the will of the party.

Mo Yan and around 100 other Chinese writers and artists hand-copied paragraphs from the speech for the book.

Criticism
That act, in conjunction with Mo’s position as vice chairman of the government-backed Chinese Writer’s Association, which has failed to voice support toward fellow writer Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize victory, has raised the ire of artists like Ai who wonder just how committed Mo Yan is to free expression.

Complete Asia-Pacific coverage on NBCNews.com

After all, critics argue, if a Nobel Prize-winning author with a leadership position in the national writing guild fails to stand up for a fellow artist, then who will?

Not fair, said professor Dai.

"I don’t agree with Ai Weiwei, it's just his personal opinion," said Dai. "People have different values, so they evaluate people differently. I think Mo Yan is a great author and Mo Yan is prized by the Nobel Prize council."

Perhaps sensing the backlash against him, Mo spoke out Friday afternoon from his hometown. Mo told reporters he hoped that Liu Xiaobo "can achieve his freedom as soon as possible." He also noted that he had read Liu’s literary criticisms from the 1980s and that the dissident had the right to research his "politics and social system."

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

Other supporters of Mo have also came to his defense, noting that many of his books have been banned in China and that the Nobel victory will help put Chinese literature on the map.

But few believe that the victory will help put Liu Xiaobo back on the map in China, where his victory is still not acknowledged by the government. Liu’s name and the term "Nobel Peace Prize" remain blocked terms on China’s twitter-like service, Weibo.

Just this week, a BBC report on Liu’s imprisonment noted that the activist and his wife, who remains under illegal house arrest, have been facing extraordinary pressure to accept exile from China in exchange for their freedom.

NBC News' Johanna Armstrong and Yanzhou Liu contributed to this report.

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BEIJING – Following a weekend of anti-Japanese protests that engulfed China, demonstrations hit a crescendo Tuesday with the 81st anniversary of the start of Japan’s occupation of China.

The Mukden Incident, also known as the Manchurian Incident, was a staged bombing by the Japanese military that served as the pretext for the Japanese invasion of China in 1931.

The painful anniversary served to enflame a dispute that has been growing for months over ownership of East China Sea islands called the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Emotional anniversary reignites anti-Japan protests in China

During recent protests in more than 80 cities across China, Chinese citizens have expressed themselves by taking to the streets and loudly demonstrating outside of Japanese consulates, businesses and online. However, unlike previous protests on the mainland in recent years, the collective anger has been well-documented and disseminated freely online, giving us a unique look at Chinese nationalism unleashed.

See images of some of the more unusual expressions of anti-Japanese anger below.

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BEIJING – This time, Apple and its devoted Chinese customers weren’t taking any chances. 

Wary of a repeat of the iPhone 4S debacle in China in January, when Apple’s release led to scuffles and even an egging of its flagship Beijing store by angry hordes after it was forced to cancel sales due to the crowds, Apple’s managers here put their heads together and came up with a new strategy for dealing with the crowds.

They came up with a reservation style of ordering already in use in other countries like the United States. However, this time they decided to institute the reservation system as the only way to purchase the latest iPad, which features a sharper display and better camera than previous versions, for its China debut.

Around 50 customers quietly lined up outside the store in Beijing Friday morning, staring intently inside the store as an almost equal number of jovial blue-uniformed employees clapped, sang and danced in the minutes before opening.

It was a far cry from the sheer bedlam unleashed earlier this year when the iPhone 4S went on sale. On that day, many in the crowd were scalpers who local media said hired scores of people to line up with them to purchase the precious phones to be sold in other Chinese cities for a higher rate. 

‘It shouldn’t take too long to learn how to use’
First in line to purchase the new iPad in Beijing on Friday was Ye Huafei, a 34-year-old software engineer who arrived at the store just two hours before opening. Forced to purchase this new iPad after his iPad2 had been poached by his mother to watch TV dramas, Ye elected to arrive early to pick up his new iPad so he could bring it to work and show it off to his colleagues. 

