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Remember when President Barack Obama was running around telling everyone how he’d convinced China to get serious about cutting its carbon dioxide emissions? A new report shows that Obama was easily duped. Over the course of three years, Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to, he said, agree to “climate targets” (in 2014), “lay out additional actions” (in 2015), and sign the Paris Agreement (2016). In typical Obama understatement, he declared that “we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet.” Of course, anyone who looked at what China was promising could see...

The specifics of how the person contracted the plague have not been revealed Three other people 250 miles (400km) away have been diagnosed this month Two have the bubonic plague while two have the more lethal pneumonic strain One man was treated for the bubonic plague after he ate a wild rabbit, while the first two patients were diagnosed with the more fatal and contagious pneumonic strain.

Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters waving American flags filled the streets Thursday to celebrate President Donald Trump's signing of a law that supports their months-long movement. Images and video footage from the semi-autonomous city showed thousands of protesters out to praise the action, with many waving or adorning red, white and blue flags. President Trump on Wednesday signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which will seek to ensure that Hong Kong has sufficient autonomy from China to maintain favorable trading terms with the United States. The bill, which would impose sanctions on Chinese officials for cracking down on...

DC Comics deleted a poster for its new ‘Batman’ comic after Chinese internet users piled on the company, accusing it of hiding a pro-democracy message in the image to support protesters in Hong Kong. The poster—which showed Batman lobbing a flaming Molotov cocktail in the foreground, with the phrase, "the future is young" behind him—was to promote DC's new comic, "Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child." However, some commentators in mainland China claimed the poster had a secret agenda, and likened the superhero’s black mask and improvised grenade to the tools of the youthful activists who have taken over Hong...

China’s hand in cementing a phase one trade deal with the U.S. keeps getting weaker even though many American media outlets keep reporting otherwise because they seem to like Chinese President Xi Jinping better than President Donald Trump, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday. (Please see link for full article)

The bills support the democracy protesters in Hong Kong and threaten China with possible sanctions on human rights. On Thursday the Hong Kong Democracy protesters honored President Trump by carrying his picture — shirtless. HONG KONG, CHINA – NOVEMBER 28: Pro-democracy protesters hold posters of US President Donald Trump during a Thanksgiving Day rally at Edinburgh Place on November 28, 2019 in Hong Kong, China. Protesters gathered to say thank you to the United States after US President Donald Trump signed legislation supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, with new legislation requiring annual reviews of Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms....

Thousands of demonstrators in Hong Kong staged a “Thanksgiving” rally on Thursday evening in response to President Donald Trump signing two bills in support of the city’s pro-democracy movement. Demonstrators took to the streets shortly after the president signed the legislation. Some draped themselves in U.S. flags and expressed gratitude for the administration’s support. “The rationale for us having this rally is to show our gratitude and thank the U.S Congress and also President Trump for passing the bill,” student Sunny Cheung, 23, told Reuters. “We are really grateful about that and we really appreciate the effort made by Americans...

After Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp scored a landslide victory in the city’s district elections on Nov. 25, Chinese state media have largely kept silent, omitting news of the result in its reports. The city’s residents turned out in record numbers on Nov. 24 to hand pro-democracy parties a resounding victory in the district council elections. Democratic candidates won 388 out of 452 district seats, with over 260 seats swinging to the pro-democracy camp. More than 2.94 million Hongkongers voted, amounting to a record turnout rate of 71.23 percent, resulting in hours-long queues from the polling station extending for blocks. The...

The former CIA officer who may have devastated US intelligence collection in China by giving up its network of informants to Beijing agents was sentenced on Friday to 19 years in prison.

The Guardian reported that Junius Ho a Pro-Beijing lawmaker in Hong Kong was stabbed in what appears to be a politically motivated...

Trauma creeps up on you when you are distracted. Someone bends down to pick up a piece of paper that fell on the floor of the MTR train carriage, and even if your eyes are on your phone, you catch that movement with your peripheral vision, and your heart skips a beat. The images come back unsolicited, and play in the inscrutable theatre of one’s brain: people begging to be spared, kneeling in that same metallic, silvery doorway, crying for help and mercy. Police officers don’t care: they storm the train, they beat people they suspect of being protesters with...

