Adrienne Mong

Dozens of police barricaded a highway entrance ramp in Haimen, where protests broke out on Tuesday.

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

HAIMEN, Guangdong Province—It wouldn’t have been fair or accurate to call it a China Spring, but for a moment it was worth wondering: Was this the beginning of a Guangdong Spring?

Since September, residents in a fishing village called Wukan, in the southern coastal province of Guangdong, had been protesting against their local government over, specifically, illegal land grabs and, more generally, corruption.  This was a town where one man had held sway as the Communist Party chief for four decades.

The situation grew explosive two weekends ago when one of the protest organizers died in police custody, triggering a widespread and cohesive revolt that saw thousands of people run the local officials and police out of town—the first time the Communist Party appeared to have lost total control of a town.

The authorities responded by laying siege on Wukan, preventing food and other supplies from reaching the 20,000-strong population, and censoring all mention of the latest developments in Chinese media or on the Internet.  In turn, the residents welcomed foreign and Hong Kong journalists to cover their plight.

Negotiations between the two sides kicked into high gear even as the situation escalated. The villagers threatened to march to the government offices of a nearby town unless their demands were met, potentially pitting them against thousands of riot and paramilitary police deployed along the main road leading in and out of Wukan.

In the end, cooler tempers prevailed amidst government compromises, but just as the Wukan standoff appeared to ease, reports of more protests nearby surfaced on Tuesday on the Internet.

Suddenly, the province in which its Communist Party head had promoted a “Happy Guangdong” campaign no longer seemed so happy.  At least not in this southeastern coastal corner.

Adrienne Mong

Residents in Haimen say the power plant built in 2009 has dramatically increased pollution and caused a rise in cancer cases.

At least three other pockets of unrest had flared up in districts of a large city near Wukan:  two of the groups were protesting similar examples of illegal land seizures and a third, the largest outbreak of demonstrations, was over government plans to build a coal-fired power plant in Haimen.

Though difficult to confirm, the initial reports described thousands of residents converging on the main local government office and organizing a sit-in on a key highway entrance to protest the development plans.  Local residents were quoted as saying they hoped foreign journalists would cover their story.

Before long, photographs emerged on Sina Weibo and other Chinese microblogs showing large numbers of paramilitary police in riot gear lining up against civilians in Haimen, a large town about 70 miles away from Wukan.  Tear gas was fired and clashes ensued.  Rumors also circulated that at least two boys had been killed in the confrontations; the government denied them.

Protests are not unusual in China.  In fact, according to the most recent official statistics, 2009 saw more than 90,000 “mass incidents,” as the Chinese government calls protests, across the country.  Land grabs and pollution concerns are among the top grievances.

Although the protests in Wukan and Haimen appear unrelated, it seemed a remarkable coincidence that two demonstrations adopting similar tactics would spring up within several dozen miles of one another. 

Heavy-handed police tactics
On Thursday, the streets of Haimen looked like those of any other comparable-sized Chinese town: food stalls, shops, sleepy government buildings, a high school, and a population that relies mostly on motorbikes to get around.

Mid-morning, dozens of those motorbikes were massed near the Haimen highway entrance.  In the distance, scores of black-and blue-uniformed police wearing helmets were standing behind barricades that had been pulled across the toll gate to the highway.

A large gas station on the corner looked open, but was in fact not.  The station's attendants in bright yellow jackets were lazing around, directing traffic to the next station.  The only energy came from a discussion about the power plant taking place among some of motorbike riders.

Adrienne Mong

Dozens of police vehicles, fire engines, and water canon trucks lined the side of a highway running through Haimen.

A short excursion on the highway itself revealed a sizeable police presence.  Police vans lined up against the side, interspersed with ambulances, fire engines, and water cannon trucks.  Dozens of police in riot gear sat on the ground.  Near several other highway entrance ramps, police vehicles could be spotted behind the gates of nearby compounds.

A little over an hour later, the crowd around the main entrance ramp had grown.  Motorbikes whizzed back and forth a couple of hundred feet away from the police barricade.  Many of the riders were young.

Suddenly, a pop rang into the air and a group of young teenagers were scrambling back away from the highway barriers—a plume of smoke rose above them.  The teens had tried to sidle up along the side.  A murmur of “tear gas” arose in the crowd as people began rushing away, covering their faces.  Nostrils burned.

“They don’t have the right to treat people like this,” said a 24-year old local resident who only offered his surname, Li.  “Using tear gas?  It’s wrong.”

Rumors of cancer
A few miles away, a large power plant with two smokestacks sat under the hazy sun.  It was not in operation; local reports said the government had suspended it as well as the plans to build the second plant until further notice. 

Haimen residents called Hongdong — the hamlet of one-storey homes nearest the power plant —“Cancer Village.”  But inside Hongdong, a man working in a local medical clinic denied that cancer patients were on the rise.

Back in front of the highway entrance, a young man named Chen and his two friends on motorbikes watched the police.  They had joined in the protests on Wednesday, because they, too, were angry about the health hazards posed by the power plant.

“The ocean is polluted [because of the run-off from the plant],” said Chen, also 24 years old.  “You can’t fish in it any more.”

He and others in the crowd said the number of cancer cases in Haimen had grown since the power plant was constructed in 2009 and quoted local papers as saying 80 percent of the cancer patients at a major regional hospital came from their township.

Chen said news of the protest had spread by QQ, a popular instant messaging service, until it was blocked on Tuesday evening.  Then they relied on word of mouth.

On the following day, the protesters were demonstrating peacefully, without weapons, said Chen, but the police rushed out from behind the blockade into the crowd and began beating up people—including women. 

Many of the participants on Wednesday, according to residents, were young Chinese.  Several were injured, and countless others arrested—just as was the case on Tuesday.

