China Falls Out Of Fashion For U.S. Brands

President Trump's Tariffs Push More US Manufacturers To Look Outside China
By SCOTT HORSLEY

Designer Isaac Mizrahi (left) embraces Robert D'Loren, CEO of Xcel Brands, which once manufactured 70% of its clothes in China. Today that's down to about 20%. The company now manufacturers in a variety of countries, including Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka.

A lot of American companies that make or buy products in China are starting to rethink that, as a new round of tariffs takes effect this weekend. 

But Robert D'Loren doesn't have to worry. 

As CEO of the Xcel Brands clothing company, he began moving production out of China some time ago.
"You never want to have all your eggs in one basket," D'Loren said. 

"China was easy. In retrospect, probably if you had 90% of your production in China, that wasn't good risk-management planning."
D'Loren, who sells clothing under the Isaac Mizrahi and Halston labels, among others, once manufactured 70% of his company's clothes in China. 

Today that's down to about 20% — a byproduct of D'Loren's effort to find faster, more flexible suppliers that can jump on fashion trends and turn out clothes in as little as six weeks.
"Sometimes there are things that by design and by luck ... you do that serve you well," D'Loren said.
Xcel now manufacturers in a variety of countries, including Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, and it's exploring production in Central and South America. 

But building that flexible network wasn't easy. 

Clothes from the new factories didn't fit right at first, or the fabric wasn't what D'Loren expected.

"It took us five deliveries to get it right," he said. 

"Everything that could go wrong did go wrong."
Many companies are now going through a similar process of trial and error, as they look for ways to avoid the president's tariffs.
"The truth is that the trade war is a little bit of a wake-up call for many companies," said Gerry Mattios, a Singapore-based vice president with Bain & Company consultants.
He says rising labor costs in China were already causing some companies to look elsewhere for suppliers, and the Trump tariffs have accelerated that. 

But other countries will need a lot of investment to match the expert manufacturing base and robust shipping network that China has built over the past two decades.
A survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China says most companies that do relocate look to Southeast Asia. 

Vietnam's exports to the U.S. jumped 33% in the first six months of this year, compared with the same period last year.
Mexico is another popular destination for companies shifting away from China. 

Roberto Durazo works for a company called Ivemsa that helps manufacturers set up shop in Mexico. 

He held three conference calls with potential clients in a single day this week. 

But for now, he says, most companies are keeping their options open.
"Not many of them are pulling the trigger," Durazo said. 

"My feeling is that many of them are gathering information and, if the trade war continues for a long time, just making the decision of coming into Mexico."
Mexico offers the advantage of much shorter delivery times to the United States. 

But it was only three months ago that President Trump was threatening tariffs on goods made there. Trump ultimately dropped that threat.
Trump has urged companies worried about tariffs to move production back to the United States. 

But only about 6% of the companies operating in China are considering that, according to the American Chamber survey.
Harry Moser, who runs the Reshoring Initiative, estimates that about 25% of those companies would find manufacturing in the U.S. competitive if they took tariffs, transportation and all other costs into account.
"Probably they made the right decision going to China when the wages [there] were so low," Moser said. 

"Probably they should have reevaluated it five years ago. But now that they feel they have to bring a lot of work out of China, now is the perfect time to reevaluate the U.S. as an alternative."
As the trade war drags on, more companies may rethink their presence in China. 

But for now, most are staying put. 

That includes Crown Crafts, a Louisiana-based company that makes baby blankets and other products in China. 

CEO Randall Chestnut told investors this summer that he looked into shifting production to a half-dozen different countries. 

But ultimately he decided it was cheaper to stay in China and simply pay Trump's tariffs.
"So we think that we're going to have to bite the bullet and, you know, pass it on," Chestnut said during a quarterly earnings call.
According to the American Chamber survey, 60% of the U.S. companies now operating in China have no plans to relocate.

China: A New World Order review – are we conniving with a genocidal dictatorship?

This documentary dared to do what politicians the world over would not, asking tough questions of Xi Jinping’s totalitarian rule 

By Stuart Jeffries

Is Xi Jinping ... creating a personality cult? 

The drink Mihrigul Tursun’s captors offered her was strangely cloudy. 

It resembled, she said, water after washing rice. 

After drinking it, the young mother recalled in China: A New World Order (BBC Two), her period stopped. 

“It didn’t come back until five months after I left prison. So my period stopped seven months in total. Now it’s back, but it’s abnormal.”
We never learned why Tursun was detained – along with an estimated one million other Uighurs of East Turkestan colony, in what the authorities euphemistically call re-education centres – but we heard clearly her claims of being tortured. 

“They cut off my hair and electrocuted my head,” Tursun said. 

“I couldn’t stand it any more. I can only say please just kill me.”
Instead of murdering one Uighur mother, China is attempting something worse – eliminating a people. 

“There’s a widely held misunderstanding that genocide is the scale of extermination of human beings,” said the former UN human rights envoy Ben Emmerson QC. 

“That’s not so. The question is: is there an intention to, if you like, wipe off the face of the Earth a distinct group, a nation, a people?” 

This, Emmerson and Barack Obama’s former CIA director Leon Panetta claimed, is what is happening to the Islamic people of East Turkestan. 

“This is a calculated social policy designed to eliminate the separate cultural, religious and ethnic identity of the Uighurs,” said Emmerson. 

“That’s a genocidal policy.”
Independently verifying Tursun’s treatment is scarcely possible, but this documentary heard claims of similar treatment in the colony.

A teacher and Communist party member told how she had been sent to teach Chinese at a detention camp for 2,500 Uighurs. 

She claimed not only to have heard detainees being tortured, but also to have learned from a nurse that women were given injections that had the same effect as the drink Tursun took. 

“They stop your periods and seriously affect reproductive organs,” she said.
What its critics call concentration camps, Beijing describes as “vocational education and training centres” resembling “boarding schools”. 

We cut to official footage of drawing, dancing and in one room a class singing in English “If you’re happy and you know it, shout ‘Yes sir!’” 

Which, while not proof of genocidal policy, was grim enough viewing.

But without doubt, since 2013 when Xi Jinping became president and there was an attack in Tiananmen Square in which Uighurs killed five people and injured 38, Beijing has cracked down on what it perceives as an Islamist threat from the province. 

That crackdown has included using smartphones and street cameras to create a surveillance state for Uighurs.
Should Britain roll out the red carpet to a country charged with crimes against humanity, of undermining freedom of speech and democracy in Hong Kong, of crushing freedom movements in Beijing, of – it was suggested here – creating a cult of personality around Xi the likes of which have not been seen since Chairman Mao? 

“Better we engage with them so we can influence them,” said the former chancellor George Osborne.
But does the UK have any influence? 

Certainly not as much as we did in in the 19th century when, instead of trying to charm them into trade deals, we militarily subdued the Chinese. 

“Very few countries have any leverage at all,” said Jeremy Hunt, the former foreign secretary. 

The rest of the world shrinks from criticising China’s human rights violations because we’re awed by its economic power and how we benefit from it, argued Panetta.
This first of a three-part series did what politicians dare not do, namely to raise hard questions, not just of Beijing, but of us. 

Are we so in thrall to consumerism, to buying cheap goods made by cheap labour in China, so intimidated by Chinese military and economic might, that we connive with what may well amount to a criminal dictatorship? 

