Mankind's Enemy No. 1

China is a global threat to human rights, report finds
By Amy Woodyatt

The Chinese government increasingly poses a "global threat to human rights," according to NGO Human Rights Watch.
In its annual report reviewing human rights standards in nearly 100 countries, the NGO warned that China is carrying out an intensive attack on the global system for enforcing human rights.
The report's release comes after HRW executive director Kenneth Roth said he was denied entry to Hong Kong -- with no reason given by immigration authorities.
Roth had planned to launch the report in the city, which has been rocked by anti-government protests for over seven months.
HRW echoed longstanding concerns about China's use of an "Orwellian high-tech surveillance state" and sophisticated internet censorship system to catch and stamp out public criticism.
The report also pointed to the detainment and intense surveillance of hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims in the far western colony of East Turkestan.
Beijing has faced increasing international pressure over its tactics in East Turkestan, with multiple, unprecedented leaks shining a light on a massive network of concentration camps targeting Muslims. Former detainees have also spoken out, with a former teacher in the camps telling CNN they witnessed abuse and attempts at brainwashing of detainees.
Beijing has previously denied accusations of ethnic or religious discrimination in East Turkestan, which is home to 10 million Muslims.

Beyond East Turkestan, HRW warned of "mass intrusions" on personal privacy including the forced collection of DNA and use of artificial intelligence and big data analysis "to refine its means of control."
High-tech surveillance and censorship tactics pioneered in East Turkestan have previously been rolled out to other parts of the country, and there have been concerns that other religious minorities -- including Hui Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists -- are facing similar restrictions to those placed on Islam in East Turkestan.
"Beijing has long suppressed domestic critics," Roth said in a news release after he was prevented from entering Hong Kong.
"Now the Chinese government is trying to extend that censorship to the rest of the world. To protect everyone's future, governments need to act together to resist Beijing's assault on the international human rights system."

Mesut Ozil vs. China: Arsenal star makes human rights stand

'Lukewarm and selective support'
As well as criticizing China for undermining international human rights protections, HRW also took aim at democratic governments and world leaders for their "lukewarm and selective support" for existing standards.
The organization criticized Donald Trump, who was deemed to be "more interested in embracing friendly autocrats than defending the human rights standards that they flout."
It also singled out the European Union for a failure to adopt a "strong common voice" on human rights, both in China and around the world, and noted that it was instead distracted by Brexit, nationalism and migration.
In the report, the NGO calls for governments and financial institutions to offer alternatives to Chinese loans and development aid, and for universities and companies to promote codes and common standards for dealing with China.
Beijing has emerged as the primary donor for much of the developing world, as well as extending major trade and infrastructure investment through Xi Jinping's Belt and Road project.
The report also urges leaders to force a discussion about East Turkestan -- where massive concentration camps are located -- at the UN Security Council.
Such international condemnation has been hard to come by, however, particularly among Muslim countries, which might be expected to speak out against China's hardline tactics.
At the UN General Assembly in late October, 23 mostly Western countries came forward to make a strong, official statement criticizing Beijing's East Turkestan concentration camps.
In response, Belarus issued a statement claiming 54 countries were in support of the East Turkestan camps system. 
Not all signatories were revealed, but a similar statement in July included several Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran.
"An inhospitable terrain for human rights is aiding the Chinese government's attack," the organization said in a statement.
"A growing number of governments that previously could be relied on at least some of the time to promote human rights in their foreign policy now have leaders, such as Donald Trump, who are unwilling to do so."

Unequal Deal

TRUMP’S “PHASE ONE” TRADE DEAL LEAVES CHINA WITH MASSIVE ADVANTAGE
One of the key reasons Trump launched his trade war has yet to be resolved.
BY BESS LEVIN

Donald Trump denies leading a pressure campaign on Ukraine in remarks to the press outside the White House November 20.

Back in October, financial markets and other interested parties woke up to the exciting news that, according to Donald Trump, the United States had reached a “very substantial phase-one deal” with China, constituting the first step in a series of steps that would hopefully end the longtime trade war with Beijing and make the pain that American farmers, companies, consumers, and the economy at large had suffered over the last two years all worth it in the end. 

Like most Trump proclamations, though, this one turned out to be a lie. 

We knew this both in real time, as news outlets reported that China wanted another round of talks before even thinking about signing “phase one” of the trade deal and on Tuesday, it was made yet more clear when Trump again announced striking a phase one deal—more than two months after he’d already claimed one had been clinched:


Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
I will be signing our very large and comprehensive Phase One Trade Deal with China on January 15. The ceremony will take place at the White House. High level representatives of China will be present. At a later date I will be going to Beijing where talks will begin on Phase Two!
94.4K
3:16 PM - Dec 31, 2019


While Trump has lied about negotiating a deal with China numerous times by now—in December 2018, he bragged to reporters that he’d struck an “incredible” deal with Xi Jinping that blew up in his face less than 24 hours later; in August, a breakthrough call with China turned out to be fictional—at this point, there’s no suggestion that he is, once again, just making shit up as he goes along. That’s the good news.
The less-good news?
His big, terrific phase one deal appears to accomplish very little, and on a matter that both the president and his top advisers have said is crucial to bringing fairness to the markets, literally no progress has been made. 

Per the Washington Post:
President Trump’s trade deal with Beijing leaves untouched the marriage of business and government known as China Inc. that American executives for nearly two decades have said tilted global markets against them. 
Trump insisted for months that he wanted to resolve all outstanding trade issues with China in a single, comprehensive accord that would refashion the Chinese state’s economic role. 
As late as September, he rejected talk of a partial agreement, saying instead that he wanted “the big deal.” 
The two sides discussed industrial subsidies in the early rounds of negotiations over an agreement that exceeded 150 pages. 
But Chinese officials resisted making structural changes, and by the time officials settled this month on an 86-page partial accord, any commitments to reduce subsidies had been excised.

Chinese steel mills, solar panel manufacturers, electric battery developers, shipbuilders and oil producers all benefit from a vast web of government support. 
Officials in Beijing arm Chinese companies against their foreign rivals with discounted loans from state banks, cheap land, low-cost electric power, and cash infusions from officially approved investment funds...
China now devotes more than 3 percent of its annual output to direct and indirect business subsidies — a share of the economy that is roughly equivalent to what the United States spends on defense, according to economist Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan research group.
Some of that aid is similar to programs in the United States and other advanced nations, encouraging companies to retrain workers, use less energy or otherwise support government goals. 
But much of it is divorced from any consideration of profit and loss. 
So it fuels excess production of goods like steel, which spill into global markets, depressing prices and making it hard for American companies to compete. 
Trump last year imposed tariffs on steel after the Commerce Department warned that the U.S. share of global production had fallen by nearly two-thirds since 2000, under pressure from heavily subsidized Chinese mills. 
At the same time, signs that China was lavishing state aid on efforts to supplant the United States as the global leader in advanced technology triggered Trump’s decision to launch his trade war with Beijing.
In a report published last year, Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s top trade negotiator, said that government subsidies were a major element of China’s plan to surpass the U.S on technological leadership.
China is “grossly subsidizing and taking over our markets,” he insisted to the Senate Finance Committee this summer. 
And yet!
White House officials have acknowledged that some key issues remain unresolved.
Lighthizer has said “a lot of hard things” have been left to future talks, which most analysts say will be arduous and unlikely to bear fruit before the November election.
Bargaining over industrial subsidies is expected to be particularly tough. 
Though Trump launched the trade war to get China to change practices including its numerous subsidies, the commercial conflict has only convinced Xi to accelerate efforts to become self-sufficient — no matter the cost.
In other words, one of the major reasons Trump launched his trade war has yet to be resolved, and while getting a “phase one“ deal sounds well and good, it’s not at all clear that President Art of the Deal will be able to advance to beyond that (though he’ll assuredly claim as much in an quickly debunked tweet some time soon.)

