The Wall Street Journal: China Real Time comments, "Thousands of years ago, one story goes, a man named Yu tamed the country's terrible flooding with the assistance of a dragon and was ultimately named emperor. Now the authors of a new paper published in the U.S. journal Science say they've found evidence of an ancient, cataclysmic flood that helps to underpin at least part of that legend. In a bigger leap, they also say their research helps offer evidence for the existence of what some describe as China's first dynasty, the Xia, long seen in some quarters as a myth. The team found that a massive flood took place around 1920 B.C., a time that coincides with when many scholars believe the Xia dynasty first emerged....Still, scholars caution against too hastily connecting the dots between the existence of a flood, however sizable, and that of the Xia."
The New York Times: The Opinion Pages comments: "The campaign against legal activists is part of President Xi Jinping's broad assault against any criticism of Communist Party rule. It has also included tough new controls on nongovernmental organizations, especially those with foreign connections, and a crackdown on religious organizations not sanctioned by the government...On Thursday it was Zhou Shifeng's turn to take the stage in the Chinese inquisition. A lawyer who worked with people who challenged the Communist Party, he was charged with 'spreading subversive thoughts' under the influence of 'anti-China forces' and sentenced to seven years in prison. Mr. Zhou's was the third of four show trials in Tianjin, about 80 miles southeast of Beijing, following a nationwide crackdown on legal activists and other dissidents last summer in which more than 300 people were detained or questioned. On Wednesday, Hu Shigen, an advocate for democracy and religious freedom, was sentenced to seven and a half years; the day before, Zhai Yanmin, an activist lawyer, received a suspended three-year term for organizing protests; awaiting his turn is Li Heping, another human rights lawyer...The show trials all featured obviously coerced 'confessions.' The defendants, with the 15 or so other dissidents who remain in detention since July 2015, have been held incommunicado and are not allowed to appoint their own lawyers."
TIME reports: "China signed up to unprecedented U.N. economic sanctions in March, following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test. The daily convoys of sooty trucks that rumble over Dandong's iron bridge—bringing coal, minerals and assorted oddities from the secretive Stalinist state—have slowed to a trickle. Chinese President Xi Jinping said he and U.S. President Barack Obama have a 'responsibility to work together' to enforce North Korean denuclearization....The deployment of a U.S missile system so close to Chinese soil is a security headache for Beijing as tensions with Washington heat up over disputed territory in the South China Sea. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin released a joint statement saying THAAD severely infringed 'upon the strategic security interests of countries in the region,' and decrying the U.S. for 'threatening the use of force in international affairs.'...There is a small risk for Western powers is that, in retaliation for THAAD, Beijing will loosen the sanctions it has imposed on Pyongyang. Chinese military representatives reportedly visited North Korea July 27 to mark Korean War Victory Day. But it will take more than this modest olive branch to repair the relationship."