The Chinese refer to the 19th century as the Century of Humiliation. 

Ours is becoming the Century of Moral Feebleness.
One day in 2015, while Xi was being charmed by the Queen and David Cameron, a bookseller from Hong Kong set off to see his girlfriend. 

Suddenly, Lam Wing-kee recalled, he was surrounded by 31 people. 

He spent the next five months in solitary confinement and was released only after he admitted to selling illegal books. 

“I am very remorseful,” he told his captors, clearly under duress. 

“I hope the Chinese government will be lenient to me.” 

The books he had mailed from his shop to customers in mainland China included those critical of the constitutional change that allows Xi to remain president for life.
Forget morality, it’s time for more cloudy drinks. 

While Lam Wing-kee sat in solitary, Cameron and Xi went to the pub for ye venerable nightmare of ye photo-op. 

Neither waited for their pints to settle, for clouds to resolve into clarity. 

Instead, both precipitately drank what, had the cameras not been there, I feel sure, neither would have touched. 

An emblem of Sino-British relations in the 21st century.

Per qualche renminbi in più

Media Quisling: Washington Post publishes special advertising section pushing propaganda for communist China

By Brian Flood

China says the U.S. can 'do more' to reduce the fentanyl demand after the U.S. says China is to blame for much of the fentanyl trafficking in the States.
Washington Post readers were treated to an eight-page “advertising supplement” on Thursday touting the achievements and talking points of the Chinese government in a section of the paper that's off-limits to Post editors.
The special section, dubbed “ChinaWatch,” came with a warning declaring, “Content in this advertising section was prepared by China Daily, and did not involve the news or opinion staff of The Washington Post.”
China Daily is owned by the Communist Party of China. 

Regular readers of the Post have seen similar sections in the past, and countries such as Russia have published similar sections in other papers, but Thursday’s version raised eyebrows as China’s ruling Communist Party has been in the news for a variety of topics amid a trade war with President Trump.
Earlier this year, the Washington Post’s own editorial board declared that China had launched a “massive campaign of cultural extermination” against Uighurs and other Muslims in the East Turkestan colony of the country. 

The Post’s editorial board described the “gross bigotry with which Chinese authorities view the Uighurs” and called for bipartisan legislation as a result.
“We have run the China Watch advertising supplement for more than 30 years. The China Watch advertising supplement has always been clearly labeled as such. Every page of each advertisement states that the supplement was prepared by China Daily and did not involve the news or opinion departments of The Washington Post. 

In addition, the layout and format of the supplements differs from our editorial content in a number of ways, including headline style, body font and column width,” a Washington Post spokesperson told Fox News. 

The newspaper did not comment on how much money it received for publishing the special section.
Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor told Fox News he was taken aback when he saw the eight-page section in the Post.
“Are they so desperate for cash, when they are owned by one of the richest men in human history, that they have to publish propaganda for communist China?” Gainor asked.
Gainor then joked, “We’ve always called it Red China, but the Washington Post wants to make sure it’s always read.”
The Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who reportedly is the richest person in the world with a net worth of over $100 billion dollars. 

Under Bezos’ control, the Post began using the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in 2017 as Trump was feuding with the media.
The Post's special “ChinaWatch” section featured glowing headlines such as “Nation puts its best sporting foot forward,” which hyped the country’s fitness initiative.
The “China Watch” section of the Post also included a look back at comments then-President Richard Nixon made in 1971 about American leaders seeking to normalize relations with China and a tidbit about China being a rapidly growing market for venture capitalists.
Gainor took specific exception with a financial story headlined, “Reforms juggernaut rolls on” that declared, “Financial services sector perks up on further opening-up, promising to stabilize China’s economic growth.”
Washington Post readers also were provided stories about Chinese tech companies, the introduction of high-speed trains across the country and a piece examining young job seekers who find success working in the communist nation’s tourism industry.
China Daily did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2013, journalist Mitch Moxley detailed his time working for China Daily in a feature for The Atlantic. 

Moxley said he spent the majority of his time writing “government-friendly puff pieces” and wasn’t allowed to criticize local issues, such as a counterfeit silk market he discovered.
“Many of the articles weren't so much arguments supported by fact, but rants supported by nothing. Many violated everything I had ever learned about journalistic ethics,” Moxley wrote.
Moxley declined comment when reached by Fox News about the Post selling space to China Daily.
This week, there have been rapid-fire developments in the trade fight between the U.S. and China. The president, after urging American businesses to abandon China, over the weekend threatened to declare a national emergency and freeze those relationships—as China imposed retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion in U.S. goods and the Trump administration announced increased tariffs on $550 billion in Chinese goods.


Steve Herman
✔@W7VOA
Eight-page supplement (from the Communist Party of #China) inside today’s @washingtonpost (owned by @amazon billionaire @JeffBezos).

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3:04 PM - Aug 29, 2019 · Washington, DC
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Voice of America White House bureau chief Steve Herman tweeted an image of the section.
“Meanwhile, overseas expansion of #China Communist Party-controlled media continues,” Herman added, with a link to a Financial Times report that China’s state TV was preparing to launch in Europe despite critics labeling it propaganda.

Joshua Wong predicted Hong Kong crackdown in interview before arrest

Pro-democracy figure said protesters must keep up the fight or outcome will be ‘unimaginable’

Tania Branigan in Hong Kong

Joshua Wong has been arrested in Hong Kong.

Joshua Wong was serving a prison sentence for his role in the 2014 “umbrella movement” when Hong Kong’s current protests broke out.
He said: “Agnes Chow visited me and said: ‘You know, on 17 June, when you are released, I guess the extradition bill will already have passed. In fact, 2 million people went on the street.”
The unprecedented outpouring of public anger had already forced Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, to announce that the bill was dead – and has kept the protests going. 

But as the movement enters its 13th weekend, Wong and Chow are among hundreds who have been arrested over the unrest.
In an interview conducted before his arrest, the secretary general of pro-democracy group Demosistō said no one could have imagined such large-scale and enduring turmoil.

Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow

He said: “They cannot govern Hong Kong any more. Five years ago, we said youngsters were standing on the frontlines and parents were criticising them. But baby boomers have been very supportive this time. People might not agree with all the behaviour of the protesters, but everyone is asking what’s the reason for teargas in residential areas, in roads where there aren’t even protesters?”
He pointed to a poll showing that about four-fifths of the population want an independent inquiry into the police response to unrest – a key demand of the movement – and that almost as many want the government to completely withdraw the bill.
He said: “Never in Hong Kong history have you had people supporting a political demand like that.”
Wong said that while low wages and cramped housing had played a part in fomenting discontent, they were not driving the protests, with many professionals and wealthier people taking part, too. 

He said: “Everyone knows Hong Kong people are just asking for fundamental rights enjoyed by western countries since the last century.”
Wong was a student leader who became the face of the 2014 movement and co-founded Demosistō. This time the protests are leaderless and he is just one face among many. 

Participants make their own decisions on the streets or via online voting.
But arresting him and Chow, another leading figure in Demosistō, is a gamble. 

Protesters may well be intimidated by the cumulative effect of arrests, sackings and attacks by thugs. But all the previous attempts to turn up the pressure have created further anger, and sustained mass participation.