Salvator Mundi

President Trump has done the world a favor by highlighting China’s monstrous communist regime

By Hugh Hewitt 

William Safire once recalled talking in the early 1990s with his old boss, President Richard Nixon, about events two decades earlier. 

They were talking China.
“Before Nixon died, I asked him — on the record — if perhaps we had gone a bit overboard on selling the American public on the political benefits of increased trade,” wrote the New York Times columnist, who died in 2009. 

“That old realist, who had played the China card to exploit the split in the Communist world, replied with some sadness that he was not as hopeful as he had once been: ‘We may have created a Frankenstein.’”
What Nixon and every president since — save President Trump — has done, is the catapulting of communist China to peer superpower status with the United States. 

Even as we watch, Xi Jinping is playing “the Russia card” against America, in the reverse image of the events of 50 years ago. 

This week, Russia flipped the switch on the new “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline from the Far East of Vladimir Putin’s country to the heart of Xi’s.
Despite its extensive oil reserves, Russia may not just be “Saudi Arabia with trees,” as some have called it, given the old Soviet Union’s nuclear capabilities being modernized by Putin. 

But Russia’s ailing demographics limit it to second-tier superpower status, akin to that of the other members of the nuclear club not named the United States or the PRC.
What President Trump has done, in his nearly three years in office, is fundamentally to redefine the U.S.-China relationship by emphasizing what my radio colleague Dennis Prager first gave voice to as a general rule for competing interests: “Clarity before agreement.”
President Trump has clarified a great deal about China and its ambitions. 

The 45th president has also clarified — especially for Big Tech but also for all providers of goods and services to China, including the NBA — that there are deep differences between the value sets held in Beijing and those in Washington, differences that need to be recognized and understood.
Recent weeks have brought new and intense scrutiny to Xi’s mandates regarding the China’s Uighur minority. 

For months, the world has watched the perilous push by Hong Kong protesters for the preservation of the “one country, two systems” guarantees given them (and the world) by Xi’s predecessors. 

And the West generally, and Americans specifically, are at long last fully awake to the reality that China’s Communist Party has not joined any “end of history” long march toward freedom that inevitably results in an appreciation of liberty and natural law.
What President Trump — with the assistance of popular and crucial books such as Henry Kissinger’s “On China,” Graham T. Allison’s “Destined for War” and Michael Pillsbury’s “The Hundred-Year Marathon” — has made clear is that the competition with China is very much an all-out battle for leadership. 

Its fronts encompass every field of technology, weaponry, Information Age data and artificial intelligence, and cultural and international norms.
This is as significant a breakthrough as Nixon’s in 1972, though of a completely different order. 

In 1972, the world welcomed China back into the community of nations.

Now, with China no longer “rising” but risen, a new era is in front of us, one that President Trump has ushered in with typical Trumpian bluntness but with great effectiveness.

Given China’s ambitions and its array of tactics in the service of Xi’s grand strategic vision of it as the dominant country on the planet, Trump has done even his fiercest critics a great service: He is obliging them to consider China, in every aspect of life, on every stage, in every conversation. 

It is now incumbent on the men and women who would replace President Trump at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to declare their own China policies, and to do so in great detail.

The Democrats have avoided talking about China much, because they don’t want to upset their Silicon Valley funders -- these greedy pro-China Quislings -- who would prefer that China remain just another market — albeit a very large one — instead of an existential enemy not just of America but of the very idea of ordered liberty. 

Democrats also hate to acknowledge the good things President Trump has done, including this infusion of long-needed clarity about Beijing.
China, our Frankenstein’s monster, is a wholly new force on the planet.

Democrats who would be president need to demonstrate that they have a plan, for Xi most certainly does.

Salvator Mundi

Traumatic defeat for China makes President Trump Hong Kong superhero
By Gabrielle Fonrouge

Hong Kong protesters hold up a photo President Trump tweeted of himself with his head on Rocky Balboa's body.

President Trump is Hong Kong’s sudden hero.
Hours after he signed two bills to support human rights in Hong Kong, enraging Chinese communistofficials, pro-democracy protesters in the beleaguered city held a “Thanksgiving Rally” Thursday night to commend him for taking the action.
And front and center at the rally were printouts of the president’s Wednesday tweet showing his head on Rocky Balboa’s chiseled body.
“Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong,” thousands of protestors chanted in a public square as they waved American flags and held up copies of the photo composite.
For the past six months, the former British colony has been rocked by mass protests that have spawned violence on both sides of the divide.
More than 5,000 people have been detained since the uprising began.
In the midst of a heated trade war between the US and China, President Trump unexpectedly signed the two bills on Wednesday after they passed the House and Senate nearly unanimously.
The new laws mandate sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials who carry out human rights abuses on the semiautonomous island, require an annual review of Hong Kong’s trade status and prohibit the export of specific nonlethal weapons to Hong Kong police.
Joshua Wong, a well-known pro-democracy activist who was among those who lobbied for the laws, told protesters Thursday their next goal is to get other Western leaders to follow in President Trump’s footsteps in order to put pressure on the Chinese government to give in to their demands.
On the mainland, Chinese government officials were enraged by the new laws and said President Trump is using Hong Kong as a pawn to hamper China’s growth and hit back at Beijing.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng told US Ambassador Terry Branstad that Beijing sees the move as “serious interference in China’s internal affairs,” a ministry statement said.
In response, the US Embassy in Beijing said China’s Communist Party “must honor its promises to the Hong Kong people.”
The protests started in June over a Chinese extradition bill that whittled away the freedoms promised to them when China regained control of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom in 1997.

Barking Chinese Never Bite

Enraged China Warns US of Retaliation Over Law Backing Hong Kong Protesters
President Trump on Wednesday signed into law congressional legislation which supported the protesters
Reuters

Anti-government protesters clean up after protests at the Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, China, November 16, 2019. 

Hong Kong -- China warned the United States on Thursday it would take "firm counter measures" in response to US legislation backing anti-government protesters in Hong Kong, and said attempts to interfere in the Chinese-ruled city were doomed to fail.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law congressional legislation which supported the protesters despite angry objections from Beijing.
The legislation requires the State Department to certify, at least annually, that Hong Kong retains enough autonomy to justify favourable US trading terms that have helped the territory grow as a world financial center. 