“It feels great to be first,” said Ye. “The scene here is fantastic.” 

Apple’s new product releases tend to attract a younger, status-conscious crowd in China. But mixed in the opening throng of customers was Mr. Wu, an older customer who coyly put his age at “under 65.”

Wu owns an iPhone 4S, but decided to upgrade to an iPad because he is getting older and his eyes have been getting tired looking at the small screen.

With new iPad in hand, the first thing Wu did was walk over to a nearby counter where an Apple employee was offering hour-long lessons to new customers on how to use their new tablets.

Fresh from class, Wu excitedly showed us what he had learned.

“It shouldn’t take too long to learn how to use, I have a strong base,” he said happily. “I have an iPhone 4S and I know how to use that very well.”

He will need to learn quickly. With his purchase, Wu became the first member of his extended family to use an iPad.

One thing he did not take long to discover was the free WiFi at the Apple store. With no Internet connection at home, Wu decided to save money by not purchasing a 3G-capable iPad and bought a wifi-capable tablet instead.

Pointing to the Apple store behind him, Wu said, “I’ll just come here. My home is very close…I spent the money, so I should enjoy the product and the service.”

The ‘it’ product
Like in much of the rest of the world, Apple’s phones and tablets have become the “it” product to own in China, which is now Apple’s second-largest market after the United States. But with just five official Apple stores in the country, even a robust gray market for Apple products cannot always keep up with demand, especially in the days immediately following a high-profile release.

Apple was forced to delay the mainland release of the latest iteration of the iPad due to a lawsuit brought by a company claiming to own the iPad trademark in China. So the company had time to experiment with the new reservation system in Hong Kong for its iPad debut last March and found it effective in dealing with scalpers and the crush that has followed previous product launches.

Since the Cupertino, Calif., company settled the trademark issue for a reported $60 million earlier this month, mainland Chinese customers were invited yesterday to start registering to purchase the iPad at a special website created by the tech giant. Upon filling out the online form, customers were given a designated time to pick up their new iPads.

On Thursday morning, NBC News attempted to log onto the website when it opened at 9 a.m. but the usual crowd of customers apparently crashed the site. The site was up and running again within the hour.

Questions about whether news of the change in policy had gotten out to the public and to poachers were answered early Friday morning when the plaza outside the Apple store in Beijing was mostly empty.

Reports from the other four Apple-owned stores also showed smooth sales.

BEIJING – It may have been all talk of hard landings and poor economic numbers last week in most of China, but volunteers in Shanghai over the weekend found themselves on softer ground. 

This past Saturday, 1,001 volunteers in Shanghai came together at an unused section of a shopping mall in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for “human mattress dominoes.” The idea was to have people and mattresses line up and fall on top of each other like, well, dominoes.

Rules of the event were simple: each participant must touch the person behind them and there needed to be a consecutive chain of toppling mattresses.

Wielding a radio with one hand and clutching his vertical mattress with the other, the first participant called out “Starting!” before leaning back into his mattress onto another volunteer.

That kicked off a wave of mattresses falling that took 10 minutes to finish. Cheers erupted from onlookers and the fallen as the last volunteer collapsed on his mattress, officially crushing the previous record held by La Quinta Inns & Suites in the United States, which in February of this year mobilized 850 of its employees in New Orleans to break the world record.

All of the participants in Shanghai this weekend were given $6.30, a souvenir shirt and a certificate of participation.

“We need good teamwork,” said one of the volunteers. “All the participants from the first to the last, must act like one person… that is dominoes.”

Gathering 1,000 people for the spectacle took a great deal of organization, said Cheng Dong, an authenticator from Guinness World Records. As well as… bravery?

“Our volunteers were all very brave. No one dodged when the 2-meter-high (6.56ft) mattress fell onto them,” he said. 

BEIJING – Workers around the world sometimes get a little extra cash for jobs with tough occupational hazards, but what do you give an airplane cabin crew that successfully thwarts a hijack attempt?

In China, quite a bit.