Wong said: “Mistakes by the riot police and Hong Kong government encourage people to continue this movement.”
Protesters are under no illusions about the likelihood of retaliation once the movement is over, given what happened after 2014.
Wong said: “One country, two systems [China’s formula for ruling Hong Kong after Britain returned the city to Beijing in 1997] was eroded systematically after the umbrella movement: there were jailings, the disqualification of legislative council members, the booksellers were kidnapped, a foreign correspondent’s visa was not renewed … If we don’t continue, the crackdown will be far worse than you can imagine.”
Many believe authorities will crack down far more harshly if there is no sign of the movement dwindling. 

Mainland media have shown paramilitary police drills near the border with Hong Kong and there is growing talk that the government might invoke the emergency regulations ordinance, a colonial-era giving sweeping powers to the chief executive on everything from censorship to arrest and property seizures.
Wong said: “I can’t imagine what would be the outcome. Of course they’re trying to scare people. But I think it also scares the world.
“World leaders may not care about the extradition bill or whether Hong Kong people have the right to vote. But the idea of troops in the CBD [central business district] – that’s what they worry about.
“It would have an impact on the global economy. Just imagine the internet being shut down – how could financial markets operate smoothly? Even the [pro-establishment] tycoons will urge Carrie Lam not to use this ordinance. Political freedom for Hong Kong depends on Beijing. But the economy depends on western countries.”
He said he believed that international opinion was shifting, citing the recent joint statement from the G7 on Hong Kong, remarks from the UK’s foreign affairs select committee and growing political support among US politicians.
Wong said: “People ask, how can we succeed? Someone told me the state would win. They’ve won for the last 22 years [since the handover] already, and especially in the last five years. We have nothing to lose.”

The Chinese Strike Back

Democracy activists Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Andy Chan are arrested in Hong Kong
By Shibani Mahtani and Gerry Shih

Democracy activist Joshua Wong addresses crowds outside Hong Kong’s legislature during a demonstration against the extradition bill on June 17.

HONG KONG — Authorities widened a crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong with the arrests of prominent activists, underscoring Beijing’s growing intolerance of sustained street protests that have convulsed the Chinese territory and revived calls for universal suffrage.
Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, who rose to eminence as the student leaders of pro-democracy demonstrations five years ago, were detained early Friday, ahead of what was expected to be another weekend of clashes in the city.
Police said the pair would face charges of participating in an unauthorized assembly and inciting others to participate in an unapproved assembly, while Wong would face an additional charge of organizing an unapproved assembly.
The charges relate to a June 21 protest where demonstrators surrounded police headquarters.
A third activist, Andy Chan, the leader of a banned pro-independence party, was arrested at the city’s airport late Thursday while trying to board a plane.
Police said he was detained on suspicion of rioting and assaulting a police officer.
The arrests come at a tense time in the semiautonomous Chinese territory, where an official proposal to allow extraditions to mainland China triggered months of protests that have descended into street battles with police.
As demonstrations have turned violent, and grown to encompass a broader push for democracy in Hong Kong, authorities have stepped up arrests and the use of force.
The dissent coincides with a politically sensitive moment for the ruling Communist Party, as the clock ticks down to the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in October.
China’s government has issued increasingly strident threats in an effort to quell the unrest.
A day earlier, it sent a new batch of troops in to Hong Kong to reinforce the People’s Liberation Army garrison in the city.

Agnes Chow, right, and Joshua Wong outside government offices in Hong Kong in June. The pair were arrested Friday in a widening crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

Friday’s arrests, combined with the Hong Kong garrison rotation and rumors that Hong Kong may invoke emergency laws, were “extremely alarming,” said Samantha Hoffman, a fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute who studies Chinese politics.
“At the very least, it is clear that Beijing is attempting to intimidate the people of Hong Kong. The Chinese Communist Party places political protests very high on its list of threat perceptions,” she said.
“The party will protect itself before it defends the objective interests of China, the Chinese people, and Hong Kong and its people. Therefore, it is hard to imagine a solution where the party backs down in any meaningful way.”
In a report after the roundup of the Hong Kong activists, China’s official Xinhua news agency said more arrests were expected.
Hours later, Xinhua posted a picture on its social media account with a pair of handcuffs and images of the detained trio with the caption “What goes around comes around.”
A local pro-democracy councilor, Rick Hui, was also arrested Friday, his office said.
Charges against him were not immediately known.
With Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, unwilling to compromise on demonstrators’ demands, the continued unrest is taking a toll on the economy.
Police have arrested more than 800 people in connection with protests that have rocked the city since June, some of them on riot charges that can attract a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
Organizers of a planned march in Hong Kong this weekend called off the rally on Friday after police refused to authorize it.
“Our first principle is always to protect all the participants and make sure that no one could bear legal consequences for participating in the protest,” said Bonnie Leung, a convener of the Civil Human Rights Front.
Wong, 22 years old, became known as the face of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, a 79-day street occupation aimed at securing universal suffrage for Hong Kong.
He was charged and sentenced several times in connection with those protests, and served three stints in jail.
Most recently, on May 16, Wong was sentenced to two months in prison after losing an appeal against a prison term for contempt of court.
He was released in June.

Policemen pull out their guns after a confrontation with protesters in Hong Kong on Aug. 25. Police have escalated their use of force in trying to quell demonstrations. 

Along with Chow and another activist, Nathan Law, Wong went on to found political group Demosistō, which advocates self-determination for Hong Kong.
The three were arrested in 2017 ahead of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s visit to the city.
This time, the protest movement in Hong Kong has taken a leaderless form — in part to avoid arrests and detentions that plagued its leaders in the past, and to empower a broader base of participants. Unlike in 2014, members of Demosistō have not delivered speeches at rallies, nor have they been prominent faces on the front lines, but have used the group’s social media presence to promote their cause globally.
“We’ll use our influence and connections with the international community to tell the world about what’s happening,” Chow said in an earlier interview with The Washington Post. 
“It’s still very important.”
On Friday, Wong was seized at roughly 7:30 a.m. “when he was suddenly pushed into a private car on the street,” Demosistō, said.
Chow was arrested a short time later at her home, Demosistō added.
Both are being held in the Hong Kong police headquarters in the Wan Chai district.
The group has sought help from its lawyers.
Wong and Chow were due to travel to Washington next month, where they were to meet with lawmakers and participate in a congressional Executive Committee on China hearing on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. 
The bill, which has bipartisan support, including from House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), seeks to punish those who suppress freedoms in Hong Kong including through the use of sanctions and visa bans to the U.S.

Anti-extradition bill protesters take cover from tear gas canisters as they clash with riot police on Aug. 25. 

Chan, who founded a party that advocates for Hong Kong independence, was also arrested in August on suspicion of possessing offensive weapons and bombmaking materials.
Hong Kong operates under a “one country, two systems” arrangement within China, under which the city is supposed to enjoy a high degree of autonomy for 50 years following its return to Chinese rule in 1997.
In recent years, concerns have grown that Beijing is tightening control over the territory and working to erode the freedoms and autonomy that distinguish Hong Kong from mainland China.
In a tweet the night before his arrest, Wong wrote that “Being born in uncertain times carries certain responsibilities.” 
He linked to a website outlining protesters’ demands.

