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HONG KONG (Reuters) - China’s parliament passed national security legislation for Hong Kong on Tuesday, setting the stage for the most radical changes to the former British colony’s way of life since it returned to Chinese rule almost exactly 23 years ago. .... The legislation pushes Beijing further along a collision course with the United States, Britain and other Western governments, which have said it erodes the high degree of autonomy the global financial hub was granted at its July 1, 1997 handover.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was right to declare Wednesday that Hong Kong can no longer be regarded as autonomous from China. The United States must lead the world in rejecting what China is doing to this former British colony. What is happening in Hong Kong is a legal, political, and moral disgrace. With its move to impose a new national security law upon the city, Beijing is asserting decisive and unilateral authority over Hong Kong in violation of its international commitments. Xi Jinping is abandoning the 1984 Sino-British Joint declaration by which China vowed to respect Hong Kong's political...

China officially has the broad power to quash unrest in Hong Kong, as the country’s legislature on Thursday nearly unanimously approved a plan to suppress subversion, secession, terrorism and seemingly any acts that might threaten national security in the semiautonomous city. As Beijing hashes out the specifics of the national security legislation in the coming weeks, the final rules will help determine the fate of Hong Kong, including how much of the city’s autonomy will be preserved or how much Beijing will tighten its grip. Early signals from Chinese authorities point to a crackdown once the law takes effect, which...

Chaos erupted in Hong Kong International Airport late Tuesday as riot police barrelled through the masses of hundreds of protesters demanding freedom from China. CNN International reported, following the police operation that reporters witnessed at least four arrests and that officers appeared to be targeting specific people. To get through the protesters, police used pepper spray and batons to push back the crowd. According to an official statement from Hong Kong police, airport officials requested that the riot officers enter the airport to rescue a man who protesters had apprehended and accused of being an undercover police officer........ Pro-democracy protesters...

Hong Kong International Airport canceled all flights for the second straight day on Tuesday as crowds of anti-government protesters clashed with police as they continued to occupy the terminals. "Terminal operations at Hong Kong International Airport have been seriously disrupted, and all check-in processes have now been suspended," the airport authority said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. Travelers at the airport, one of the world's busiest, were advised to leave the terminals as quickly as possible and contact the airlines for more information. Some flights were able to depart from the airport earlier on Tuesday before the suspension was announced....

A full-scale military crackdown on the Hong Kongers resisting imposition of mainland-style tyranny may be in the cards, but President Xi and his supporters must understand that they will pay a monumental price for any bloodbath. From Xi’s perspective, this is terrible timing, all the more painful because it was a change in Hong Kong’s extradition law pushed by Beijing that set off the protests. A pair of videos on YouTube appear to show columns of military units moving into Hong Kong (hat tip: Conservative Treehouse) And the regime has ended the three days of protests (video here) at...

Hong Kong Hit by Another Weekend of Clashes, Tear Gas, Public Anger 2019-08-11 Hong Kong has been rocked by yet another weekend of tear gas, baton charges and angry protests amid a deepening confrontation between anti-extradition protesters and the city authorities. Riot police fired multiple rounds of tear gas at "illegal" protests and made arrests in several districts of the city on Sunday, as pro-China thugs attacked anti-extradition protesters in North Point. "HK Riot Police fired bullet and headshot a young lady," Joshua Wong, a former leader of the 2014 pro-democracy movement, said in a caption to a photo posted...

YouTube video (33s)... China Begins Hong Kong INVASION 08 11 2019 The Chinese government has begun moving troops across the Shenzhen Qianhai Guangshen Coastal Expressway Bridge into Hong Kong minutes ago, in a military operation to put down protests against the government of Beijing. Hundreds of military trucks carrying soldiers and guns are moving at this hour across the Bridge into Hong Kong. Army troops have now entered downtown Hong Kong (another short clip is at the at source)

China's Shuanghui International Holdings, which has agreed to buy US pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc for $4.7 billion, plans to list the combined company in Hong Kong after completing the takeover, people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. A Hong Kong IPO, valued at around $4 billion, would allow the merged group to trade in a market that would place a higher valuation on the stock than the US or other exchanges, the sources said. Hong Kong is a far bigger and more international stock market than Shenzhen, the Chinese exchange where Shuanghui's main publicly traded subsidiary is listed....

Four Hong Kong filmmakers have made the first film on Edward Snowden. The amateur filmmakers shot the film in just under a week on a shoestring budget. They none-the-less managed to feature all the major locations in the story, even casting a friend of a friend who is said to bear uncanny resemblance to Snowden - after a haircut of course. Entitled Verax, after Snowden's code name, the short re-imagines the build up to Snowden's revelations on the operations of the NSA, for whom he was contracted as an IT technician. Cinematographer Edwin Lee told the press that the four...

The marriage between Chinese investment bank CITIC Securities and CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, a Hong Kong-based equity broker and financial service provider, has been under the spotlight since it took shape in 2010. Going through all the twists and turns in the past three years, CITIC Securities, which has already completed the purchase of a 19.9-percent stake in CLSA from French retail banking giant Crédit Agricole S.A. for $310.3 million, announced on June 28 that it will postpone its $941.7-million takeover of CLSA's remaining 80.1-percent stake to July 31. CITIC Securities explained that the parties concerned were going all out to...

Chief Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang has called on Hong Kong couples to have three children, saying that this would be the best method to alleviate problems caused by an ageing society, which has only a very small population growth. Speaking on a Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) phone-in programme, Tsang also said it was vital to boost Hong Kong's competitiveness by expanding the talent import scheme to attract educated mainlanders - especially young single males. "Hong Kong has one of the lowest 'total fertility rates' in the world and we need to think about how to resolve the problems...