Chinese netizens were buzzing on Monday about payouts to crew members of a Tianjin Airlines flight who foiled an attempted hijacking in China’s troubled Xinjiang Province 11 days ago

Hainan Airlines, the parent company of Tianjin Airlines, gave two onboard security officers and the chief flight attendant a cool million yuan each ($157,000), houses said to be worth 3 million yuan each ($470,000) and brand new Audi cars.  

Other crew members involved in foiling the hijacking were awarded a half million yuan ($80,000) each and apartments said to be worth 2 million yuan ($315,000) per person.

In addition to that windfall, the provincial government in Hainan, where the airline is based, awarded all the crew members half a million yuan ($80,000). 

Details have slowly emerged about the incident, with state media reporting that six people tried to hijack the flight 10 minutes after it took off from the Hotan, a city in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, headed to the regional capital, Urumqi. The hijackers reportedly disassembled a pair of crutches into metal rods and attempted to rush the cockpit.

The region, home to the Uighur ethnic minority, is known for its separatist movement, so the alleged hijackers were quickly labeled terrorists by the Chinese media.

After the violence broke out, the reports said, passengers, cabin crew and air security fought back, subduing the hijackers while the pilots turned back and landed safely back at Hotan. The two air police officers were seriously injured during the attempted hijack, while the head flight attendant and seven passengers suffered minor injuries.

Two of the hijackers wounded during the attack died of their injuries, according to news reports.

The announcement of the hefty awards generated a lot of buzz on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, mostly congratulating the crew for their bravery and service to the 100 passengers onboard. However, some of the comments questioned the large financial prizes to the crew.

“It's necessary to give them [the crew] rewards, but isn't it too much?” wrote one commenter. “If they want to give rewards, shouldn't those passengers on the plane be given more?”

Others took a similar tack with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“Hainan Airlines is really rich! Next time I will also fly Hainan planes and hope to have the same good luck!” wrote another.

“In the future I will take more flights in Xinjiang – it’s much more reliable than the lottery,” another chimed in.   

Unusually, Chinese state media has given the hijacking, dubbed the “6.29 Hijacking,” more coverage than previous cases involving ethnic unrest, with many details about the incident and warm articles emerging about the heroic crew.

Meanwhile, the government has responded to the incident by tightening flying restrictions in the region. Last week, the government announced new security measures that requires handicapped passengers in wheelchairs or passengers on crutches to show a hospital-issued certification, and passengers flying from the heavily Uighur city of Kashgar are now required to check in crutches and wheelchairs.

NBC News’ Horace Lu contributed to this report

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A man passes a women wearing shorts as she waits for a subway train in Shanghai on Wednesday. A subway operator in the Chinese metropolis of Shanghai has caused uproar by warning women not to wear revealing clothes to avoid being groped by the city's "perverts."

BEIJING – For women in Shanghai looking to beat the heat this summer with skimpier clothes, the city’s subway authorities have a message: dress appropriately or be ready to deal with the inevitable sexual harassment. 

The controversy online started on June 20 when someone posted on the Shanghai Number 2 Subway Line official Weibo account – Chinese version of Twitter – a picture of a female passenger wearing a revealing dress with the comment: “If that’s what you wear on the subway, then no wonder you will be sexually harassed! There are perverts riding the subway every day and we can’t catch them all. Girls, you’ve got to respect yourself!”

Outrage over the comment was swift and voluminous, quickly becoming the second-most discussed topic on Weibo with nearly 16,000 forwards and 7,000 comments tagged to the original post alone.

No right to judge!
The overwhelming number of comments condemned the message and its insinuation that revealing dress could be viewed as an invitation for harassment; branding it blatant gender discrimination. 

"It's a woman’s business to choose what to wear, if laws or your regulations do not forbid her from dressing like this, you [the Metro] have no right to chastise them,” wrote one commentator. “If your logic were right, then all men would harass women in the swimming pool.”

