Chaos broke out in northern Hong Kong on Sunday night after groups of masked men rampaged through a train station and beat passengers with sticks and other weapons.

The assailants, mostly dressed in white T-shirts, seemed to target people who were returning from anti-government protests in downtown Hong Kong. At least 45 people were injured, including several journalists.

The attacks threaten to plunge the former British colony into further unrest. Some protesters have vowed to retaliate…

To get where she is today, Sun Ling has beaten long odds.

Born in a rural hamlet in central China’s Hunan province, Sun shot to Chinese social media stardom for her rags-to-relative-comfort career trajectory.

Her story begins in a household of such modest means that her mother had to sell blood to make ends meet and a primary school education interrupted by the need for her hands in the family’s fields.

She has no fancy college degree, having gone to work on the assembly line at a Shenzhen…

Like many Chinese who live in the US, I relish the freedom of being able to use Google, Twitter and YouTube whenever I like.

This means I have no need to use virtual private networks (VPN) to “leap over” China’s Great Firewall, the way that my friends in China have to, in order to access uncensored social networks and news sites.

It is no secret that, because of China’s tight control over information, many of these sites are inaccessible from inside the country, unless you use a VPN. 

But…

Temperatures are rising, tensions are boiling over, and Hong Kong’s leaders are feeling the heat of the worst political unrest since Britain handed back its colonial jewel to China more than 20 years ago.

Since an estimated 2 million-plus people – more than a quarter of the city’s population – took to the streets last month to oppose a bill that would allow for extraditions to territories the city does not currently have agreements with, including – and most controversially – mainland China,…

China is embroiled in a debate about whether people with a history of mental illness should be allowed to use public transportation, which was sparked by an incident last week at Air China.

The airline was criticized after an off-duty employee made a scene during a flight and accused three passengers of attacking her, leading them to be questioned by police for hours after their arrival in Beijing.

Later, it emerged that the employee had bipolar disorder. The passengers were eventually…

Itchy from mosquito bites?

Scientists have wiped out the entire population of mosquitoes on two islands in southern China, using a radical technique to make the males infertile.

The study, published in the journal Nature, could transform the fight against a range of deadly diseases carried by mosquitoes.

Over nearly two years, scientists released more than 200 million specially bred male Asian tiger mosquitoes on the Shazai and Dadaosha islands in the delta to the south of Guangzhou, the…

The ongoing protests in Hong Kong have led to an escalating conflict at the city’s top university, fueled by tension between local and mainland Chinese students.

Controversy erupted at the prestigious University of Hong Kong (HKU), after the school’s President Zhang Xiang publicly condemned the violent storming of Hong Kong’s legislature earlier this month. 

In response, the Hong Kong University Students’ Union accused the president, a Chinese-born American physicist, of siding with the pro…

The Beijing Zoo has promised to improve security around its giant panda enclosure after stones were hurled at one of its residents.

A video of the incident on Saturday was posted to Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, where it drew more than 100 million views.

It shows the panda named Meng Da sitting in the enclosure when a stone appears to bounce next to him and stop close by. The startled panda pauses, and then goes over to examine the object.

Visitors are heard asking, “Who threw the stone…

A martial arts movie depicting a group of Chinese swordsmen battling the Japanese army in 1933 has become the latest film to be canceled amid growing censorship in China’s entertainment industry. 

The producer of The Hidden Sword cited “market reasons” for its cancelation, a euphemism that industry insiders say refers to censorship. 

The pulled film is the latest example of an expanding censorship drive in the entertainment industry, during a year with many political anniversaries. 

The…

Chen Zebin, 22, was expecting easy money and fame. But he had a rough initiation into the life of a professional video game player.

After joining the King e-sports team in Shanghai, his ambition hit a wall. He didn’t get into a tournament for almost 10 months.

“My performance was no worse than the other players,” he said. “But I wasn’t allowed to play in the competition simply due to my lack of experience.”

Chen, who had been a star gamer back home in the southern megacity of Shenzhen, was…