Chinese Islamophobia

Arabic, Muslim symbols ordered taken down in China's capital
www.aljazeera.com
The Arabic script on the signboard of a halal restaurant is seen covered in Beijing 
Authorities in the Chinese capital ordered halal restaurants and food stalls to remove Arabic script and symbols associated with Islam from their signs, part of an expanding national effort to "Sinicize" its Muslim population.
Employees at 11 restaurants and shops in Beijing selling halal products said officials told them to remove images associated with Islam, such as the crescent moon and the word "halal" written in Arabic, from their signs.
Government workers from various offices told one manager of a Beijing noodle shop to cover up the "halal" in Arabic on his shop's sign and then watched him do it.
"They said this is foreign culture and you should use more Chinese culture," said the manager, who, like all restaurant owners and employees, declined to give his name because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The campaign against Arabic script and Islamic images marks a new phase of a drive that has gained momentum since 2016.
The campaign has included the removal of Middle Eastern-style domes on many mosques around the country in favour of Chinese-style pagodas.

Ethnic violence
China, home to 20 million Muslims, officially guarantees freedom of religion, but the government has campaigned to bring the faithful in line with Communist Party ideology.
It is not just Muslims who have come under scrutiny. 

Authorities have shut down many underground Christian churches, and torn down crosses of some deemed illegal by the government.
But Muslims have come in for particular attention since a riot in 2009 between mostly Muslim Uighur people and majority Han Chinese in the far western colony of East Turkestan, home to the Uighur minority.
Spasms of ethnic violence followed, and some Uighurs, chafing at government controls, carried out knife and crude bomb attacks in public areas and against the police and other authorities.
In response, China launched what it described as a crackdown on "terrorism" in East Turkestan.
Now, it is facing intense criticism from Western nations and rights groups over its policies, in particular, mass detentions and surveillance of Uighurs and other Muslims there.
The government says its actions in East Turkestan are necessary to stamp out religious "extremism". Officials have warned about creeping Islamisation, and have extended tighter controls over other Muslim minorities.
Analysts say the ruling Communist Party is concerned that foreign influences can make religious groups difficult to control.
"Arabic is seen as a foreign language and knowledge of it is now seen as something outside of the control of the state," said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Washington who studies East Turkestan.
"It is also seen as connected to international forms of piety, or in the eyes of state authorities, religious extremism. They want Islam in China to operate primarily through Chinese language," he said.
Kelly Hammond, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas who studies Muslims of the Hui minority in China, said the measures were part of a "drive to create a new normal".
Beijing is home to at least 1,000 halal shops and restaurants, according to the Meituan Dianping food delivery app, spread across the city's historic Muslim quarter as well as in other neighbourhoods.
It was not clear if every such restaurant in Beijing has been told to cover Arabic script and Muslim symbols. 

One manager at a restaurant still displaying Arabic writing said he had been ordered to remove it but was waiting for his new signs.
Several bigger shops visited by Reuters replaced their signs with the Chinese term for halal - "qing zhen" - while others merely covered up the Arabic and Islamic imagery with tape or stickers.
The Beijing government's Committee on Ethnicity and Religious affairs declined to comment, saying the order regarding halal restaurants was a national directive.
While most shopkeepers interviewed by Reuters said they did not mind replacing their signs, some said it confused their customers and an employee at a halal butcher shop accused authorities of "erasing" Muslim culture.
"They are always talking about national unity, they're always talking about China being international. Is this national unity?"

Hong Kong Is a Black-and-White Issue

Does the Hong Kong government want a solution? Waiting and hiding is not a strategy.

By Matthew Brooker
Time is running out. 

Hong Kong is running out of time. 

Signs are building that the city’s political crisis is starting to affect its financial and business prospects. 

Waiting is no longer a viable option for the government.
It’s a measure of the poverty of expectations that Hong Kong stocks rebounded from their lows during Monday’s press conference by the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office in Beijing. 

The briefing offered no initiative to break the deadlock. 

It was simply enough that spokespeople didn’t broach any of the more apocalyptic contingencies that have been floated in recent weeks – such as intervention by the People’s Liberation Army to quell the unrest. 

Having been heading for its worst loss in more than a month, the Hang Seng Index pared losses to close 1% lower.
Yang Guang, spokesman for the Chinese agency that oversees Hong Kong, certainly appeared intent on lowering the temperature. 

He offered a regulation defense of the city’s government and ritual condemnation of the actions of the more radical protesters, who have battled with police, defaced national emblems and broken into the legislative chamber during eight weeks of unprecedented turmoil triggered by a proposed law that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China.
But Yang’s tone was notably softer and more measured than the incendiary language used in recent editorials by China’s state-controlled media, which have railed against “outside meddling” in Hong Kong and urged stern action by the police. 

That will have reassured those who feared that Beijing might use the unrest as a pretext to tighten its grip on the former British colony, further eroding the autonomy promised under the “one country, two systems” model that has governed the city’s relationship with the mainland since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
The trouble is, a holding pattern is no longer adequate in a dynamic situation that’s lurching toward rapid deterioration. 

While Hong Kong equities have been generally resilient to the protests, Monday’s stock-market action shows that the price of political inertia is getting higher. 

Stocks fell again in a storm-shortened session Wednesday after further violent clashes between police and protesters on Tuesday night.
Signals in other areas are flashing red, too. 

Businesses are already reporting serious consequences from the protests, a survey of members by the American Chamber of Commerce found. 

These range from an immediate hit to revenue caused by disruption to supply chains and consumption, to longer-term doubts over cancelled events and shelved investments, AmCham said. 

A clear majority of members surveyed said the government “needs to address the underlying causes of the protests and not simply to paper over the cracks of social instability with a short-term law-and-order fix,” AmCham President Tara Joseph said in a release.
Such warning flags are ignored at the government’s peril. 

Anecdotal evidence also points to unusual levels of anxiety among the city’s local business elite. 

The downside of being a small, open economy is that capital and companies can turn on a dime. 

For multinationals with operations across multiple Asian cities, moving some functions and headcount to, say, Singapore may be a relatively trivial matter. 

Similarly, for local tycoons with billions of dollars to deploy, moving a few hundred million out of Hong Kong may seem like a prudent hedge.
Such cycles, once started, can feed on themselves. 

Hong Kong’s reputation for political stability, reliable institutions and effective governance was won over decades. 

Once lost, it will be hard to regain.
AmCham’s call for clear leadership to resolve the crisis is apposite. 

There is a vacuum at the top of the Hong Kong government. 

As of Tuesday, Chief Executive Carrie Lam hadn’t spoken publicly on the protests for more than a week. 

Over the weekend, when black-shirted protesters gathered in Yuen Long to confront the white-shirted thugs who attacked commuters and demonstrators in a subway station the previous weekend, a picture circulated on social media of Lam – at a PLA youth summer camp in Hong Kong. 

The optics are of a government that is almost comically out of touch.
If the government’s strategy was to wait out the protests in the hope that violent clashes would drive a wedge between the radical minority and more moderate opponents of the extradition bill, it has failed spectacularly. 

Instead, the opposition has metastasized, to encompass social workers, the elderly, aviation staff, transport systems and even the civil service.
Beijing spokesman Yang noted Monday that the protesters’ demands have been diffuse and changing, implicitly pointing to the difficulty of negotiating with them. 

That’s no excuse for not trying. 

Some of the demands are clearly beyond the purview of the Hong Kong government – such as reopening the political reform process that stalled in 2014.
Yet the government has signaled no willingness to move on any of them since suspending the extradition bill last month. 

Such intransigence is baffling. 

What, for example, is the objection to stating that the bill has been formally withdrawn, given that Lam has already said it is “dead”? 

And what explains the resistance to calling an independent inquiry, which now has a chorus of pro-establishment interests behind it?
The choice for the government between continuing on its present course and trying something proactive to break the impasse is as stark as that between black shirts and white shirts. 

The costs of inaction are rising each week.

