"Share prices in China plunged on Friday in one of the sharpest sell-offs in years, accelerating a downturn this past week in what has been, for much of this year, the world's best-performing stock market. China's two major market indexes fell in tandem. The Shanghai composite fell 7.4 percent on Friday. The Shenzhen composite fell even more, dropping 7.9 percent. Share prices in Hong Kong, which is regulated separately, also weakened, dropping 1.8 percent. Analysts had been warning for months about the risks of a stock market bubble in China, where giddy investors have driven up stock prices by purchasing shares on margin, or with money borrowed from brokers," writes The New York Times.
Reuters reports, "China accused the United States on Friday of being "haunted by spreading guns" and racial discrimination, in its annual tit-for-tat rebuttal to U.S. criticism of China's human rights record. In a lengthy report carried by the official Xinhua news agency, the information office of the State Council, or cabinet, said the United States "violated human rights in other countries in a more brazen manner, and was given more 'red cards' in the international human rights field". Human rights have long been a source of tension between the world's two largest economies, especially since 1989, when the United States imposed sanctions on China after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing's Tiananmen Square."
CBS News reports, "China is pressing ahead with the construction of artificial islands on at least two reefs that are also claimed by the Philippines in the increasingly tense territorial dispute, Filipino officials said Friday, despite Beijing's pronouncement that some work would end soon. Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon of Kalayaan island, which is under Philippine control in the Spratly islands, where attention has recently focused on China's massive islands reclamation work, said that he flew last week near the Chinese-controlled Subi Reef and saw construction was in full swing with many dredgers and a huge crane visible on the emerging man-made island.' It's full-blast construction. It's massive and incredible,' he told The Associated Press, adding that it was evident it would take months before the Chinese complete the work."