How China’s repression playbook miserably backfired in Hong Kong

Beijing tried to repress Hong Kong the way it represses the mainland. It backfired.
By Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian 

It may have been China’s biggest unforced error in Hong Kong.
Earlier this year, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who is close to the government in Beijing, tried to force through a draft bill that would have permitted China to extradite alleged criminals in Hong Kong for trial in mainland China.
The legislation would, in essence, link Hong Kong’s judicial system with China’s, allowing the Chinese Communist Party to seize political dissidents there and effectively ending Hong Kong’s tradition of a free and independent judiciary.
The move was widely perceived as having Beijing’s backing. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang has stated that China will “continue to firmly support” Lam as she pushed the law. 

Chinese state-run media also touted it, with the China Daily calling the treaty “long overdue.”
Hongkongers were furious, seeing the move as a naked attempt by China’s leaders to assert more control over Hong Kong, and they took to the streets. 

The massive protests that have wracked the city for more than two months began with the largest march in Hong Kong history — almost 2 million of the city’s 7 million residents took part.
In the face of near-universal opposition, Lam announced the bill would be suspended, but not scrapped entirely. 

The hint that the legislation might be renewed when anger died down, combined with incidents of police brutality against peaceful protesters, galvanized hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents to continue to protest every weekend for the past eleven weeks. 

This summer of protest has now become one of the largest protest movements in history.
How did China’s leaders make such a mistake?
The answer has to do with the lessons they learned from crushing the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement and their subsequent decades of successful repression on the mainland. 

The ruling Chinese Communist Party has one impulse, and one impulse only: repression.
By pushing this extradition bill, China was trying to apply the same levers of repression to Hong Kong that it uses in the mainland. 

Only this time, it backfired.
That’s because Chinese communists fundamentally don’t understand how to effectively govern a free-thinking citizenry. 

By seeking to quash dissent in an already orderly, prosperous city, the party has turned peace into chaos.

China’s playbook for repression
China’s government has decades of experience in how to crush popular movements. 

It’s a skill set they’ve honed since June 4, 1989, when they sent in the People’s Liberation Army to open fire on the hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters gathered at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, with official figures placing the number of dead at 300, though estimates range as high as 10,000.
The crackdown ended the period of relatively free intellectual ferment that had characterized the 1980s and ushered in a new era defined by an implicit contract between the Chinese Communist Party and the people: stay silent on politics, and the party will deliver economic prosperity in return. To enforce this political silence, China’s leaders developed a playbook for stopping popular movements before they can ever take hold.During the night of June 3 to June 4, 1989, China’s People’s Liberation Army opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, killing hundreds if not thousands. 

First, the party planted the seeds for a long-term cultural change. 

They purged hundreds of thousands of reform-minded officials from the party. 

And in 1992, they instituted a nationwide patriotic education curriculum in schools that played up China’s historic victimization at the hands of foreign powers and presented loyalty to country and party as a primary virtue.
These efforts bore fruit over time. 

Chinese youth today, unlike their peers 30 years ago, are far less likely to admire democracy or Western-style freedoms, and far more likely to say that one-party rule is a better system for China.
Second, party officials have made it extremely personally risky to participate in protests, a task made far easier by China’s lack of an independent judiciary and the party’s control over domestic security agencies.
Participants may be disappeared and put into “black jails,” or off-books detention centers, beaten up by plainclothes thugs, or formally arrested and charged with “creating a disturbance” or, more seriously, “inciting subversion of state power.” 

Some have been sent to forced labor prisons. 

Family members of participants may also be subject to intimidation or detention. 

Troublemakers can be fired from jobs, removed from leadership positions, and subjected to torture.
Third, Beijing has sought ever-greater control over the information environment. 

Media in the People’s Republic has never been free, but in the past decade, ever-stricter media censorship combined with innovative and sweeping internet filters have made it far more difficult for mainland Chinese to access unapproved information.
As messaging apps and social media have become a primary way for people to communicate and for protesters to mobilize, the Chinese government has pioneered new techniques of intercepting messages before they are even sent, crippling the ability of would-be activists to organize.
And fourth, in recent years Chinese leaders have sought to construct a comprehensive surveillance state utilizing facial recognition technology, mass data collection, and artificial intelligence. 

In some major cities, a network of cameras allow police to immediately identifypedestrians and even drivers. 

This is done in the name of fighting crime — but of course, that includes political crime. 

Increasingly, there is no such thing as anonymity and there is nowhere to hide from China’s security state.
It’s important to note, however, that Chinese authorities do actually permit many protests, particularly local demonstrations with modest demands, such as to reroute a proposed road or improve working conditions in a factory. 

Indeed, there are thousands of such incidents each year. 

Under some circumstances, officials may even permit larger demonstrations, such as the anti-Japan protests that swept China in 2012 amid a maritime territorial dispute.
But other types of demonstrations are quickly crushed. 

As China scholars Maura Cunningham and Jeffrey Wasserstrom wrote in Dissent magazine in 2011, “In post-Tiananmen China, not all protests are created equal.” 

Demonstrations that fit within the party’s historical narrative — that foreign powers victimized China while the Communist Party saved it — are often tolerated, unless they become violent or began to acquire a life of their own, at which point officials view them as threatening and shut them down.
But “when a protest highlights divisions within the Chinese nation,” wrote Cunningham and Wasserstrom, “it almost always draws swift and harsh retaliation from the government.”
The Hong Kong protests are the epitome of such a division. 

That’s why Beijing is doing everything it can to silence them.

Why China’s repression playbook doesn’t work in Hong Kong
Hongkongers are committing a cardinal sin: turning the party’s preferred historical narrative of victimization by Western colonial powers on its head. 

For years now, the people of Hong Kong have been fighting to preserve the political legacy left to them by British colonizers, while rejecting what the Chinese Communist Party wants to replace it with.
Britain took control of Hong Kong after defeating the Qing Dynasty in a series of wars in the mid-19th century; a treaty stipulated that the city would remain under British control until 1997. 

Under the British system, Hong Kong gradually developed strong traditions of judicial independence, freedoms of speech and assembly, and some degree of representative government.
The British did not, however, implement universal suffrage in elections for the city’s top leader, leaving that task to China’s Communist rulers as specified in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which laid out the framework for Hong Kong’s 1997 handover back to mainland Chinese sovereignty.

According to that framework, Hong Kong would retain a “high degree of autonomy” until 2047 with explicit protections for the civil liberties its residents had previously enjoyed — giving rise to what came to be known as “one country, two systems.”
It’s no surprise, then, that the Chinese government’s reflex to attempt to deploy the same toolkit of repression in Hong Kong that it has developed to deal with protests on the mainland. 

But China’s single-minded obsession with stability through repression is counterproductive in a well-functioning region that cherishes political freedom. 

It was Beijing’s numerous attempts over the past two decades to “mainlandize” Hong Kong that stirred up unrest in the first place.
A primary barrier to Chinese social and political control of Hong Kong is the city’s political system, which protects traditional freedoms such as speech and assembly. 

Thus, an ongoing goal of China’s has been to recreate the legal conditions present on the mainland.
Since as early as 2003, China has attempted to push through legal changes that would allow authorities to crack down on political freedoms in Hong Kong when desired. 

