Society

No city is immune from tragedy. But in the wake of a heart-wrenching apartment fire in Shanghai this week, which killed at least 58 people and injured well over 100, public anger is smoldering.

Shanghai is no ordinary city: It’s the site of the just-ended World Expo, designed to showcase China’s efforts to meld modernization and globalization. High profile projects, massive infrastructure, and a glistening skyline are promoted as public policy done right.

The fire, though, was a reminder of the many shortcomings of governance in China – failings that were underlined by the government’s hesitant and divided response to the disaster. Shanghai officials appeared to be operating on one agenda; central officials another.

China's government-backed Catholic church ordained a bishop who did not have the pope's approval Saturday, despite objections from the Vatican and comments by a key papal adviser that the move was ``illegitimate'' and ``shameful.''

Rev. Guo Jincai's ordination at Pingquan Church in Chengde city was carried out amid a strong security presence, with dozens of police blocking the building and denying entrance to reporters. But there was also an air of festivity, with colorful banners and traditional Chinese lanterns hanging outside the church and worshippers posing for photos.

It was not immediately clear if bishops loyal to the pope had been forced by government officials to attend the ordination, as the Vatican had feared.

"We are the masters now." I wonder if President Barack Obama saw those words in the thought bubble over the head of his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, at the G20 summit in Seoul last week. If the president was hoping for change he could believe in—in China's currency policy, that is—all he got was small change. Maybe Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also heard "We are the masters now" as the Chinese shot down his proposal for capping imbalances in global current accounts. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke got the same treatment when he announced a new round of "quantitative easing" to try to jump start the U.S. economy, a move described by one leading Chinese commentator as "uncontrolled" and "irresponsible."

"We are the masters now." That was certainly the refrain that I kept hearing in my head when I was in China two weeks ago. It wasn't so much the glitzy, Olympic-quality party I attended in the Tai Miao Temple, next to the Forbidden City, that made this impression. The displays of bell ringing, martial arts and all-girl drumming are the kind of thing that Western visitors expect. It was the understated but unmistakable self-confidence of the economists I met that told me something had changed in relations between China and the West.

Anthropologists are looking into the possibility that some European-looking Chinese in Northwest China are the descendants of a lost army from the Roman Empire.

Experts at the newly established Italian Studies Center at Lanzhou University in Gansu province will conduct excavations on a section of the Silk Road, a 7,000-kilometer trade route that linked Asia and Europe more than 2,000 years ago, to see if a legion of Roman soldiers settled in China, said Yuan Honggeng, head of the center.

"We hope to prove the legend by digging and discovering more evidence of China's early contact with the Roman Empire," said Yuan.

Before Marco Polo's travels to China in the 13th century, the only known contact between the two empires was a visit by Roman diplomats in 166 AD.