Global Voices Online

Simon at Simon World looks at the Chinese government's decision this week to spurn the Vatican and appoint their own Bishops:

“Naturally, this debate boils right down to control over Chinese civil society, and whether the Chinese government will tolerate any form of civil pluralism or alternate authority hierarchies in the country, or whether the corporatist model it has adopted will dominate social and even religious life in China, in all its aspects, for the forseeable future.”

China Confidential's Confidential Reporter gives a second look at rapidly-deteriorating relations between the Communists in Beijing and the Catholics in the Vatican, preceded with one long dire post: at least twenty-four dead in a coal mine collapse in the Northwestern province of Shaanxi this past weekend, and toxic dumping in the Southwestern of Guangdong.

“Booming China is also Polluting China—an environmental nightmare on a scale that few foreigners can appreciate,” writes the anonymouse blogger. “On this note, officials in southern China reported Saturday that a chemical factory illegally discharged waste water into a river, affecting the drinking supply of about 40,000 people.”