That year, Communist Party officials in Beijing pushed Hong Kong’s leaders to introduce a sedition act that would have allowed city officials to ban speech, outlaw organizations, and conduct searches without warrants if there were suspicions of “treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government.”
But the proposed bill was shelved after Hong Kong erupted in massive protests that filled the streets — the first sign that Hongkongers were not going to simply surrender to the same fate as mainland China.Emily Lau Wai-hing of the Frontier Party sells her party’s protest T-shirt at Sai Yeung Choi Street in the Mongkok district on June 22, 2003, in Hong Kong. 

In 2014, Beijing once again sought to use legal means to assert control over the political system, proposing a legal change that would allow all Hong Kong residents to vote to elect their own leaders, but only from a set of candidates approved by Beijing. 

Protesters, led by high school and college students, occupied downtown areas to demand that Hong Kong residents be granted the true universal suffrage they had been promised under the Sino-British Joint Declaration.
The disruptive demonstrations that came to be known as the Umbrella Movement polarized the city, pitting powerful pro-China business interests against students and pro-democracy activists. 

The government, under Beijing’s watchful eye, waited out the movement until it fizzled out. 

No electoral changes were made; the result was, at best, a draw.
Demoralized, activists were unable to maintain mass interest in their cause, and many observers, including the Chinese Communist Party itself, believed the 2014 movement had been Hong Kong’s last stand.A pro-democracy activist holds a yellow umbrella in front of a police line on a street in Mongkok district on November 25, 2014, in Hong Kong. 

China’s attempts to subdue Hong Kong through legalized repression gained momentum. 

An unprecedented cascade of prosecutions followed, with the pro-democracy movement’s top leaders arrested and jailed on dubious charges ranging from contempt of court to conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. 

And in September 2018, the Hong Kong government banned a small pro-independence party, citing national security reasons — the first time a political party had ever been outlawed there.
That demoralization is likely what emboldened Beijing to think that they would finally be able to achieve their goal of subverting Hong Kong’s independent judiciary, this time through an extradition treaty. 

This time, however, city residents aren’t nearly as polarized as before.
This time, what’s at stake isn’t just the democratic ideal of free and universal elections, which business interests and other groups have in the past been willing to give up in exchange for economic opportunity on the mainland. 

High school students, stay-at-home mothers, and wealthy financiers all know that the end of Hong Kong’s judicial independence will mean the end of Hong Kong’s special status and their way of life.
And China’s response in 2014 means that protesters know this may be their last chance. 

“They know if they give up, the crackdown is going to be worse than what happened after the Umbrella movement,” Victoria Tin-Bor Hui, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, told me.
By attempting to apply mainland-style repression in a city with entrenched political freedoms, the Chinese Communist Party has needlessly alienated an entire generation of Hongkongers.

Stop the Beijing Bully in the South China Sea

Destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer Sails Past Fiery Cross, Mischief Reefs in Latest FONOPS
By Megan Eckstein

Sailors man the rails aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108) as the ship transits along the coast of Valparaiso, Chile during a parade of ships on Nov. 19, 2018. 

A U.S. destroyer conducted a freedom of navigation operation in the Spratly Islands today.
Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG-108) sailed within 12 nautical miles of both Fiery Cross Reef and Mischief Reef today to challenge excessive maritime claims in the South China Sea, U.S. 7th Fleet spokeswoman Cmdr. Reann Mommsen told USNI News.
“U.S. Forces operate in the Indo-Pacific region on a daily basis, including in the South China Sea. All operations are designed in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” she said.
Ships operating the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command have conducted several FONOPS this year, with officials saying they wanted FONOPS to be viewed as more routine operations. 

In late May, USS Preble (DDG-88) sailed near the Scarborough Shoal, and earlier that month Preble and USS Chung-Hoon (DDG-93) steamed within 12 nautical miles of the Gaven and Johnson Reefs.
In February, Preble and USS Spruance (DDG-111) steamed within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, an artificial island China built up in the Spratly Islands chain. 

In January, USS McCampbell (DDG-85) steamed past the Paracel Islands.

Ens. Christian Meyer practices visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) techniques aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108) on Aug. 22, 2019. Wayne E. Meyer is deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations in support of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. 

The South China Sea continues to be a key location where U.S. warships promote freedom of navigation and open international waterways, and also where China has taken a stand this summer. 

A group of Chinese warships, including aircraft carrier Liaoning, sailed through the South China Sea earlier this summer, operating in territorial waters of the Philippines and near Japan.
When Wayne E. Meyer conducted its FONOP today, other ships were in the vicinity, but all interactions were considered routine, a source told USNI News.
Today’s operation comes just after China denied a U.S. Navy request to send a warship to the eastern port city of Qingdao, Reuters first reported. 

The U.S. and China are locked in a growing trade war, and while U.S. Navy ships have made port visits in Chinese cities previously, the rejection of the request may reflect those growing tensions between the two economic powers. 

China also denied two warships access to Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous islands where protests against the government in Beijing are ongoing.
The full statement from U.S. 7th Fleet:
“The guided-missile destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer (DDG 108) conducted a Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP) in the South China Sea, Aug. 28 (local time). Wayne E. Meyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of Fiery Cross and Mischief Reefs in order to challenge excessive maritime claims and preserve access to the waterways as governed by international law. U.S. Forces operate in the Indo-Pacific region on a daily basis, including in the South China Sea. All operations are designed in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows. That is true in the South China Sea as in other places around the globe. We conduct routine and regular Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) as we have done in the past and will continue to in the future. FONOPs are not about any one country, nor are they about making political statements.”

Hong Kong: Protesters join MeToo rally against police

BBC News

This Hong Kong park lit up in a sex abuse protest

Several thousand people have rallied in Hong Kong to protest against sexual violence by police during the past months of demonstrations.
The rally was billed as a #MeToo event, echoing global protests to end sexual assault and harassment.
Organisers said some 30,000 people attended, while police put the figure at 11,500, local media say.
Hong Kong Police said they respected the rights of people in detention, and had not received formal complaints.
At Wednesday's rally, some attendees told the crowd they had been mistreated by police officers.
According to the South China Morning Post, one woman broke down in tears as she accused police of conducting an unnecessary strip-search.

The protesters accused Hong Kong police of using sexual violence as a means of intimidation.

Another speaker said her underwear had been exposed while she was dragged away by police, and said officers insulted her and called her a prostitute.
"I told them I was wearing a dress and asked them to let me walk. But, of course, they played deaf," reports quoted her as saying.
"I am not ashamed of talking about what happened that night, because I did not make any mistakes. I am not a weakling. I don't need people to sympathise with me."
The anti-government rallies in Hong Kong have frequently escalated into violence between police and activists, with injuries on both sides.
Police have fired tear gas and rubber bullets, while some activists have thrown bricks, firebombs and other objects. 

On Wednesday, police said 900 people had been arrested since the protests began.
Demonstrators have repeatedly accused the police of brutality, and are demanding an independent inquiry.

At a separate protest organised by the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, hundreds of people denounced Cathay Pacific Airways for dismissing staff who took part in or supported anti-government rallies.

Cathay Pacific protest
Earlier this month, demonstrations at Hong Kong international airport led to hundreds of flights being cancelled.
The protests began as rallies against a controversial extradition bill which would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial.
They have since expanded in scope, becoming a broader pro-democracy movement.
Beijing has repeatedly condemned the protesters and described their actions as "close to terrorism".