Hong Kong Unrest: ‘We Cannot Give Up’

As protests in Hong Kong increasingly escalate into violent clashes, demonstrators, and others reflect on where the movement is headed.
By Tiffany May, Lam Yik Fei and Ezra Cheung

Protesters during a march in Hong Kong early this month.

HONG KONG — Over the past nearly two months, hundreds of thousands of people have braved Hong Kong’s sweltering summer heat in a series of mass rallies against an unpopular bill that has come to symbolize concerns about the encroachment of the mainland Chinese government on their semiautonomous territory.
The city’s beleaguered leader, Carrie Lam, has already suspended the bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China and declared it “dead.”

But she has refused to formally withdraw it or to meet the protesters’ other demands, which include the establishment of an independent commission to investigate police conduct and the right to directly elect the territory’s leader.
Mrs. Lam’s unwavering stance has helped fuel protests that now occur regularly, some of them escalating dramatically. 

In recent weeks, protesters have stormed the city’s legislative offices, clashed with riot police officers at a luxury shopping mall and surrounded the mainland Chinese government’s offices in Hong Kong.
[For the second day in a row, thousands rallied against mob violence and what they call brutality by the police.]
We spoke to protesters and others who have been otherwise caught in the crossfire, to hear about their experiences. 

These are excerpts from their answers, edited for clarity and length:

Henry Fung, a high school student, during a protest in the Sheung Wan neighborhood this month.

Henry Fung, 17
A high schooler and antigovernment protester who believes forceful tactics are needed
I haven’t really protested before, not even in marches, but I feel that if I don’t do something to protect freedoms I ought to have, I may never recover them again. 

We want to be peaceful, but under oppression, we need to resist.
We do what peaceful protesters don’t dare to do. 

Only after we’ve occupied a street or a building do they feel that it’s safe to come out and sit there as well. 

When I walk to the front, I’m scared. 

I prepare myself mentally that I may get hurt and even arrested.
My brother supports me, but he can’t join the protests because of work. 

My father found out because my school called him when I skipped exams on June 12. 

He would say that it’s dangerous, and that protesters who are in front, hitting the police, are rioters, and to tell me not to be like them. 

I feel that that’s unfair to them, but I wouldn’t get angry at him.

Alexandra Wong, who is retired, scuffled with police officers outside the Legislative Council building last month.

Alexandra Wong, 63
Retiree who is often on the front lines of protests, waving a Union Jack flag
I wave the British flag because I want to remind middle-aged and older people to think back on 1997 (when Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese control), and what the British people have built for us. The Hong Kong government and Communist regime keep wanting to erode our freedoms, our partial democracy, core values and our rule of law.
I didn’t study politics or social science, but I simply understand how precious democracy is from life experience. 

I lived in Austria for 12 and a half years. 

I’ve lived in mainland China and was born and raised in Hong Kong, and have also been an immigrant in the United States. 

The difference in political systems can alter the people’s sense of happiness so vastly — like heaven and earth!
I need to stand at the front with the students. 

I want to resist till the end with them.

Calvin So, a cook, was walking near a protest in the town of Yuen Long when he was attacked by a mob.

Calvin So, 23
A cook who was in the town of Yuen Long on July 21 when a mob attacked protesters and bystanders
It was 9:45 p.m., and I had gotten off work and was walking along a river on my way home. 

I saw many people in white shirts holding weapons and I said, “Wow! So many people in white.” Those people came over and yelled at me right after I said that. 

One person started to hit me, then a few more. 

Then they all started to hit me as I walked further. 

There must have been around 20 people surrounding me.
These people beat me with things like rattan or hiking sticks. 

I couldn’t exactly see what they were using, but I saw other people holding these weapons. 

I felt frightened and bewildered. 

There was no way I looked like their target. 

I didn’t go to the protest.
No one helped me. 

During the attack, someone threw my mobile phone into the river. 

I just ran away and found a convenience store where I called emergency services. 

Some officers arrived and an ambulance took me to a hospital.

The artist Perry Dino at his Hong Kong studio on Wednesday.

Perry Dino, 53
Artist (real name: Perry Chan) who captures the protests with oil on canvas, even when tear gas is fired
I see my role as a witness to history, not so different from reporters. 

I’m here to stand with the students, rain or shine. 

People can take thousands of photos at a protest, but I only create one painting. 

Photos can be deleted but to destroy my paintings, you will have to burn them.
As I was painting on site, a foreigner asked me to sell him my painting but I told him no. 

I’m worried that if a painting passes through the wrong hands, it could disappear from history. 

I think they need to stay here so that the next generation can see it in an exhibit about Hong Kong’s democracy.
Not many paintings have tear gas as a raw material.

Lam Ching, a camp instructor, in Sheung Wan this month.

Lam Ching, 28
An instructor at an adventure camp who volunteers medical assistance at protests
Too many people had been injured in recent clashes between police and protesters, so I decided to come out, hoping to do my part and provide them with first aid treatment.
I feel so angry. 

It is supposed to be a political issue, but the government has turned it into a conflict between the police and Hong Kong people.
We are all Hong Kong people. 

I really hope the Hong Kong police force can remain professional. 

I genuinely hope they can regain their rationality and self-possession.

So Hiu-Ching, a high school student, at a “Lennon Wall” in the Tai Po district this month.

So Hiu-ching, 16
High school student and peaceful protester
Our society isn’t thrown into chaos because of the protests. 

There are protests because society is in turmoil. 

I really want to ask the government to think about what they did this for. 

So much has happened and so many young people’s hopes have been dashed. 

Can they take responsibility? 

Why can’t you say you will withdraw the bill?
My parents sometimes cry while watching broadcasts of the protests and would tell us, “We are very sorry.” 

I don’t want to repeat this phrase to my children. 

I want to fight for a Hong Kong that we want, and not have to tell generation after generation that we haven’t done enough. 

I’m very happy my parents understand this.
There are still some conflicts though. 

Sometimes they would say things like, “How can you battle with the government? You are doing so much, will it lead to anything?” 

But we cannot give up because we won’t win without even trying.

Chinese Students Bring Threat of Violence to Australian Universities

A clash with Hong Kong supporters at an anti-China protest is a dark omen of what’s to come.

By Damien Cave

A group of violent Chinese students at the University of Queensland last week, before a scuffle with protesters who supported Hong Kong activists.

BRISBANE, Australia — The Chinese nationalists disrupting pro-Hong Kong democracy rallies at the University of Queensland arrived 300 strong, with a speaker to blast China’s national anthem. They deferred to a leader in a pink shirt.
And their tactics included violence.
One video from the scene shows a student from Hong Kong being grabbed by the throat.
Another shows a philosophy student, Drew Pavlou, 20, shouting, “Hey hey, ho ho, Xi Jinping has got to go,” until a counterprotester throws his megaphone aside.
The altercations, which took place last Wednesday in the main square of a major Australian university, were broken up by the police, but experts believe it could be a dark omen of what is to come as the passions of Hong Kong protesters ripple to other countries.
A similar scuffle broke out on Tuesday at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, when three Chinese men were filmed shouting down students from Hong Kong at a rally and pushing a young woman to the ground.
For Australia in particular, the past week signals trouble after years of gliding along and growing rich off China’s growth.
Australian universities have come to depend on Chinese donors, students and organizations that are loyal to Beijing and intolerant of dissent.
More collisions with China’s muscular nationalism now seem likely.
Racist chants and insults have been traded, along with punches.
The Chinese Consulate in Brisbane praised the “spontaneous patriotic behavior” of the pro-China activists — leading the Australian defense minister to take the extraordinary step of warning foreign diplomats against attempts to suppress free speech.
Deconstructing what led to the clashes on Wednesday, through interviews, online messages and videos, reveals just how volatile, racially charged and violent any reckoning with China may become.
“It would certainly be nice if it didn’t escalate, but I remain quite concerned that the entire way this has been handled makes copycat attacks inevitable,” said Kevin Carrico, a senior lecturer in Chinese Studies at Monash University in Melbourne.
“It’s quite worrying.”

