The Specials

Riot police battle protesters as China crisis escalates

Hundreds of Uighur Muslims confront heavily-armed police demanding release of family members

Palau president: American aid is just a coincidence

President of Pacific nation says $200 million in American aid did not influence decision to take 13 Uigher detainees

China’s parents try shock tactics to cure net ‘addicts’

Chinese teenagers hooked on the internet are being subjected to electro-shock therapy to free them of their obsession

Twenty six people killed in China landslide

Rescuers search for survivors as another disaster hits Chonqing area, hitting iron ore plant and several homes

Sri Lanka's role in power struggle

For a tiny, teardrop-shaped fragment in the Indian Ocean, the island of Sri Lanka punches far above its political weight

Lawyers silenced as Tiananmen date looms

Authorities' failure to renew licences is part of carefully orchestrated government campaign, say human rights lawyers

Kidnappers swoop on China’s girls

The Chinese government's one-child policy has led to a shortage of females that criminal gangs are ruthlessly exploiting

Beijing blocks dissident website

Online version of magazine that publishes articles by political prisoner is firewalled days before Tiananmen anniversary

Tiananmen Square, 20 years on

Two decades after the brutal Chinese crackdown on students in Beijing, we talk to some of the witnesses and survivors

Big beasts take sides in zoos' panda war

Documents reveals how two royals and Boris Johnson have raced to woo China for a pair of the iconic animals

Tiananmen ‘hooligan’ freed after 20 years

Liu Zhihua organised a strike in Chairman Mao’s home town; 30 others remain in jail for their part in the uprising

China inches towards closer ties with Japan

China tenatively commits to improving relationship with Second World War enemy during Taro Aso's visit to Beijing

Four Rio Tinto staff detained in China

The Anglo-Australian mining group said that four of its workers have been detained in Shanghai for reason that were 'unclear'

City style: Shanghai

Shopping, eating and sleeping in China’s second city

Second time in China? Head to remote Guizhou

The shamans and entrancing landscapes of the Guizhou cast a spell on Stanley Stewart

A British coffee shop on a mountain in China

British expat and author Mark Kitto left Shanghai to open a coffee shop three hours away. No-one would come, he was told