They had picked the highway entrance, said Chen, because it would attract the greatest attention.  Unlike the existing power plant itself or the land where the second plant has been designated—both of which are removed from the main roads.

Hearing about Wukan
“Were you in Wukan?” was a question that crept up a few times in conversation with Haimen’s residents.  In the past couple of days, Chinese media had begun publishing reports on the dispute next door.  Moreover, many had heard through friends or acquaintances or on the Internet about the months-long confrontation in Wukan.

But no one said Wukan had inspired them to take action. 

“This [environment issue] has been a problem for us for a while,” said Li.

There appears to be another difference between Wukan and Haimen.  Local officials from Haimen have promised to come up with some sort of resolution in five days, according to Chen.  But later on Thursday evening, he said that many more young Chinese had been rounded up and detained.

BEIJING—While China’s chief climate negotiator is getting rock star treatment at the Durban climate summit this week, his peers back in the capital are suffering a third straight day of foul air.

As a leading Canadian newspaper put it, China provided “the few glimmers of hope at the stalled negotiations” in Durban, where "photographers and television journalists swarmed around the chief Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, as he entered a news conference on Monday to announce his list of conditions for considering a legally binding treaty on carbon emissions after 2020."

However, not many glimmers of hope could be spotted back home.

From the China Daily website

A grid image posted on the China Daily newspaper showing the dramatic changes in air quality in Beijing in the past four days.

A persistent 'fog'
The Chinese state-run print media all ran headline stories Tuesday morning on the persistent "fog" that has blanketed Beijing and parts of the country’s northeast since the weekend. (See video above of the "hazardous" level of smog on Monday).

Much of the coverage focused on the hundreds of flights cancelled at the Beijing Capital International airport—the world’s second busiest hub—or the rising and very vocal concerns about air pollution.  Some local reports referred to sales of air filter masks and air filter machines spiking in the past week.

Still more reports tried to cast the air pollution issue as one of sovereignty.  "The heavy fog or smog that has shrouded Beijing in the past couple of days has triggered a renewed round of debate over the different air pollution standards applied by China and the United States," said an opinion piece in the Global Times, a state-run newspaper with a strong nationalist overtone.

But at least these same newspapers are now calling it "smog" rather than "fog," as they were just a day ago.  The China Daily, another state-run newspaper, ran a headline on page 3 crying, "Exposure to smog is severe hazard."  Later in the day, the paper’s web site posted four stark images of the same location showing changes in air visibility. (See photo above). The images are pretty staggering.

Only 13 days of 'good' air this year so far

And as we write this, the ever-trusty and ever-reliable @BeijingAir Twitter feed has been down five hours, prompting followers to wonder whether the pollution has finally gotten to the air quality index monitor that lives on top of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Post by @TomVandeWeghe

An image of an iPhone app circulating on Twitter this afternoon, showing the @BeijingAir monitor out of commission.

A sobering analysis of the @BeijingAir feed can be found in this post by China Dialogue, which notes that the improvements in air quality claimed by officials at the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau "are due to irregularities in the monitoring and reporting of air quality – and not to less polluted air."

Moreover, based on the analysis using the @BeijingAir data, this year there have only been 13 days of "good" air quality. 

Buried further amidst the quantitative data was one more alarming point: "…if Beijing’s fine particulate concentration even reached the polluted levels of Los Angeles, life expectancy may increase by over five years."

We at NBC News Beijing are trying to claw back a few months to our life span.  We have just taken delivery of two air filter machines for the bureau.

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

BEIJING — If there were one place that is living proof that global carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 jumped the largest amount on record, it’s got to be the Middle Kingdom.

Emissions leapt 5.9 per cent last year, according to the Global Carbon Project.

And the world’s biggest emitter —yes, China — was a big contributor.  It pumped 2.2 billion tons of carbon into the air, compared to the 1.5 billion tons of carbon by the U.S.

On days like Monday — and there have been way too many this year — it feels like Beijing is the receptacle.

'Hazardous' days
We’ve already written about it, but this time returning to the Chinese capital after a break, I found my hardy NBC News colleagues ordering air filter machines for their homes and air filter masks for cycling (to get around the traffic).

Adrienne Mong/NBC News

The NBC News Beijing bureau invests in air filter masks to combat the pollution.

Monday, while the @BeijingAir index — which comes from an air quality monitor housed atop the U.S. embassy in Beijing — tweeted hourly “hazardous” readings all day, we took a peek at readings back home to see how levels of air pollution were faring across the Pacific.

Across a map of the United States, it was a depressing monochromatic “green” color signifying “good” quality air — with only a few slashes of “yellow,” meaning “moderate.” 

Bear in mind, according to the chart developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “hazardous” is the highest alert level, which would trigger “health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected,” according to the site.

There were no readings from the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau’s (EPB) own air monitor until mid-afternoon Monday, when it acknowledged “slight pollution.” 

Last month, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection suggested it was finally heeding growing concerns among Beijing residents’ about air pollution.

The ministry said it would begin publishing measurements for the smallest particulate matter or PM2.5, also considered the most dangerous to human health because they’re tiny enough to enter the lungs and cause damage to the respiratory system.

Courtesy of Daxian/Weibo

"I thought I was looking at a mirage!" said a Weibo user by the name of Daxian after posting a photo from Beijing Monday morning.

On Thursday, however, the Beijing EPB emphatically announced PM2.5 readings for the city would not be made public.

A 'mirage'
To add insult to health injury, officials have been quoted in local newspapers as saying they will set up a new air monitoring system for Beijing in … Tianjin — a metropolis 80 miles away from the capital.

Mind you, photos posted on the Shanghaiist blogsite suggest we in Beijing are not the only ones suffering.

