Thousands of people belted out a new protest song at Hong Kong’s shopping malls in an act of resistance that highlighted the creativity of demonstrators in their months-long fight for democratic freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.Activists and ordinary citizens sang “Glory to Hong Kong” at several malls for a third straight night Wednesday in a respite from recent violence clashes. More protests are expected this weekend, though on Thursday police banned one planned rally, citing safety concerns.The protesters have adopted the song, penned anonymously, as their anthem. The lyrics reflect protesters’ vow not to surrender despite a government concession to axe a proposed extradition law that sparked the summer of unrest.The law, which would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to the mainland for trial, heightened fears about Beijing’s growing influence over the former British colony. Protesters have widened their demands to include calls for direct elections for the city’s leaders and police accountability.At the New Town Plaza in Sha Tin district, some 2,000 people spread across several floors chanted slogans before breaking out into song, with some crying with their hands to their hearts while others lifted their hands in the air. Many referred to lyrics on their phone as they sang.The crowd included families with young children, students and senior citizens, many of them not wearing masks, the usual attire of protesters. The busy mall is linked to a subway station where police fired tear gas on Sunday after protesters vandalized the station.Local media showed singing taking place in at least seven other malls, as well as in some spots including outside a subway station. The South China Morning Post said participants responded to online calls to gather and sing. Police were absent and the gatherings dispersed peacefully.The song has been sung at almost every protest since it emerged Aug. 31, including during Tuesday’s World Cup qualifier match with Iran where Hong Kong soccer fans booed at the Chinese national anthem before kick-off.Protesters over the more than three months of demonstrations have also sung the Christian hymn “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord” and the “Les Miserables” tune “Do You Hear the People Sing?”The sing-alongs have boosted protesters’ morale and highlighted their creativity in inventing new ways to get their message heard by the authorities.On Thursday, scores of pro-Beijing supporters staged a counter protest during lunchtime at a swank mall downtown, singing the Chinese national anthem and waving red five-star national flags. Local media reported that a flash mob of pro-democracy supporters swiftly responded with their protest anthem, leading to minor scuffles.The Civil Human Rights Front, which has organized several massive rallies, said Thursday it is appealing a police ban on its planned march Sunday.Police also banned the group’s Aug. 31 march but protesters turned up anyway. Violent clashes erupted that night, with police storming a subway car and hitting passengers with batons and pepper spray.Police official Kwok Chun-kit said police have reason to believe that radical protesters would break away from the march and carry out destructive acts. He noted that some activists have made online vows to escalate violence if the government failed to meet their demands by Friday.Kwok told a news conference that the proposed route would pass close to high-risk building,s including the police headquarters, government offices and subway stations that have been a focus of protests in recent weeks.Front coordinator Bonnie Leung said violent clashes were unrelated to the group.“We create a safe zone for people to protest. Our marches are like Hong Kong people giving a chance to the government to end the crisis peacefully but now, they have closed the valve to release public anger. It’s like declaring war to peaceful protesters,”  she told The Associated Press.Leung accused authorities of trying to provoke protesters to carry out illegal gatherings to find an excuse to crack down. She urged activists “not to fall into the trap,” saying protests can be in many forms and that they should keep safe to sustain the protest movement.
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Tongan Prime Minister ‘Akilisi Pohiva, who is credited with helping bring democracy to the small Pacific island nation, has died. He was 78.Political adviser to the prime minister Lopeti Senituli told The Associated Press that Pohiva died at the Auckland City Hospital about 9 a.m. local time after being medically evacuated to New Zealand a day earlier. Before that, Pohiva had been hospitalized in Tonga for two weeks suffering from pneumonia before his condition turned critical, Senituli said.Pohiva was an immensely significant figure in Tonga. He was behind the push for democracy and getting away from politics dominated by the royal family, said Graeme Smith, a research fellow in the Department of Pacific Affairs at Australian National University.Tonga is home to 106,000 people.
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Thailand’s Constitutional Court announced Wednesday that it had declined to hear a case accusing the country’s prime minister of violating the constitution by omitting a sentence from the oath of office he and his government took before King Maha Vajiralongkorn. 
 
The issue raised questions about the legitimacy of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s government, which took office in July. 
 