“You have the right to judge whether people are dressing elegantly or not.  And you have the right to like it or not,” wrote another critic of the Shanghai Metro. “But you have no right to harass anyone!” 

Some people also raised questions about the fact that the Shanghai Metro staff took a photo of the unwitting passenger in the first place, and, adding insult to injury, used the photo in its controversial public service announcement. 

Zhejiang Province Police

The Zhejiang province police department's diagram meant to give women guidance on how men's lurking eyes can lead to sexual harrassment.

“First I think the Metro has no right to insult others, especially their passengers. It's a matter of professional decency,” wrote Hao Junbo, a lawyer on Weibo. “If the Metro published this person's picture without approval beforehand, it violates the passenger's rights.”

Responding to the criticism, Lan Tian, a press officer for Shanghai Shentong Metro Group, the authority that runs the Shanghai subway, justified the company’s comments to the Chinese state newspaper Global Times.

"As the city's subway operator, we have the responsibility to warn women of the potential danger of sexual harassment on the subway," he told the Global Times. "At the same time, we are not justifying any kind of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior." 

Nevertheless, perhaps inspired by the general sentiment expressed online, a couple days later on June 24, several women went to another subway station in Shanghai to protest the Weibo post by the Shanghai Metro.

Donning black veils that covered their faces and holding signs that said things like, “Just because I'm slutty doesn't mean you can be dirty,” the girls rode the subway in an attempt to call attention to the issue.

Interestingly, this time though, online sentiment was against the protestors, with many arguing that women should in fact dress more conservatively while riding the subway. A recent online poll by Sina Weibo found that 55 percent of over 10,000 people agreed with that sentiment.

Elaborate diagrams to thwart harassment
By all accounts, reports of sexual harassment on the Shanghai metro have been on the rise this year. An editorial in Wednesday’s edition of China’s People’s Daily noted that there had been seven cases of sexual harassment since May of this year.

There has been a greater emphasis nationally to raise awareness about sexual harassment and to educate Chinese women on how to protect themselves. But some of the recent articles on how to avoid becoming a victim of sexual harassment verge on the ridiculous. 

A recent article by the popular Chinese web portal, QQ, includes a number of graphics showing how men attempt to harass women by looking up skirts on elevators or even when women try on shoes at department stores.  

But this diagram put out on the Zhejiang province police department’s official Weibo account earlier this year was perhaps the most puzzling. It looks like an elaborate SAT math question requiring a thorough grounding in geometry. For example, the second and third illustrations are designed to help women understand the angles at which men can position their heads or bodies to look up their skirts while riding the subway.

If the diagram is confusing already with its multiple diagrams, consider the English translation of the explanation:

“If the eyes of the ‘observer’, i.e. the point E, is right on the extension of segment BC, then point B would fall into his eyesight. Then, let's make another line of DE which goes through E and is perpendicular to the extension of AC, then the right triangle of DEC is similar to the right triangle of ABC. So clearly, the length of DC is the horizontal distance between the man's eye and the lady’s skirt. Ladies, have you figured that out?” 

Unsure if you have figured out whether that man is looking up your skirt? Consult the closest math teacher in your subway car.

NBC News’ Horace Lu contributed to this report.

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BEIJING – They say working with animals on screen can be maddeningly unpredictable, even with Zen-like patience. 

So there could be no better person to test that theory than a Buddhist monk, right? 

Yen Shen, a monk who serves as a director of the Cangzhou Buddhist Association in China’s Hebei province was at Mount Emei – a popular tourist site and home to a well-known Buddhist temple – in western Sichuan shooting a little video about the beauty of the region.

With lush forest and fog draped valleys behind him, Yen was speaking poetically about the beauty of the region and the need to take time to connect with nature. “As the years pass, let us bless our friends, let us bless everything,” he waxes on poetically in the video, “when the year’s pass let us bless spring and the autumn.”

That’s when the monkey business starts. (Click to watch the video above). 

