The New York Times reports: "As rescuers searched Monday for survivors of a catastrophic landslide in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, a series of failures and ignored warnings that contributed to the disaster began to emerge. The Ministry of Land and Resources said the landslide that destroyed at least 33 buildings on Sunday was caused by the collapse not of a hillside but of a sodden mountain of dirt and construction debris in an industrial area. At least 91 people were missing as of early Monday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported...China's rapid construction of new buildings, and the short life of many of those structures, have long created problems with unregulated dumping of construction waste. Often the result is illegal, multistory piles of debris that appear on the outskirts of cities, creating problems with dust and flooding because of blocked waterways. The landslide on Sunday appears to have been one of the most destructive episodes yet connected with the practice."

Wall Street Journal reports that Relations between China and the U.S. entered a newly antagonistic phase, most notably over cybersecurity and Beijing's island-building in the disputed South China Sea.In the buildup to President Xi Jinping's U.S. visit in September, President Barack Obama threatened sanctions on Chinese entities over cyberattacks, while senior U.S. officials said they had drawn up options to challenge China's territorial claims. Some U.S. presidential candidates even called for Mr. Xi's visit to be downgraded. In the end, Mr. Xi was granted the full honors of a state visit, and the two sides agreed not to direct or support cybertheft for commercial gain—leaving aside the question of cyberespionage by government or military actors. They also reaffirmed a pledge to work together on climate change—one of the few areas where they appear able to cooperate. But Mr. Xi's surprise commitment in Washington not to "militarize" China's Spratly Island installations was too vague to ease the pressure on Mr. Obama from his own military advisers and from allies and partners in Asia. A month later, a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of one of China's artificial islands in what U.S. officials said was the first "freedom of navigation" patrol in the area since 2012. At least two Chinese warships "shadowed" the destroyer, the USS Lassen.