New activists and new causes
The protest began with two students: Jack Yiu, 21, a quiet psychology major from Hong Kong, and Mr. Pavlou, a chatty grandson of Greek immigrants from Brisbane.
Both new to activism, they didn’t know each other until a few weeks ago.
Until recently, Mr. Yiu had led the university’s Hong Kong Student Association, holding benign activities like welcome dinners.
Mr. Pavlou was known on campus for starting a popular Facebook group for intellectual debate.
But recent events involving China, they said, forced them to act.
Mr. Yiu said he had friends in Hong Kong marching for democracy and against a bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.
Mr. Pavlou said his own outrage was prompted by reading about Xinjiang, a region of China where the government has pushed minority Muslims into re-education camps.
“It’s cultural genocide,” Mr. Pavlou said.
Adding to his anger, he discovered his own university had cultivated close ties with Chinese officials.
While the University of Queensland is one of several universities with a Confucius Institute — officially a program to promote Chinese language and culture — the vice chancellor, Peter Hoj, has made more of that relationship than his peers have.
The institute at the university plays a broader role, emphasizing collaboration with China in science, engineering and technology.
Until late last year, Mr. Hoj was an unpaid consultant for the Confucius Institute headquarters.
This month, he granted a visiting professorship to the Chinese consul general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, bringing a Communist Party official into university life at a time when the United States, Canada and several European countries have cut ties.
“It’s part of this China illiteracy, which is quite prevalent in Australia,” said Louisa Lim, a professor at the University of Melbourne and the author of “The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited.”
“In many cases,” she said, “the allure of Chinese investment and large numbers of Chinese students has been so overwhelming that educational institutions have just thrown their arms wide open without doing their due diligence.”

The University of Queensland's vice chancellor, Peter Hoj, right, with Xu Jie, the Chinese consul general in Brisbane, Australia, in a photo released by the Chinese Consulate this month.

In a statement online, the University of Queensland said that the consul general would not be teaching and was one of 260 titleholders appointed in recent years.
But for Mr. Pavlou, who is majoring primarily in philosophy, his university’s warm welcome has legitimized a culture of disinformation and censorship. 
He said his anger crystallized after a student Facebook group, called StalkerSpace, filled up with pro-China statements around the 30th anniversary of the TiananmenSquare massacre in June.
“I saw all these people denying things that happened or stating the official government line on it, and like to me, that was really disgusting and horrifying,” Mr. Pavlou said.
A recent poll of Australians’ views on foreign affairs, by the Lowy Institute, found that many Australians were experiencing a similar shift: Only 32 percent of respondents said they trust China either “a great deal” or “somewhat” to act responsibly, a 20-point fall from 2018.
Mr. Pavlou said the recent protests in Hong Kong were an inspiration.
He found Mr. Yiu through other activists, and they agreed to back-to-back rallies on July 24: The Hong Kong students would start at 10 a.m.; Mr. Pavlou and his group, broadening the focus to the university’s China ties, would start at noon.
Mr. Pavlou posted a notice of the event on Facebook.
That’s when the trouble started.

Counterprotesters emerge
“Yo bro where u from? Australia?” said the Facebook message from an account with the name Frank Wang.
“If so u better want to stay away from political problem.”
“Cancel the event,” the message continued.
“If u keep doing this, uv gonna face millions of people on your opposite side.”
Other messages were more aggressive.
Mixing Chinese and English, some people called Mr. Pavlou a white pig, using a pig emoji.
One comment in Chinese said: “When will you die.”

A threatening message that Drew Pavlou received on Facebook.

Mr. Pavlou was drawn into trading insults with some of them.
“It was out of fear and anger,” he said.
“It was silly. I regret it.”
Nonetheless, he carried on.
The first protest was uneventful.
A wall filled up with sticky notes of support, mirroring those in Hong Kong.
But by the time Mr. Pavlou and a few others started their protest, a crowd had gathered.
Several people there estimated that about 300 people — appearing to be a mix of Chinese students and nonstudents — appeared suddenly.
Within minutes, someone had grabbed Mr. Pavlou’s megaphone, prompting him to jump up and push back.
Security guards intervened, but the leader of the counterprotesters demanded an apology on China’s behalf.
“We tried to talk to them,” Mr. Yiu said.
“On the megaphone, I told them, we’re just fighting for Hong Kong democracy, not independence.”
By 2:15 p.m., it had grown tense.
Mr. Pavlou, who had continued the protest inside the Confucius Institute’s offices, re-emerged to see 50 or so Hong Kong students surrounded.
Priya De, 22, a leader with the socialist group that connected Mr. Yiu and Mr. Pavlou, said she heard white Australians shouting “Go back to China” at the Chinese students, and “Deport them, deport them.”
A video shot by a Hong Kong student showed David Chui, 23, a business student from Hong Kong, being grabbed by the throat and thrown to the ground.
Christy Leung, 21, another Hong Kong student, said a sign was torn from her hands and her clothing ripped.
She and Mr. Chui went to the police to press charges.
They were told there was nothing they could do.
“I don’t know how to be hopeful,” Ms. Leung said.
“People told me to report it and I did, but it didn’t work.”

The aftermath
Mr. Pavlou’s group is planning another protest this week.
The university said that it opened an investigation into the clash, and it issued a statement defending free speech but proposing that the demonstration be held in a more remote area of campus.
“It’s simply a way to starve the protest of visibility,” Mr. Pavlou said.
Some students would rather see it canceled.
A half-dozen students from mainland China interviewed around campus on Tuesday called any demonstration against Chinese influence unnecessary and useless.
Some activists on the left, noting that the Hong Kong Student Association is not involved, said they worried that any protest led by Australians who were not from Hong Kong or mainland China would only contribute to anti-Chinese racism.
But for Mr. Pavlou, Mr. Yiu, and many others, there is no turning back.
A group of Tibetan students has aligned with Mr. Pavlou’s group, calling for the university to shut down its Confucius Institute.
Mr. Yiu and his fellow Hong Kong students are planning more rallies, coordinating with groups all over Australia.
“People in Hong Kong are risking their lives,” Ms. Leung said.
“The threats we faced last week are nothing compared to them. We have to stand up. With them.”

Why Hong Kong’s protesters look to Ukraine

By Isabella Steger

An uprising that started off with people marching and singing in high spirits morphs into one increasingly defined by violence, police brutality, propaganda wars, and even thug attacks—that’s the trajectory of the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine that Hong Kong’s protesters increasingly feel parallels their own struggle.
While the last few years have seen an explosion in popular uprisings across the world from the Middle East to Sudan to Puerto Rico, few have resonated with Hong Kongers as much as the 2014 pro-European, anti-Russian protests in Ukraine. 

The timing of the uprising in Kiev’s central Maidan square, coming just months before the outbreak of the Umbrella Movement in 2014, provided a convenient reference point for those in Hong Kong. Five years later, as a much more volatile and high-stakes resistance movement in Hong Kong emerges, Ukraine’s experience feels even more eerily familiar and instructive.
Oleksandra Ustinova, a 33-year-old politician who was recently elected to Ukraine’s parliament, said that as a student at Stanford earlier this year she gave a joint presentation with some Hong Kong student leaders and participants of the Umbrella Movement, where they tried to draw parallels between the two situations. 

“I know that a lot of (Hong Kong) were looking at Ukraine as a prototype,” said Ustinova.
The Oscar-nominated 2015 documentary Winter on Fire, which is about the Maidan protests, has been one central discussion point for many Hong Kong protesters. 

With the documentary now available on Netflix, many are sharing their thoughts on it.

Lee Ngao, the administrator of a Facebook page called Resistance Live Media that frequently shares updates related to the Hong Kong protests, recently promoted (link in Chinese) the documentary on his page. 

“Hong Kong protesters are interested in Maidan because it’s enlightening and educational for them,” said Lee.