(There’s been plenty of supporting visual evidence coming out of Beijing all day.  One user of Weibo, the popular Chinese microblog, posted a photo of high-rises apparently floating above a cloud of pollution, calling it a “mirage.”  And YouKu, a Chinese version of YouTube, posted a video of this morning’s commute.)

Soho property mogul Pan Shiyi, who led an online petition to get PM2.5 readings published by the EPB, has begun posting on his Weibo account screen shots from an iPhone app that compiles the U.S. embassy’s BeijingAir index.   

In the meantime, Chinese authorities are still determined to call the smog by any other name.

Flight after flight on the Beijing Capital International airport website was shown to be cancelled — owing to “fog.” A Xinhua news agency report described it as “heavy fog.”

But an AFP report called it “smog,” tallying the airport casualties: 213 domestic and 15 international cancelled flights.

See Shanghaiist for more photos of the smog in Beijing and China

Update: Since this posting, a state-run newspaper, The Global Times, quoted meteorological officials as saying the “dense fog” enveloping Beijing and parts of the northeast will persist until Friday. One official described it as a “normal climate condition in Beijing.” Good thing we got our masks.

YINGJING, SICHUAN—The panda was always one of my favorite animals.

Until I found myself slipping and sliding down a steep muddy mountain slope in southwestern Sichuan, looking for panda poop.

To be precise, someone else was searching. 

My colleagues and I were just attempting to keep up with him on what was easily one of the more physically grueling NBC News assignments we’d all been on in years.

Li Guiren, a fleet-footed 36-year old Sichuan native who works at the Chinese Forestry Department, was hiking through the mud, following coordinates on his bright yellow GPS device.  He’s one of 70 “trackers” working in Sichuan to count pandas in the wild—which they do by collecting panda droppings.  (More on that in a moment.)

China kicked off its panda census last month.  It’s the fourth one since the 1970s, when they instituted the practice to keep tabs on the worldwide panda bear count every 10 years.

The wild panda is only found in China, across parts of three provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi, covering 5,400 square miles.  Or the size of Connecticut.

The bears like being high up, usually somewhere between 4,000 and 11,500 square feet above sea level in mountain forests with a damp climate.

The last census revealed only 1,596 wild pandas existed with 290 pandas in captivity around the world.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

Li Guiren takes notes on the geography on a Sichuan mountain.

“About 70 to 80 percent [of all the pandas in the world] live in Sichuan,” said Huang Zhi of the Bifengxia Panda Breeding Center in Ya’an, Sichuan.  “Sichuan also has the highest number of wild pandas.”

Trackers in the field
Sichuan is also where the two-year panda census project has launched.  Smaller teams in Gansu and Shaanxi will begin working in the field next year.

Early in the morning, a group of twenty men suited up in wet-weather clothes and thin boots.  They reviewed their cartographic materials and compared notes one last time before setting off.  Each one carried the same bright yellow GPS device Li was toting.

Li, who took part in the last panda census, said new technology has had a huge impact on their work.  “We can get a lot more done more quickly,” he said, with the GPS device shaving the amount of time in the field down by about 30 percent.

Each tracker is assigned a near-vertical tract of land to explore.  On average, they cover 1.2 to 1.5 square miles a day, looking for panda droppings.  (A typical male panda roams in a territory about 3.3 square miles whereas a female confines herself to 1.8 square miles.)  Li found a pile that looked like it had been produced within the past three days, which he bagged and brought back to base camp for analysis.

“We take a sample for DNA testing,” he said as he prepared the panda waste.  “The DNA test demands fresh feces not more than four days old.  This is very fresh.”

But DNA testing isn’t foolproof so Li and his colleagues also measured the undigested bamboo scraps to help identify the pandas individually.  “We measure the width of the teeth marks,” he explained.  Each bear has an individual bite with differing teeth sizes.

Habitat challenges
While in the panda’s natural habitat, the research teams also take detailed notes of the conditions and its geology. 

“What people normally care about is the number of the pandas,” said Gu Xiaodong, a scientist with the Sichuan branch of the Wildlife Survey Conservation and Management in the Forestry Department.  “We care more about the quality of their habitat.”

With the data the trackers are collecting, the scientists will be able to analyze changes to the habitat and "draw up more effective conservation policies," continued Gu.  “For example, last time we found pandas in locations between the reserves we had established,” he said.  “So we had to set up more reserves to protect these pandas.”

Adrienne Mong

Li Guiren and other researchers measure undigested bamboo in the panda droppings to help identify each animal.

Researchers also hope to have more detailed information about the impact of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which measured 7.9 (by the U.S. Geological Survey) and devastated the famed Wolong Giant Panda Reserve Center, one of the earliest research bases set up by the Chinese government in the early 1980s. 

But humans remain the biggest threat to the survival of wild pandas.

With more than 80 million people, Sichuan is one of China’s more densely populated provinces.  In recent years, it has seen large inflows of government investment and is rapidly urbanizing.  Scientists have cited roads and high-speed railways as a major hazard encroaching on the panda’s natural habitat in the mountains.

But mining is also a problem.  The day we trudged up the mountain with Li and Gu, we passed a couple of mines—one of them lead, whose run-off cast an unhealthy gray tinge to the river.  Loud explosions went off even during our hike, unsettling us as much as the pandas.

“The place where we are doing research now, it’s always been a traffic-intensive area with a lot of human activity,” said Gu.  “The pandas here probably choose to go higher.”

But they still sometimes descend into human territory, especially if it means getting something to eat other than bamboo plants. While the giant panda's diet consists mostly of bamboo, they do have the digestive system of carnivores. 

Gu confirmed that local farmers have regularly complained about pandas raiding their livestock.  “One farmer has his goats eaten by pandas every year,” recalled Gu, who said the Forestry Department offers compensation in such instances.

