China

Philadelphia will be the US Airways hub for nonstop flights to Asia if the airline launches service to China, Japan or Turkey, airline officials said. Currently, the only nonstop flight to Asia from Philadelphia International Airport is a US Airways flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. Philadelphia is the largest metro area in the country without nonstop service to other cities in Asia. Service to Beijing, Istanbul or Narita, Japan, will await the delivery of new long-distance planes in the next several years and would also depend on fuel costs and government approvals, officials said.

Shelly Fisher's world is dominated by the unfashionable. Not people, but the illnesses and other medical conditions that plague them. Diabetes, heart disease, peanut allergies. There's nothing stylish about any of it. Except, perhaps, for the contributions the Villanova mother of three has made over the last nine years on her way to building an internationally known company. Hope Paige Designs L.L.C., operating out of cluttered third-floor space in a West Conshohocken office building, creates medical-identification bracelets with a twofold purpose: to save lives and be chic (or cool, depending on the targeted age group)

Cheap labor in China helped make Apple Inc. the richest company in the world. But those days are nearing an end, says Marshall Mayer, veteran Wharton School management professor and regular visitor to America's top competitor. "Things are happening to drive up manufacturing costs in China," Mayer tells me. One, there's the "incipient labor shortage. " China (like Mexico, Brazil, and other fast-growing economies) temporarily benefited from the shift to small families, with more workers and fewer dependent seniors and babies.

The fates of the United States and China have become linked in ways no one could have imagined 30 years ago. The two countries' economies have become so intertwined that historian Niall Ferguson has coined the term Chimerica . We buy China's goods, and the Chinese funnel billions of dollars back to support our deficit. They are a fast-rising power whose cooperation we need. Yet Chinese and American images of each other are frequently negative or misconstrued, and such misunderstandings can endanger relations.

BEIJING - A cacophony of piano music spills from the 14 lesson rooms at the Piano City music store as a big digital clock in a waiting area counts down the time on lessons. On this Sunday, more than 100 students will file in and out for music lessons, including 11-year-old Jesse Cheng. Her parents say families in China are keen to train their children in music, especially piano or violin, to give them an edge in life. "This may be helpful in the future," said Frank Cheng, who owns an information-technology company.

The U.S. women's soccer team will play China in an exhibition May 27 at PPL Park in Chester, in preparation for the London Olympics. "We are pleased to welcome back the U.S. women's national team to PPL Park," said Nick Sakiewicz, CEO and operating partner of Keystone Sports and Entertainment. "This is the third time that we have hosted a U.S. Soccer match and we are proud to be one of the final stops for the [women] before they head off to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau deserves praise for enthusiastic preparations to make guests welcome during the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution, but it may have slipped in its latest report on the subject that begins: "When you hear that company's coming, you reach for the vacuum cleaner, the furniture polish, the newest china and your best smile. " Shouldn't that be oldest china? On a very special occasion you bring out the heirlooms.

The White House inched away yesterday from President Bush's unequivocal support of renewed trade breaks for China, suggesting that it might require China to curb human-rights abuses in exchange for the low tariffs. The unusual backpedaling came after Bush surprised aides Wednesday by telling reporters he wanted to continue most-favored-nation trading status for China - a highly controversial issue in Congress. Bush made his comments nearly three weeks before he was to make a formal decision on trade with China, and White House aides said he had not been presented with options on the matter.

When Judith Shapiro first visited China in 1977, fresh from graduate school, she packed a few misconceptions. She viewed Chinese society as almost utopian. Instead of realizing that people were doing back-breaking physical labor and had little to eat, she thought everyone seemed thin and fit. After returning from one of her yearly trips to China three weeks ago, Shapiro said she was frustrated but fascinated by China - a country isolated in the world and yearning to break free.

China's detention of New York Times Peking correspondent John F. Burns contradicts its efforts to portray itself as a society open to ideas, trade and tourism from the west. Mr. Burns, held nearly a week without being charged with any offense, and four days before being allowed visitors, is reportedly suspected of entering an area off limits to foreigners and spying during a recent motorcycle trip he took to central China. Mr. Burns' arrest seems like a throwback to China's worst days of deep suspicion of the West.