“It’s David vs. Goliath. Hong Kong protesters really admire those in Ukraine for their strategy and unwavering spirit of resistance.”
The David vs. Goliath comparison is one that’s also been oft used to describe the conflict in Ukraine. Arthur Kharytonov, a Kiev-based lawyer who started a group in 2017 called Free Hong Kong Center that aims to bring information about Hong Kong to a Ukrainian audience, said that both Russia and China are like a “very bad child of the USSR,” and employ similarly violent tactics to intimidate protesters.
The brutal scenes from an incident earlier this month that saw armed white-clad thugs beating people in a suburban train station, for example, felt shockingly familiar to followers of eastern European affairs. 

Many compared it to the Titushki, a term used by Ukrainians to refer to athletic young men believed to have been hired by the state to assault pro-democracy protesters and journalists.


Andreas Umland@UmlandAndreas
These kind of unofficial attack squads of an authoritarian regime have been labelled "titushky" in Ukraine, after one such martial arts fighter Vadym Titushko who was filmed attacking Ukrainian TV journalists. https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1153966803477045248 …
DW News
✔@dwnews
𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀
An assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong left dozens wounded. Footage showed people screaming as suspected triad gangsters beat protesters and leaving pools of blood on the floor.

2
1:15 PM - Jul 24, 2019

As questions swirled over why it was that Hong Kong police were absent for almost 45 minutes as thugs with wooden sticks and bats beat both black-clad activists returning from a protest and regular civilians in the train station, and in a carriage, many are alleging collusion between law enforcement forces and organized crime gangs known as triads. 

The government and police have strongly denied the existence of such links. 

However, in a recording obtained by Reuters, a Chinese official was heard encouraging residents of a village in the rural area near the scene of the attacks that they should drive away any protesters from the area in order to maintain peace just days before the July 21 mayhem. 

Beijing’s representative office in Hong Kong has denied allegations linking it to the mob violence.
Others see comparisons even on a granular level. 

Edison Hung, a 31-year-old music critic, said he saw similarities between how Euromaidan began as a student-led protest that was peaceful and even uplifting, with people singing songs “with a degree of innocence, just like in Hong Kong.” 

One scene in particular in Winter on Fire, where the bell ringer of a cathedral near the Maidan rang the church bells to signal to people to head to the square to defend protesters from government forces, reminded Hung of how Christians have played a central role in the current Hong Kong protests, for example by incessantly singing hymns to lend support to protesters and defuse tensions.
For now at least, one of the key things that differentiates the two protest movements is the lack of deadly violence in Hong Kong. 

The city’s police have so far responded to what they say is worsening violence on the part of the protesters with weapons including tear gas, pepper spray, batons, rubber bullets, and bean bag rounds. Though it represents a significant escalation of tactics on both sides, there have been no deaths in the protests thus far. 

In the Maidan, dozens of people lost their lives, some after being shot by snipers.

 Thousands more have died in the ensuing war in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed separatists.
“The protests in Hong Kong are 90% similar to Ukraine’s. The only difference being that they haven’t used real bullets in Hong Kong yet,” wrote a user named Zuki Po in a Facebook post (link in Chinese) that broke down in detail the similarities between the two uprisings using timestamps from Winter on Fire as reference points.

As the protests in Hong Kong seem likely to drag on with no political solution in sight, however, the protests that inevitably turn into street battles against police will only intensify. 

Police have already signaled that they’re prepared to use increasingly powerful crowd-control tactics, such as water cannons, and clashes between the two sides are beginning earlier and earlier in the day. For now, there’s also no sign that Beijing is prepared to send its army to quell the unrest, despite growing fears in recent weeks of such a likelihood. 

Still, when watching scenes such as when Hong Kong protesters stormed the legislature and said that they were prepared to be arrested for it, Hung, the music critic, saw shades of the Ukraine protests.
“That made me think of the movie where people said that they were ready to die for (the cause). And they did die.”

Address protest grievances, US chamber of commerce tells Hong Kong leaders

AFP

Hong Kong’s leaders must address the grievances fuelling nearly two months of protests, the American Chamber of Commerce said Monday (Jul 29), as the business community becomes increasingly alarmed by the chaos engulfing the financial hub.
The once stable city is reeling from weeks of anti-government protests that show no sign of abating.
What began as a mass display of opposition to an extradition Bill two months ago has morphed into a wider pro-democracy movement that has thrown down the most significant challenge to Beijing’s authority since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

And there is growing frustration over the seeming inability – or unwillingness – of Beijing and the city’s leaders to offer compromises or a solution that might end the political crisis.
Protesters battled riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets on two consecutive days over the weekend in some of the most sustained and violent clashes since the pro-democracy movement kicked off last month.
The American Chamber of Commerce said “a clear majority” of its members felt Hong Kong’s leaders needed to do more to address core protester demands, including an independent inquiry into the unrest and a permanent withdrawal of the extradition Bill.
“The government should take immediate and tangible actions to address the root causes of recent demonstrations and restore confidence in the city’s status as Asia’s pre-eminent international business and financial centre,” the Chamber said in a statement released Monday.

Tara Joseph. 

AmCham president Tara Joseph said the administration of city leader Carrie Lam needed to “show clear leadership in meeting the expectations of Hong Kong people and in restoring the city’s international reputation for effective governance”.
“A clear majority of our membership surveyed over the past week said the government needs to address the underlying causes of the protests and not simply to paper over the cracks of social instability with a short-term law-and-order fix,” she added.
The statement follows a similar rebuke from the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce last week which also called for a permanent shelving of the extradition Bill and an inquiry.
Lam has faced growing criticism over her response to the crisis, both from opponents but also within the civil service and the city’s pro-Beijing establishment ranks.

Beyond agreeing to postpone the widely-loathed extradition Bill she has made few compromises. 

She has also made few public appearances in recent weeks despite the unprecedented scenes of violence – over the weekend she was pictured visiting a Chinese army barracks in the city.
Beijing has thrown its support behind Lam’s administration and issued increasingly shrill condemnations in the last two weeks, dismissing protester grievances and portraying the rallies as a foreign-funded conspiracy.

Yesterday’s Cold War Shows How to Beat China Today

The Trump administration has been ignoring the playbook that produced the downfall of the Soviet Union.
BY STEPHEN M. WALT
U.S. President Ronald Reagan, commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin, reviews honor guard of Royal Regiment of Scotland (wearing kilts) on June 12, 1987 after his landing at Berlin Tempelhof Airport. 

Commentators of many stripes increasingly refer to the deteriorating relationship between the United States and China as a new “cold war.” 

As some readers may recall, I think analogies to the earlier rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union should be viewed with some skepticism, as there are important differences between the two situations. 

But analytic caution doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to draw useful lessons from the past and use them to inform policy decisions today. 

Why did the United States ultimately triumph over its Soviet rival? 

What advantages made victory more likely, and how did U.S. leaders exploit them? 

How might that earlier experience help Americans retain the upper hand over China in the decades ahead?
Here are five important lessons from the Cold War, lessons that should be guiding contemporary U.S. foreign policy. 

Spoiler alert: Donald Trump has been ignoring or violating every one of them.

Lesson #1: Make sure you have the right allies.
The United States won the Cold War in part because its market-based economy was larger, more diverse, and more efficient than Soviet-style central planning. 

But it helped that America’s principal allies were also a lot wealthier and more powerful than most Soviet client states were. 

As the U.S. diplomat George Kennan’s original formulation of containment emphasized, the key to victory over the long term was to keep the “key centers of industrial power” (i.e., Western Europe and Japan) aligned with the West and out of Soviet hands. 

That’s what containment was really all about.
This objective led directly to the formation of NATO and the construction of the hub-and-spoke alliance system in Asia, and the result was an overwhelming preponderance of power in favor of the West. 

Although the Soviet Union was the world’s second-largest economy and a formidable military power, its allies were much weaker than America’s. 

