Society

Yu Lianmin, a cotton farmer in Huji, China, harvested 6,600 pounds of cotton this year. Despite record cotton prices, he didn't sell any of it.

Instead, mounds of cotton are piled up in two empty rooms of Mr. Yu's home, and the homes of many of the farmers in his small township of Yujia, which is part of the bigger township of Huji in northern Shandong province, 220 miles southeast of Beijing. The farmers are holding out for higher prices, aiming to help overcome higher costs of labor and fertilizer, which are up about 20% in the past year.

"I think there's still hope for prices to go higher," he said.

The amount of cotton held in hamlets throughout China is unknown, but, with 25 million cotton farmers, a Chinese cotton agency estimates it could amount to about 9% of the world's cotton supply. And the situation is occurring throughout the supply chain. Many ginners and merchants in China are keeping warehouses full, according to the agency, in an attempt to obtain higher prices.

Expectations that prices will rise are driving the apparent stockpiling, which causes short-term shortages and leads prices to rise further. The situation is complicating an already volatile picture for cotton, which has jumped to 140-year highs in the U.S. and has become a symbol of brewing commodity inflation around the globe.

Chinese prosecutors filed only light charges against a man who police say killed a college student while driving drunk and who witnesses say then tried to use his father's position as a police official to avoid punishment, an incident that has come to symbolize rampant abuse of power among the families of officials.

Prosecutors on Wednesday formally accused 23-year-old Li Qiming of "crimes causing traffic casualties" for the October incident, a relatively minor offense that carries a maximum sentence of seven years. The decision not to file more serious charges could further inflame popular anger over the case just as Beijing is stepping up efforts to make regular citizens feel the government is more responsive.

From the ads on Times Square to the 21-gun salute on the White House lawn, everything about President Hu Jintao's visit has been designed to show that China has arrived as a major world power, and its leader deserves to be treated as an equal.

China's state-controlled newspapers and television channels were dominated Thursday by images of Mr. Hu and President Barack Obama, side by side. The official Xinhua news agency characterized China and the U.S. as "two heavyweight players on the international stage [that] have seen their national interests increasingly interwoven." China Daily added: "The rest of the world has been paying close attention to every word and gesture—given the importance of the two countries to the global economic and political landscape."

Even as many Americans appear convinced that China is about to overtake the U.S. economically or militarily, state media outlets called for deeper relations based on mutual respect. The bi-weekly World News Journal said the U.S. should adjust its mentality of "deep suspicion about China." Other publications called for the end of a "zero-sum game" mentality.

For Chinese citizens following President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S., the message from Communist Party propaganda czars is loud and clear: The world's dominant power is finally treating China as an equal, and Mr. Hu, who steps down as party chief next year, is the man to thank.

State-controlled media have gone into overdrive to portray the visit as a resounding success and the start of a new era of bilateral relations, based on "mutual respect and mutual benefit," while Internet censors have scrubbed clean chat rooms and blogs of almost all comments that might suggest otherwise.

One forum set up on 163.com—one of China's leading news portals—to discuss Mr. Hu's visit showed 248,555 participants as of Sunday evening, but only 19,936 comments were visible, suggesting tens of thousands had been deleted. The comments that remained were overwhelmingly positive.

The only online commentary allowed to stray from the official party line was widespread praise from nationalist bloggers for Lang Lang, the China-born pianist who played a tune from a famous anti-U.S. Chinese film about the Korean War during the White House state banquet.