Mating challenges
Mating habits are also a challenge, particularly for pandas in captivity.

Female pandas are only in heat for three days a year.  The window for conceiving is very narrow—from 12 to 24 hours during those 72 hours.

Adrienne Mong / NBC News

The panda's natural habitat is a rugged landscape, but it's also being encroached by China's westward development.

Pandas in the wild don’t generally have a problem reproducing, said Huang from the breeding center.  But those in captivity usually need a bit of help—whether through artificial insemination or even the famed panda porn method.

Despite the success in breeding the cuddly animals in captivity, there’s been none so far in re-introducing fully domesticated pandas into the wild.

Nonetheless, researchers say they think breeding programs and conservation efforts have worked to keep the panda from advancing any closer to extinction.

“We really hope once the census is done, we’ll find more pandas than we found in the last census,” said Li.  “That will mean what we’ve been doing has made progress.”

And if the scientists are right, that will make at least one civilian very happy.

A man by the name of An Yanshi in Sichuan is collecting panda poop by the bucket-loads to make tea—with curative properties.

“Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 percent of everything they eat,” An has been quoted as saying.  “That means their excrement is rich in fibres and nutrients.”

He plans to market the tea as the world’s most expensive—at $36,000 a poop.  A pop.  A pound.

BEIJING – When news emerged that a vehicle carrying 64 people but designed for only nine had collided with a truck on Wednesday morning in the northwestern province of Gansu, it was hard not to wonder, "How in the world did they fit all those passengers into a tiny vehicle??"

Well, wonder no more.  Apparently, it is common practice in the countryside.  This video – which Ed Flanagan posted two months ago – is worth putting up again as it shows just how they do it in rural China.

In the video, 66 really cute children are jammed into a van that normally only holds six.  

Fortunately, their vehicle gets stopped by police, who proceed to unload the van in the middle of traffic.  The children are then bundled into police vans in much smaller groups and driven home.  In one scene, towards the end, a policeman looks as though he's berating a parent for allowing the child to travel in such unsafe conditions.

Despite the video, Wednesday's accident was no laughing matter.  The collision killed 18 children and two adults on board.  Most of the students were only 5 or 6 years old.

The accident has triggered an outcry among many ordinary Chinese, who have criticized the government for failing to provide better care for students in the countryside.  Parents of Wednesday's victims were quoted in local media as saying they'd worried about safety every time their children boarded the makeshift school bus, but that they had no choice if they wanted to send them to school.

BEIJING – As the deadline approaches for paying a whopping tax bill of $2.4 million, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has collected nearly half that amount from supporters across China.

“I’m very surprised,” said the 54-year old Ai in his studio in northeastern Beijing.  “I never really [wanted] people to donate anything to us.”

Last Tuesday, the authorities presented the bill to his company, known as Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd, and issued a deadline of November 15.  Fake, which is registered in the name of Ai’s wife, manages the artist’s affairs.  The government is seeking the back taxes and fines based on tax evasion charges they made earlier this year against Ai during his 81-day detention in an undisclosed location.

Ai immediately turned to his apparent favorite medium of expression these days, the Internet, to solicit donations from followers. 

An unorthodox way of fundraising
While the artist said he has the means to find the money himself to pay the tax bill, he wanted to bring attention to how the government is treating him.  Ai’s family and supporters have maintained that the tax evasion charges come as retaliation for his constant attacks on the Chinese central government.

Ai has said he considers the donations a “loan” and intends to pay everyone back.  

The donations have come in many shapes and sizes.  Roughly 25,000 people have sent in donations by Alipay (a Chinese version of PayPal), money orders, and cash–wrapped around fruit or folded as paper planes thrown over the garden wall into his compound.

Eric Baculinao

Ai Weiwei gives journalists the latest tally of donations that have been streaming in since last week.

“Society should be more tolerant,” said Zhao Yangping, a retired engineer living in Beijing.  We found her leaving the studio, where she had just donated some money on behalf of relatives from overseas who wanted to show their support for Ai.  “Why should the government be so nervous?  He deserves more freedom.  The government is too harsh on him, too sensitive.”

The government maintains otherwise.

In the state-run newspaper, The Global Times, an editorial questioned whether Ai’s unorthodox response was legal, “Since he's borrowing from the public, it at least looks like illegal fund-raising.”

It also looks like people – even if still a small fraction given the size of China's population – are taking a stand in the battle between Ai and the government.  "It is obviously…about that,” Ai said.  “It’s about how people vote with very [limited] possibilities….  We use our money to vote.  It’s our ticket.”

Collateral damage?
Despite initial reports stating that he was unsure yet about whether to pay the fine and back taxes, Ai confirmed to NBC News he would do so by next Tuesday.

“I think we have to,” he said.  “If you don’t pay, then you violate another law….  And it’s not me now, they are not aiming at me.  The tax company said it’s not you.  It’s the company.  In the company, there are several people [who are] innocent.”

Nonetheless, innocent people are affected by Ai’s activism.

On the day NBC News visited Ai, a young woman was waiting to confer with him about a predicament.

Wu Hongfei, a writer-journalist whose main passion she says is singing for her rock band, Happy Avenue, had just learned a concert for a birthday party this weekend had been cancelled.

“The authorities told Yugong Yishan [a public concert venue] that they cannot hold the performance,” she said.  Managers at the club were not given any explanation, according to Wu, but she reckoned it had to do with their decision to give out sunflower seeds to ticket buyers as “a special birthday gift” from Wu to her audience.

Harmless or odd as it might seem, the gesture could be interpreted by authorities as an overt show of support for Ai. 

“Sunflower Seeds” is the name of a major installation Ai mounted late last year at the Tate Modern, a prestigious museum in London.  It was still on display in April, when the artist was detained in Beijing, and drew even more widespread attention as a result of his arrest.