It also threatens sanctions for human rights violations.
Beijing warned that the United States would shoulder the consequences of China's counter measures if it continued to "act arbitrarily" in regards to Hong Kong, according to a foreign ministry statement.
Hong Kong's Beijing-backed government said the legislation sent the wrong signal to demonstrators and "clearly interfered" with the city's internal affairs.
Anti-government protests have roiled the Chinese-ruled city for six months, at times forcing businesses, government, schools and even the international airport to close.
The financial hub has enjoyed a rare lull in violence over the past week, with local elections on Sunday delivering a landslide victory to pro-democracy candidates.
Hong Kong police entered a sprawling university campus on Thursday at the end of a nearly two-week siege that saw some of the worst clashes between protesters and security forces to have rocked the former British colony.
A team of about 100 plain-clothed police officers entered the city's battered Polytechnic University to collect evidence, removing dangerous items including petrol bombs which remain scattered around the campus.
It was not clear whether any protesters remained on site but officers said any that were found would receive medical treatment first.
Demonstrators in Hong Kong are angry at what they see as Chinese meddling in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Polytechnic University on Kowloon peninsula was turned into a battleground in mid-November, when protesters barricaded themselves in and clashed with riot police in a hail of petrol bombs, water cannon and tear gas. 

About 1,100 people were arrested last week, some while trying to escape.

More than 5,800 people have been arrested since June, the numbers increasing exponentially in October and November.
Security teams from the university had scoured the maze of buildings at the red-bricked, sprawling campus, a focal point in recent weeks of the citywide anti-government protests that escalated in June, finding no one.

Duty of Interference to Support Democracy and Human Rights

President Trump signs bill supporting Hong Kong protesters 
By Andrew O'Reilly

President Trump signs Hong Kong bill.

President Trump on Wednesday signed two bills meant to support human rights and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, drawing a furious response from Beijing's foreign ministry.

The bills were signed as Hong Kong continues to be gripped by turmoil amid widespread discontent over Chinese rule in the special administrative region. 

Chinese officials had hoped President Trump would veto the bill and the president had expressed some concerns about complicating the effort to work out a trade deal with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
"Look, we have to stand with Hong Kong," Trump said in an interview on "Fox & Friends" last week, later adding: "But I'm also standing with President Xi. He's a friend of mine. He's an incredible guy."
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act mandates sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials who carry out human rights abuses and requires an annual review of the favorable trade status that Washington grants Hong Kong. 

The second bill prohibits export to Hong Kong police of certain nonlethal munitions, including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, water cannons, stun guns and tasers.
"The act reaffirms and amends the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, specifies United States policy towards Hong Kong, and directs assessment of the political developments in Hong Kong,” Trump said in a statement.
He added: “Certain provisions of the Act would interfere with the exercise of the President's constitutional authority to state the foreign policy of the United States. My administration will treat each of the provisions of the Act consistently with the president's constitutional authorities with respect to foreign relations.”
The munitions bill was passed unanimously, while Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was the sole House member to oppose the human rights bill. 

Before Wednesday's signing announcement, Trump would only commit to giving the measures a "hard look."

Hong Kong kept its advantageous trading status with the U.S. upon its 1997 handover to China by the U.K., in recognition of Beijing’s pledge to allow it to retain its own laws, independent judiciary and civil and economic freedoms.
That independent status has come into question amid moves by Beijing to gradually strengthen its political control over the territory, helping spark months of increasingly violent protests.
Earlier in November, China’s legislature argued it had the sole right to interpret the validity of Hong Kong’s laws after the territory’s court struck down an order banning the wearing of masks at protests. 

Legal scholars described that as a power grab violating the governing framework known as “one country, two systems.”
With Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed government refusing to enter into dialogue or make concessions, the territory’s police force has been given broad powers to quell the protests. 

That has brought excessive use of force and the abuse of detainees, along with a complete lack of accountability for officers.
In a September report, Amnesty International documented numerous cases where protesters had to be hospitalized for treatment of injuries inflicted while being arrested.
The signing of the act was widely praised by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers.
"If America does not speak out for human rights in China because of commercial interests, we lose all moral authority to speak out elsewhere," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. 

“This bicameral, bipartisan law reaffirms our nation’s commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law in the face of Beijing’s crackdown. America is proud to stand with the people of Hong Kong on the side of freedom and justice.
“I am pleased that the President signed this legislation and look forward to its prompt enforcement.”
“The signing of this legislation into law ensures the United States finally sends a clear and unequivocal message to the people of Hong Kong: We are with you,” Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. 

“With the world standing witness to history as the people of Hong Kong risk it all in pursuit of their legitimate aspirations for autonomy and against the erosion of democracy, I am incredibly proud to support the people of Hong Kong with the tools in this powerful new law.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., added: I applaud President Trump for signing this critical legislation into law. The U.S. now has new and meaningful tools to deter further influence and interference from Beijing into Hong Kong’s internal affairs.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch, R-Idaho said the bills are "an important step forward in holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its erosion of Hong Kong's autonomy and its repression of fundamental human rights." 

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., warned Xi: "Americans despise tyrants and stand in solidarity with Hong Kong. The whole world has seen both the courage of Hong Kongers and the brutality of your Chinese Communist Party. As long as freedom-seekers fill the streets of Hong Kong, the American people will take their side."
President Trump’s signing of the act comes just days after pro-democracy candidates in Hong Kong won 388 out of 452 seats in 18 district council races, while pro-Beijing forces, who previously held 73 percent of the seats, won only 62. 

Voters came out in droves with a 71 percent turnout -- up from 47 percent four years ago in the same elections, according to the Electoral Affairs Commission.

The Unreliable Clown-President

Will Trump Betray Hong Kong?
BY JOSEPH BOSCO

Donald Trump’s latest declaration on the Hong Kong protests seeks to reconcile his earlier conflicting statements. 

In June, he said Hong Kong, as part of China, is an internal matter for those parties to resolve.
In August, he recognized that Hong Kong is also an international human rights concern and called on Xi Jinping to “do the right thing.” 

He said Beijing’s handling of it would affect progress on the trade talks if China “works humanely with Hong Kong first.”
Last week, both houses of Congress — the Senate unanimously and the House with all but one vote — approved the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which would impose sanctions against officials who violate human rights in Hong Kong and could remove the territory’s special trade and financial status.
Predictably, Beijing strongly condemned Washington’s latest “interference in China’s internal affairs” and encouragement of political turmoil. 

But, since Chinese spokespersons have been alleging an American “black hand” virtually from the outset of the protests, the heavy-handed tactics finally have provoked a serious Western response.

Congress might well have reasoned that if the United States will be accused of intervening anyway, we might as well do some good in the meantime.
On Friday, Trump was asked whether he would sign or veto the legislation. 

His answer reflected the competing considerations he suggested he is weighing: human rights and support for democracy versus the need to negotiate an acceptable trade agreement with China.
“We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi. He’s a friend of mine. He’s an incredible guy but I’d like to see them work it out. But I have to stand with Hong Kong. I stand with freedom … but we are also in the process of making the largest trade deal in history.”
It suggested a reversal of his earlier position that the Hong Kong outcome took priority over a trade deal. 