The maker of K'nex toys has long manufactured many of its products in America, and it pushed that as a key marketing message in 2007, after safety concerns arose about toys made in China. But the family-owned company in Montgomery County decided it needed to do more as the U.S. economy slumped, and it chose to move one of its key operations from China to the United States. "It started as a moral decision," K'nex Brands L.P. chief executive Michael Araten told the 375 people who attended a "Made in America" program presented by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce at the Hilton Philadelphia City Avenue on Wednesday morning.

The blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng, who had been at the center of a diplomatic row between the U.S. and Chinese governments, completed a four-week journey from confinement in a rural Chinese village to the freedom of New York City, arriving Saturday night after a flight from Beijing with his wife and two children. Three weeks after taking refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Chen arrived to study law at New York University. Chen has said he hopes he will end up back in China doing legal reform, but he could end up in prolonged and frustrating exile in the United States.

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War By Stephen R. Platt Alfred A. Knopf. 478 pp. $30 One of history's least-known conflicts for Westerners is also one of its bloodiest. China's Taiping Rebellion, from 1851 to 1864, is estimated to have killed 20 million to 30 million people, making it the most sanguinary internal war in human history. Americans, of course, tend to focus their historical attention during these years on the trauma of their own Civil War. Yet, as Stephen Platt observes in his well-researched, highly readable account of the Taiping movement, there are unsuspected connections linking the two conflicts.

BEIJING - With a series of quickly choreographed steps, the U.S. and China outlined a tentative deal Friday to send a blind legal activist to America for study and potentially bring a face-saving end to a delicate diplomatic crisis. The arrangements, if kept, promise to give Chen Guangcheng much of what he wanted: a chance to live with his family in safety and to get a formal legal education. It would also allow Washington and Beijing to put aside a rancorous human rights dispute to focus on managing their rivalry for global influence.

Given the growth of China's robust economy, the Chinese clearly know how to make money. They aren't quite as good at giving it away. In 2010, America's 308.7 million people contributed $290.98 billion to charity. In China, where the population topped 1.3 billion, donations reached a mere $16.4 billion, according to an official Chinese website, China.org.cn. "China still needs to cultivate the nation's awareness of philanthropy and set up a more complete system to develop the cause," Minister of Civil Affairs Li Liguo said in announcing new charity regulations in March.

Cheap labor in China helped make Apple Inc. the richest company in the world. But those days are nearing an end, says Marshall Mayer, veteran Wharton School management professor and regular visitor to America's top competitor. "Things are happening to drive up manufacturing costs in China," Mayer tells me. One, there's the "incipient labor shortage. " China (like Mexico, Brazil, and other fast-growing economies) temporarily benefited from the shift to small families, with more workers and fewer dependent seniors and babies.

No screenwriter could have dreamed up the saga of the blind Chinese human-rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng, a story so dramatic that it threatens to upend U.S.-Chinese relations - but offers China's leaders a unique chance to promote legal reforms. Here's the saga so far: Chen angered local officials by helping the villagers of Linyi, who were protesting illegal forced abortions. After years of brutal mistreatment by local officials, during which he became a Chinese - and international - human-rights hero, Chen made a dramatic escape from unlawful house arrest.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton headed Tuesday to Beijing, where a tense human-rights showdown awaits over the fate of a blind Chinese lawyer said to be under U.S. protection after escaping from house arrest. The issue of Chen Guangcheng's future threatens to overshadow this year's round of high-level strategic and economic talks between the world's two biggest economic powers. Talks begin Thursday. Publicly, the U.S. and Chinese governments have said nothing about the Chen case.

WASHINGTON - The blind Chinese lawyer at the center of a diplomatic storm between Washington and Beijing is a taboo topic in each capital. Neither side wants the biggest human-rights issue between the two since Tiananmen Square to disrupt strategic and economic talks set to begin Thursday. President Obama's administration and China's officials have signaled that the global economy, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan - issues in which millions of lives are at stake - have become far more important in U.S.-Chinese relations.

WASHINGTON - Less than a week before annual U.S.-Chinese diplomatic and economic talks, relations between the powers risked sharp deterioration Saturday with an escaped Chinese activist reportedly under American protection and a U.S. fighter-jet sale to Taiwan now being considered. Fellow activists say Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer who exposed forced abortions and sterilizations as part of China's one-child policy, fled house arrest a week ago and has sought protection at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.