Quotes from Richard McGregor

Before she landed, Ms Clinton publicly downplayed the importance of human rights. At a press conference ahead of leaving, she beamingly implored the Chinese government to keep buying US debt, like a travelling saleswoman hawking a bill of goods.

In a remarkable research finding, Yasheng Huang, an MIT economist, established that Shanghai had the lowest number of private businesses relative to the city's size and its number of households in 2004, bar two other places in China. Only Beijing and Tibet, where government and the military are, respectively, the main businesses, had lower shares of private commerce.

The debate in Australia over China has long been framed by a number of influential essays by Hugh White, a former bureaucrat and academic. White's thesis is summed up by the title of one of his books, The China Choice, which argued that Australia's refusal

Stories like Yu's shocked Yang. 'I did not foresee this level of cruelty,' he said. 'There was cannibalism in ancient times in famines. People used to talk about "exchanging children to eat", because they could not bear to eat their own children. But this was much worse.' Even the final nationwide death toll, a figure which has been known in the west for more than two decades, was a revelation.

Mubei: Zhongguo Liushi Niandai Da Jihuang Jishi [Tombstone: A Record of the Great Chinese Famine of the 60s], Cosmos Books, Hong Kong, 2008.