Now, he was cautioning that the U.S. position on Hong Kong should not be allowed to interfere with a good trade outcome.
But Trump hinted at a slightly different line of reasoning when he took credit for the Chinese government’s restraint so far in avoiding a Tiananmen-like massacre: “The only reason he’s not going in is because I’m saying it’s going to affect our trade deal.”
In the president’s mind, and possibly Xi’s, China might be seen as already having done its part on Hong Kong to facilitate the trade talks. 

Now, that argument might go, Washington must be prudent by not exacerbating the situation, which the Hong Kong Act could do by encouraging the protesters to persevere.
Yet, the absence of machine-gun fire and tanks in the streets is a very low hurdle to pass in judging official restraint. 

Police beatings with batons and metal rods, stomping downed protestors’ heads, shootings with beanbags and rubber bullets, spraying with toxic gases, and choke-holds, manhandling and bundling young people into police vans hardly qualify as “humane” treatment. 

The number of students loaded into trains and vans and incarcerated in unknown locations is now in the thousands, approaching the death and casualty figures for June 4, 1989. 

There have been reports of torture and “suicides.”
The fact that Chinese Communist brutality has not been even worse and more public hardly constitutes “doing the right thing” as Trump requested of Xi. 

Concessions to the student demands for release of detainees, police accountability, and guarantee of universal suffrage would have calmed the situation and would have been consistent with Beijing’s original “one country, two systems” promise. 

Xi’s failure to ensure that result provides more than enough reason to justify Trump signing the Hong Kong Act.
If China were to respond by indeed unleashing its army against Hong Kong, Trump should make clear that would immediately trigger the punitive actions provided in the act and would trigger severe international repercussions against China across the board. 

Along with the concentration camps in East Turkestan, it would make Communist China the pariah regime it should have been after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Far from weakening the U.S. position in the trade talks, where China needs a deal more than the United States, it would demonstrate an indomitable American will that Beijing has not previously encountered and which it must now accept in all its dealings.
The president has several options vis-à-vis the legislation, ranging from pro-Hong Kong to pro- Beijing actions. 

Trump could:

1. sign it into law with a strong statement affirming its democratic purposes and pledging vigorous implementation in support of Hong Kong;
2. sign with no statement;
3. sign with a wink-and-nod conciliatory statement to Beijing while admonishing the protestors to refrain from violence or provocation;
4. do nothing and let the bill become law in 10 days;
5. do nothing and let it die if Congress adjourns within the 10 day period (pocket veto);
6. veto with no statement, allowing bipartisan Congressional majorities to pass it over his veto;
7. veto with a statement calling for protestors’ restraint and expressing appreciation to Xi for cooperation in Hong Kong, in the trade talks, and possibly on North Korea — and convince enough Republicans to switch their votes and uphold his veto.

The course of action Trump chooses will have broad implications for the future of U.S.-China relations, and for the security and confidence of Taiwan, which Beijing also claims as part of China under the one country, two systems formula.
For Xi and China, it is an existential political moment, equal to the economic challenge Trump has created with his demand for internal structural reform and trade reciprocity. 

If Trump does not shrink from pressing America’s and the West’s advantage in both confrontations, China will finally be on the way to true integration into Richard Nixon’s “family of nations” and Trump will find himself presiding over a historic moment every bit as monumental and positive for the world as Ronald Reagan’s success in ending the Cold War.
If Trump joins with a virtually unanimous Congress in standing with Hong Kong, it will send a powerful message to America’s adversaries that domestic political rancor will not tie America’s hands in the global struggle between freedom and tyranny.

Trump is a Real Bastard but Has He the Balls?

White House Won’t Say if Trump Will Sign Hong Kong Bill That Has Angered China

Trump has avoided a strong defense of pro-democracy protesters, but Congress has thrown the issue into his lap.

By Michael Crowley and Ana Swanson

Protesters clashing with the police this week near the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

WASHINGTON — Trump has spent months delicately sidestepping Hong Kong’s escalating battle between pro-democracy demonstrators and security services enforcing China’s authoritarian government line.
But on Wednesday, Congress put Trump on the spot, sending him tough legislation that would impose sanctions on Chinese officials for cracking down on the protesters and could end Hong Kong’s favored economic relationship with the United States.
The measure lands on the president’s desk at a sensitive moment. 

His trade talks with Beijing are becalmed, and a Dec. 15 deadline for Trump to decide whether to renew major tariffs on Chinese goods is approaching. 

China’s government has responded with fury to the measure and demanded that it not become law.
The bill, titled the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, is a test of Trump’s commitment to the United States’ historical mission of promoting human rights and democracy abroad. 

Members of both parties have urged the president to speak out more forcefully on behalf of demonstrators resisting Beijing’s tightening grip over the semiautonomous island territory, to little avail.
“He’s largely tried to ignore it so far,” said Laura Rosenberger, a top National Security Council aide for China affairs in the Obama White House.
“This is really going to be a test. In general his approach to the China challenge has been very focused on the trade aspects of the relationship,” added Ms. Rosenberger, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
The White House declined to comment on whether Trump would sign the measure, which passed the Senate unanimously and the House with only one lawmaker opposed, creating a solidly veto-proof majority. 

Presidents have 10 days to sign approved legislation, but that clock is suspended when Congress is adjourned, as it will be next week for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Speaking on CNBC on Thursday, the measure’s Senate sponsor, Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said that he expected it to win Trump’s approval.
“My understanding is they will sign it,” he said.
Trump could still invoke presidential authorities to avoid or delay enforcing some of the bill’s provisions, according to people familiar with the measure, potentially blunting its impact in the near term as well as criticism from Beijing.

China often issues angry criticisms of Washington with little follow up. 

And Chinese negotiators have also pushed to isolate the trade talks from a range of security-related matters, including the Trump administration’s crackdown on the Chinese telecom firm Huawei and the American sale of fighter jets to Taiwan.
“What has been surprising to me throughout the trade negotiations has been the degree of China’s willingness to compartmentalize issues,” said Evan S. Medeiros, another top China aide in the Obama White House.
“Obviously the Chinese don’t want the president to sign it. But are they going to be willing to blow up the trade deal to do so?” added Mr. Medeiros, now a professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. 

“I don’t think they will, in large part because they understand he has a lot of discretion with this particular bill.”
In June, Trump told Xi Jinping that he would not publicly back the protesters as long as trade talks were progressing. 

Administration officials have said that they have some reservations about striking a trade deal with China at a time when violence in Hong Kong could worsen, but that it is not the main impediment to reaching an agreement.
Congress acted on the measure, which had been stalled, after the riot police challenged student activists on campuses for the first time this month. 

Trump has said he hopes the crisis “works out for everybody,” and has suggested that the matter is an internal affair for China to resolve.
But leaders in both parties have pressed Trump to offer more support for the protesters.
“I would encourage this president, who has seen Chinese behavior for what it is with a clarity that others have lacked, not to shy away from speaking out on Hong Kong himself,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Wednesday. 

