A gas explosion tore through a state-run coal mine in northern China on Saturday, killing 42 people and leaving 66 others trapped underground as rescuers worked hastily to save them.

Chinese soldiers from the southern boomtown of Guangzhou who are newly assigned to Tibet will get a “special allowance” of up to 160,000 yuan (US$23,440) for serving there, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.

Bill Gross, who runs the world's biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said Chinese growth is likely to be hurt by an absence of consumer demand from trading partners such as the U.S.

The United States is seeking the release of a U.S. citizen detained in Beijing for two years, in a case similar to the detentions of Rio Tinto staff which launched an international debate over China's secrets laws.

China's yuan is undervalued by 20 percent, a Reuters poll shows on Friday, highlighting the case of President Barack Obama who this week pressed Beijing to allow the currency to rise.

China is passive on the value of the U.S. dollar as the level doesn't affect the nation's economy, central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said, rebuffing criticism that the government is devaluing the yuan.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he's “quite confident” China will move to relax controls on the value of the country's currency, the yuan, as its economy becomes less reliant on exports.

China thwarted efforts by the U.S. and the European Union to have World Trade Organization judges probe Chinese restrictions on raw-material exports, delaying for a month their complaint that the levies are discriminatory.

Hong Kong's personal bankruptcy filings fell in October to a one-year low as the city emerges from its worst slump since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.

Ruling Kuomintang Vice Chairman John Chiang met Thursday in the Chinese city of Xian with a Chinese elementary school girl who sent 20 Chinese yuan (NT$96) to help people in southern Taiwan who were affected by Typhoon Morakot in early August, a news agency in China reported that day.