Prayuth failed to include the phrase “I will also uphold and comply with the constitution of the kingdom in every aspect.” It was unclear whether the omission was accidental or intentional. 
 
A statement from the court Wednesday said it lacked jurisdiction because the oath was a matter between the executive branch and the king. 
  
It also mentioned that the king had issued a royal message, delivered late last month but dated the day of the oath-taking, that encouraged Cabinet members to perform their duties according to the oath they swore. 
 
The king as a constitutional monarch is supposed to have no political role but holds a great amount of influence. 
  
The court’s decision appeared to preclude further legal challenges of Prayuth’s omission. The lower house of Parliament is supposed to debate the matter on Sept. 18 at the request of the opposition, but the court’s position gives Prayuth’s government ammunition to stave off any political attacks. Monarchy’s special status
  
The mention of the king’s note giving moral support to the government helps it defend against criticism, because the monarchy is treated as an untouchable institution in Thailand, where a tough lese majeste law provides penalties of up to 15 years in prison for insulting the royal family. 
 
The case went to the Constitutional Court after the state ombudsman forwarded complaints from two citizens who charged that Prayuth’s failure to pledge allegiance to the constitution was a breach of the charter. 
 
Opposition lawmakers pointed out the omission, and Prayuth responded that the matter was not a problem. The ombudsman’s office said he told them he had completed the oath-taking, without elaborating. 
 
The oath is written into the constitution that was adopted in 2017 when Prayuth headed a military government that took power in a 2014 coup. 
 
He became prime minister again after a general election in March that was held according to laws the military regime wrote to favor its political allies. 
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South Korea has formally asked the International Olympic Committee to ban the Japanese rising sun'' flag at next year's Tokyo Games, calling it a symbol of Japan's brutal wartime past and comparing it with the Nazi swastika. 
  
South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Wednesday said it had sent a letter to IOC President Thomas Bach expressingdeep disappointment and concern” about Japanese plans to allow the flag in stadiums and other facilities during the 2020 Olympics. 
 
South Korean Olympic officials last month urged the local organizing committee to ban the flag, but Tokyo organizers responded by saying it was widely used in Japan, was not considered a political statement and it is not viewed as a prohibited item.'' 
 
The flag, portraying a red sun with 16 rays extending outward, is resented by many South Koreans, who still harbor animosity over Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. 
 
The ministry said that in its letter to Bach, it described the flag as an unmistakable political symbol that's embraced by Japanese right-wing protesters who vent anger toward Koreans and other foreigners. It said the flag recallshistoric scars and pain” for the people of South Korea, China and other Asian countries that experienced Japan’s wartime military aggression, similar to how the [swastika] reminds Europeans of the nightmare of World War II.'' Banned by FIFA
  
The ministry said it also pointed out that FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, had banned the flag in international matches. 
  Furthermore, we emphasized that the use of the rising sun flag during the Tokyo Olympics would be a direct violation of the Olympic spirit promoting world peace and love for humanity, and that the IOC should have the Tokyo organizing committee withdraw its [current] stance on the flag and prepare strict measures to prevent it from being brought to stadiums,” the ministry said. 
 
Tokyo’s Olympic organizing committee didn’t immediately react to South Korea’s request to the IOC to ban the flag at the games. 
 
The IOC confirmed it had received the Korean request and said that “sports stadiums should be free of any political demonstration.” Concerns at the games are examined on a case-by-case basis, the Olympic body said in a statement. 
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The first Chinese-born lawmaker to be elected to Australia’s Parliament has come under attack over her links to the Chinese foreign influence network.
 
Gladys Liu, who was born in Hong Kong in 1964, was elected to the conservative government in May elections to represent a Melbourne electoral division with a large population of ethnic Chinese voters.
 
She has come under media scrutiny recently over her membership of organizations overseen by the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, which exert influence on important individuals, organizations and governments outside China. Concern is growing about China’s influence in Australia, which last year banned covert foreign interference in domestic politics.
 
Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported Tuesday that Chinese government records indicate that Liu, who migrated to Australia in 1985, was a member of two provincial councils of the China Overseas Exchange Association between 2003 and 2015.
 