Just 10 seconds into his monologue, what looks like a Tibetan macaque next to him starts grabbing Yen’s robes and playing with them. Showing incredible TV professional poise though, Yen continues talking about Buddhist spirituality without skipping a beat.

Then 1:30 into the video, two macaques run up and jump onto Yen, turning him into a human jungle gym. Yen appears momentarily frozen in panic, but recovers and then continues talking; ignoring the growing giggles and chatter of onlookers.

A third monkey joins in on the fun at 1:58, before someone hands one of the macaques what appears to be a cookie and pulls Yen out of the way.

Further attempts to continue the video are derailed as one monkey who will not be denied his 15 minutes of fame, perches itself next to Yen and starts clutching his robe, only letting go long enough to devour more biscuits handed to him just off screen by a helper.

As biscuit after biscuit is handed over to the ravenous monkey, Yen simply looks at him with seeming amusement, all while passersby yell advice on how to deal with the monkeys and urge him to look back up at the camera and continue.

The video has racked up almost 1 million hits since it was posted on Sina, the Chinese web site, Wednesday. Online commentators mostly express admiration for Yen’s ability to keep talking despite the distraction. Strangely though, many more commentators seemed interested in discussing the monk’s “strange” accent as much as the rambunctious macaques.

Regardless, a marvelous big screen debut by both man and monkeys. 

Andy Wong / AP

Ai Weiwei, second from left, stopped by a plain clothes policeman while he argues with another policeman, foreground, outside his home in Beijing on Wednesday.

BEIJING – While Ai Weiwei didn’t get his day in court Wednesday, he did get his case heard.

The Chinese artist and social activist was noticeably absent from opening arguments at a Beijing courtroom after he was warned off by police. Instead, Ai, 54, stayed home at his studio while his wife, Lu Qing, represented their design company, Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd., with a team of lawyers.

Ai and his wife are challenging a ruling by the tax office that rejected their appeal against a steep fine imposed for alleged tax evasion, a charge roundly rejected as false and trumped up by Ai and his supporters.

NBC News spoke to Ai Weiwei by phone late Wednesday afternoon, but he could not comment on how legal proceedings had gone.

The government previously ordered Ai’s company to pay a staggering 15 million yuan ($2.4 million) in alleged back taxes and additional fines. Surprisingly, Ai raised the money needed to pay an 8.45 million yuan ($1.3 million) bond needed to contest the tax charges through donations and contributions from around 30,000 supporters after he called for assistance through social media, a favored tool of his and other activists in China.

Stunts like these as well as his pokes at authority – see the photo he posted yesterday on Twitter sporting a too-tight Chinese police uniform – anger authorities who view Ai as a troublemaker. 

In April 2011, Ai was detained without charge during a national roundup of activists and dissidents following the many pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East.

It was only after his 81-day detention that tax-evasion charges against Ai and his company were made, lending credence to claims made by human rights watchers and Ai supporters that the move was retaliation by the government.

The case against Ai has been shrouded in secrecy due to the government’s unwillingness, or inability, to reveal any original tax documents as evidence of tax evasion they purport to have.

Slideshow: The artist strikes a nerve

Sharron Lovell / Polaris

Click to see a slideshow of photos of projects done by the Chinese artist and activist Ai Wei Wei.

Launch slideshow

A hearing held last July during which the government’s evidence would ostensibly have been revealed was closed and the company’s lawyers were barred from attending, a decision Ai’s lawyers claim was illegal.

It is a sensitive time politically in China as President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are poised to step down later this year. Despite the political drama swirling around the fleeing of dissident Chen Guangcheng to the United States and the ongoing Bo Xilai scandal, Beijing desperately wants to make the transition peaceful and is doing everything possible this year to mitigate sensitive stories.

Yet, as has sometimes proven the case when it comes to Ai, attempts to muzzle or contain him can backfire.

While Beijing police have discouraged local dissidents from going to the courthouse to support Ai, security was said to be intense around the court with a ring of police cars around it and officers telling foreign press to stay away as well. Still, supporters of Ai were seen outside holding small signs that said “Ai Weiwei, we love you” and “No justice without a fight.”

