1 Football fans pose at Wulihe Stadium in Shenyang before China's crucial World Cup qualifying match against Oman in October. China win 1-0, sending the team to the finals for the first time.
2 Beijing celebrates in July after winning the right to stage the Olympics in 2008. It will be the first time the event has been held in China.
3 Five Falun Gong members set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square in January in protest at the Chinese Government's treatment of the sect.
4 Chinese boat trackers tow a vessel up the Wu Jiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze in Sichuan. The Government is to go ahead with a plan to divert Yangtze water hundreds of kilometres north to the Yellow River, which dries up every year. The project, which will cost US$17m (HK$132.6 million) and involve moving a million people, is scheduled for completion in 2010.
5 Shi Hu, 29, is dying of Aids in the village of Wenlou, Henan. He is one of hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers infected with HIV by unsterilised needles after selling their blood to government-sponsored programmes. In some villages, 65 per cent of people are affected.
6 A United States EP-3 spy plane crash-lands on Hainan Island on April 1 after colliding with one of two Chinese jets tailing it. China takes 12 days to hand over the 24 crew and sends the plane back in crates three months later - along with a $1m bill. Wang Wei, the missing Chinese fighter pilot, is declared a martyr.