“The world should hear from him directly that the United States stands with these brave men and women.”
Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic leader, denounced the president’s position, asking on Twitter this month, “Why is Trump giving the Chinese Communist Party a free hand?”

While Trump has said little about Hong Kong to provoke Beijing, other administration officials have used stronger words. 

“We stand with you. We are inspired by you. We urge you to stay on the path of nonviolent protest,” Vice President Mike Pence said in an address last month.
The measure requires the State Department to certify annually whether Hong Kong’s government is maintaining democratic and civil society freedoms, such as judicial independence and freedom of the press, that were promised by China’s government when Britain handed over its former colony to Beijing in 1997. 

If Hong Kong fails that test, it would lose a preferred trading status that plays a major role in its economy.
It would also require sanctions on Chinese officials deemed responsible for arbitrary detention, torture, or forced confession of demonstrators and other political dissidents.
But the bill could be another impediment to a so-called Phase 1 trade deal whose fate is increasingly unclear.
Michael Pillsbury, a China expert at the conservative Hudson Institute with close ties to the Trump administration, said that Trump could blunt the measure’s impact on the trade talks by delaying his signature until after such a deal is reached.
Trump announced last month that he had reached a trade agreement with China that would strengthen intellectual property protections, lock in extensive purchases of American farm goods and forestall some of the tariff increases he had planned for later this year.
The agreement would help ease tensions in a trade war that has dragged on for more than a year and harmed businesses and consumers on both sides of the Pacific. 

But in recent weeks, the countries have sparred over the pact’s provisions, with China pushing for the removal of more of the tariffs that Trump has placed on $360 billion of its products.
The cancellation of a summit in Chile where Trump and Xi were expected to sign the agreement also threw plans for the pact’s completion into disarray.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday as he toured an Apple plant in Austin, Texas, Trump said he had resisted a deal because China was not offering enough concessions.
“I haven’t wanted to do it yet because I don’t think they’re stepping up to the level that I want,” he said.
Chinese officials have asked their American counterparts to travel to China for another round of negotiations. 

But Trump’s advisers have been reluctant to do so, insisting that China is offering too little in the form of concessions to warrant the level of tariff relief it is requesting, one person briefed on their plans said.

The Battle of Hong Kong

Beijing Misjudged Trump and Overestimated Its Infiltration in US Government Before Hammering Hong Kong
BY OLIVIA LI

Several Chinese government agencies and numerous state-run media bombarded the White House with harsh criticism after the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Bill on Nov. 19 in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters.

Beijing’s blatant arrogance, reflected in the escalation of police violence in the past week, and its furious response to the passing of the bill indicate that Chinese leaders misjudged the situation, according to China expert Qin Peng, who shared his views with Sound of Hope radio, during a Nov. 19 interview.
“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shown unfettered evil in Hong Kong in the latest round of suppression. Police assaulted universities and brutally beat protesters in public. Numerous murders on the sly have been reported. Needless to say, it is the CCP’s true nature that leads to these outrages,” Qin said.
“However, there is also another important factor. That is, the CCP thought that the international community couldn’t do anything other than condemn its actions, and that it was even possible that both the CCP and the protesters would be criticized in equal measure, which wouldn’t bring any real harm to the CCP. Therefore, it dared to commit all kinds of outrages.”
The CCP thought President Donald Trump would only be concerned about economic benefits for the United States, which is one of the major reasons for their misjudgment, Qin added.
The Fourth Plenary Session of the CCP was held between Oct. 28 and Oct. 31 in Beijing.
An insider revealed that the main topics discussed at the political meeting were the Hong Kong protest and the U.S.-China trade talks.
“Moreover, the CCP believed they had enough influence inside the U.S. Senate, through years of infiltration, to help postpone the Hong Kong bill or even obstruct the bill from passing. The escalation of police brutality after the CCP’s Fourth Plenary Session tells us that Beijing’s plan was to quell the protest before the U.S. senators discussed the bill.”
Thus, when the U.S. Senate expedited the vote on the Hong Kong rights bill and then passed it unanimously, it was a heavy and unanticipated blow to Beijing, which Chinese leaders were not prepared for, Qin said.
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act requires the U.S. Secretary of State to annually assess whether Hong Kong is sufficiently autonomous from Beijing to warrant the special trade status it currently has.
Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997 under Beijing’s promise that the city would remain a highly autonomous region with the “one country two systems” framework.
The United States has treated it as a separate entity from mainland China in trade, investment, and visa processing.
For example, Hong Kong doesn’t face the tariffs that the United States is imposing on Chinese imports.
Chinese officials and Hong Kong leaders deemed responsible for any gross violations of international human rights standards, such as arbitrary detention, torture, or coerced confessions from individuals in Hong Kong, will face sanctions after President Trump signs the bill into law.
Qin applauded the bill, saying that these measures can serve to punish and curb the actions of the perpetrators.
Heng He, a U.S.-based Chinese affairs commentator, expressed similar views when speaking with Sound of Hope.
According to Heng, before the passage of the bill in the U.S. Senate, the CCP took a chance and amped up its handling of protestors, hoping that international society would continue its appeasement attitude toward Beijing.
“Especially when the White House expressed eagerness to reach a deal in the trade talks, and when the U.S. Senate didn’t seem to have a sense of urgency in discussing the Hong Kong rights bill, the CCP wishfully interpreted these as hopeful signs that it could do whatever it wanted without any consequences,” Heng said.

International Duty of Interference to Save Hong Kong

Trump expected to sign Hong Kong bill after it clears House, Senate

By Danielle Wallace

President Trump is expected to sign a bill aimed at protecting human rights in Hong Kong amid an escalating pro-democracy movement in the semiautonomous city after the legislation cleared both chambers of Congress this week, with overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle.
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act passed in the House Wednesday by a 417-1 vote. 

The proposed legislation was unanimously approved in the Senate on Tuesday. 

The bill gained support in recent days as police tightened their siege of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where hundreds of young protesters remained holed up trying to evade arrest.
“Today, the Congress is sending an unmistakable message to the world that the United States stands in solidarity with freedom-loving people of Hong Kong, and we fully support their fight for freedom,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during the bill’s consideration, according to Politico.
Florida’s GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, who first introduced the Senate’s version of the bill in June, asked President Trump on Wednesday to sign the proposed legislation after the House vote.
“The U.S. House has just passed our #HongKongHumanRightsandDemocracyAct. It’s now headed just an @Potus signature away from becoming law. A powerful moment in which a united, bipartisan coalition made it clear that we #StandWithHongKong,” Rubio said on Twitter.


Marco Rubio
✔@marcorubio
The U.S. House has just passed our #HongKongHumanRightsandDemocracyAct.
It’s now headed just an @Potus signature away from becoming law. A powerful moment in which a united, bipartisan coalition made it clear that we #StandWithHongKong13.8K
11:18 PM - Nov 20, 2019

The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act would require the secretary of state to certify at least once a year that Hong Kong retains enough autonomy in order to retain special trade status under U.S. law, something which allows the city to thrive as a world financial hub. 

Under the proposed legislation, President Trump would be responsible for imposing sanctions on Hong Kong and Chinese officials who commit human rights violations against protesters in the city.
The White House has not commented on the bill. 

