Kunming police showed video at a press conference yesterday which they claim proves that the death of burglary suspect Xing Kun (郉鯤) in police custody on Saturday was suicide and not torture, as claimed by Xing's parents.

The video reportedly shows Xing, 29, alone in an interrogation room unlocking his handcuffs with a banknote and attempting unsuccessfully to hang himself with a bootlace, according to a China Daily report.

The moment of Xing's death was not captured on film because he was in a corner of the room outside of the surveillance camera's range, the report said.

In a phone interview with the China Daily, Xing's father Xing Caifang (郉才芳) criticized the police and municipal procurator, who jointly held the press conference, for not notifying him that the video was going to be shown to reporters.

He also expressed confusion as to why police would have allowed his son to bring a bootlace or anything else that could be used to commit suicide into the interrogation room.

The municipal procurator reportedly performed an autopsy on Xing Kun in front of relatives – including his father – on Tuesday.

"The evidence along with the autopsy results are still not solid enough to convince me," the elder Xing said. "One day the truth will finally come out."

General reaction to the case on the Chinese internet has not been favorable to the police, who have had a less than stellar year in terms of public relations. In 2009, the Kunming Public Security Bureau has had to deal with several high-profile cases involving alleged police misconduct, including two previous detainee deaths and a poorly handled case involving alleged child prostitution.

A Sohu report on the Xing Kun case cited one netizen's comment on the case as a typical reaction by people elsewhere in the country.

"Could it be that he hung himself with a cobweb?" the commenter asked.

More than 200 children in Kunming's Dongchuan district have been found to have unsafe levels of lead in their blood, the third major case of child lead poisoning in China this month.

During routine blood testing in Dongchuan's Tongdu county, more than 200 out of 1,000 children tested were found to have blood lead levels of more than 100 micrograms per liter.

Children are particularly susceptible to the effects of lead poisoning. Blood lead levels of more than 100 micrograms per liter have been found to impede normal behavior and cognitive development in children under the age of six years.

Hospital management at Tongdu's Healthcare Center for Women and Children said that the high blood lead levels among children in the area were likely due to car exhaust. Some local parents dismissed the hospital explanation, saying that a nearby industrial park was to blame.

China Daily quoted a mother from Yingpan village (营盘村), where the industrial park, which has been in operation since 2004, is located:


Local environmental officials are investigating the source of the lead poisoning. Management of Yingpan's industrial park declined to discuss the lead poisonings with China Daily reporters, the paper said.

On August 13, the Wugang Manganese Smelting Plant in Hunan province was closed by local officials after more than 1,300 children living near the plant were found to have unsafe blood lead levels. Four days later on August 17, hundreds of villagers attacked a lead and zinc smelting facility in Changqing, Shaanxi province after 851 children were found to have high blood lead levels.

The three high-profile lead poisoning cases in the last month have put pressure on national and local officials to close facilities that do not meet basic environmental protection regulations. Some analysts have also suggested the lead poisoning scandal could lead to industry consolidation in addition to plant shutdowns.

The China Daily reported that the national environmental ministry ratified a new Implementation Plan on Controlling Heavy Metal Pollution, which is still waiting approval from the Cabinet-level State Council. The regulation prescribes better cooperation between government departments to avoid further pollution by heavy metal smelting industries.

Update: The Associated Press has information about a recent government study in which it was found that up to 60 percent of children in mining areas in Yunnan are suffering from lead poisoning.

In the latest twist in an already confusing plotline, the 16-year-old girl at the center of the so-called 'virgin prostitute' case is now claiming that Kunming police coerced her into confessing to being involved in an alleged prostitution scheme.

Chen Yan, who police say was forced into prostitution by her father Liu Shihua, told China Daily that she only confessed to being a prostitute to obtain leniency from police:


Chen's case gained local and national media attention after her father Liu claimed that she had been arrested for prostitution by the Kunming police after a March altercation with law enforcement officers involving her father, her father's girlfriend Zhang Anfen and her father's friend Pu Enfu.

Liu produced what he claimed was medical documentation from a Kunming hospital proving that Chen was a virgin, after which police launched a new investigation into the case.

In June, Kunming police claimed to have solved the case, saying that the medical documents were faked and that Liu and Pu had confessed to forcing Chen into prostitution in October of last year. Liu is still under police custody.

