China posts rules of sex change (June 16, 2009, China Daily)
To change gender in China costs more than money. One must be free of a criminal record and be single if he or she wants to have a sex change, the Ministry of Health said Tuesday in a new regulation. Other conditions include having lived publicly as the other gender for more than two years, at least five years of unwavering desire to change, more than one year of psychotherapy and a commitment by local police to issue a new ID card after the operation.

Chinese upper class growing (June 18, 2009, China Daily)
More than half of nearly 800 wealthy Chinese recently polled believe the widening gap between the rich and poor is also creating an emerging upper class in the country. The survey, carried out by lifestyle magazine Best Life, interviewed 792 rich Chinese in 62 cities from 27 provinces through local chambers of commerce. Those interviewed were private entrepreneurs with personal assets of more than 10 million yuan ($1.4 million). More than 80 percent of those polled also said the income gap between rich and poor in the country was too wide, the magazine reported this week. "In recent years, the huge gap between rich and poor has become an indisputable fact in China," Li Wei, director of the social development department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), told China Daily Wednesday.

Kids taken in adoption scheme (July 2, 2009, Shanghai Daily)
An orphanage in southwest China has been accused of taking children away from parents who can't afford fines for violating family planning policy and sending the kids overseas for adoption. The orphanage was reportedly earning US$3,000 for each child placed with a foreign family. The allegations involve family planning officials in Zhenyuan County, Guizhou Province. They demanded that parents who violated childbirth regulations pay 10,000 yuan (US$1,460) for each extra offspring, according to Nanfang Metropolis Daily. Those who couldn't afford the fine were ordered to give their child to a local orphanage, the paper said. The orphanage was funneling the children into China's system for foreign adoptions, the paper reported. Overseas families sent applications through adoption agencies in their countries to a state-backed adoption center in China. The center collected information about abandoned and orphaned children from around country, including the Zhenyuan orphanage, and sent it the adoptive families. If a child was chosen, the orphanage received US$3,000 from the adoptive family.

License plate with lucky 8 sells for record price (July 2, 2009, China Daily)
A vehicle license plate with the number D88888 was auctioned off for the record price of 100,100 yuan ($14,652) in Qionghai, Hainan province, on Monday. The buyer is a businessman who felt it was worth the large sum of money. The public auction for the plate started at 30,000 yuan. The digit 8 (ba) has a similar Chinese sound to "fa", meaning becoming rich.