Its passage comes as Trump tries to negotiate a trade deal with China amid his bid for reelection in 2020. 

Trump told reporters on Wednesday he would be content continuing to accept the tariffs on $350 billion worth of Chinese goods if a deal couldn’t be reached, according to Politico.
“We continue to talk to China. China wants to make a deal. The question is: Do I want to make a deal? Because I like what’s happening right now. We’re taking in billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang slammed the U.S. for challenging its sovereignty over Hong Kong after the bill first cleared the Senate on Tuesday.

The legislation passed in the House despite China’s warning. 

China assumed control of the former British colony in 1997 but promised to let Hong Kong retain a high-level of autonomy.

“Today, it is beyond question that China has utterly broken that promise,” Pelosi said. 

“America has been watching for years as the people of Hong Kong have been increasingly denied their full autonomy and faced with a cruel crackdown on their freedoms and an escalation of violence.”
She added that recent escalations in violence in Hong Kong – which saw protesters use gasoline bombs and bows and arrows to fend off police backed by armored cars and water cannons -- “have shocked the world as unconscionable and unacceptable.”
The House and Senate this week both unanimously passed a second bill that aims to ban American companies from exporting crowd control munitions to Hong Kong police, Politico reported

Hong Kong Uprising Poses a Threat to China’s Legitimacy

An unintended consequence of the current unrest in Hong Kong has been to derail Xi Jinping’s proposal to use the “one country, two systems” formula to settle the Taiwan issue.

by Dennis P. Halpin


In December 2004, the Heritage Foundation’s Hong Kong office hosted a speech by Henry Hyde, Chairman of the then-named House International Relations Committee (now the Foreign Affairs Committee.) 

 Hyde, a veteran of World War II who fought in the battle for the Philippines, had an abiding personal interest in post-war political developments in Asia, including the challenges posed by a rising China. In his remarks, he saw political developments in Hong Kong as a key test as to whether Beijing would emerge as a responsible stakeholder or, alternatively, an authoritarian threat in the 21st Century.
Speaking of Hong Kong, he said: “Many years ago, those laboring in mines deep underground, faced the deadly problem of the buildup of fatal but undetectable gases. To warn them of approaching danger, they would bring with them a small and fragile bird, imprisoned in a cage, which became known as the miners’ canary… Hong Kong is the miners’ canary. Its vulnerability makes it an unmistakable indicator of the course of China’s historic transition and the impact it will soon have on us all. We must watch carefully.”
Hyde died in 2007. 

 Yet his words of caution remain relevant for Americans today. 

These include Donald Trump who, according to a CNN report on October 4th, made another questionable promise on Hong Kong in one of his now-famous phone calls to global leaders: “During a private phone call in June, Trump promised Chinese dictator Xi Jinping that the US would remain quiet on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong while trade talks continued.” 

 CNN further reported that the State Department told then-U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong, Kurt Tong, “to cancel a planned speech on the protests in Washington because the President had promised Xi no one from the administration would talk about the issue.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and NBA star LeBron James should also take heed. 

Their concerns for human rights and the rule of law are blinded by what Chairman Hyde called in his 2004 speech “the fool’s gold of pure selfishness” – in this case, the glitter of Chinese gold.

Zuckerberg, seeking a breakthrough for Facebook in China after it was blocked in 2009, bought several copies of China strongman Xi Jinping’s book on governance in 2014, so that “he and (his) colleagues could learn about socialism with Chinese characteristics,” according to a December 9, 2014 article in the South China Morning Post. 

And LeBron James more recently got caught in the awkward position of appearing to excuse Beijing’s current crackdown in Hong Kong in some ill-advised online comments. 

This happened soon after a high school student protester was shot in the chest by police on China’s National Day, October 1st, in an eerie echo of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and prior to a leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement being hospitalized after an assault on the street by thugs with hammers. 

Commenting on LeBron James’s remarks, one disappointed Hong Kong protester told the Associated Press on October 15th: “Please remember, all NBA players, what you said before: ‘Black lives matter.’ Hong Kong lives also matter.” 

Perhaps all three -- Trump, Zuckerberg, and James -- need to take their quotes more from Chairman Hyde and a little less from Chairman Mao.
The spin doctors in Beijing did not care very much for what Hyde had to say in his speech. 

UPI reported on December 6, 2004 that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Hyde had “viciously attacked China’s development and progress, and insulted China’s foreign policy from his own Cold World view.”
So, what exactly did Hyde say about Hong Kong back in 2004 that drew such ire from Beijing? 

 Hyde noted that “in sharp contrast with Taiwan, where political reform and liberalization enjoyed sustained government sponsorship, in Hong Kong the push has had to come from the people themselves, with the government actively attempting to slow or stop altogether any further advance. I am certain that the standoff that has arisen is dispiriting to many here, especially as the prospects for further progress remain uncertain… Clearly, the commitment to democracy has already sunk deep roots.”
If the situation looked uncertain back in 2004, it looks downright gloomy in 2019. 

Reuters reported on September 30th that “last month, Beijing moved thousands of troops across the border into this restive city. 

They came in on trucks, and armored cars, by bus and by ship. 

“ Three diplomatic envoys told Reuters that “the contingent of Chinese military personnel in Hong Kong had more than doubled in size since the protests began. They estimate the number of military personnel is now between 10,000 and 12,000, up from 3,000 to 5,000 in the months before the reinforcement. As a result, the envoys believe, China has now assembled its largest-ever active force of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and other anti-riot personnel and equipment in Hong Kong.”
Chairman Hyde foresaw this coming, as he remarked that “Hong Kong has become an arena for an unavoidable struggle, one with global implications, where rival forces are locked in a battle to determine which of their visions for China’s political evolution will prevail... If we assume that chaos or repression are unacceptable outcomes to both sides, the question becomes: Is there a route by which Hong Kong can become increasingly free and democratic without challenging the regime’s ultimate authority and thereby provoking a forcible response?” 

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping seemed to answer Hyde’s question in the negative during a recent trip to Nepal. 

In the face of the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong, Xi warned that any effort to split China will result in “bodies smashed and bones ground into powder,” according to Hong Kong Free Press. 

 Hyde concluded at the end of his speech, if the repression of civil liberties in Hong Kong was China’s response, that “enamored of an aggressive and intoxicating nationalism, it would soon wreak havoc on the world.”
One result of the current political crisis in Hong Kong has been the exposure of Beijing’s formula of “one country, two systems” as a fraud. 