In a Tuesday press conference, Kunming police said that no confessions had been forced out of anyone involved in the case. A police spokesperson also struck out at media for running "biased" reports of the case.

Chen told China Daily that she had been entertaining a man at home on the night in question, but that he was a friend, not a client. However, Chen reportedly could not remember the man's name.

Lawyers for Liu and Chen told China daily that Chen had slept with "some guys" but was not charging money for sex. They added that Chen had "beaten the girl many times to warn her not to have sex or develop any relationship with riffraff on the streets".

China should push forward the building of a third Eurasian land bridge connecting Shenzhen and Rotterdam, Yunnan Governor Qin Guangrong told the China Daily yesterday.

The 15,000 kilometer proposed transport corridor would pass through 17 countries – in China it would pass through Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan before entering Myanmar and passing through Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey before continuing into Europe.

Qin said the rail and road network would stimulate trade and by providing an alternate route to Europe would also promote China's energy and economic security.

Qin was in Beijing with other Yunnan officials for meetings with the central government to discuss a proposal to help Myanmar build more than 300 kilometers of road and rail to link Yunnan's rail network with South Asia's highway network.

If built, the proposed land bridge would join the two existing transport routes across the Eurasian continent - one spanning 13,000 kilometers from Rotterdam to eastern Russia and the other covering 10,900 kilometers connecting Rotterdam with Lianyungang in eastern China's Jiangsu province.

Qin said that a branch line for the third land bridge extending from Turkey through Syria and Palestine into Egypt would also facilitate the transport of goods manufactured in Guangdong's Pearl River Delta to African markets by cutting 6,000 kilometers off of the Guangdong-Egypt sea journey.

Scholars first raised the idea of a third land bridge two years ago, but no progress has been made - despite only needing to add approximately 1,000 kilometers of new highways and railways to existing transport infrastructure.

The proposed land bridge's main obstacles are disinterested national governments and cumbersome border crossing procedures, analysts said.

Image: China Daily

The Yunnan provincial government and the parent company of China Eastern Airlines have reached an agreement to form a new joint venture airline to serve the high-potential but relatively undeveloped Yunnan aviation market, according to a China Daily report.

The company, 65 percent of which will be owned by China Eastern Air Holding Company with the remainder held by the Yunnan State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, will begin a new chapter in the historically strained relationship between the airline and the Yunnan government.

During a 2005 restructuring of China's domestic aviation industry, Shanghai-based China Eastern took over Yunnan Airlines from the Yunnan government, after which it ceased being an independent company.

China Daily sources said that relations between the two parties soured after China Eastern reallocated most of Yunnan Airlines' capacity to serve the Shanghai market, thus reducing the company's local market share. According to the source:


According to the agreement, the new airline's fleet will reach 40 planes by the end of this year and 50 by 2011. Financial terms of the deal have yet to be disclosed.

The deal's announcement comes as Kunming is building a new airport that is expected to significantly increase its domestic and international air links. The new airport is officially scheduled to launch operations by 2011.

Despite the Olympics being held in Beijing and six other coastal cities, the Olympics are essentially a local event for all of China. Kunming may not be hosting any events, but it has played its own role in the runup to the games, serving as a high-altitude training base, not just for China's Olympians but also for athletes from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and several other countries.

With the torch preparing to enter the National Stadium aka 'The Bird's Nest', American sports network ESPN arranged a journalist roundtable to discuss the political repercussions of China hosting the games, as well as how China will perform in different events. Host Anthony Tao was joined by Newsweek Beijing bureau chief Melinda Liu, China Daily columnist Raymond Zhou, Sexy Beijing writer, editor and host Anna Sophie Loewenberg.

Rounding out the roundtable was former GoKunming contributor Maggie Rauch, who is now based in Beijing as co-founder and editor of China Sports Today, the foremost English-language source of information about sports in China [disclosure: your correspondent is a contributor to and cofounder of China Sports Today]

A transcript of the ESPN roundtable can be viewed here. Our favorite quote may be this one by China Daily's Zhou:

"Personally, I only care about Liu Xiang because I feel Liu Xiang winning the gold medal is tantamount to Barack Obama winning the presidency in the United States. Because it's about more than sports. It's about shattering stereotypes that Asians are intrinsically not good at track and field."

Images: ESPN

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China's high-altitude training centers