On Thursday, China's military moved a new batch of troops into Hong Kong. State media described it as a routine annual rotation.
When last year's rotation was announced, it was stated that the number of troops stationed in Hong Kong "was maintained with no change".
There was no such line this time, fuelling speculations Beijing might have raised the number.
News agency Xinhua showed pictures of armoured personnel carriers and trucks, as well as a small naval ship arriving in Hong Kong.
The troop rotation follows reports of increased Chinese military and police presence in the city of Shenzhen just across the border from Hong Kong.
A former British colony, Hong Kong has some autonomy and more rights than the Chinese mainland under a "one country, two systems" agreement.
It has its own judiciary and a separate legal system from mainland China. 

Activists increasingly fear its freedoms are being eroded.

Freedom Fighter

Why Jimmy Lai is the only Hong Kong multi-millionaire standing up to China

By Jenni Marsh

Jimmy Lai met with US Vice President Mike Pence in July 2019.

Hong Kong --  Jimmy Lai has been a public target for decades.
It all started after the Hong Kong business tycoon — a refugee from China — reinvented himself in the mid-1990s as the founder of the city's provocative, anti-Beijing tabloid, Apple Daily.
One of the advertisements that introduced the newspaper to the world made Lai's point in the bluntest of ways: By showing Lai sitting in a dark warehouse with a red apple on his scalp, being pelted with incoming arrows fired by a shadowy figure.
Since then, Lai's role as one of Hong Kong's most prominent rabble-rousers has threatened his fortune, subjected him to death threats and made him a symbol of the city's tensions with communist China.
When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the city was guaranteed its own legal system and certain democratic freedoms until 2047, when it will likely return in total to Beijing. 

Over the past three months, millions have flooded Hong Kong's highways in marches against Beijing's aggressive encroachment on those treasured freedoms.
Apple Daily has become the city's biggest official champion of that movement. 

The newspaper of the protesters. 

Its front pages rally citizens to go out and march, it has given away posters to raise at demonstrations, and it regularly taunts the government for its failures.
In a town of tycoons, Lai is the only multi-millionaire who is prepared to openly jeopardize his fortune for Hong Kong's freedom. 

The 70-year-old is frequently seen at the marches, in the pouring rain or blazing summer heat.
To his supporters, Lai is a brave democracy fighter. 

But his detractors say that Lai and his muckraking publication are a black hand for the United States and cause chaos. 

In recent years, firebombs have been lobbed at his gated home, an obituary claiming he died from AIDS has run in a rival publication and Lai's political donations have subjected him to an anti-corruption case. 

Lai denied wrongdoing, and the case against him was ultimately dropped.
That Lai has ties with the United States is undeniable. 

Last month, he flew to Washington to discuss with US Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton how fundamental Hong Kong's freedom is to the US' standoff with China.
"The new Cold War is actually a rivalry of competing values," Lai says, framing the current US-China trade war as a standoff of between democracy and authoritarianism. 

"We in Hong Kong are fighting for the shared values of the US against China. We are fighting their war in the enemy camp."
It's a battle Lai says he's prepared to die for.

Chinese refugee
Lai had already led an extraordinary life by the time he founded Next Digital group, which owns Apple Daily, in the 1980s.
As the Great Chinese Famine gripped mainland China in 1960, Lai smuggled himself out of the southern mainland province of Guangdong and into Hong Kong in the bottom of a fishing boat. 

He arrived in the city at the age of 12 and dirt poor.
Lai says he became an odd jobs guy at a textile factory, making 60 Hong Kong dollars ($7) a month and living in an apartment with 10 others in the slum neighborhood of Sham Shui Po -- still one of Hong Kong's most impoverished districts.

The Hollywood Knitwear Factory in Kwun Tong in the 1970s when Hong Kong's textile industry was booming.

On his first day, he recalls how coworkers took him for breakfast. 

Relief from "the anxiety of hunger" was overwhelming, says Lai. 

"This freedom was the first feeling I had about Hong Kong and it never disappointed me," Lai says. "Never, until now."
After the Communists assumed power of China in 1949, Hong Kong's population swelled by 1,000 people a day during the 1950s as Chinese migrants flooded over the border. 

Most were "daring and entrepreneurial" survivors willing to take risks, Lai recalls. 

His twin sister was one of the so-called freedom swimmers, who literally swam from China to the city. 

She went on to become a major property developer in Canada.
"Hong Kong was a land of opportunity," Lai says of that era.
Within two decades, Lai had learned English, worked his way up the factory floor to the position of salesman and decided to start his own retail line. 

On one trip to New York during fabric sampling season, he bought a pizza. 

Written on the napkin was the name Giordano.
That became the name of his wildly successful, casual men's clothing chain, which made Lai his first fortune.
"I was stupid enough to think that if I called it Giordano, people would think that it's an Italian brand name," he says. 

It worked. 

By 1992, the group had 191 outlets, made 9 million garments annually and had a turnover of 1.6 billion Hong Kong dollars ($211 million).

Shoppers pass a Giordano retail store on a rainy day in Hong Kong, 22 March 2005.

"He's kind of a legend in terms of his business success," says Clement So, associate dean in the school of journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

"Not only for what he did in the news media but in other kinds of industry."
Business was booming, but two things happened in the late 1980s that would derail the course of Lai's life.
First, on June 4, 1989, tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to disperse young pro-democracy protesters, changing China forever. 

Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred to thousands.
Lai says he wasn't political at the time, "but I always had a very strong yearning for freedom because of my experience in China."
Hong Kong was still under British rule but barreling towards reunification with China in 1997. 

As the city watched the Tiananmen crackdown in horror, Giordano began producing T-shirts with pro-student slogans.
Around the same time, Lai says he got divorced from his first wife. 

"I thought I was a very eligible guy," he says. 

"That was something shocking to me."
Shortly afterward, Lai was interviewed by local journalist Theresa Lai. 

The pair fell in love and married. 

Next, he became a media baron.

An Apple a day
Today Lai lives in a white, gated house in an upmarket nook of Kowloon. 

Security staff are stationed outside the property. 

Paparazzi from communist newspapers photograph all who leave and enter, putting pressure on Lai's personal life and looking for signs that he meets with pro-US figures.
Inside, melodious Chinese hwamei birds chirp in tall white cages, dramatic art works adorn the walls, while giant bromeliads and orchids brighten each corner. 

"I love flowers," says Lai, with intermittent clips of an upper-class British accent, as he enjoys a breakfast of strawberries and egg sandwiches served on china platters.
The figure he cuts at home, where he regularly hosts politicians, journalists and influential figures to discuss Hong Kong's democratic future -- or lack of it -- is in stark contrast to his reputation as a brash, instinct-driven, ex-factory manager whose formal education ended in primary school.
That public persona began in 1994, when Lai published an incendiary column in a magazine owned by his Next Digital group, describing then Chinese Premier Li Peng, known as the "butcher of Beijing" for his role in the Tiananmen crackdown, as "the son of a turtle's egg with zero IQ" — a profoundly offensive slur in Chinese.

Jimmy Lai with his Chinese-language Apple Daily newspaper which sparked a price war when it launched in 1995.

Beijing responded then as it might do now. 

It penalized his clothing business.
Lai says Giordano's licenses were revoked across much of mainland China. 

In 1994, Lai sold his stake in the company, and the following year he launched Apple Daily, with a 100 million Hong Kong dollar promotional campaign, two years before the British handed the city back to China.
"It's my nature to be a rebel -- to be a revolutionary," Lai says. 