Wu has already had one other concert shut down by local officials—again no reason was given although she suspects it’s because of her association with Ai.

“This is irrational.  We’re not even that close friends.  I don’t bother the government.  I don’t even understand politics,” she said.  “If I can’t perform, then what can I do?  I really love my band.”

Read more reports in Behind the Wall on Ai Weiwei

The show goes on in New York, minus detained Chinse artist

SLIDESHOW of Ai Weiwei's work

EN ROUTE BACK TO BEIJING -- We like to lament the state of Chinese television.  It's pretty awful.

But then there's Hunan TV.  With its hit reality TV shows, it's possibly the nation's most popular broadcaster and reaches millions of viewers.

And just based on this one video, one can see why.

A bunch of Chinese senior citizens doing a cover of "Bad Romance."  Yes, the one by Lady Gaga.

Some things need no words.

Adrienne Mong

Xin Xin paid $200,000 in cash for her Porsche, which NBC cameraman David Lom films.

BEIJING – Xin Xin is a 24-year-old west Beijing native who runs her own media consultancy.

In 2006, she bought a limited edition Mini Cooper GP.  Only three of them exist in China.  Two years later, with her parents’ help, she forked over $200,000 in cash for a pink Porsche Cayman.  "I like the lines of the car," she said.  "It's very pretty....  And I like changing gears so you can accelerate very quickly." 

It's extraordinary enough to hear that someone this young in a nation still making the transition from a low-income to a middle-income economy can buy a top-shelf German sports car.  (In cash! In a city with Beijing's traffic problems!)

But what's more remarkable, for retailers and advertisers, is that Xin Xin’s not the only one.  In fact, many other young Chinese women are snapping up high-performance sports cars.  (One woman named Guo Meimei was pilloried after she posted on China's Twitter-like service, Sina Weibo, photos of herself with some of her cars, including a Maserati and a Lamborghini.  At the time, she claimed to be working for the Red Cross Society of China, which triggered a flurry of Netizen speculation that she was siphoning funds, the Red Cross was corrupt, or she was the mistress of some official.)

Fiat – whose Maserati brand now counts China as its second biggest market after the U.S. – says 30 percent of its Maserati customers in the mainland are women – far greater than the percentage of women buyers in Europe or the U.S., which ranges from 2 to 5 percent.  

The number of women who buy Ferraris in China is double the global average.  About 300 models were sold in the mainland in 2010, with women accounting for 20 percent of the sales. 

"[Women] are  much more involved in China about buying the car: the look, the feel, the actual decision to buy the car," said Matthew Bennett, Asia-Pacific Director at Aston Martin. 

But they're not just, ahem, steering the decision on what family car to purchase.   

They're buying high-performance sports cars for themselves.

"The culture is very different," said Angelica Cheung, Editorial Director of Vogue China.  "A lot of women in China are very independent women....  They really made their own fortune.  They earned their own success.  And they just feel that, I can have what men have." 

Indeed.  Xin Xin, who takes her cars out regularly to a local track to race other drivers, said, "We Chinese girls not only have a heart of girls, we also have a wild heart for driving sports cars.  You can feel the charm of racing cars just like boys do." 

Which drives sports car aficionado Paolo Gasparrini, well, a little nuts.

"I am thinking of my country, Italy, you don't give your sports car to your wife, frankly speaking, not so easy, here it's easy," he said.  On a regular basis, Gasparrini sees young Chinese women driving a high-performance sports model around the streets of Shanghai. 

"You see much more here than in Europe, [where] we have a different attitude about car[s]," he continued.  "The men, we are very jealous about [our] cars....  But here it's fantastic.  It's very, very open." 

Role reversal
In fact, as president of L'Oreal China, Gasparrini thinks the average Chinese luxury consumer is very open to displaying symbols of wealth and power in ways that their European or American counterparts might be a little shy about. 

"I think that in the Chinese culture there is not a taboo" about men spending time and money on grooming products, he said.  Ten years ago, such products were virtually nonexistent in China.  Today, it's an industry worth nearly $800 million.  

"Nobody pulls your leg if you take care of your face...so little by little more and more Chinese men use [these grooming] products," said Gasparrini, whose company dominates the men's sector with its Biotherm and L'Oreal Paris lines.  In fact, 30 percent of Biotherm's overall sales come from its men's skincare products. 

They're consumed by Chinese men like Jacky Sun, an ebullient young Shanghai native who had just purchased a Biotherm skin cleanser.  "More and more of my friends like to use these things, because they think it's very important...to leave a good impression on other people," he said. 

A recent survey by the Hurun Group, a consultancy which tracks China’s wealthy elite, finds that these impressions are critical to the rich.  

“Chinese luxury consumers are in general younger, many under 40 years old….  Furthermore, they are mainly new rich, with a rather short history of luxury consumption.  Therefore, the social function of luxury goods is most important to them,” according to the GroupM Knowledge—Hurun Wealth Report 2011.

But some luxury goods also serve a practical function.   

The 'man bag'
Going back to our young Shanghai native, Sun possesses another important status accessory – the man-bag. 

"The purse?  My friend says that's a purse," laughed Sun as he held up his small shoulder bag.  "This way I can make my hands free, and it can take my wallet, my key, small stuff, so I like it....  Sometimes my friends from America will tease me that it's a purse, a woman's purse, but I still like it.  I don't care." 

As a report by the Los Angles Times put it, “Luxury leather goods makers can't believe their luck:  Both sexes in the world's most populous country adore purses.” 

“Our survey shows about thirty percent of male consumers buy bags or shoes regularly,” said Mao Mao Xun, Beauty Director at Men’s Health China.  Moreover, “Chinese men have a different view of masculinity from that in the West.” 