Taken together, the United States and its allies had roughly 25 percent more people than the Soviet alliance network, nearly three times the combined GNP, and a slight edge in total military manpower—and they outspent the Soviet bloc by roughly 25 percent every year.
As I explained way back in 1987, this imbalance of power in America’s favor resulted from four key advantages. 

First, the United States had a powerful economy in its own right. 

Second, the United States was far from the other key centers of world power, while the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were right next door. 

The proximate threat of Soviet power made most of Europe and many states in Asia eager to ally with the United States. 

Third, Soviet military doctrine emphasized offensive conquest, further increasing others’ perceptions of threat, and Moscow never abandoned its formal commitment to spreading world revolution, which made noncommunist states even more nervous. 

And the more the USSR tried to compensate for its weaker position by building up military power, the more other states wanted to align with the United States.
Relatedly, the United States also benefited by adopting a policy of “divide and rule” toward its communist rivals. 

The early Cold War fixation with the so-called communist monolith eventually gave way to a more realistic policy, most notably in U.S. President Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972. 

This move left Moscow increasingly isolated and added to its strategic burdens.
What about now? 

Thus far, Trump’s presidency has been a textbook case in how not to manage America’s various international partnerships. 

He abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his fourth day as president, undercutting the U.S. strategic position in Asia and handing China an easy victory. 

He compounded that error by launching trade wars with nearly everyone, including America’s Asian allies, and by engaging in an impulsive, poorly executed outreach to North Korea.
Trump’s desire to get Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defense has considerable merit, but insulting European leaders, threatening trade wars, attacking the European Union, and jacking up U.S. defense spending is the wrong way to do it. 

Europeans regard Trump’s decision to abandon the nuclear deal with Iran as an ill-considered blunder, doing further damage to America’s reputation for acumen and reliability. 

Similarly, Trump’s decision to give carte blanche to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt has empowered these governments’ worst tendencies, yet produced no tangible strategic benefits for the United States.
The result: Washington is still subsidizing Europe’s defense, tied to increasingly problematic clients in the Middle East, and in a weaker position vis-à-vis China. 

Moreover, whatever Trump’s initial instincts might have been, he has continued his predecessors’ ineffectual approach to Russia, thereby cementing a growing strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing. 

Instead of playing divide-and-rule, he has been pushing the two Asian giants closer together, while Moscow plays divide-and-rule against NATO and the EU. 

The United States seems to have forgotten this critical Cold War lesson, but its rivals haven’t.

Lesson #2: Investing in science, technology, and education pays off.

Having the world’s most sophisticated and technologically advanced economy was an enormous asset for the United States. 

Not only did it fuel impressive economic growth, but it also gave the U.S. military important advantages over its Soviet rival. 

When the Sputnik 1 launch in 1957 raised fears that the United States might be losing its scientific and technological edge, initiatives like the National Defense Education Act of 1958 produced a new renaissance of scientific and engineering development and ensured that the USSR would trail the United States in most areas of scientific endeavor.
Side note: In addition to encouraging the study of science and mathematics, this same initiative also sought to encourage study of foreign languages and cultures. 

By providing experts who could help devise appropriate policies for dealing with different regions, support for area studies was also important in helping win the Cold War.
By contrast, the Trump administration seems to have little respect for scientific expertise and has twice attempted to gut federal support for scientific research. 

Fortunately, Congress has twice stepped in to restore, and in some cases, increase, research funding. Nor does Trump seem to think area expertise is needed to conduct an intelligent foreign policy. 

If he did, he wouldn’t have given his son-in-law critical responsibilities in the Middle East and might have listened to the many experts who warned that his approaches to North Korea and Iran were doomed to fail.
And how is the United States faring regarding China? 

China’s scientific achievements have risen steadily, even if it still trails the United States in many areas. 

Equally important, China has been training a large cadre of regional experts to conduct its diplomacy, while the United States has been gutting the State Department and relying on untrained amateurs (aka campaign donors) for decades. 

As William Burns makes clear in his recent book The Back Channel, America’s disregard of diplomacy (and regional expertise) is a massive self-inflicted wound. 

But not according to Donald Trump, who said he’s “the only one that matters” and thought he could charm or bluster his way into a nuclear deal with North Korea.

Lesson #3: Greater openness, transparency, and accountability gave the United States an important advantage.
No political system is perfect, and even dedicated public servants sometimes make big mistakes. 

But democracies with a tradition of free speech and a vigorous, vigilant media are more likely to recognize errors and (eventually) correct them. (As the economist Amartya Sen argued in a famous study, that’s a big reason why no well-established democracy has ever suffered a massive famine.) The United States clearly blundered when it plunged deeply into the Vietnam War, for example, but it began to cut its losses with Vietnamization and eventually got out completely, if not as soon as it should have.
By contrast, the sclerotic Soviet system—where free speech was fully suppressed—was both economically inefficient and prone to more catastrophic failures, whether in its own Afghan campaign, the brutal Soviet gulag, the disaster at Chernobyl, or the environmental harms inflicted over communism’s long reign. 

Maoist China suffered from similar disasters, most notably in the millions who died from famine during Mao Zedong’s ill-conceived Great Leap Forward.
To be fair, openness, transparency, and accountability have been under siege in the United States for some time, and the Trump administration isn’t the first to play fast and loose with facts or to attempt to shield itself from outside scrutiny. 

That said, the 45th president has taken this aversion to accountability to a new level: attacking the media as the “enemy of the people,” lying without restraint, and going to enormous lengths to prevent legitimate scrutiny of his own conduct as a candidate and as president. 

Like would-be authoritarians everywhere, his goal is to become the sole arbiter of truth in the public mind, so that it ignores his mistakes and continues to embrace his agenda.

Lesson #4: Playing rope-a-dope (i.e., letting the Soviet Union squander resources in strategically marginal areas) was a smart strategy.
Back in 1974, Muhammad Ali defeated a younger, bigger, and stronger George Foreman in heavyweight boxing match in Zaire. 

The bout was fought on a hot and humid night, and Ali’s strategy—which he called the “rope-a-dope”—consisted of leaning back on the ropes and covering up while Foreman punched himself into exhaustion with ineffective body blows. 

The fight ended when Ali came off the ropes in the eighth round and knocked Foreman out.
There’s a valuable strategic lesson here. 

As discussed above, by the mid-1950s the United States was allied with most of the world’s major industrial powers. 

The coalition it put together vastly outstripped the Soviet Union and its various clients in productive capacity, military power, wealth, public legitimacy, and overall well-being. 

Moscow did bring together a number of quasi-Marxist or socialist regimes in the developing world, but these relatively weak states did not make its global alliance significantly stronger, especially when compared with the U.S.-led counterpart.
Although the United States did try to undermine these arrangements (and sometimes succeeded), it generally did less to undermine them than Moscow did to prop them up. 

The final straw was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which sped up its collapse. 

Like Ali, the United States let the Soviet Union punch backing burdensome client states and fighting costly wars.
Make no mistake: The United States also wasted considerable money and lives fighting peripheral wars like Vietnam, but its economy was significantly stronger, and most of its allies were assets, not burdens. 

Playing rope-a-dope was a smart strategy from a U.S. perspective, contributing to its Cold War victory. 

The lesson: Letting opponents squander significant resources for small gains is a smart strategy. 

A corollary: Make sure your opponents don’t lure you into the same error, and don’t confuse a big military budget with success.

 Spending more is not better if less is more than enough, and especially if doing so undermines your economic well-being over the long haul.
Sadly, Trump seems to understand none of this. 

He believes throwing more money at the bloated and inefficient Pentagon (and ordering aerial flybys and parades) will “Make America Great Again,” but it is more likely to sap its economic strength. Trump also promised to get “out of the nation-building business”; instead, he imitated former President Barack Obama and sent more troops to Afghanistan. 

He’s ramped up global anti-terrorism efforts, backed the futile Saudi war in Yemen, and nearly went to war against Iran a few weeks ago. 

