China opens longest bullet route

26 December 2012 Last updated at 01:24 GMT China's high-speed railway has been expanding rapidly in recent years China has officially opened the world's longest high-speed rail route, linking the capital Beijing with the southern commercial hub of Guangzhou.

The first bullet train left Beijing on Wednesday morning. Trains will initially travel at 300km/h (187mph), more than halving travel time.

A Chinese official has described the route - parts of which were already in operation - as "one of the most technically advanced in the world".

The 2,298km route will have 35 stops.

They include such major cities as Wuhan and Changsha.

The previously 22-hour journey will now take less than 10 hours.

The decision was taken to start the passenger service on 26 December to commemorate the birth of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, state media said.

China is currently expanding its high-speed rail network across the vast country.

But the ambitious project has not been free from controversy.

Forty people died last summer in a crash on a rapid train line in eastern Zhejiang province and the entire high-speed scheme has been dogged with reports of corruption.

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China runs 'sexy' N.Korea spoof

Onion editor: Tricking China has a "certain delightfulness" A Chinese news site takes an Onion satire for a real storyThe Onion declares North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "sexiest man alive"People's Daily Online runs portions of the Onion story and 55 photos of Kim

(CNN) -- China, as one Twitter user wrote Tuesday, has been fooled by the "mysterious Western art of satire."

The merciless comedy website The Onion has declared North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the "sexiest man alive for 2012." And it appears China's People's Daily Online has taken the story seriously.

"I love this one," Onion editor Will Tracy told CNN. "It has a certain delightfulness to it."

The Chinese story reprinted satirical comments describing Kim's "air of power that masks an unmistakable cute, cuddly side," his "impeccable fashion sense, chic short hairstyle, and," the story says, "that famous smile."

A Chinese state-run site was fooled Tuesday by a satirical story that declared North Korea's Kim Jong Un the "sexiest man alive."The story on People's Daily Online on Tuesday illustrates the mutual backscratching that China and North Korea exercise through their government-run media. The incident also shows foreign media outlets' difficulty in navigating The Onion's brand of satire.

The Chinese website had underscored its story by including its own 55-page photo gallery to accompany the text, which was published in both English and Chinese. But the pages and the images were no longer available Wednesday.

A woman responding to a call Wednesday to the office of the website said it was "impossible that the People's Daily will quote from any unreliable media -- we do verify our news and sources."

The woman, who declined to identify herself, noted that the item had been removed.

The People's Daily Online has a separate office from the print version of the Chinese Communist Party's main newspaper.

Tracy said he's not surprised when legitimate news sites fall for his high-level tomfoolery, but this was the first time The Onion had named a "sexiest man alive." "We knew it would get a response," he said "but we didn't expect it would get life from abroad."

A satirical post on The Onion congratulated the People's Daily for its coverage.

The site "has served as one of the Onion's Far East bureaus for quite some time, and I believe their reportage as of late has been uncommonly fine, as well as politically astute," said The Onion's Grant Jones in a e-mail statement. "May our felicitous business association continue for centuries to come."

Earlier Tuesday, The Onion pointed readers to the Chinese website: "please visit our friends at the People's Daily in China, a proud Communist subsidiary of The Onion, Inc. Exemplary reportage, comrades."

Read the Chinese story

Twitter users went wild over the editorial faux pas. "It makes me cry from another room!" Tweeted Francesca Ulivi @fraubass.

"Not sure they know this was a joke," wrote @loweringthebar.

"Curse of the #Onion again," said Colin Freeman @colinfreeman99.

Yes. Again. If this scenario sounds familiar it's because The Onion is no stranger to fooling government-run news outlets.

In September, an Onion satire fooled Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency. Fars published an Onion story claiming that a Gallup poll found that rural white Americans preferred Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over President Barack Obama.

On the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo, netizens made their own teasing comments about People's Daily.

"Foolish foreigners, the party paper was born to be funny," wrote @sheldon-BaiBai.

"The world was fooled by the People's Daily, because no Chinese believes this paper," wrote @Hai_Dao_Wu_Bian.

The Onion never writes its stories with the intention of fooling government agencies, Tracy said. But "it's great when it happens. We hope it happens more often."

This prank, he said with obvious glee, may turn out to be the legendary Onion fake story that veterans will talk about for years to come. "We essentially just fooled the government of China."

CNN's Jethro Mullen and CY Xu contributed to this report.

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Director Xie slams China censors

17 December 2012 Last updated at 11:13 GMT The film market in China is the second-biggest in the world Award-winning Chinese director Xie Fei has accused his country's censorship rules of "killing artistic exploration" in an open letter to authorities.

Xie, whose films include Woman Sesame Oil Maker, which won the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear prize in 1993 - has not made a film since 2000.

He urged censors to give clearer rules on banned topics.

Currently, China has no film rating system similar to those used in the UK in the US.

Films must be deemed suitable for all audiences.

Xie wrote that China's system "long ago lost its real social, economic, ideological and cultural significance".

He added that it "has only become a corrupt black spot for controlling the prosperity of the cultural and entertainment industry, killing artistic exploration and wasting administrative resources".

It has meant that many western films have been subject to cuts in order to be released. China also maintains a quota on the number of foreign movies that can be shown in cinemas.

Just 20 a year are released, although the government has been trying to attract foreign studios to form joint ventures with China.

In March, Disney rival DreamWorks unveiled plans to build a studio in Shanghai and the third film in the Iron Man series, starring Robert Downey Jr, was co-produced in China.

Iron Man 3 is due for release in 2013

Xie's last film was 2000's Song of Tibet but recently he has been working as artistic consultant on a movie about controversial military leader Lin Biao, who was killed in 1971 after a failed coup against Chairman Mao - founder of the Chinese communist party.

The film also includes homosexuality as a theme and has been awaiting approval for four months.

In his letter, Xie urged censors to "move from the current administrative review system to a rating system that allows for a self-governed and self-disciplined film industry, bound by legal restrictions and administrative supervision".

Xie, who is a professor at Beijing Film Academy, said: "Our current review system is not the rule by law, but the rule by man, something that we wanted to end a long time ago."

Earlier this month, Mo Yan - the winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, voiced his support for censorship in China, comparing it with airport security checks.

He said he hoped it "should have the highest principle".

His Nobel prize was met with some criticism because of his close ties with the Chinese authorities.

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