Construction of a high-speed rail link between Yunnan province and neighboring Myanmar, part of a project to upgrade transport connections with Southeast Asian nations, will start in about two months, a top rail expert said.

The lawyer for a Chinese father who was jailed for organizing parents to fight for compensation after a tainted infant formula sickened their children says his client has dismissed his lawyers and apparently won't appeal his jail term.

Yang Haiyun, 57, who became a Buddhist in the late 1980s, tries to visit at least two sacred sites of Buddhism each year.

China executed a local official Friday, six years after he was convicted of illegally selling hundreds of Qing Dynasty imperial relics for about US$550,000, state media said.

Armless Chinese pianist Liu Wei is set to take his unusual skill on a world tour, showing off to a global audience his dexterity with his toes.

A man in southern China surrendered to police and confessed to killing five people and wounding a 10-year-old girl on Tuesday, Chinese state media said.

China will spend 30 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion) searching for domestic mineral deposits over the next five years in a bid to lessen its reliance on imported products, state media said Sunday.

Fire ripped through a shopping mall in northeast China, killing 19 people, state media said Saturday, as police detained the general manager of the complex for questioning.

Tan Jianguo and his wife are migrant workers who have lived in a dirty rundown alleyway in a Beijing suburb for the past 10 years, eking out a meager living for themselves and their two small children.

Rights groups demanded Friday that China end a wide-ranging crackdown on supporters of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, which has ensnared up to 100 activists, civil rights campaigners and scholars.