To be sure, he inherited most of these policies.
If the United States is facing a new cold war with China, the proper course is to stop wasting time, money, and lives on peripheral matters and to focus laserlike on managing that critical bilateral relationship. 

Obama tried to do this with the so-called pivot to Asia, but he didn’t quite pull it off. 

Thus far, Trump has failed to grasp that doing more to confront China requires doing less elsewhere—and getting other states to aid U.S. efforts instead of picking fights with them, too.
Lesson #5: Nice countries finish first.
The United States is not as virtuous as Americans like to pretend, but during the Cold War, it benefited from standing for freedom, human rights, and other popular political values. 

U.S. leaders also recognized that making progress on civil rights would be important in the context of the Cold War, as greater racial equality would make the country look better in the eyes of nonwhite societies around the world.
To be sure, the United States backed authoritarians when it thought it had to and sometimes acted with callous disregard for foreign populations. 

But on balance—and especially when compared to its Soviet rival—the United States was seen as standing for something more than just the naked exercise of power.
Equally important, U.S. leaders consistently treated their foreign counterparts with respect, even when they were privately angered by others’ actions or when they had to play hardball with them within the broader alliance context. 

French President Charles de Gaulle irritated several U.S. presidents on more than one occasion, but you rarely heard U.S. officials denouncing him in public. 

U.S. officials understood that denigrating or humiliating one’s partners would generate resentment and undermine Western unity, so they kept the mailed fist inside a velvet glove. 

Because the United States was so much stronger than others, it usually got its way. 

But its leaders were wise enough not to boast about it, lest this trigger resentment and impair cooperation.
By contrast, the communist world was a seething cauldron of resentment and fratricidal animosity. Yugoslavia’s Tito and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin fell out quickly after World War II, and so did Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong in the 1950s. 

Soviet and Chinese troops clashed along the Ussuri River in 1969, and Moscow even contemplated a preventive nuclear strike against Beijing’s nascent nuclear arsenal. 

Relations inside the Warsaw Pact were also less than harmonious, and the USSR had to intervene in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968) to keep these satellites in the fold. Communist Vietnam went to war against the Marxist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, which eventually led to a short but intense border war between Vietnam and China. 

Despite sometimes serious policy disagreements, America’s Cold War alliance system was a model of harmony when compared to its communist counterpart.
Needless to say, Trump flunks here as well.

Even as he heaps praise on autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and thuggish blusterers like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump calls Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “weak,” says President Emmanuel Macron of France is exhibiting “foolishness,” and tweets out demeaning jibes at German Chancellor Angela Merkel and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. 

He’s acted boorishly at international conferences and alarmed experienced foreign diplomats with his insecurity, ignorance, and incompetence.
Not surprisingly, America’s image in most countries has plummeted since Trump took office. 

This decline in part reflects concerns about Trump’s erratic decision-making, but some of it clearly reflects global disdain for his personal conduct. 

Khrushchev undermined Soviet foreign policy when he banged his shoe in the U.N. General Assembly; Trump does something similar nearly every time he tweets.
Being powerful matters a lot in world politics, but being popular or at least respected isn’t irrelevant. The United States won the Cold War in part because it was stronger and more resilient than the Soviet Union, but also because Washington’s values and actions—for all of its shortcomings and hypocrisy—proved more popular with most of the world than Moscow’s did. 

This is an advantage the United States probably still retains as its competition with China heats up, unless Trump and his minions manage to squander it too.

China’s pig herd predicted to shrink by 50% thanks to swine fever

• China’s pig herd could halve by the end of 2019 from a year earlier.
• The decline has been much worse than confirmed by agriculture officials, who this month launched an investigation of local authorities’ efforts to contain the disease.
• Production may take more than 5 years to recover to levels prior to the deadly outbreaks as challenges including a lack of solutions to prevent the disease and a lack of capital will restrict restocking.

Reuters

A hired hand feeds a sow which recently gave birth to a new litter at the Grand Canal Pig Farm in Jiaxing, in China’s Zhejiang province.

China’s pig herd could halve by the end of 2019 from a year earlier as an epidemic of Chinese swine fever sweeps through the world’s top pork producer, analysts at Dutch bank Rabobank forecast on Tuesday.
The bank said China’s herd, by far the world’s biggest, was already estimated to have shrunk by 40% from a year ago, well above official estimates which have ranged from 15% to 26%.
The forecast comes amid industry speculation that the decline has been much worse than confirmed by agriculture officials, who this month launched an investigation of local authorities’ efforts to contain the disease.
Rabobank said China’s pork production in 2019 was expected to fall by 25 percent from the previous year, a smaller drop than pig herd loss due to the large number of animals slaughtered in first half of 2019.
Output of pork, China’s favorite meat, will likely drop by a further 10% to 15% in 2020, it said in a report.
Production may take more than 5 years to recover to levels prior to the deadly outbreaks as challenges including a lack of solutions to prevent the disease and a lack of capital will restrict restocking, it added.
Reuters reported earlier this month that as many as half of China’s breeding pigs have either died from Chinese swine fever or been slaughtered because of the spreading disease.
Rabobank, which late last year estimated China’s pig herd at 360 million animals, said in April that up to 200 million pigs could be culled or die due to the disease, while pork output could fall by 30 percent.

Chinese Internet Pioneer Who Exposed Misdeeds Gets Heavy Prison Term

By Ian Johnson

Huang Qi in his apartment in 2013 in Chengdu, China. A Chinese court convicted him of disclosing state secrets.

A Chinese internet pioneer who once won Communist Party praise for using the Web to combat social ills was sentenced Monday to 12 years in prison — a further sign that the window for independent social activism in China has all but closed.
Huang Qi, 56, who spent nearly 20 years exposing local government malfeasance and brutality, and has already served eight years in prison, was found guilty by a court in southwestern China of “deliberately disclosing state secrets” and “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities,” according to the court statement.
In addition to the prison term, he was deprived of political rights for four years and fined 20,000 yuan, or nearly $3,000.
It was one of the longest sentences given to a rights advocate in recent years and followed calls for clemency by human rights groups, foreign governments and the United Nations. 

In light of Mr. Huang’s chronic bad health, including high blood pressure as well as kidney and heart problems, the nongovernmental organization Reporters Without Borders called the 12-year term “equivalent to a death sentence.”
Mr. Huang was most recently arrested in 2016 for “inciting subversion of state power,” which often carries a prison term of up to 10 years.

 The more serious charge of divulging state secrets, and its longer sentence, may have stemmed from his unwillingness to cooperate or confess, according to Patrick Poon of Amnesty International.
During a secret trial in January, Mr. Huang reportedly denied all wrongdoing and criticized the government, according to one associate who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions.
“The authorities are using his case to scare other human rights defenders who also do similar work,” said Mr. Poon. 

“Due to his popular website and broad network of volunteers and grass-roots activists, his case is highly sensitive.”
Mr. Huang is one of several activists recently targeted for running human rights websites. 

One, Zhen Jianghua, who ran the Human Rights Campaign in China, was sentenced to two years last December, while another, Liu Feiyue, received five years in January for running the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch.
Mr. Huang’s 64Tianwang website was a ticker of social unrest.
He and his team of volunteers fielded dozens of phone calls a day, often from people appealing government decisions to expropriate their land. 

Many were engaged in street protests or presenting petitions to government agencies, and Mr. Huang’s team reported on their complaints and actions.
When he started his site in 1999, Mr. Huang and his former wife, Zeng Li, helped missing children and their parents unite.
In a 1999 profile, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily, focused on a man who had disappeared after he followed the banned spiritual practice Falun Gong. 

Through the site’s efforts, the man’s family found out he had committed suicide.
While that story was in line with government priorities, the newspaper’s report also discussed other more sensitive cases that the site handled, including the kidnapping of rural children, which was rampant in the 1990s because of the government’s single-child policy.
The website’s name reflected its agenda. 

