Just three days ago the pride of the Emirates, the 160-floor Burj Khalifa hotel, celebrated its first birthday. The next day, a Chinese official announced plans to build a $1.3 billion knock off of the "seven star" hotel in Beijing.

[This is a fireworks portrait of (non-communist) Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen (from the New Year's celebration in Taipei, Taiwan), but really, it could be anyone, so send this picture your friends and tell them that it's you. Image via AP]

The Chinese government today released a plan to end taxpayer-funded, booze-fueled sex parties in 2011, as well as official "seminars" held in Las Vegas and other cities that cost the country around $58 billion every year. That's some serious partying.

In your stranded Monday media column: an AP vs. NYT journo-feud, Jon Stewart is slobbered over again, business cable news networks are finally making the big bucks, and Nick Kristof loves China so much.

A while back, we paid a paparazzo to tail Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. But during his high-profile trip to China this week, Chinese fans are doing the stalking for free. Here's a gallery of their Zuckerberg-in-China snapshots.

Now that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has overthrown the internet and been named Time's "Person of the Year" is there anything left for him to do? Yes: Conquer China, beginning with this weekend's visit to Beijing.

The Gap is having branding problems. Two months after their logo misstep, they are now selling a "Made in USA" branded "FEED" bag. But, oh my, how awkward: The tag inside Gap's bag says it's actually made in China. Updated.

McDonald's is planning a huge expansion in China. Soon their kids will be just like ours!

Archaeologists in China have dug up what they believe is a 2,400-year-old bowl of bone soup, as well as a pot of wine, near China's former capital Xian.

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo's chair sits empty at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony today in Norway. Committee secretary Geir Lundestad (left) said, "We regret that the laureate is not present. He is in isolation in a prison in northeastern China."

China's beef with the Nobel Committee over its selection of dissident Liu Xiaobo for this year's Peace Prize has turned comical, with the government creating its own "Confucius Peace Prize," which will go to Taiwan's former VP this week.

The results are in: on a respected international standardized test, students in Shanghai beat the tar out of everyone in science, reading and math. The U.S. finished 23rd, 17th, and 32nd, respectively. Yea, well...Yao Ming is slow. [NYT]

[Fearless Chinese electrical workers install the final power supply line for the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, which is scheduled to begin operating next year. Image via Getty]

Chinese officials are fuming over Friday's Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony because they really don't like the winner, jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo. Police have arrested many of Liu's supporters, and today the Foreign Ministry called them anti-Chinese "clowns." How mature.

Here is a video about a couple of Americans who boarded a cab Tianjin, China. The driver made a wrong turn, and to remedy that mistake, he has chosen to backtrack by driving down the wrong side of the freeway.

Even as Wikileaks battles for its digital existence and Interpol closes in on Julian Assange, the cables keep flowing. This week brought details about Berlusconi and Putin's bromance and China's Googling habits, plus tantalizing hints of extraterrestrials. Diplomatic gossip roundup!

Starbucks has "no room for new stores in the U.S." They won't stop until China's full, too.

The giant diplomatic cable dump released by Wikileaks today represents the world's largest leak of geopolitical gossip: Diplomats tittering about world leaders' sexxxy affairs, their financial skeeziness and weird quirks. Let's dive into a U.S. Embassy gossip roundup!

Chinese rescue workers managed to extract 29 miners from a flooded coal mine in the Sichuan province.

Chen Jianping retweeted something her fiance said about anti-Japan protests getting violent, and added, "Charge, angry youth!" For this she was sentenced to one year in a labor camp.