Meanwhile, the detention of Ai’s legal consultant, Liu Xiaoyuan, by security forces Tuesday outraged Ai, who announced it on Twitter and called for Liu’s immediate release. Ai told NBC News that Liu’s phone had been turned off and that he had been “taken away to the countryside for some sort of treatment by the police.”

Additionally, Ai has also been using Twitter to call attention to the heavy police presence outside his home. He pointed to a bust up at his home yesterday when someone in his studio took a photo of what Ai described as “30-40 police cars.” Ai alleges that police rushed the photographer to grab the camera, causing some minor scratches and bruises which were tweeted here.

As part of his conditional release late last year, Ai’s travel rights were taken away and he was told to refrain from criticism of the government through social media.

Friday was supposed to be the day those restrictions would be lifted, but in lieu of Ai’s continued defiance, it is hard to believe local authorities won’t extend these restraints in order to rein him in. 

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BEIJING -- China's first woman in space, Liu Yang, will be conducting space medical experiments on a 10-day mission that started Saturday, but experts are deeply interested in the mechanics of the mission -- namely the manual space docking the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft will attempt with the Tiangong-1 module.

Launched last September, the Tiangong-1 is China’s first space laboratory module and a key cog in Beijing’s larger ambitions of establishing a space station by 2020. From this outpost, Chinese scientists over the next few years will be able to test out new equipment and experiment with future space station capabilities. 

But first Chinese astronauts need to prove they can actually dock with it. 

Last year, China successfully got its unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft to remotely link up with the Tiangong-1 module, but this will be the first time Chinese astronauts will attempt to manually guide a spacecraft into docking. 

"Some people describe the manual docking as threading a needle from 100 meters away, so you can see how difficult and precise the procedure would be” said astronaut Jing Haipeng, who with 14 years of experience in China’s space program, will be responsible for this critical aspect of the mission. 

"The manual space rendezvous ... is a huge test for astronauts' ability to judge spatial position, eye-hand coordination and psychological abilities," he added. 

According to NBC News space analyst, James Oberg, the sooner China’s astronauts master how to linkup with the Tiangong-1, the faster the country will be able to realize its long-term vision. 

“The Tiangong-1 is not just a docking target ... this is a full-fledged, live support module that can also can be used as a living space if the Chinese decide to move beyond low-Earth out to the moon or deep space” said Oberg. “The Tiangong-1 is exactly the kind of module for long term, deep space missions.” 

China’s space rise a cause for concern?
According to Oberg, China’s rapid development in space capability is quickly bringing the nation to the same level as the other major space powers. 

“What the Chinese are doing is not just going on a tail chase of ancient space race accomplishments,” says Oberg, “They are bringing themselves right up to and in some cases maybe even taking a step ahead of some of the other space powers.” 

“It’s a very, very impressive program on a very broad front,” he adds.

There have been some questions, though, about whether China’s space program is going too fast. An annual U.S. Department of Defense report on China’s military and security developments released in May theorized that China’s space program might be encountering challenges in system reliability, pointing to an August 2011 malfunctioning of a Long March 2C rocket. 

China is currently in the process of several large scale improvements in its space capabilities. The design of the much larger Long March 5 booster and the construction of a new rocket launch site on Hainan Island are just two examples that will push China’s technological expertise. 

Report: First Chinese female astronaut joins space club

Increased reliability and confidence in China’s space capabilities will be critical for another important Chinese aspiration: increased commercial opportunities. European and American satellite builders have traditionally corned the market on satellite construction and launching. A U.S. ban on the use of American components in satellites launched by China have effectively kept China out of the competition for satellite construction bids. 

The success of Chinese designed, constructed and launched satellites could position China to be a major player in the industry. 

“When the Chinese get credibility for their technology that space successes give them, they elbow their way to the top rank,” says Oberg, “the slice of the U.S. pie will shrink when the Chinese start getting a bigger slice.”

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