That association reported to the State Council, China’s chief administrative authority, when Liu was a member, but has since merged with the United Front Work Department.
 
She told Sky News television later Tuesday that she “cannot recall” being a member of those provincial councils.
 
“If I can’t recall, I cannot be an active member of that council, can I?” she told Sky News. “I can tell you that I have never been a member of this council.”
 
But in a statement Wednesday, Liu said she held an “honorary role” in the council she had referred to — Guangdong Overseas Exchange Association — in 2011. But she said she no longer had any association with that organization.
 
 “Unfortunately some Chinese associations appoint people to honorary positions without their knowledge or permission. I do not wish my name to be used in any of these associations and I ask them to stop using my name,” she said.
 
 “I have resigned from many organizations and I am in the process of auditing any organizations who may have added me as a member without my knowledge or consent,” she added.
 
Opposition lawmakers on Wednesday accused Liu of making misleading statements about her past links to “Chinese Communist Party propaganda arms.”
 
She has also come under fire for failing to condemn China’s military grab for contested territory in the South China Sea.
 
Asked in the Sky News interview if she agreed that China’s efforts to take over most of the South China Sea were unlawful, she replied, “I definitely put Australia’s interests first.”
 
 She said Wednesday that during the interview “I was not clear and should have chosen my words better.”
 
 “We do not take sides on competing territorial claims but we call on all claimants to resolve disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law,” she said of Australia’s policy on the South China Sea.
 
The opposition has likened Liu’s situation to that of Sam Dastyari, who resigned as an opposition senator in 2017 over his links to wealthy Chinese political donor Huang Xiangmo.
 
Huang made headlines when it was revealed that his company had paid Dastyari’s personal legal bills then appeared alongside the then-senator at a news conference for Chinese media where Dastyari supported Beijing’s stance on the South China Sea, contradicting Australia’s bipartisan policy.
 
Australia has since canceled Huang’s permanent residency and banned foreign political donations.
 
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday stood by Liu and rejected comparisons with the disgraced former senator, whom Morrison accused in 2017 of “betraying his country.”
 