A random sampling of interviews with young men in central Beijing suggests the practical benefits of toting around a small handbag outweigh any Western conventions of masculinity.   

Jing, who did not want to give his full name, was toting a leather clutch during a visit to Sanlitun Village one Saturday afternoon.  It was given to him by his mother, and he raved about its functionality.  Other men said they’d rather wear a shoulder bag than have a bulky wallet and cell phone jammed into their pockets. 

“Given the commuting nature of our Chinese consumer, we find that cross-body bags, bags that hang over their body, are much more popular than they would be here in the United States,” said Victor Luis, President of Coach International Retail, which has designed special editions for the China market.  In fact, male consumers make up half of Coach’s mainland China sales of premium handbag and accessories. 

And it’s not just Coach.  All the foreign luxury brands sell well in China. 

”Bags are very discernible,” said Mao.  “You can easily tell the brand by a bag.  Many Chinese buy these products to be known, to be noticed.” 

There’s no question these young consumers get noticed.

Xin Xin, the owner of the Pink Porsche, is already working on her next purchase. 

"Lamborghini," she said confidently. 

And this time she's planning to buy it with her own cash.

PU'ER, YUNNAN PROVINCE – The name of this area is synonymous with the delicate leaf prized by tea aficionados in China and beyond.   

For at least 2,000 years, families have cultivated Pu'er tea in the rolling hills of Yunnan, bordering Myanmar. 

The tea is known for its intense earthy flavor, which devotees say improves with age.  However, it’s also valued for reputed health benefits: the ability to lower cholesterol and high blood pressure, reduce fat, and cleanse the liver of toxins.

All this led to crazy auction prices few years ago.  Reports in 2007 suggested some aged vintages of Pu’er were going for as much as $10,000 for 10 grams (0.35 ounces).

One year later, that bubble burst.  The market for this special fermented tea collapsed after a buying frenzy turned into a selling spree by unscrupulous wholesalers who had driven up prices artificially.

Many farmers who were caught up in the frenzy were left with nearly worthless supplies of tea, but many others had carefully spread their risk.

To coffee.

Adrienne Mong

A tea farmer in Pu'er, where the climate and topography also favors the production of coffee.

Nestle comes to Yunnan
In 1988, Yunnan produced 1,500 tons of coffee beans.  This year, it’s expected to produce 35,000 tons, and that figure could double in five years. Coffee is now the province’s third-largest export product after tobacco and flowers.

“Before I started growing coffee, I couldn’t afford a house like the one I live in now,” said Wang Zhongxue, a robust 72-year-old who cuts a striking figure with his machete.  “My house back then was made of mud and the living conditions were terrible.  When it rained outside, it rained inside, too.”

Last year, Wang earned around $18,000 from his coffee plants.  Chinese farmers on average earn about $900 a year.

The toothy farmer said he was introduced to the idea of growing coffee back in 1992 by experts, both Chinese and foreign.  “They taught us the whole system,” he said.

Some of them came from Nestle, the Swiss foods giant.

“We are in a mountainous area, the climate is good, so it’s a suitable area to grow coffee,” said Wouter De Smet, manager of the Nestle Agricultural Service based in Pu’er. 

As early as 1988, Nestle decided to support the cultivation of Arabica beans in Yunnan and has been working closely with local officials to develop the company's program.

“We are working with the farmers on a [relationship basis]…so we give training and technical assistance to the farmers, which is completely free to the farmers,” explained De Smet.  Training and assistance includes everything from growing to processing to marketing.

Roughly 80 percent of the farmers selling beans to Nestle are small scale, "smaller than three hectares," (approximately seven acres) according to De Smet.  During the last season, after the harvest (September-February), the smallest farm delivered Nestle five pounds whereas the largest farm delivered 413 tons.

“We buy directly from the farmer without need of the middleman or the local trader,” said De Smet.  That way, Nestle can better monitor the quality of the coffee beans – half of which are exported to Nestle factories worldwide and the other half goes to its factories in Dongguan.

The tasting center inside the Nestle compound in Pu’er was tiny, but the first thing we saw was a table with cups of coffee on top and spittoons next to each chair for the Nestle tasting panel. 

Two or three other colleagues joined De Smet in blind taste tests to check the quality. 

Adrienne Mong

Coffee beans are laid out to dry in a Dai village in Pu'er. The Dai are an ethnic minority in Yunnan.

On any given day, they might taste-test 150 cups.

“We are not drinking,” De Smet emphasized.

If the beans fall below Nestle’s standards, the delivery is rejected, but De Smet said they also try to advise the farmer how to make improvements.

If the coffee passes muster, the farmer is paid right on the spot – either in cash or by bank transfer, depending on the amount.

The allure of 'black gold'
Understanding and tracking coffee prices is another skill Nestle provides to the farmers.

"Our farmers are becoming speculators," said De Smet, only half-jokingly.

Nestle announces coffee prices every Monday and Thursday via text message to all the farmers' cellphones. 

"We also get 150 to 200 calls from other farmers checking on the price," he said.  "It's up to the farmer to decide whether to sell.  There is no contract.  The farmers are free to choose."

Wang, the elderly farmer, said his daughter and her friends track coffee prices on computers.  “When the price goes up, we know it immediately,” he said. 

Adrienne Mong

A Nestle lab worker prepares coffee beans for a taste test.

Sometimes dubbed “black gold,” coffee is the second most widely traded commodity after oil.  And in the past year, coffee prices have gone up nearly 92 percent on major exchanges around the world. 

“Some farmers are worried that coffee prices have risen so high now,” said Li. Zhongheng, director of the Pu’er City Experiment Demo Coffee Farm.  “They remember the Pu’er bubble," he said, referring to the fall in tea prices.

