BEIJING: A sharp escalation of violence in Hong Kong is once again raising the question of how China’s central government will respond: Will it intervene, or allow the chaos to persist?
The Liaison Office, which represents mainland authorities in Hong Kong, said Wednesday that actions in the semi-autonomous territory were “slipping into the abyss of terrorism.” It pointed out that a man was set on fire Monday during an argument with demonstrators, leaving him in critical condition.
On the same day, a police officer shot a protester who was then taken to a hospital, also in critical condition.
The unabating tumult, now in its sixth month, may give China’s ruling Communist Party the justification it needs to take more direct action, analysts said.
“Beijing is hoping that the Hong Kong community will start blaming the protesters and support the restoration of order,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist University.
The central government must wait for the right moment to step in, Cabestan said, adding that if China acts before public opinion is fully on its side, it could exacerbate existing discontent.
While the movement began peacefully in June to oppose a now-withdrawn extradition bill, it has been increasingly defined by smaller groups of hard-core demonstrators bent on sowing chaos. Their actions, which have included setting cars on fire and smashing storefronts, have alienated many residents.
The Liaison Office described the act of setting the man on fire as “flagrant terrorism,” and pledged support for Hong Kong authorities taking measures to curb “various illegal acts of violence and acts of terrorism.”
Whereas Chinese authorities previously called the demonstrators “rioters” with behavior “close to terrorism,” they are now calling them “murderers” and tying them more explicitly to terrorism. This label may presage more severe enforcement measures and impact how demonstrators are ultimately prosecuted.
A former British colony, Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 under the framework of “one country, two systems,” a policy that promises Hong Kong certain democratic rights not granted to the mainland. But the arrests of pro-democracy activists and booksellers in recent years have raised fears among Hong Kong residents that Beijing is encroaching on the city’s freedoms.
During a key meeting of the party’s Central Committee at the end of October, Chinese leaders proposed establishing and strengthening the “legal system and enforcement mechanism for safeguarding national security” in special administrative regions like Hong Kong and Macao.
A meeting summary from China’s official Xinhua news agency did not elaborate on what this would entail, but Chinese officials have variously pointed to Article 14, Article 18 and Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s de facto constitution.
Article 14 allows the Hong Kong-based garrison of the Chinese military to help with public order maintenance at the request of the local government. Article 18 states that national laws may be applied in Hong Kong if China’s ceremonial parliament decides that the region is in a “state of emergency” that endangers national unity or security.
“When necessary, the People’s Armed Police Force and the People’s Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison will back you up,” the nationalistic Global Times said in an editorial Monday, addressing the Hong Kong police.
Zhang Xiaoming, head of the Cabinet’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, said over the weekend that Hong Kong has yet to fulfill Article 23, which stipulates that the city will “enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion” against the central government. These laws should also ban the theft of state secrets and prevent foreign political organizations from conducting political activities in Hong Kong. Beijing has repeatedly accused foreign forces of fomenting the unrest.
Proposing new national security legislation is likely to further inflame the protests, though China may not be opposed to that, said Joseph Cheng, a pro-democracy advocate and retired City University of Hong Kong political scientist.
China has made it clear that it intends to maintain a hard line politically, refusing to make any concessions to protesters while pushing ahead with unpopular security legislation, Cheng said.
A further concern is that Beijing might order the postponement of Hong Kong’s local assembly elections scheduled for Nov. 24, freezing in place the current pro-China makeup of the body and avoiding possible embarrassment for the administration of Hong Kong’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam.
Although Lam has been criticized for a lack of leadership and her inflexibility, she has faithfully carried out Beijing’s will. During meetings last week in Shanghai and Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed support for her work.
At least for now, the central government appears to be leaving enforcement to local authorities, said Ben Bland, a research fellow at Australia’s Lowy Institute and author of “Generation HK: Seeking Identity in China’s Shadow.”
This approach allows the party to keep the issue tied to Hong Kong, as opposed to one that requires intervention at a higher level, Bland said, adding that while Beijing has several options for cracking down on the protests, each carries its own risks and could aggravate tensions.
As protesters’ tactics have become increasingly extreme, crippling regular operations in the city and plunging various districts into mayhem, Hong Kong’s government has shifted its focus toward the violence and away from the democratic reforms the movement intended to advocate.
“We all feel very depressed because we don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Cheng said.
China mulls its options as Hong Kong descends into chaos
China mulls its options as Hong Kong descends into chaos
- Actions in the semi-autonomous territory were ‘slipping into the abyss of terrorism’
- ‘When necessary, the People’s Armed Police Force and the People’s Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison will back you up’
Trump threatens to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China on first day in office
The tariffs, if implemented, could dramatically raise prices on everything from gas to automobiles. The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent Census data.
Trump made the threats in a pair of posts on his Truth Social site Monday evening in which he railed against an influx of illegal migrants, even though southern border crossings have been hovering at a four-year low.
“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25 percent Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” he wrote, complaining that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” even though violent crime is down from pandemic highs.
He said the new tariffs would remain in place “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! ”
Trump also turned his ire to China, saying he has “had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail.”
“Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10 percent Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America,” he wrote.
It is unclear whether Trump will actually go through with the threats or if he is using them as a negotiating tactic before he takes office in the new year.
Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico have been falling and remained around four-year lows in October, according to the most recent US numbers
The Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests in October, less than one third of the tally from last October.
Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico. Border seizures of the drug rose sharply under President Joe Biden, and US officials tallied about 21,900 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl seized in the 2024 government budget year, compared with 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.
Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, if confirmed, would be one of several officials responsible for imposing tariffs on other nations. He has on several occasions said tariffs are a means of negotiation with other countries.
He wrote in a Fox News op-ed last week, before his nomination, that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives. Whether it is getting allies to spend more on their own defense, opening foreign markets to US exports, securing cooperation on ending illegal immigration and interdicting fentanyl trafficking, or deterring military aggression, tariffs can play a central role.”
If Trump were to move forward with the threatened tariffs, the new taxes would pose an enormous challenge for the economies of Canada and Mexico, in particular.
They would also throw into doubt the reliability of the 2020 trade deal brokered in large part by Trump, which is up for review in 2026.
Spokespeople for Canada’s ambassador to Washington and its deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, who chairs a special Cabinet committee on Canada-US relations to address concerns about another Trump presidency, did not immediately provide comment.
Trump’s promise to launch a mass deportation effort is a top focus for the Cabinet committee, Freeland has said.
A senior Canadian official had said before Trump’s posts that Canadian officials are expecting Trump to issue executive orders on trade and the border as soon as he assumes office. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department and Economy Department also had no immediate reaction to Trump’s statements. Normally such weighty issues are handled by the president at her morning press briefings.
Judge grants dismissal of election subversion case against Trump
- Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed
WASHINGTON: A judge on Monday granted a request by prosecutors to dismiss the election subversion case against Donald Trump because of a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed to the request by Special Counsel Jack Smith to dismiss the case against the president-elect “without prejudice,” meaning it could potentially be revived after Trump leaves the White House four years from now.
“Dismissal without prejudice is appropriate here,” Chutkan said, adding in the ruling that “the immunity afforded to a sitting President is temporary, expiring when they leave office.”
Trump, 78, was accused of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden and removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House, but the cases never came to trial.
Smith also moved on Monday to drop his appeal of the dismissal of the documents case filed against the former president in Florida. That case was tossed out earlier this year by a Trump-appointed judge on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed.
The special counsel paused the election interference case and the documents case this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 presidential election.
Smith cited the long-standing Justice Department policy of not indicting or prosecuting a sitting president in his motions to have the cases dismissed.
“The Government’s position on the merits of the defendant’s prosecution has not changed,” Smith said in the filing with Chutkan. “But the circumstances have.”
“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States Constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting President,” Smith said.
“As a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
In a separate filing, Smith said he was withdrawing his appeal of the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump but pursuing the case against his two co-defendants, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.
Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said the cases were “empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”
“Over $100 Million Dollars of Taxpayer Dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME,” he said. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before.”
Trump was accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding — the session of Congress called to certify Biden’s win, which was violently attacked on January 6, 2021 by a mob of the then-president’s supporters.
Trump was also accused of seeking to disenfranchise US voters with his false claims that he won the 2020 election.
The former and incoming president also faces two state cases — in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
However, Judge Juan Merchan has postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers that the conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in office.
No regrets: Merkel looks back at refugee crisis, Russia ties
- Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs
BERLIN: Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel gives a spirited defense of her 16 years at the helm of Europe’s top economy in her memoir “Freedom,” released in 30 languages on Tuesday.
Since she stepped down in 2021, Merkel has been accused of having been too soft on Russia, leaving Germany dangerously reliant on cheap Russian gas and sparking turmoil and the rise of the far right with her open-door migrant policy.
Her autobiography is released as wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump is headed back to the White House and Germany faces snap elections after its ruling coalition collapsed this month.
Merkel, 70, remembered for her calm and unflappable leadership style, rejects blame for any of the current turmoil, in the 736-page autobiography co-written with longtime adviser Beate Baumann.
After years out of the public eye, she has given multiple media interviews, reflecting on her childhood under East German communism and tense encounters with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, who she felt “was captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial tendencies.”
In the full memoir, she gives further insights into her thoughts and actions — including during the 2015 mass refugee influx, which came to define the final years of her leadership.
Critics have charged that Merkel’s refusal to push back large numbers of asylum-seekers at the Austrian border led to more than one million arrivals and fueled the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Merkel, who at the time posed for a selfie with one Syrian refugee, says she “still does not understand ... how anyone could have assumed that a friendly face in a photo would be enough to encourage entire legions to flee their homeland.”
While affirming that “Europe must always protect its external borders,” she stresses that “prosperity and the rule of law will always make Germany and Europe ... places where people want to go.”
In addition, she writes in the French edition of the book, fast-aging Germany’s “lack of manpower makes legal migration essential.”
Her bold declaration at the time — “wir schaffen das” in German or “we can do this” — was a “banal” statement with the message that “where there are obstacles, we must work to overcome them,” she argues.