“Tianwang” means “heavenly web,” referring to the idea of heaven as a synonym for “justice.” 

The numbers 6 and 4 referred to the date of the site’s founding: June 4, 1999. 

But that date was also — not coincidentally, Mr. Huang said in later interviews — the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when pro-democracy protesters were killed in Beijing.
Soon after the flattering profile in People’s Daily, the site’s social edge sharpened. 

Eventually Mr. Huang paid a heavy price.
In 2000, the site reported on migrant laborers forced to undergo unnecessary appendectomies, and pay exorbitant bills at state-run hospitals. 

This also won government praise.
But later that year, the site began reporting on the violent suppression of Falun Gong, which included the beating deaths of followers in police custody. 

Shortly after that report, Mr. Huang was arrested and served five years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power.”
He said he spent a year in solitary confinement, often sleeping on a concrete floor, which damaged his kidneys and led to regular dialysis.
Released in 2005, Mr. Huang reopened the site and won numerous human rights awards for his reporting of malfeasance, especially about the shoddy construction of schools that collapsed in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.
Those reports led to another prison stay, this time of three years.
He relaunched the site after his release, remaining optimistic that it was having an effect. 

In a 2013 interview, he said that the site was read by the country’s security apparatus, and that it helped publicize citizen grievances, applying pressure.
Mr. Huang also expressed optimism that the new government of Xi Jinping would be more tolerant of his work because of its avowed goals of promoting a transparent legal system and cracking down on corruption.
Mr. Huang said, however, that the struggle could be prolonged and costly. 

Comparing his efforts to those of American revolutionaries, he said the British agreed to negotiate only after Washington inflicted defeats on them.
“It’s like that with us now,” Mr. Huang said.

 “It’s only after pressure from the people that the government will change its opinions.”

Amnesty International Condemns Police Aggression in Hong Kong Protests

BY FRANK FANG

Violence again erupted in Hong Kong’s Yuen Long on the evening of July 27 after hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered for a peaceful march in the afternoon to oppose an attack a week earlier by suspected triad members at the local metro station.
Amnesty International issued a statement following the violence, saying that the actions of the local police had been “unacceptable.”
“The violent scenes in Yuen Long tonight were in part because Hong Kong police chose to inflame a tense situation rather than deescalate it,” Amnesty said.

“For police to declare today’s protest unlawful was simply wrong under international law.”

Riot police fire tear gas towards protesters in the district of Yuen Long, Hong Kong, on July 27, 2019. 

It added: “While police must be able to defend themselves, there were repeated instances today where police officers were the aggressors; beating retreating protesters, attacking civilians in the train station, and targeting journalists. Alarmingly, such a heavy-handed response now appears the modus operandi for Hong Kong police and we urge them to quickly change course.”
On July 21, a group of men in white t-shirts, wielding wooden or metal poles, rushed into the Yuen Long metro station and began beating passengers, according to footage taken by commuters and journalists at the scene. 

Democratic party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting was among the at least 45 injured.
The attackers targeted any passengers dressed in black because they were likely to have taken part in a peaceful march earlier in the day against the Hong Kong government’s extradition bill. 

The march drew 430,000 people.
A number of attackers have since been arrested by the police, who noted that some had triad backgrounds.
The attacks triggered the UK government, the U.S. State Department, and multiple rights groups, including Amnesty International, to issue statements expressing concerns about the violence.

Reclaiming Yuen LongProtesters hold up signs saying how police had colluded with local gangs in a march on Yuen Long, Hong Kong, on July 27, 2019. 

The march on July 27, named “Reclaiming Yuen Long,” was organized by Hong Kong resident Max Chung to call on the government to meet seven demands, including the withdrawal of the extradition bill and an independent investigation into the violent civilian clashes on July 21.
The police did not grant Chung the approval for the march, and the Hong Kong’s Appeal Board on Public Meetings and Processions turned down his appeal of the decision on the grounds that such a march could pose threats to public safety given the events on July 21.
Despite the police objection, the march still proceeded, with participants marching from Shui Pin Tsuen Playground to Yuen Long’s metro station.
Pro-democracy lawmaker Eddie Chu and Leonard Cheng, President of Lingnan University of Hong Kong, were among the participants.
About 288,000 people took part in the march, according to Chung’s estimate.
Protesters join a march in Yuen Long, Hong Kong, on July 27, 2019. 

But the peaceful march quickly descended into clashes when police began firing tear gas, rubber bullets, and sponge grenades to disperse the crowds. 

Protesters were reportedly throwing rocks and bottles at police.
Hong Kong media reported that several reporters were hit by the police’s rubber bullets. 

Some protesters eventually retreated into Yuen Long metro station. 

Then, at around 10 p.m. local time, violence escalated as police moved in on protesters inside the station. 

According to Hong Kong media HKFP, baton-wielding police cornered protesters and some of them fell to the ground as people tried to flee. 

Bloodstains could be seen spattered on the floor.

An officer uses pepper spray to disperse protesters inside a metro station in the district of Yuen Long, Hong Kong, on July 27, 2019. 

At around 1 a.m. on July 28, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority announced that 24 people had been injured, with 2 in serious condition.
Hong Kong media The Stand News reported that 11 men aged between 18 and 68, had been arrested on charges including unlawful assembly, assaulting police officers, and possession of offensive weapons.
The Hong Kong government has since issued a statement, calling the Yuen Long march “illegal” and condemning “radical protesters” for deliberately breaking the law by charging at police cordon lines and blocking roads. 

It also stated that police would take serious follow-up actions with arrested protesters.
Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo in a press conference at noon on July 28 condemned the police again for use of excessive force on citizens, social workers, and journalists. 

She added that the police’s ban on the march, in contradiction to Hong Kong’s Basic Law that guarantees the freedom of assembly, had created a “vicious cycle” provoking more people to come out and protest.
At around 3 p.m. local time on July 28, Hong Kong media HK01 reported that Max Chung had been taken away by police on the charge of inciting unlawful assembly. 

Local police have since confirmed the arrest.

China’s Brutality Can’t Destroy Uighur Culture

The Turkic people has an ancient language and traditions. Even Mao didn’t expect to erase it.
By S. Frederick Starr

A police vehicle patrols in Kashgar, East Turkestan, June 25, 2017. 

Daily headlines tell the story of China’s mass internment of Uighurs in its East Turkestan colony, along with the closing and destruction of Uighur mosques and the demolition of their neighborhoods. But the press largely ignores other aspects of their identity, notably their significant cultural and intellectual achievements. 

These details matter, because Uighurs’ resilient culture may ultimately frustrate China’s efforts to stamp them out.
Uighurs are one of the oldest Turkic peoples and were the first to become urbanized. 

When the ancestors of modern Turks were still nomadic, Uighurs were settling into sophisticated cities. 

One of their branches, known today as the Karakhanids, had a capital at Kashgar, near China’s modern border with Kyrgyzstan. 

When Karakhanids conquered the great Silk Road city of Samarkand, they established a major hospital and endowed not only the doctors’ salaries but the cost of heating, lighting and food. 

That was 1,000 years ago, before the Normans conquered England.
Uighurs were active experimenters in religion. 

Besides their traditional animism, they embraced Buddhism, Manichaeism, Christianity and finally Islam. 

They were also among the first Turkic peoples to develop a written language. 

And with writing came literature and science.
Yusuf of Balasagun (c. 1020-70) was chancellor of the Karakhanid state. 

His “Wisdom of Royal Glory” celebrates the active and civic life. 

Rejecting mystic Sufism, Yusuf embraced the here and now, proclaiming that “the next world is won through this world.” 

The widely read text helped popularize a literary version of the Turkic language, the equivalent of the works of Chaucer in English or Dante in Italian. 

His rhymed couplets bemoaning the disenchantments that come with the passage of time reach across the centuries.
A contemporary of Yusuf was Mahmud of Kashgar, a pioneer linguist, ethnographer and geographer. 

