Steel Magnate's Success

Shen Wenrong, Board Chairman and President of Jiangsu-based Shagang Group, can add one more accolade to his successful entrepreneurial career. His company overtook Lenovo Group, the world's fourth largest PC maker, in 2008 to become China's largest private company in terms of sales income. Lenovo Group had held the coveted title for 10 successive years. According to statistics recently released by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, Shagang earned 145.23 billion yuan ($21 billion) last year.

Shagang, now the country's third largest manufacturer, is also the only Chinese private company on this year's Fortune 500 list, ranking 444th. Shen, 63, holds about a 30-percent stake in Shagang. With an estimated personal wealth of 20 billion yuan ($3 billion), he is now the richest Chinese mainlander.

Shen was one of the founders of Shagang more than 30 years ago and has helped the company make rapid progress. Especially in the past decade, Shagang greatly expanded its production through acquisitions at home and abroad, including the 2002 purchase of Germany's Hoesch steel mill that was the world's ninth largest steel maker. Earlier this year, Shagang bought into one of BHP Billiton's iron ore mines and acquired an Australian mining company with an iron ore reserve of 800 million tons.

Marathon Gold Surprise

Bai Xue won an unexpected gold medal in the women's marathon event at the 2009 IAAF Athletics World Championships in Berlin on August 23.

The 20-year-old runner from northeast China's Heilongjiang Province finished the 42.195-km race at 2:25.15, beating Japanese Yoshimi Ozaki and Ethiopian Aselefech Mergia.

Bai is the youngest women's world marathon champion. The first Chinese to win a marathon race in the world championships or Olympic Games, she also put an end to Chinese women's 10-year gold drought at major international athletics competitions.

Bai began her marathon career in 2007 and won the title at the Beijing International Marathon last October. The Berlin race is only the 11th marathon competition for her.

"I'm very young and I think I still have a lot of potential. My aim is to win the gold at the 2012 London Olympic Games," Bai said in a Xinhua News Agency report.

Corrupt Officials Sacked

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CCDI), the Party's top disciplinary body, has expelled two former senior officials—Huang Songyou (upper) and Wang Huayuan—from the Party for their role in separate corruption cases. The two have also been dismissed from all their official positions.

Huang, 51, was vice president of the Supreme People's Court. Huang was found abusing his power to seek profits for concerned people in return for a "huge amount" of bribes, accepting money as presents illegally and living a "corrupt" life, CCDI said in a statement.

Another statement by CCDI said investigators found that Wang, 61, former top Party discipline regulator in east China's Zhejiang Province, took huge bribes with his family members and sought illegal profits for others by taking advantage of his position. Wang was also accused of living a "corrupt life" and having crossed the border for gambling many times.

CCDI said that both Huang and Wang had been transferred to prosecutors for further investigation.

"If we are going to tackle all of thosesuccessfully, by definition, we will raise our relationship to new heights."

New U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, favoring joint efforts between the two countries on climate change, energy, regional security and the global economy in his first meeting with journalists in Beijing on August 22

"The economic center of gravity has been shifting for some time, but this recession marks a turning point. It's Asia that's lifting the world, rather than the U.S., and that's never happened before."

Neal Soss, Chief Economist for Credit Suisse in New York

"The only truth here is this: Our country is technologically very far behind."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, talking about the explosion at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power plant in south Siberia during a visit to the Siberian city of Ulan Ude on August 24. Russian investigators said a technical fault caused the disaster on August 17, which killed at least 69 people

"The big reduction in poverty China had achieved had a lot to do with its model of development and the opening of its markets to the world and the higher production that it was achieving."

Hania Zlotnik, Director of the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened."

William Calley, a U.S. Army officer who was convicted for his part in the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which 500 Vietnamese civilians were killed, offering his first public apology on August 19

"They are not human. They are animals."

Mohammad Sher Shah, deputy provincial police chief in Kandahar, Afghanistan, condemning Taliban militants who detonated a cluster of vehicle bombs on August 25 that killed at least 41 people