Li, an agriculture official who retired 10 years ago, started training local farmers in the region on how to grow coffee.  His farm is part of the province's more recent efforts to encourage farmers in Pu’er to try growing coffee – as outlined in the Pu'er and Yunnan governments' five-year plans.

But “we don’t encourage tea farmers to stop growing tea and switch to coffee,” said Li.  “We don’t support that.”

In fact, the farmers we visited were growing other cash crops in addition to coffee.  Wang has mango trees, which also help to shade and protect his coffee plants. 

Chen Bing, a 40-year-old farmer, abandoned corn and rice, mostly because they were too water-intensive, but he also farms tea in addition to coffee.  “We depend on coffee when the weather is dry and on tea when the weather is too wet,” he said.

Starbucks’ “seed-to-cup” strategy
Late last year, Starbucks announced it was going to get into the game and set up a government base farm in cooperation with Yunnan local officials.  The plantation will also include a development center farmer support center, and processing facilities.

“The purpose of that [is] really to demonstrate how to grow coffee in an environmentally friendly and socially responsible [way] and also how to improve the coffee farmers’ life," said Wang Jinlong, president and chairman of Starbucks Greater China. He added, "And really try to show and demonstrate…how to increase the yield.” 

Adrienne Mong

Wang Zhongxue's family members sort through the "green beans" of this year's harvest.

And to ensure a steady supply of beans for the American coffee retailer – also the world's largest. 

Since entering the mainland market in 1999, Starbucks has nearly 450 stores in China itself and plans to triple that number to 1,500 by 2015.  In 2009, the company introduced to its customers a coffee blend that includes beans grown in Yunnan, “South of the Clouds.”  

The Yunnan coffee farm project marks the first time Starbucks is growing its own coffee directly – working with local farmers to grow and cultivate the crop – instead of just buying it locally or globally. 

“It is our seed-to-cup overall supply chain strategy which will really back…our idea of making China a second home market,” said Wang.

Back in Pu'er, some farmers have taken to brewing their homegrown product.

For visitors, though.

Although De Smet and my colleagues all enjoy the taste of Yunnan coffee, the farmers have yet to embrace it in their diet.

“Sometimes I can’t get to sleep after I’ve had coffee,” said Wang Zhongxue, the farmer.  “So I still drink tea.”

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent

TRIPOLI – Even from a remote perch in Libya, we heard about the horrific story making waves in China.

Last Thursday, a two-year-old girl crossing a street by herself in the city of Foshan in China’s southern Guangdong Province was hit by a car. The driver paused briefly as the girl lay between the front and rear wheels and then tore off, thumping her now-limp body again. 

Soon after, a second vehicle rolled over the girl, with the driver presumably unaware that a body lay on the road. The second driver also did not stop.

As if both these acts were not outrageous enough, 18 more people – on foot, on motorbikes, or on bicycles – passed by the girl, lying inert on the ground, and did nothing. Even a mother with her own child ignored the victim.

(Warning the video is very graphic, but it can seen here from a Chinese broadcast or here from the BBC).

It wasn’t until a female trash collector saw her and proceeded to pick the girl up that she was moved to the side of the road. The trash collector asked passers-by who the girl belonged to, and eventually the mother appeared, distraught, to claim her daughter named Yueyue.

All of this was caught on surveillance cameras. A clip was posted on China’s popular micro blog, Sina Weibo on Sunday, generating a huge outcry as netizens counted the number of people who glanced at the girl and ignored her plight – all in the seven minutes she lay on the road until the Good Samaritan carried her to safety.

The story, which has been a leading headline on all of China’s news sites, touched a nerve in the country, with many decrying the lack of moral standards and general disregard for fellow human beings.

One report quoted the first driver as saying, “If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan."

Some news reports and online discussions made the point that civil behavior is not always rewarded in China. Many people fear they’re being subject to some sort of scam while others remember still a well-known case from 2006, when a man helped a woman who had fallen only to have her accuse him of causing the injury to begin with.  She filed a suit against him, in which the judge ruled the man wouldn’t have come to her aid had he not caused the fall.

State-run news agency Xinhua has reported both drivers of the vehicles that ran over the girl have been apprehended by police.

Yueyue, meanwhile, is in critical condition with serious brain injuries, breathing with the help of a ventilator. Her parents are asking eyewitnesses to come forward with any additional information.

The story of Yueyue’s hit-and-run stands in stark contrast to another story that picked up steam online over the weekend.

Last Friday afternoon, a woman fell into a scenic tourist lake in Hangzhou, the capital of the eastern province of Zhejiang. A Western woman who was walking by saw the Chinese woman struggling and quickly jumped into West Lake to save her. 

After swimming back to shore, the foreigner dragged her onto the bank. The victim remained conscious and appeared out of danger. Police turned up ten minutes later, and the Western woman left quietly. Several websites reported she was American.

What was notable in this instance was the response of those who read the story online.

In addition to giving the rescuer high praise (“That American girl is great, she has a beautiful character”), people also made unfavorable comparisons to Chinese behavior:

“According to Chinese laws and regulations, if she hadn’t pushed the girl into the water, why ever would she save her?”

Thanks to China Digital Times for the translations.

Adrienne Mong is NBC’s Beijing correspondent. She is on assignment in Libya.

Nerissa Michaels / AP

This early Dec. 2009 photo provided by the Illinois River Biological Station via the Detroit Free Press shows Illinois River silver carp jumping out of the water. Many fear that the Asian carp, which can reach 4 feet long and weigh up to 100 pounds, will wreak havoc, not by attacking native fish, but starving them out by gobbling up plankton.

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News

BEIJING –They are a feared species, threatening to invade America’s Midwest and cause the collapse of an ecosystem and a $7 billion industry.

