China mavens will know that China has tightened up its visa issuance regulations significantly in recent weeks. There has been much piecemeal reporting on this, but it has been hard to find good, comprehensive information on the situation. While several blogs have covered this pretty well, the most comprehensive information I have found so far is on Travelpod.com If you are traveling to China soon or wrestling with the visa situation, check it out.

Update: 

Imagethief always likes to give credit where it is due. As you'll see in Rebekah Pothaar's comment, below, the original source of the information in Travelpod's post was the China travel forum Chinatravel.net. Given that this situation is subject to change at any time, and they seem to have done a good job tracking this situation, their "passport and visa" forum would probably be worth checking periodically.