Beijing has been steadily seeking to undermine this pledge made at the time of the 1997 reversion of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule.Under the Basic Law, based upon the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, Hong Kong was to be a special administrative region (SAR) with its own capitalist economic system, its own currency, its own legal and legislative system, and a guarantee of the people of Hong Kong’s rights for fifty years. Yet Beijing and its surrogates in Hong Kong have sought to erode these guarantees by such means as the 2003 controversy over the since withdrawn national security measures contained in Article 23 of the Basic Law, the use of Hong Kong immigration to restrict entry of human rights critics of the Beijing regime, and the kidnapping of Hong Kong sellers of books banned in mainland China.
According to a New York Times article of April 3, 2018, “At a national Communist Party congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping made clear the party’s expansive vision of control. ‘The party exercises overall leadership over all areas of endeavor in every part of the country,’ he told delegates. No corner of society was out of reach. Even books — ‘socialist literature,’ in Xi’s words — must extol ‘our party, our country, our people and our heroes.’”
Then there was the attempt by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, which triggered the current unrest, to ram through the Legislative Council a new extradition bill earlier this year (since withdrawn) which would make both the citizens of Hong Kong and visitors subject to the long reach of Chinese security forces. 

 The people of Hong Kong decided it was time to either stand up or fatalistically submit to creeping authoritarianism.
Another unintended consequence of the current unrest in Hong Kong has been to completely derail Xi Jinping’s proposal to use the “one country, two systems” formula to settle the Taiwan issue. 

 In remarks made at the beginning of 2019, Xi said that unification was the key to “national rejuvenation,” according to the South China Morning Post. 

“The political division across the strait cannot be passed from generation to generation,” he added. 

 Xi proposed the “one country, two systems” formula for Taiwan. 

However, the people in Taiwan have been watching very closely the current political struggles of their Hong Kong cousins and, as a result, see “one country, two systems” as the equivalent of the spider inviting the fly into its web.
A further unintended consequence has been placing Hong Kong’s special status in U.S. legislation as a separate customs area with special trading status distinct from China at risk. 

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, in a report to Congress last year, noted that Beijing’s “encroachment” on the city’s political system could diminish its standing as a global business hub and affect the export of American technology to the city. 

The report recommended an assessment of the export control policy on technology “as it relates to U.S. treatment of Hong Kong and China as separate customs areas.”
The recent passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act by the U.S. House of Representatives drew threats of unspecified “strong countermeasures” from Beijing if enacted by the entire Congress, according to an October 16th Bloomberg report. 

The Act subjects Hong Kong’s “special U.S. trading status to annual review and provides sanctions against officials deemed responsible for undermining its ‘fundamental freedoms and autonomy.’”

Xi Jinping’s “broken bones” remark seems to answer Chairman Hyde’s question on the future for both Hong Kong and China -- the specter of authoritarianism and repression is in the air. 

 Hyde said back in 2004 to his Hong Kong audience that “I can assure you that the U.S. Congress will never abandon its commitment to the freedom and prosperity of Hong Kong nor fail to ensure that this remains a prism through which our relations with China as a whole are viewed.” 

 Hyde’s old colleagues in the House seem to be heeding his admonition of fifteen years ago to “watch carefully” the events unfolding in Hong Kong both for their human rights implications and for their indication of the aspirations of a rising China.

The Art of the Deal

President Trump says has not agreed to roll back tariffs on China

By Alexandra Alper and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Friday said he has not agreed to rollbacks of U.S. tariffs sought by China, sparking fresh doubts about when the world’s two largest economies may end a 16-month trade war that has slowed global growth.
Officials from both countries on Thursday had said China and the United States have agreed to roll back tariffs on each others’ goods in a “phase one” trade deal. 

But the idea of tariff rollbacks met with stiff opposition within the Trump administration, Reuters reported later on Thursday.
Those divisions were on full display on Friday, when President Trump -- who has repeatedly described himself as “Tariff Man” -- told reporters at the White House that he had not agreed to reduce tariffs already put in place.
“China would like to get somewhat of a rollback, not a complete rollback, ‘cause they know I won’t do it,” President Trump said. 

“I haven’t agreed to anything.”
He said China wanted to make a deal more than he did, adding that the U.S. tariffs were generating billions of dollars for U.S. coffers. 

“I’m very happy right now. We’re taking in billions of dollars,” he said.
U.S. stocks dipped after President Trump’s comments, and the dollar fell against the yen.
Trump also said the trade deal with China, if completed, would be signed in the United States. “Assuming we’d get it... it could be Iowa or farm country or some place like that. It will be in our country,” he said.
The farm state of Iowa has been hammered by the tariff war, and has hosted Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in the past.
Experts inside and outside the U.S. government warn the “phase one” trade pact could still fall apart. U.S. officials said a lot of work remained to be done when President Trump announced the outlines of an interim deal last month, and Beijing has since pushed back on U.S. demands for big agricultural purchases, among other issues.
President Trump has used tariffs on billions of dollars of Chinese goods as his primary weapon in the protracted trade war. 

The prospect of lifting them, even in phases, has drawn fierce opposition from advisers in and outside of the White House who remain wary of giving up a key aspect of U.S. leverage.
China in May scuttled a previous trade deal that U.S. officials said was 90% completed.
If an interim deal is finished and signed, it is widely expected to include a U.S. pledge to scrap tariffs scheduled for Dec. 15 on about $156 billion worth of Chinese imports, including cell phones, laptop computers and toys.
But China was also seeking cancellation of other U.S. tariffs put in place since January 2018. 

Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng on Thursday said both countries must simultaneously cancel some tariffs on each other’s goods to reach the phase one pact.

President Trump Says ‘Bad’ Outcome in Hong Kong Would Hurt China Talks

By Jennifer A Dlouhy
President Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington on Oct. 7. 

President Donald Trump warned China that if the country does anything “bad” to quell protests in Hong Kong, trade negotiations with the U.S. would suffer.
“They have to do that in a peaceful manner,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday.
A fresh round of Hong Kong protests remained relatively small Monday night as the city cleaned up from a chaotic weekend in which demonstrators battled with police and paralyzed swaths of the Asian financial hub.

Insane Criminal President

'LEGALLY AND MORALLY WRONG': BUSH ERA AMBASSADOR BLASTS TRUMP AFTER TRUMP CALLS ON CHINA TO INVESTIGATE BIDEN

BY JASON LEMON


Former United States ambassador to NATO Nick Burns slammed Donald Trump on Thursday, calling the clown's public call for China to investigate his political rival Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden "legally and morally wrong."
"Calling on one of our great rivals in the world, the Chinese regime, to investigate his political opponent," Burns, who served as the top U.S. diplomat to NATO under former President George W. Bush and later as the under secretary of state for political affairs, said during an interview with MSNBC, "it's wrong to do that. It's legally and morally wrong."
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Thursday, Trump doubled down on defending his efforts to pressure Ukrainian leaders to look into claims against Biden while also saying China should investigate his political rival as well. 

The public call to encourage Chinese government to look for dirt on Biden came ahead of renewed trade talks with Chinese officials.
"They [the Ukrainians] should investigate the Bidens," Trump said. 

"Likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine."
The president's actions came after Fox News reported on a previously known trip from 2013, when then-Vice President Biden and his son Hunter Biden traveled to China aboard Air Force Two. 

It has been alleged that Biden's son used the official government trip to enhance his own business interests in China. 

Critics of Trump may find the president's complaints about Biden somewhat ironic, as Trump's own family has appeared to use the ongoing trade war with China to benefit their personal business interests.
Democrats have launched an impeachment inquiry over revelations from a whistleblower that Trump pressured the Ukrainians to open a probe into Biden and his son, in an apparent bid to dig up dirt on his political rival. 