And on the AfD, she cautions Germany’s mainstream parties against adopting their rhetoric “without proposing concrete solutions to existing problems,” warning that with such an approach mainstream movements “will fail.”
Merkel, who speaks Russian, also defends her engagement over the years with Putin, who speaks German — despite her misgivings about the former KGB agent who once allowed a labrador into a meeting between them, apparently playing on her fear of dogs.
She describes the Russian leader as “a man perpetually on the lookout, afraid of being mistreated and always ready to strike, including by playing at exercising his power with a dog and making others wait.”
Nevertheless, she says that “despite all the difficulties” she was right “not to let contacts with Russia be broken off ... and to also preserve ties through trade relations.”
The reality is, she argues, that “Russia is, with the United States, one of the two main nuclear powers in the world.”
She also defends her opposition to Ukraine joining NATO at a 2008 Bucharest summit, considering it illusory to think that candidate status would have protected it from Putin’s aggression.
After the summit, she remembers flying home with the feeling that “we in NATO had no common strategy for dealing with Russia.”
Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, cut Germany off from cheap Russian gas, with the taps’ closure a key driver of its ongoing economic malaise.
But Merkel rejects criticism for having allowed the Baltic Sea pipelines in the first place, pointing out that Nord Stream 1 was signed off on by her predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder, long a friend of Putin.
On Nord Stream 2, which she approved after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, she argues that at the time it would have been “difficult to get companies and gas users in Germany and in many EU member states to accept” having to import more expensive liquefied natural gas from other sources.
Merkel says the gas was needed as a transitional energy source as Germany was pursuing both a switch to renewable energy and the phase-out of nuclear power following Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster.
On nuclear power itself, she argues that “we do not need it to meet our climate goals” and that the German phase-out can “inspire courage in other countries” to follow suit.
Russia security chief meets Taliban officials in Kabul
- Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar
KABUL: Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu visited Afghan government officials on Monday, assuring them Moscow will soon remove the Taliban from its list of banned organizations, Kabul said.
Since the Taliban surged back to power in 2021 visits by foreign officials have been infrequent because no nation has yet formally recognized the government of the former insurgent group.
Taliban government curbs on women have made them pariahs in many Western nations but Kabul is making increasing diplomatic overtures to its regional neighbors, emphasising economic and security cooperation.
Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, met an Afghan cohort in Kabul headed by Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar.
He “expressed Russia’s interest in increasing the level of bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan,” Baradar’s office said in a statement released on social media site X.
“He also announced that, to expand political and economic relations between the two countries, the Islamic Emirate’s name would soon be removed from Russia’s blacklist.”
The Islamic Emirate is the name the Taliban government uses to refer to itself.
Russian news agencies quoted Shoigu as saying he wanted “constructive” ties with Kabul, without saying if he had floated Moscow removing the Taliban from its list of banned groups.
“I confirm the readiness to build a constructive political dialogue between our countries, including in order to give momentum to the process of the internal Afghan settlement,” Shoigu said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
He also said Russian companies plan to take part in projects in Afghanistan on extracting natural resources.
Analysts say Moscow may be eying cooperation with Kabul to counter the threat from Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K) — the Afghan-based branch of the Sunni militant group.
In March, more than 140 people were killed when IS-K gunmen attacked a Moscow concert hall.
Taliban authorities have repeatedly said security is their top domestic priority and have pledged militants staging foreign attacks will be ousted from Afghanistan.
“The Taliban certainly are our allies in the fight against terrorism,” Russia’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Dmitry Zhirnov, said in July.
“They are working to eradicate terrorist cells.”
Republican senator blocks promotion of US Army general associated with Afghanistan withdrawal
- President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it
WASHINGTON: A Republican senator has blocked the promotion of US Army Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, who commanded the military’s 82nd Airborne Division during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and was the last American soldier to leave the country in 2021.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hold had been placed by Senator Markwayne Mullin, who did not respond to a request for comment on why he blocked the promotion.
The Pentagon on Monday said it was aware of the hold on Donahue, who had been nominated for a fourth star by President Joe Biden to lead the US Army in Europe and Africa.
“We are aware that there is a hold on Lt. Gen. Donahue,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.
President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have decried the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan and vowed to go after those responsible for it. In August, Trump said he would ask for the resignation of every senior official “who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”
“You have to fire people when they do a bad job. We never fire anybody,” Trump has said.
Reuters has reported that Trump’s transition team is drawing up a list of military officers to be fired, in what would be an unprecedented shakeup at the Pentagon.
While the image of Donahue, carrying his rifle down by his side as he boarded the final C-17 transport flight out of Afghanistan on in August 2021, has become synonymous with the chaotic withdrawal, he is seen in the military as one of the most talented Army leaders.
“The finest officer I ever served with, Chris Donahue is a generational leader who is now being held up for political purposes. At the tip of the spear defending this country for over three decades, he is now a political pawn,” Tony Thomas, the former head of US Special Operations Command, posted on X.
Under Senate rules, one lawmaker can hold up nominations even if the other 99 all want them to move quickly.