They prompted one U.S. lawmaker to say, “We are not in a go-slow mode. We are in a full attack, full-speed-ahead mode.”

“They” are Asian carp.

The fish were imported from Southeast Asia in the 1970s to help clean ponds at wastewater treatment facilities and fish farms in the American South. 

But they escaped into the Missouri and Illinois rivers during flooding of the Mississippi River. A twenty-pound Asian carp measuring three feet long was found just six miles south of Lake Michigan in July 2010.

Biologists worry that the invasive fish will starve native ones to death. A hardy creature that breeds easily and with no natural predators in the U.S., the Asian carp can eat up to 40 percent of its body weight in plankton every day.

Concern is so great that Asian carp have been “the subject of state lawsuits, EPA and Congressional hearings, and U.S. Supreme Court motions,” according to a U.S.-based environment magazine.

A task force comprising more than 20 state, regional, and federal officials monitors the fish’s every move.

There’s even a carp czar, appointed by the White House, to oversee the $80 million federal effort to keep the Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes. 

But the state of Illinois has a simpler solution.

Send them to China.

Shu teamed up with Ross Harano, who had just stepped down as Illinois trade director, to find a way to persuade Chinese to buy Asian carp from the state.

The problem was one that anyone who’s ever set foot in a Chinese restaurant knows: the Chinese like their seafood fresh. That’s what the restaurant aquariums are for – to keep fish and shellfish alive until the very last minute.

The Asian carp from Illinois were going to be sold frozen; moreover, they were too pricey for local Chinese consumers.

So Harano, who is now Director for International Marketing at Big River Fish, found himself mapping out a marketing strategy that ultimately made more economic sense than simply just trying to pit their frozen product against local varieties sold live in China.

Coining the term “wild-caught” to market the Illinois carp, Big River Fish try to emphasize its freshness. 

“There are no pollutants,” said Harano in a conversation with NBC News. “The fish feed on algae in Illinois rivers. They have a very non-muddy taste.”

“We sell it as a high-end fish to high-end restaurants, so the cost is not an issue,” he said. In particular, Big River Fish is ringing up sales mostly in northern China. “There’s a better market for fish like this in northern China than down south,” he added.

In July 2010, the Beijing Zuochen Animal Husbandry Co. agreed to buy Asian carp from Big River Fish. The aim was to ship at least 30 million pounds of fish by the end of this year. The small start-up from Illinois could make $20 million a year exporting the carp to China.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, you eat ‘em,” said Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn at a much heralded signing ceremony.

The deal seems an elegant solution to a worrying ecological problem. 

But it also appears to address, in a more modest way, another issue: unemployment. 

With a state grant of $2 million, Big River Fish is in the final stages of acquiring a new 10,000-square foot plant in Pike County, to which it will add another 30,000-square feet, enabling it to reach its export target.

The new plant is not the 80,000-square foot facility Big River Fish had hoped to purchase back in March, owing to a paperwork glitch. The hiccup put the company “behind track” on its timetable, CEO Lisa McKee acknowledged to NBC News.

Once the new plant is secured – hopefully by Nov. 1, according to McKee and President Rick Smith – Big River Fish will increase its plant work force from 12 to 61.  An additional 120 jobs will come from hiring more fishermen to harvest more carp.  Not insignificant, says Harano, for a county of 17,000 people that in 2010 registered more than 10 percent unemployment.

Slowly creating jobs via China
The Big River Fish deal exemplifies the kind of salesmanship Quinn wants for his state. He continued to tout the culinary advantages of Illinois carp even last month during a rare trip to China.

“We have wonderful rivers in our state,” he told NBC News just before dashing off to attend a special carp luncheon. “Some of the freshest waters in the country, and the Asian carp we have are big and meaty. We catch them wild, and we ship them to China.”

Quinn peddled other Illinois specialties during his eight-day trip through China – with the aim of drumming up business, jobs creation, and investments in his home state.

In a major coup, he persuaded Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., a top wind turbine manufacturer in northwestern China, to build a $200-million wind farm in Lee County, which will provide electricity to some 25,000 homes. 

It’s the largest U.S. project to date for Goldwind, and the Illinois governor stressed that it will create a dozen permanent jobs and more than 100 construction jobs.

Another deal announced on Quinn’s trip was for Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to sell 180,000 tons of soybeans to China by the end of next year – a deal worth about $50 million. China already buys a quarter of all U.S. soybeans and is Illinois’ third largest exports destination.

Chinese trade & economic reforms critical
But there are skeptics about just how much Quinn and others can recoup his state’s job losses and whether these minute steps towards creating jobs by boosting exports will be enough.

There seems to be consensus among most pundits in Washington that selling more American goods to growing economies, like China, will mean more jobs. 

But getting more U.S. goods into China requires a few substantive reforms on the part of Beijing, skeptics say. 

One of those measures is currency reform, and the Chinese central government is balking at Washington’s efforts to get it to move more aggressively to strengthen the yuan against the U.S. dollar.  A weak yuan makes Chinese exports cheaper and imports from the U.S. and other countries more expensive.

More specifically, for Illinois, a survey from the Economic Policy Institute found that the Land of Lincoln lost 118,200 jobs in the past decade as a result of the U.S. trade deficit with China. 

In particular, traditional manufacturing industries took the brunt of the job losses: auto parts production, fabricated metal products, electronics, and specialty steel – areas in which the Chinese have sought to compete.

“Increases in the bilateral trade deficit with China will lead to growing trade-related job displacement in Illinois for some time to come,” said Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute survey, unless Beijing reforms its trade and economic policies – particularly on the Chinese currency. 

“Until those policies are reformed,” he wrote in an email to NBC News.  “The growth of imports and job displacement will vastly exceed the growth of export-supporting jobs for Illinois, and all other U.S. states.”