"I express it in business. Whenever I am in business, I create something different from the norm. That's the reason why I have been successful more than other people. I don't believe in incremental improvement."
He applied the mass-market ethos of Giordano to his newspaper: It was low cost, populist and sensational. 

Modeled visually on USA Today, it "shook the media landscape in Hong Kong in a revolutionary way," says Clement So, the Chinese University of Hong Kong associate dean. 

The paper didn't care for balanced reporting: This was advocacy journalism, with a strong dose of saucy celebrity gossip.
On news stands, Lai sparked a citywide price war, virtually giving away the sensational title at two Hong Kong dollars (25 cents), the price vendors charged to sell it. 

"Other papers quickly imitated without much success," says So. 

"The style of writing, the use of big photos. The pagination. Everything. There was a term called 'Apple-ization.'"
The newspaper became the city's most-talked about outlet -- a reputation it has maintained through its pioneering Apple Extra platform, which controversially animates breaking news events from murders to protests. 

The publication also found big success in Taiwan, a self-governed Chinese democracy which Beijing claims as its own territory. 

"Apple Daily was very lucrative in the beginning," says Willy Lam, a professor in history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
By 2008, Lai was worth $1.2 billion, according to the Forbes rich list.

Jimmy Lai protests during 2014's Umbrella Movement for democracy in Hong Kong.

With other media moguls unwilling to risk the commercial fall out of facing off with Beijing post-1997, Apple Daily became the city's sole publication regularly criticizing China. 

"They were so afraid of the Communists, they left me an independent media market almost to myself," Lai says.
The paper's uncompromising stance coincided with swathes of Hong Kong's media becoming more pro-Beijing.

"Basically, today people choose their media depending on what is their political affiliation," says Michael Tien, a pro-Beijing lawmaker and fellow textile tycoon whose G2000 clothing chain has more than 700 outlets globally. 

Few Hong Kongers back Beijing. 

Many are pro-democracy. 

Supporters of democracy and freedom identify as "yellow ribbon."

Many make a point of defining themselves as Hong Kongers, to distinguish their identity from the Chinese living across the border.
For Lai, a Hong Konger is someone from a small Chinese island who shares the values of the West. "The Hong Kong identity this time ... has really emerged much more into our consciousness," he says. 

"We identify as Hong Konger like never before."
In early 2018, a 19-year-old Hong Kong resident allegedly killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan and returned to the city before being arrested. 

There was nothing Taiwanese police could do; Hong Kong had no extradition agreement with Taiwan, or any Chinese territory.
In March 2019, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam proposed a solution: an update to the city's fugitive laws that would allow criminals to be extradited to Taiwan -- and mainland China.
Lai was in the United States when the bill was announced and was warned by a US politician over breakfast about the danger it posed. 

"I really alerted myself," remembers Lai. 

"I looked at it again and said, 'Shit, this is horrible.' I knew it was going to be a big thing."
He was right. 

The bill ended up sparking nearly three months of often violent demonstrations in Hong Kong, with more than 800 mostly young people arrested on charges including "rioting". 

Protesters have paralyzed the city's airport on two occasions.
Speaking to Lai it seems that many of his defining moments were sparked by America. 

The name "Giordano" came from a New York pizza house napkin; when the brand initially struggled to make money, a trip to McDonald's inspired Lai to streamline its offerings, as the US burger chain had done; Apple Daily was modeled on the USA Today.
His top aide in Hong Kong, Mark Simon, is the son of a former CIA employee.
That last detail never fails to tantalize onlookers. 

For decades, one of the key charges against Lai has been that he is a CIA stooge, and the Apple Daily a tool of the United States.
Earlier this month, China's state-run media branded Lai and three other well-known pro-democracy figures in the city as Hong Kong's "Gang of Four" -- a reference to the group that tried to overthrow Mao Zedong and seize power from the Communist Party in the 1970s.
The People's Daily claimed Lai was part of a quartet of "secretive middlemen and modern traitors," as Beijing tried to blame the unrest in Hong Kong on foreign forces.
The pro-Beijing lawmaker Tien, for one, believes that Washington pumps money into Hong Kong's democracy movement to provide a "continuous force to destabilize China," although he admits he has no evidence to substantiate this claim.
Lai calls the idea of a US-funded color revolution "ridiculous."
"If the US is funding this the evidence would be so self-evident," he says. 

"You can't find even one person to stand up and say, 'Hey, I got money from the US.'"
But he does view Washington as a key ally for Hong Kong -- as that early warning on the extradition bill proved. 

When Lai returned from that trip, he began raising the alarm. 

Journalists at first weren't too ruffled, he says.

"Lam was flying high before this extradition law," says Lai. 

"Xi Jinping was taking her hand (at public events), she was walking in front with him, she really wanted to do something great for her boss. She knew this was a great opportunity. And actually it was almost. Because people really didn't pay attention to it at first."
But the business community was more alarmed. 

"All of them have had to pay something to get the protection of the people that control them in mainland China," says Lai. 

More than that, they understood the law could be used by Chinese contacts as a tool for blackmail; if a Chinese partner wanted to control their Hong Kong counterpart they could potentially report them to the authorities across the border, where there is a 99% conviction rate.
Opposition to the bill slowly mounted, starting with a march of 12,000 people on March 31, led by Lam Wing-kee, a bookseller who was kidnapped from Hong Kong by mainland Chinese agents in 2015, after selling tomes critical of Beijing. 
Lam steamed ahead.
The marches continued: 160,000 people, then 1 million. 

Still the bill remained set to go through the city's top legislative body, Legco, in early June. 

Finally an estimated 2 million people took to the streets on June 16. 

The bill was suspended, but it was too late to quell the anger it had stirred.
Tien concedes it's unlikely that Washington engineered a 2-million-man march, but as demonstrators increasingly wave American flags in the protests -- something Lai says is just a publicity play to attract international TV cameras -- the pro-Beijing politician wants an independent inquiry into whether the CIA is funding a color revolution in the city.
A senior US administration official has denied that Washington is sponsoring or inciting the demonstrations, and President Donald Trump also appeared to reject the suggestion last week, when he tweeted that "many are blaming me, and the United States, for the problems going on in Hong Kong. I can't imagine why?"

Freedom over fortune
Founding Apple Daily, and taking on Hong Kong's fight for democracy, gave Lai "a meaning in life that I never had" as a textile tycoon. 

"The mission," he says, "it has such a wonderful meaning."
The city's other tycoons have avoided wading into the crisis. 

"If you're a business person in Hong Kong, it is difficult to avoid the China market," says Lam, the history professor. 

"And once you are in the China market your investment becomes a hostage, which the Chinese government is never shy of using as a means to exert influence."
The closest that Hong Kong's richest man Li Ka-shing, who is worth over $31 billion according to Forbes, has got to commenting on the political crisis was publishing two cryptic messages in the many of the city's newspapers this month (Apple Daily wasn't one of them). 

The cryptic nature of his advice to exercise caution was unmistakable -- across the city, readers speculated about whether he was addressing the protesters or Beijing, or both.
"No other tycoon is willing to" be so outspoken against China as Lai, says Clement So, the Chinese University of Hong Kong professor. 