 “Money changed hands and his position was bought by that,” Morrison told Parliament of Dastyari. “He was caught in his own web of corruption. He should have resigned and he did.”  
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Eighteen years after the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil, the world’s military spending is at an all-time high.According to data from the FILE – A U.S. fighter jet takes off from the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan to patrol the international waters off the South China Sea, Aug. 6, 2019.Military spending hit a post-Cold War low in 1998, but took a sharp rise after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people.The Obama administration began making military budget cuts during efforts to end U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now military spending is on the rise again — thanks to Russia and China.Speaking exclusively with VOA, the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper called Russia and China “revisionist powers that would like to be in a place where they’re not.””I wouldn’t call this an arms race,” Cooper said, “but what is different is that we are in places that are more competitive than they were in the past.”The United States accounts for more than a third of global military spending.It boasts 11 aircraft carriers, a powerful nuclear arsenal, new elite fighter jets and about 2.1 million troops. Experts agree its military remains the dominant force.”I think sometimes there’s a tendency to make Russia and China 30 feet tall, and they’re not,” Bradley Bowman, a former military officer and a current senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA. “There are real vulnerabilities there that we could exploit in a conflict, but there are also areas where they’re more advanced than we are.”‘Coerce and defeat’China is now the world’s second-largest military spender — going from just 2% of the world’s military budget in 1990 to 14% now.FILE – Troops are seen by a row of over a dozen army jeeps at the Shek Kong military base of People’s Liberation Army in New Territories, Hong Kong, China, Aug. 29, 2019.Bowman warned allies and partners that China has undertaken this comprehensive effort to modernize its military in order to “coerce and defeat” the U.S. and its allies in a future conflict.China built two aircraft carriers in the past decade, and a third is under construction. China has developed its own elite fighter jets, troop numbers have swelled to more than 2.5 million, and it is investing in new technologies, including hypersonics weapons that would fly five times the speed of sound.Wezeman says the swift modernization has been “perceived as a threat by its neighbors.”Other top spendersIn reaction, India has upped its military spending by more than $11 billion in just three years, now ranking fourth overall behind Saudi Arabia.Although Russia slipped from the top five spending countries in 2018, it still has NATO’s attention after invading Georgia in 2008 and annexing part of Ukraine in 2014.The 29 NATO countries spent $963 billion, 53% of world military spending, in 2018.That number is likely to increase as the U.S. continues to pressure NATO allies to spend 2% of their Gross Domestic Product on defense.”We can’t let countries off the hook,” U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Saturday at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “You can’t simply substitute and say, ‘Well, my 2% is going to go to technology, or I’m going to build infrastructure. I can’t deter a Russian brigade with a road.’ We need real capability.”
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Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, who helped launch China’s online retailing boom, stepped down as chairman of the world’s biggest e-commerce company Tuesday at a time when its fast-changing industry faces uncertainty amid a U.S.-Chinese tariff war.Ma, one of China’s wealthiest and best-known entrepreneurs, gave up his post on his 55th birthday as part of a succession announced a year ago. He will stay on as a member of the Alibaba Partnership, a 36-member group with the right to nominate a majority of the company’s board of directors.Ma, a former English teacher, founded Alibaba in 1999 to connect Chinese exporters to American retailers.The company has shifted focus to serving China’s growing consumer market and expanded into online banking, entertainment and cloud computing. Domestic businesses accounted for 66% of its $16.7 billion in revenue in the quarter ending in June.Chinese retailing faces uncertainty amid a tariff war that has raised the cost of U.S. imports.Growth in online sales decelerated to 17.8% in the first half of 2019 amid slowing Chinese economic growth, down from 2018’s full-year rate of 23.9%.Alibaba says its revenue rose 42% over a year earlier in the quarter ending in June to $16.7 billion and profit rose 145% to $3.1 billion. Still, that was off slightly from 2018’s full-year revenue growth of 51%.The total amount of goods sold across Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms rose 25% last year to $853 billion. By comparison, the biggest U.S. e-commerce company, Amazon.com Inc., reported total sales of $277 billion.Alibaba’s deputy chairman, Joe Tsai, told reporters in May the company is “on the right side” of issues in U.S.-Chinese trade talks. Tsai said Alibaba stands to benefit from Beijing’s promise to increase imports and a growing consumer market.Alibaba is one of a group of companies including Tencent Holding Ltd., a games and social media giant, search engine Baidu.com Inc. and e-commerce rival JD.com that have revolutionized shopping, entertainment and consumer services in China.Alibaba was founded at a time when few Chinese were online. As internet use spread, the company expanded into consumer-focused retailing and services. Few Chinese used credit cards, so Alibaba created the Alipay online payments system.Ma, known in Chinese as Ma Yun, appears regularly on television. At an annual Alibaba employee festival in Hanzhou, he has sung pop songs in costumes that have included blond wigs and leather jackets. He pokes fun at his own appearance, saying his oversize head and angular features make him look like the alien in director Steven Spielberg’s movie “E.T. The Extraterrestrial.”The company’s $25 billion initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014 was the biggest to date by a Chinese company.The Hurun Report, which follows China’s wealth, estimates Ma’s fortune at $38 billion.In 2015, Ma bought the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s biggest English-language newspaper.Ma’s successor as chairman is CEO Daniel Zhang, a former accountant and 12-year veteran of Alibaba. He previously was president of its consumer-focused Tmall.com business unit.Alibaba’s e-commerce business spans