After lots of growling from Beijing about how the communist regime wouldn't 'sit on its hands' over the massive protests disrupting Hong Kong, and new threats to 'show no mercy' to the protesters, the Chicoms have folded. >Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed puppet leader, Carrie Lam, has withdrawn the extradition bill that triggered the protests, the one that permitted Beijing to freely snatch back anyone who displeases Red China to face what passes for 'justice' in the communist dictatorship. According to the New York Times: HONG KONG — Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said Wednesday that the government would withdraw a contentious extradition...

as someone who has spent years with the knife edge of the Chinese Communist Party bearing down on my throat for my human rights work, I know that the president is on to something. Tariffs and economic threats may be blunt tools, but they are the kind of aggressive tactics necessary to get the attention of the CCP regime, which respects only power and money. ... It’s about justice, and doing what’s right for ordinary Chinese and American people. Presidents before Trump naively believed that China would abide by international standards of behavior if it were granted access to institutions...

Donald J. Trump has referred to China as “our enemy.” He has called it “a major threat.” “Remember,” he once wrote on Twitter, “China is not a friend of the United States!” Some people in China have their own label for the polarizing American president: savior. “Only Trump can save China,” goes one quip. Others call him the “chief pressure officer” of China’s reform and opening. Their semi-serious praise reflects the deepening despair among those in China who fear their country is on the wrong track. An aggressive outsider like President Trump, according to this thinking, can help China find...

The trade row halved China’s industrial profit growth, from 21 per cent in 2017 to 10.3 per cent in 2018. Some sectors were hit harder than others. Automobile industry profit fell 42 per cent in the first two months of the year, as vehicle sales dropped for eight straight months up to February.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, has reiterated that Taiwan may accept Beijing's proposed reunification under Jiang Jieshis’ "one free country” framework”. She says Taiwan would also build on its defense capabilities as China has not ruled out continuation of old world blind force options. Xi said that the "one free country” framework, has to be seen in Hong Kong and elsewhere, is the best approach for reunification of China. Tsai was speaking to foreign media in Taipei on Saturday, following a speech made by Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday. Taiwan must strengthen its’ already outstanding land, navel and...

Washington veteran Michael Pillsbury has quietly become a key figure behind Trump's confrontational China policy, to the dismay of Beijing — and some fellow China experts. -- A day before President Donald Trump departed for the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, several top officials gathered in the Oval Office to strategize about Trump's highly anticipated meeting there with China's president. Seated around Trump's Resolute Desk were Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. On couches a few feet away were White House chief of staff John Kelly, Trump's son...

A long-serving MP and a former Member of the European Parliament are among names who have condemned the agreementA group of English Catholics, including a long-serving MP, have signed a joint letter expressing “profound dismay” at the Vatican’s provisional agreement with Beijing. Conservative MP Sir David Amess joined Irish former MEP Kathy Sinnott and Professor David Paton in criticising the Vatican for allowing the atheist Chinese government to have a role in choosing bishops at a time of increasing oppression. “The Chinese authorities have also continued to harass, detain, or hold indefinitely and incommunicado certain leading Catholic clergy, including Bishops...

At the crest of his political career Meng Hongwei, the first-ever Chinese president of Interpol, was proudly hailed by state media as a testimony to the international community’s “full recognition” of China’s law enforcement capacity and status as a country based on the rule of law. Less than a year after he took the helm of the global policing body, Meng hosted its general assembly in Beijing – only the second time in the country’s history. At the opening ceremony, he was given the rare privilege of sitting next to the country’s most powerful man, President Xi Jinping, who –...

In the shifting narratives of the Trump-Russia probe, a Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud has remained a linchpin regarding claims of collusion. He is the professor who allegedly told Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russians had emails related to the Clinton campaign. The FBI says it opened its investigation in late July 2016 after Papadopoulos relayed that information to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, and the Australians tipped off U.S. authorities. While some news accounts describe Mifsud as an accomplice to Russian clandestine operations or a “cut-out” (intermediary), others contend he is a full-fledged Russian spy. In an official...