"That's what has made Lai so unique."
That outspokenness doesn't come without dangers.
In 2015, Molotov cocktails were hurled at the headquarters of Next Media and Lai's home in the early hours of the morning. 

"We're not shocked. Unfortunately, violence has become a regular feature of Hong Kong now in the political discourse. That's just a simple fact," Mark Simon, Lai's assistant, told CNN at the time.
Today, Lai has a personal security detail at his home, but the self-confessed troublemaker says he has never forgotten what it was like to be poor, and he has no intent on abandoning the masses in the crusade they share with him for democracy.
"The young people see no future for themselves -- everything is expensive," says Lai. 

"Even to live in a small room is too expensive for them." 

The land of opportunity that entrepreneurs like Lai and Li Ka-shing thrived in when they arrived in Hong Kong has long disappeared.
"With this extradition law people thought, Okay, that's the last straw, we have to fight. We have to fight in front of this last frontier," he says.
That fight might not be good for the finances of Apple Daily.
The extent of Lai's personal wealth today is unknown, but he fell off the Forbes Hong Kong Rich List in 2009. 

Big corporations with interests in mainland China, such as Cathay Pacific or Li's CK Hutchison Holdings, never advertise in Apple Daily. 

Hong Kong's previous chief executive, CY Leung, who the publication has long antagonized for his close ties to Beijing, regularly posts pictures on his Facebook page of companies that advertize in Apple Daily. 

"Apple Daily is public enemy number 1 for CY Leung," says Lam, the history professor.
Operating in this political landscape, coupled with a general decline in print sales and advertising, has squeezed Apple Daily financially. 

The newspaper's circulation is now 200,000 a day, two-thirds of what it was a decade ago, with 1.5 million readers online. 

Its daily ad revenue has halved over the past three years. 

Next Digital has posted a net loss for the past three years.
Earlier this year, the newspaper introduced a pay wall of three Hong Kong dollars for access until September. 

Next month, the publication is hoping that people will pay 50 Hong Kong dollars a month to subscribe.
"The timing is good for Apple Daily because people want news," says Clement So, the media expert. "Lai would like to get financial support from online readers, if he can do it would throw him a lifeline. But if not successful, it is a real worry whether he cannot sustain his operation in the long run."
Meanwhile, bootstrapping online outlets, such as Stand News and HKC News, are growing competitors in the pro-democracy space. 

By shooting chat shows on smartphones and employing a small staff, they keep overheads low enough to avoid needing Beijing-tied advertisers.

2047 on the horizon
To many, the year 2047, when Hong Kong will likely return to full Chinese rule,once felt like a futuristic date. 

But now that it is just 28 years away, it's something Hong Kongers can imagine in their lifetime. 

The fight for democracy has become more urgent, more controversial -- but potentially less achievable, as China's economic rise gives Beijing more political power to resist democracy.
"I don't know where (the protests are) going to end," Lai says, "but one thing I know, with the world watching over us ... I think Trump, the US, cannot back off (from supporting Hong Kong) now. They can only go further and further. Not financially, but politically and morally."
Earlier this month, Pence said that chances of a trade deal with China would diminish if Hong Kong's laws were violated by Beijing, and criticized the country's human rights violations as antithetical to American ideals. 

Trump also tweeted that Chinese dictator Xi Jingping should meet with protesters.
If mounting international pressure coincides with an economic slowdown and job losses, China could change, speculates Lai. 

"That doesn't mean that the Communist Party will collapse," he adds. 

"But it might mean that Xi would have to step down and a more liberal government will take over and slowly we will be on the right way." 

But there is no sign of this happening anytime soon.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong's economy is taking a hit across the tourism, aviation and retail sectors from the disruption. 

Michael Tien, the pro-Beijing lawmaker, says that sales for his retail business were down 40% in August. 

"Nobody feels good anymore to come out and consume," he says. 

The Hong Kong government has announced a $2.4 billion stimulus package to help the economy grow amid the unrest.
For Lai, if the financial hub's economy has to suffer for freedom, so be it: The prospect of a struggle doesn't give people "an excuse not to fight."
"If we fight, we might have a miracle happen," he says. 

"If we don't fight, we have to submit to the tyranny. I just think that if we have been able to eliminate slavery we have the ability to eliminate tyranny, too. That's hopeful."

Hong Kong’s business is everyone’s business: as protests rage on, world leaders should make sure China knows that

• A violent suppression of Hong Kong protesters could have stark consequences for world trade and world peace
• It is, therefore, in world leaders’ interests to draw clear boundaries for Beijing over how to respond to them

By Robert Boxwell

Protesters in the Ngau Tau Kok area of Hong Kong on August 24 wave the US flag, as others cover their right eye in tribute to a woman who suffered a serious eye injury during anti-government protests outside a police station two weeks before. 

During the protests over the presidential election results in Iran in 2009, I was teaching an MBA course at the University of Malaya. 

Three of my students were Iranians, one of whom looked like he was in his early 50s, about my age. We had established a friendly “old guys” rapport during the first weeks of the course and I was enjoying learning as much from him as I hoped he was from me.
At a break one evening, after the protests had turned deadly, I walked over to talk to him. 

“Crazy stuff back home,” I said, trying to make conversation, but not sure what his politics was. 

“I hope your family and friends are all OK.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. 

When he began, he spoke quietly. 

He said that he had demonstrated when he was young, decades earlier, full of the same outrage and bravado Iranians were showing in 2009. 

His voice began to crack as he told me that he had been imprisoned as a result, horribly losing a few years of his life for demonstrating. 

“Those young kids,” he said, beginning to choke up. 

“They have no idea what those people are going to do to them.”
The week before the elections, then-US president Barack Obama had given a speech in Cairo that gave hope to many in the Muslim world that his administration would be conciliatory after eight years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

His speech, and his tough words towards the mullahs when the violence began, seemed to give hope to the protesters that somehow the US would help them.
We didn’t.
Watching the demonstrations in Hong Kong grow more violent by the day, and seeing some young Hongkongers waving American flags, it’s hard to not believe the US is going to break their hearts too, and they’re going to suffer soon, tragically and indelibly, with nothing to show for it in the end.

Everyone sees where the protests are likely to be headed. 

What are the democracies going to do after thousands of Hongkongers have lost their freedom or their lives?
Now is the time for action, not after the bad thing happens. 

Beijing says that Hong Kong is an internal matter and warns the rest of the world to mind its own business. 

But Hong Kong – Asia’s world city – is everyone’s business. 

A violent repression of Hong Kong’s protesters will impact the entire world with consequences that no one can predict.
A group of respected leaders from democracies in China’s neighbourhood, Britain and the US should coordinate immediately and invite themselves to Beijing. 

There’s no reason China’s leaders can’t host them for “informal” talks, giving everyone the face that is so important in the region.

While this may sound impractical or like something that’s not done, this is not a time for business-as-usual diplomacy. 

The message to Beijing should be straightforward: “China’s business today is everyone’s business. Talk with us about Hong Kong. Nobody is trying to tell you what to do, but certain moves will lead all of us to a bad place.”

Once a violent repression starts, it will be too late, and the damage will extend far beyond Hong Kong. 

The world economy will suffer and, worse, so may world peace.
The reticence of last century’s “leaders” led to two catastrophes. 

Now is the time for this century’s leaders to step up, before we creep towards another.