The Wall Street Journal reports, "A steep drop in China shares flipped to gains Wednesday, the latest signal that Beijing won't let the market fall too far before engineering a rescue. The Shanghai Composite Index, which fell as much as 5% earlier, ended up 1.2% at 3794.11. While the gains help recoup some losses from a 6.1% drop on Tuesday, Shanghai is down 27% since its June peak. The smaller Shenzhen Composite gained 2.2% to 2222.05 and the startup-dominated ChiNext board gained 2.7% to 2570.69. Meanwhile, the volatility hitched off further losses in Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index, which has wiped out all year-to-date gains. The index fell 1.3% Wednesday, while a gauge of Chinese companies listed in the city lost 1.2%."

"Beijing's concerns about being unable to control foreign sites, combined with regulations that require companies to censor and monitor users, has led many start-ups to heed the experience of forebears like Twitter and Facebook and refrain from opening a local China site. But that may be changing. With its announcement on Tuesday that it was expanding in China, Airbnb joined a growing list of large American Internet companies that have begun experimenting with new models to enter the Chinese market. With more than 600 million Internet users, China is a rich prize," The New York Times writes.

Reuters reports, "Chinese state media on Wednesday appeared to convict executives of a company whose chemical warehouse exploded last week killing 114 people of slipshod practices at least, saying they used connections to obtain fire safety and environmental approvals. Public anger against the government has surged in the northeastern port of Tianjin among residents of apartments near the blasts who believed authorities neglected to properly police the firm, Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai International Logistics. "My connections are with police and fire. When we needed a fire inspection, I went to meet with officials at the Tianjin port fire squad," Dong Shexuan, 34, deputy head of the company, told the official Xinhua state news agency while he and other executives were in police custody."