Mahmud spent much of his career in Baghdad, capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. 

He knew that the Arab Caliph was totally dependent on Turkic soldiers and civil servants, but saw how the Arab rulers scorned and segregated them as second-class citizens. 

Mahmud’s mission was to promote Turkic peoples and to encourage Arabic and Persian speakers to learn Turkic languages.
Both Yusuf and Mahmud have been considered saints in Uighur culture, and they remain part of the public consciousness. 

The Chinese government doesn’t dare touch their grand mausoleums near Kashgar, so instead it seeks to strip the two Uighur heroes of their religion and ethnicity, regarding their monuments as undifferentiated landmarks in a Chinese world.
Meanwhile, Kashgar itself, which was 99% Turkic when Mao Zedong conquered it in 1949, is rapidly being transformed into a Han Chinese city. 

The government has bulldozed much of the old city and entire districts of traditional Uighur homes, replacing them with generic Chinese high rises. 

In Ürümqi, the capital of East Turkestan, the Han are now an overwhelming majority, and Kashgar is fast following suit.
Beijing hopes its ruthless “Strike Hard” campaign will stamp out the Uighurs as a distinct group. 

But sheer numbers will make that effort near impossible. 

Official data put the Turkic population of East Turkestan at 8.6 million, but it is likely well over 10 million. 

To exterminate them would require a double Holocaust.
Beijing’s alternative to genocide is to destroy the language and culture, but a culture’s identity cannot be so easily destroyed.

 Memories of Yusuf, Mahmud, scores of other poets and saints, the language, folklore, cuisine and way of life are simply too deeply rooted. 

The Uighurs also have developed coping mechanisms.

 While the government demands that boys be sent to Chinese schools, girls are continuing the study of their native language. 

Efforts to suppress the Uighurs’ culture will further radicalize them and drive their lives deeper underground.
The Uighur tragedy now holds the world’s attention. 

Beijing has managed to bribe Saudi Arabia, Turkey and all other Muslim countries into silence, but the gag order cannot be sustained for long. 

Meanwhile, multiple countries near and far now host large, well-educated and active communities of Uighur expatriates.

 They report on developments in East Turkestan that might otherwise pass unnoticed and provide Uighurs at home a channel to communicate with the world. 

They also translate books and articles into Uighur, which helps their co-nationals in East Turkestan overcome their isolation.
Even Mao recognized the distinctness and resilience of the Uighur people. 

Faced with the vast territory of East Turkestan that was overwhelmingly Turkic and Muslim, he named it the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. 

He thus acknowledged the Uighurs’ identity and proposed to grant them a degree of self-government.
Three-quarters of a century later, the only workable solution is still for Beijing to give Uighurs and the other Turkic peoples of East Turkestan more political and cultural autonomy. 

If China’s other provinces demand the same treatment, Xi Jinping can remind them that he is simply following Mao’s lead on the issue and not advancing a new model for Chinese governance as a whole. 

It might seem unlikely that Beijing would back down in such a way.

 But its alternative is to continue a costly conflict that brings shame at home and abroad and is unlikely ever to subdue the proud and ancient Uighur people.

Axis of Evil

Russia and China romance runs into friction in Central Asia
US strategists call for driving wedge between the traditional rivals
By HIROYUKI AKITA
Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Xi Jinping in Saint Petersburg in June: Although the two leaders have found common cause in opposing Washington, their friendship has limits, experts say. 

 
TOKYO -- China and Russia are cozying up ever closer as they find a common enemy in Washington.
During Chinese dictator Xi Jinping's visit to Russia in early June, the two countries singed a joint statement pledging to deepen their ties, as well as around 30 economic agreements.
Xi's Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has criticized the U.S. for leveling trade and technology sanctions against China and pledged to cooperate with it to resist U.S. pressure. 

The two countries are also pushing back against U.S. objectives regarding North Korea and Iran.
While analysts puzzle over whether the romance between China and Russia has peaked or will grow still more fervent, it seems clear they need each other more than ever.
Laboring under U.S. and European sanctions, Russia's economic growth is forecast to slow to around 1% this year. 

That will encourage it to lean more heavily on China. 

For Xi, Russia is a useful tool in countering Washington's increasingly hard-line policies against China.
But despite their growing closeness, China and Russia must deal with frictions.
Russia "is feeling a potential threat" from China, according to an expert on the Russian military. 

The difference the two countries' power continues to widen: China's gross domestic product is roughly eight times larger than Russia's and its population is 10 times larger. 

Russia is especially nervous about the possibility of Central Asia -- much of which was once part of the Soviet Union and is seen by Russians as their backyard -- falling under China's sway.
That is already happening economically. 

In 2018, China became the largest trading partner of three former Soviet republics: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. 

According to official data released by Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, China is the largest source of foreign direct investment in the two countries. 

China has also overtaken Russia as the fourth-largest investor in Kazakhstan.
Russia tolerates China's economic advance in Central Asia because its stands to benefit from infrastructure improvements and regional development that the flood of Chinese investment will bring. 

Security, however, is another matter. 

Moscow will not want China encroaching on its turf.
In Uzbekistan, in mid-June, cabinet ministers, senior officials and experts from the U.S., Europe and neighboring countries gathered to discuss the regional situation. 

China's activities loomed large during the meeting.

The strategic environment began shifting a few years ago as China began secretly deploying troops in Tajikistan, according to local experts. 

Although the Chinese Foreign Ministry has denied its troops are in the area, a person familiar with the matter said there are similar indication in Afghanistan.
China has, up to now, refrained from involving itself in regional security issues out of consideration for Russia. 

But its actions in Tajikistan, part of its effort to keep Islamist militants from entering the East Turkestan colony, indicate a change in Beijing's thinking.
In light of Tajikistan's lax border controls, China may have sent troops to help it shore up security, one expert said. 

China is likely to have received a green light to do so from Moscow. 

But local diplomats said Russia is growing concerned about China's military moves.
Russia's largest military base outside its borders is in Tajikistan. 

The base is scheduled to remain until 2042, under a bilateral agreement. 

Given that it has around 8,000 troops at the base, it is unthinkable that the Russian and Chinese forces will both stay in the country without friction over the long term, according to one security strategist in Central Asia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon in Moscow in April. Russia's largest military base outside its borders is in Tajikistan.

China's objective is to play a larger security role in Central Asia as part of its counterterrorism strategy without irritating Russia. 

That is easier said than done. 

Russia also seems anxious about U.S. ambitions in the region.
Leaders of the five Central Asian countries had planned to hold their second summit meeting in March. 

But the conference was canceled due a sudden change in Kazakhstan's president. 

So far, no new meeting has been scheduled. 

Whatever the official reason given for calling off the summit, a local diplomatic source said the real reason was that the participants were worried about provoking a backlash from Russia.
"Many in Russia still maintain an empire mentality. They consider the former Soviet Union to be their own sphere of influence," said Dr. Farkhod Tolipov, a political scientist who heads Knowledge Caravan, an independent education and research institution in Tashkent. 

"Russia wrongly believes that if the Central Asia region integrates it will gradually lean toward the United States and eventually enter U.S. sphere," he said.
If a rift develops between China and Russia, the implications for global politics would be significant. A weakening of the Sino-Russian axis would be favorable to the West and Japan. 

It would also help the international community increase pressure on North Korea.
At a public-private strategic dialogue between the U.S. and Europe in the polish capital, Warsaw, in June, an idea was floated for how to drive a wedge between China and Russia to give the West an edge in its strategic competition with Beijing.
It may be impossible for Europe to reconcile with Putin, given Russia's annexation of Crimea, according to military strategists in Washington. 

But they argue the U.S. should try to ease tensions with Moscow after Putin's term of office ends in 2024 to encourage Russia to keep China at arm's length.
China and Russia share a border of more than 4,000 km. 

And although they are unlikely to repeat their military clashes of 1969, it also seems unlikely that their current love affair will last forever, given their historical geopolitical rivalry.