Prior to a July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president, Trump ordered the suspension of $391 million in military aid, which was supported by Democrats and Republicans. 

Critics argue that the aid was suspended as leverage to strong-arm the Ukrainians into launching the investigation.


CNN Newsroom
✔@CNNnewsroom
Former US Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns says President Trump’s call for both Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens is “one of the worst things he's ever done to our democracy.”
“I think it disqualifies him,” he adds. https://cnn.it/2pIhNCt

675
5:57 PM - Oct 3, 2019

Although Trump has dismissed the impeachment inquiry as "partisan," several prominent Republicans and conservative commentators have raised serious concerns about his actions.
In a separate interview with CNN on Thursday, Burns again slammed Trump over the calls for Chinese support in denigrating his political rival. 

The Bush-era ambassador characterized Trump's calls to China as "one of the worst things he's ever done to our democracy."
"I think it disqualifies him," he asserted.

Insane Clown President

Trump Praises Communist China, a Regime That Killed 65 Million of its Own People

By Michael W. Chapman


On Oct. 1, Donald Trump tweeted congratulations to Communist China on its 70th anniversary, a regime whose policies have killed more than 65 million of its own people, persecuted religious believers for decades, brutalized Tibet, and which operates concentration camps today holding close to 2 million people for "reeducation."
The Clown tweeted, "Congratulations to President Xi and the Chinese people on the 70th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China!"
The People's Republic of China was established on Oct. 1, 1949, after communist revolutionaries, led by Mao Zedong, took over the country.

As is well documented by many historians, Mao, a Marxist atheist, sought to implement socialism by force. 

His policies led to political and legal repression, executions, destruction of churches, collectivization, shortages, mass famine, starvation, and the death of millions of Chinese.
Mao ruled until his death in 1976. 

The current dictator is Xi Jinping, who is often compared to Mao and his image, alongside that of Mao, is sold in shops throughout China and posted on buildings.
According to the Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press), one of the most authoritative books on the topic, the communist policies in China have killed more than 65 million people -- more than all the people who died in World War II.
Today, Communist China still operates its political prisons, called laogai, and it has built numerous concentration camps that imprison Muslims and other religious people for so-called "reeducation". 

It is a softer totalitarianism than under Mao but it is still brutal.
As Randall Schriver at the Defense Department's Asia desk recently told Reuters, “The (Chinese) Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps.”

One of Communist China's concentration camps as seen by satellite.

It is appropriate to use the words "concentration camps," like those run by the Nazis, said Schriver because “given what we understand to be the magnitude of the detention, at least a million but likely closer to 3 million citizens out of a population of about 10 million," are being held.
"So a very significant portion of the population, (given) what’s happening there, what the goals are of the Chinese government and their own public comments make that a very, I think, appropriate description,” he said.

Communist tyrants: Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping.

Last week, a lawyer for the China Tribunal, Hamid Sabi, testified before the United Nations Human Rights Council about Communist China's harvesting of body organs from prisoners and from people considered political enemies.
Forced harvesting of organs has been occuring "for years throughout China on a significant scale ... and continues today," he said. 

Many of the victims are followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and Uighur Muslims, said the lawyer.

Strife-torn Hong Kong on October 1 marked the 70th anniversary of communist China's founding with defiant "Day of Grief" protests and fresh clashes with police as pro-democracy activists ignored a ban and took to the streets across the city. 

“Victim for victim and death for death, cutting out the hearts and other organs from living, blameless, harmless, peaceable people constitutes one of the worst mass atrocities of this century,” Sabi said. 

“Organ transplantation to save life is a scientific and social triumph. But killing the donor is criminal.”

Chinazism

President Trump's China criticism turns harsh at U.N., says won't take 'bad deal'
By Jeff Mason and David Lawder

U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S.

UNITED NATIONS -- U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a stinging rebuke to China's trade practices on Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly, saying he would not accept a "bad deal" in U.S.-China trade negotiations.
Four days after deputy U.S. and Chinese negotiators held inconclusive talks in Washington, Trump's remarks were anything but conciliatory and emphasized the need to correct structural economic abuses at the heart of the countries' nearly 15-month trade war.
He said Beijing had failed to keep promises it made when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and was engaging in predatory practices that had cost millions of jobs in the United States and other countries.
"Not only has China declined to adopt promised reforms, it has embraced an economic model dependent on massive market barriers, heavy state subsidies, currency manipulation, product dumping, forced technology transfers and the theft of intellectual property and also trade secrets on a grand scale," President Trump said.

"As far as America is concerned, those days are over."
Although President Trump held out hope that the United States and China could still reach a trade deal, he made clear he wanted a deal that would rebalance the relationship between the two economic superpowers.

"The American people are absolutely committed to restoring balance in our relationship with China. Hopefully, we can reach an agreement that will be beneficial for both countries," President Trump said. 

"As I have made very clear, I will not accept a bad deal."

President Trump also recently said he was not interested in a "partial deal" to ease tensions with China, saying that he would hold out for a "complete deal."
U.S. stocks gave up modest gains and fell into negative territory after President Trump's U.N. address. 

President Trump's speech highlighted the plight of U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology, which has become a symbol of U.S. assertions that China fails to protect American intellectual property and steals it or forces the transfer of it. 

Two years ago Micron accused a Chinese state firm of stealing its chip designs.

"Soon, the Chinese company obtains patents for nearly an identical product, and Micron was banned from selling its own goods in China," Trump said, "But we are seeking justice."
He added that the United States lost 60,000 factories and 4.2 million manufacturing jobs since China joined the World Trade Organization.
"The rhetoric around China and President Trump's speech was as harsh as we have heard," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at brokerage National Securities Corp in New York.
The tone of President Trump's speech was at odds with some recent steps by China to meet his request for purchases of more American farm products. 

On Monday, Chinese importers bought about 10 shiploads of U.S. soybeans -- about 600,000 tonnes.
China's customs commission will exclude certain amounts of U.S. soybeans, pork and other products from its retaliatory tariffs, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
The purchases were made following last week's trade talks, which both the U.S. and Chinese sides characterized as "productive." 

People familiar with the trade talks said no new Chinese proposals were presented, and the countries agreed to continue minister-level talks in early October.
In his U.N. speech, President Trump also drew a link between resolving the U.S.-China trade dispute and Beijing's treatment of Hong Kong. 

Washington was "carefully monitoring the situation in Hong Kong," he said.

"The world fully expects that the Chinese government will honor its binding treaty made with the British and registered with the United Nations, in which China commits to protect Hong Kong’s freedom, legal system and democratic ways of life," President Trump said. 

Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997.

"How China chooses to handle the situation will say a great deal about its role in the world in the future. We are all counting on Xi as a great leader," Trump added.
President Trump also touched on trade with Japan in his speech, saying that he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday would "continue our progress in finalizing a terrific new trade deal."
It remains unclear whether the two countries will sign the deal at their bilateral meeting or whether Japanese requests for assurances that Trump won't hit them with autos tariffs will delay the final agreement.