Brian Rhoads

KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan (Reuters) - Tsai Chin-sheng's voice rises with emotion when asked whether he feels Taiwanese or Chinese. Then he utters the response that Beijing fears most.

TAICHUNG, Taiwan (Reuters) - Taiwan's semi-rural central plains, dotted with rice paddies and brightly coloured temples, is the battleground in a presidential poll that will set the tone of the island's prickly relations with China for the next four years.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is steeling itself for another presidential election in rambunctiously democratic Taiwan, hoping a victory for the ruling Nationalists enables even better ties but also girding for an opposition win that may inflame tensions.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top leaders convene for their latest secretive conclave on Saturday, giving them a chance to ponder looming economic and political choices ahead of leadership changes in the world's second-largest economy.

CHENGDU/WUHAN, China (Reuters) - When China announced a nearly $600 billion package to ward off the 2008 global financial crisis, city planners across the country happily embarked on a frenzy of infrastructure projects, some of them of arguable need.

CHENGDU/WUHAN, China (Reuters) - When China announced a nearly $600 billion package to ward off the 2008 global financial crisis, city planners across the country happily embarked on a frenzy of infrastructure projects, some of them of arguable need.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Even before China's great stock market bull run of 2006-2007, Wang Jianzhong had become known as China's "god of stocks" for his prescient picks.

LUFENG, China (Reuters) - It was an unusual scene for a Chinese riot -- there was not a single policeman in sight.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Crumbling flood dykes in China decried as "tofu dregs" built by "parasites." Erring bankers lashed as "half-wits" and crime "accomplices." Special hotels for Communist Party elite dismissed as wasteful piles of "golden splendor."

BEIJING (Reuters) - Hundreds of independent candidates fighting for seats in China's usually tame local congresses are opening a new front in the nation's battle over political rights, courting voters on the streets and Internet despite political controls.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is clamping down on offshore oil drillers after a spill by U.S. firm ConocoPhillips in Bohai Bay, requiring tighter controls in a campaign to beef up environmental protection standards ordered by Premier Wen Jiabao.

HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - China's securities regulator is asking the government to clamp down on the controversial corporate structure used by companies such as Sina <SINA.O> and Baidu <BIDU.O> to list overseas, and employed in thousands of other investments by foreigners into domestic Chinese companies, four legal sources told Reuters.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Mao Zedong famously said a single spark could start a revolutionary prairie fire. That fear is now driving his Communist Party successors to grapple with how to tame China's expanding legions of microbloggers.

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has decided against selling new F-16 jets to Taiwan but will give the island an arms package worth $4.2 billion, the Washington Times reported.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - It's not just dictators. Governments around the world, many of them popularly elected, have tried for years to control the Internet and social media, dismayed by their potential to incite violence, spread mischief and distribute pornography and dissent.

URUMQI, China (Reuters) - The filthy back alleys and packed mosques of the remote far western Chinese city of Urumqi are one of the more obscure front lines in the U.S.-backed war on terror, launched after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will recognize Libya's National Transitional Council as the legitimate government "when conditions are ripe," the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, without spelling out what those conditions would be.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - The troubles facing China's Sino-Forest <TRE.TO> mark a new chapter in the chequered career of Allen Chan, its Hong Kong-born founder who resigned as CEO over the weekend amid massive fraud allegations and a plunge in its share price.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has ordered banks to include their margin deposits in required reserves at the central bank to mop up excessive liquidity, banking sources said on Friday, the latest move in Beijing's campaign to rein in worrisome inflation.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China hopes that Europe will take steps to protect China's investments there, Chinese President Hu Jintao told the French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday, nonetheless voicing confidence in the euro and vowing to keep investing in it.