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Come here for my take on life in the world's most populous country - its politics, people and power
13:46 UK time, Wednesday, 23 May 2012
As China's economic, political and military influence rises, one important question is - what sort of power China will be? How will it interact with foreigners and foreign nations?
Will it be benign - as China's own officials say when they talk of China's "peaceful rise" - or will it be an assertive, nationalistic, even xenophobic power?
13:12 UK time, Monday, 21 May 2012
Have China's top leaders now settled any differences caused by the purging of Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai?
For weeks there's been speculation that the downfall of Mr Bo, an ambitious and rising Politburo member, might lead to the fall of an even more powerful figure, China's security chief, Zhou Yongkang.
09:21 UK time, Friday, 18 May 2012
From sleeping in pigsties to sneaking past sleeping guards, new accounts emerging are making the tale of Chen Guangcheng's escape from house arrest more and more astonishing.
Just how did the blind Chen manage to evade dozens of guards stationed in rings around his home and village of Dongshigu?
12:34 UK time, Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Has China's top leadership been split by the purging of rising star Bo Xilai and the political waves that has caused?
And is it now covering up to preserve a facade of unity ahead of the major leadership change due this autumn?
13:49 UK time, Thursday, 10 May 2012
War talk, it seems, is all the rage in China at the minute.
Yes, there are serious people in serious publications seriously advocating war.
07:58 UK time, Wednesday, 9 May 2012
The idea of the "unperson", whose existence is erased from all records by the state, comes from George's Orwell's novel 1984.
Today Melissa Chan, the al-Jazeera English television correspondent who, it was announced yesterday, had been expelled from China, seems to have become an "unperson" in China.
05:42 UK time, Friday, 4 May 2012
Dissident Chen Guangcheng remains inside a Beijing hospital amid intense international scrutiny of his situation. In a telephone call to US lawmakers he asked for help getting his family to the US.
Meanwhile top-level talks on trade and strategy are continuing in the Chinese capital - comprehensively overshadowed by the row over Mr Chen. Here's my report:
03:10 UK time, Thursday, 3 May 2012
The case of blind activist Chen Guangcheng continues to overshadow talks between the United States and China, a day after he left his refuge at the US embassy.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her opening address in Beijing at annual strategic talks, urged China to protect human rights and respect ''citizens' aspirations for dignity''.
03:28 UK time, Wednesday, 2 May 2012
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived in the Chinese capital for annual strategic talks. But the US embassy in Beijing is at the centre of a crisis - blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng is believed to be sheltering inside after his dramatic escape from house arrest.
Mr Chen has become a symbol of human rights abuses in China - so can the two sides prevent this issue derailing talks and ties? Here's my report on the issue:
22:36 UK time, Friday, 20 April 2012
At the Lucky Hotel, high on a hill overlooking Chongqing, south-western China, they were hosting a conference this week for the city's police officers. The subject was disaster prevention.
Crisis management may have been more apt as the death of British businessman Neil Heywood in one of the hotel's secluded villas has enmeshed China's Communist Party in ever-growing allegations of criminality and corruption.
18:52 UK time, Friday, 20 April 2012
China's Communist Party is struggling to contain the fallout from its biggest political crisis in years, triggered by the death of the British businesman Neil Heywood.
Bo Xilai, one of the Communist Party's most senior figures, has already been sacked, his wife is being investigated amid claims she had Mr Heywood murdered, and others who say they too are victims of Mr Bo are starting to come forward.
10:09 UK time, Monday, 16 April 2012
North Korea's new leader, Kim Jong-un, has spoken in public for the first time since assuming power late last year.
Kim Jong-un, who inherited his position from his father Kim Jong-il and grandfather Kim Il-sung, vowed to maintain his country's military might during a speech at a huge military parade in the capital, Pyongyang.
18:54 UK time, Friday, 13 April 2012
Damian added analysis to:
The failure of this launch is embarrassing for the North Korean regime. It had been billed as a sign of the North's technical achievement.
But the news that it had failed was only given at midday local time. For four hours after the launch, there was no word at all. The international journalists assembled in the press centre were told nothing. Then state media said rocket scientists and technicians were looking into why it failed to reach orbit.
14:14 UK time, Friday, 13 April 2012
Damian added analysis to:
The failure of this launch is embarrassing for the North Korean regime. It had been billed as a sign of the North's technical achievement.
But the news that it had failed was only given at midday local time. For four hours after the launch, there was no word at all. The international journalists assembled in the press centre were told nothing. Then state media said rocket scientists and technicians were looking into why it failed to reach orbit.
20:54 UK time, Wednesday, 11 April 2012
The guards outside North Korea's satellite command centre don't smile. But then they've never had foreign journalists here before.
The previously secret site is in the countryside, half an hour outside Pyongyang. In the muddy fields nearby, troops of soldiers dig vegetable patches with hoes, and farmers work by hand, sifting the earth and planting seedlings.
00:00 UK time, Wednesday, 11 April 2012
North Korea says it is ready to put a satellite into space this week in a move that has been condemned by America as a clear violation of UN resolutions. The launch is part of celebrations for the 100th birthday of the country's founding President Kim Il Sung, now dead, and is meant to showcase North Korea's achievements. Our correspondent Damian Grammaticas is the only British broadcaster in the usually closed country, invited by the North Korean authorities.
Today we sped, down long, half-empty avenues. Our North Korean minders were taking us out of the capital Pyongyang to the countryside.
20:18 UK time, Monday, 9 April 2012
Central Pyongyang was a sea of faces today, a crowd perhaps a hundred-thousand strong packing the open square.
What was extraordinary was the way they all acted on cue, as one, clapping together, bowing together, waving their pink floral batons in unison.
04:22 UK time, Monday, 9 April 2012
North Korea says it is ready to launch a long-range rocket that it says will send a satellite into space, despite warnings of sanctions if the launch goes ahead.
Pyongyang says the Unha-3 rocket is scheduled for launch between 12 and 16 April to mark the centenary of the birth of its late leader Kim Il-sung.
15:27 UK time, Thursday, 22 March 2012
Have you heard? There's been a coup in China! Tanks have been spotted on the streets of Beijing and other cities! Shots were fired near the Communist Party's leadership compound!
OK, before you get too agitated, there is no coup. To be more exact, as far as we know there has been no attempted coup.
07:52 UK time, Thursday, 15 March 2012
China's Premier Wen Jiabao has delivered a strong warning about the "urgent" need for reform, saying that without such reform, tragedies such as the Cultural Revolution could still happen. He added that he may even invite some of his critics for face-to-face talks.
As he spoke, some of those critics - also among China's poor - gathered to watch the event on a single television set in Beijing.
Damian joined the BBC in 1994 as a trainee reporter for BBC Television News.
For the last decade he has worked as a foreign correspondent based in Hong Kong, Moscow and Delhi before moving to Beijing in 2009.
Damian grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was born in June 1970.
He graduated from Corpus Christi College Cambridge in 1992 with a degree in English Literature.
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