Politics
PLA Daily*
General Xu Caihou, a former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and rumoured to be investigated on graft charges, makes a rare public appearance.
Time
President Xi Jinping "has resisted the temptation to use the machinery of the state to pump up growth, as his predecessors had done," writes Michael Schuman.
Caixin
Official says the thousands of smaller state-owned companies around the country are being audited to they can give the government some of their earnings.
Global Times
Editorial: "When the middle class swarms into public debate and vents their complaints like a group of penniless vagrants, there won't be positive voices in China."

Society
Radio Free Asia
Police in Putian, Fujian, are holding seven people following violent clashes at the weekend over a controversial land reclamation project.
The Guardian
For Chinese women, unmarried motherhood remains the final taboo.
New York Times
Video: a rehabilitation center where Chinese teenagers are “deprogrammed” from Internet addiction. 
China Medical News
A local inquiry into a Sichuan doctor's claims of over-servicing and financial irregularities at a Mianyang hospital has concluded that there is no case to answer.

Economy
The Economist
The fact that urban employment increased by almost 11.4 million in 2013 suggests that China's hinterland is not quite empty yet.
Wall Street Journal - China Real Time Report
If the Xi government succeeds in forcing steel mills to cut overall crude-steel output this year, it will a landmark event. According to available official data, China has never posted an output reduction in 35 years.
Quartz
According to official statistics, China is seeing a steady downward trend in income inequality since 2008.
Bloomberg
China’s central bank pumped funds into the financial system and expanded a lending facility to include smaller banks as rising cash demand before the Lunar New Year drove money-market rates up by the most in seven months.

Foreign affairs
East Asia Forum
Views that trade pacts TPP and RCEP are filling the vacuum that the WTO has left is a priority issue for consideration by global leaders in the G20.
Southern Metropolis Daily*
49 Chinese diplomats have publicly condemned Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe over the last three weeks.
Asahi Shimbun
Despite protests from Tokyo, China opened a memorial hall in Harbin for a Korean independence activist who assassinated Japan’s first prime minister more than a century ago.
Wall Street Journal
China has committed to more than US$11 billion in financing to Ecuador since 2009.