platforms including business-to-business Alibaba.com, which links foreign buyers with Chinese suppliers of goods from furniture to medical technology, and Tmall, with online shops for popular brands.Alipay became a freestanding financial company, Ant Financial, in 2014. Alibaba also set up its own film studio and invested in logistics and delivery services.Ma faced controversy when it disclosed in 2011 that Alibaba transferred control over Alipay to a company he controlled without immediately informing shareholders including Yahoo Inc. and Japan’s Softback.Alibaba said the move was required to comply with Chinese regulations, but some financial analysts said the company was paid too little for a valuable asset. The dispute was later resolved by Alibaba, Yahoo and Softbank.Corporate governance specialists have questioned the Alibaba Partnership, which gives Ma and a group of executives more control over the company than shareholders.Ma has said that ensures Alibaba focuses on long-term development instead of responding to pressure from financial markets.
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Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam said Tuesday it would be “extremely inappropriate” for the United States or any other foreign government to interfere in the city’s affairs.  The embattled leader’s warning was in response to a rally outside the U.S. consulate Sunday held by pro-democracy demonstrators calling for passage of a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Congress aimed at boosting their efforts. Protesters hold a banner and wave U.S. flags as they march from Chater Garden to the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong, Sept. 8, 2019, seeking international support for their demands.The legislation would require Washington to annually assess the former British colony’s level of autonomy from Beijing and cancel its trading privileges if that autonomy is compromised.Sunday’s rally evolved into yet another violent clash between protesters accused of vandalizing subway stations and blocking traffic, and riot police who responded by firing tear gas to force the protesters to disperse.”The escalation and continuation of violence cannot solve the problems we face in Hong Kong,” Lam said Tuesday, further warning that it would only deepen the conflict.The demonstrations began in June as a backlash against a proposed extradition bill, which would have permitted criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial in courts controlled by the ruling Communist Party.  They have since evolved into renewed demands for Hong Kongers to choose their own leaders, establishing an independent investigation of police brutality against protesters, and the unconditional release and exoneration of detainees.  In a surprise announcement last week, Lam formally withdrew the extradition bill, which was also a key demand of the demonstrators.  She suspended the bill as the protests escalated during the first month, but ignored calls to fully withdraw the measure.But activists say the decision to withdraw the extradition bill was too little, too late.  In a speech at a monastery Sunday, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing urged the city’s political leaders to resolve the matter with students leading the pro-democracy protests, calling them the “masters of our future.”   
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Comparing the struggle of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters to the role of Berlin during the Cold War, activist Joshua Wong told an audience in the German capital that his city was now a bulwark between the free world and the “dictatorship of China.”The 22-year-old activist, who was in Berlin for a newspaper-sponsored event at the German parliament celebrating human rights activists around the world, pledged that protests would not be lulled into complacency by the decision of the city’s government to drop a contested new extradition law.”If we are in a new Cold War, Hong Kong is the new Berlin,” he said in a reception space a stone’s throw from the Berlin Wall on the roof of the Reichstag building, which for decades occupied the no-man’s land between Communist East Berlin and the city’s capitalist western half.Hong Kong has been convulsed by months of unrest since its government announced attempts to make it easier to extradite suspects to China, a move seen as a prelude to bringing the pluralistic autonomous region more in line with the mainland.Wong, leader of the Demosisto pro-democracy movement, has become a prominent face of the protests.”We urge the free world to stand together with us in resisting the Chinese autocratic regime,” he added, describing Chinese leader Xi Jinping as “not a president but an emperor.”FILE – Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam addresses a news conference in Hong Kong, Sept. 5, 2019.The city’s leader, Carrie Lam, announced concessions this week to try to end the protests, including formally scrapping the bill, but Wong said protesters would not be lulled into complacency.He said they would try to hold the city’s government responsible for what he said were human rights violations committed against protesters, adding that Lam’s climb-down was a ruse to buy calm ahead of China’s Oct. 1 national day.He had briefly been detained by Hong Kong authorities before his departure earlier in the day for breaching bail conditions following his arrest in August when he was charged along with other prominent activists with inciting and participating in an unauthorised assembly.German Chancellor Angela Merkel has just returned from a trip to China, during which she faced criticism from Germany for not engaging more directly with the Hong Kong protesters, whose cause is popular in Germany, though she did call for a peaceful solution to the Hong Kong unrest.
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Former U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Monday anti-government protests in Hong Kong were “not an internal” Chinese matter and that the United States should offer at least moral support to the demonstrators.The retired U.S. Marine general, speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York, said the United States should generally side with those standing up for human rights, which he said included the Hong Kong protesters.“When people stand up for those (rights), I just inherently think we ought to stand with them, even if it’s just moral,” said Mattis, who abruptly resigned as Pentagon chief in December over disagreements with President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.“This is not an internal matter,” Mattis said in remarks likely to irritate Beijing, which has denounced the sometimes violent protests and accused the United States and Britain of fomenting unrest in the former British colony.Trump has previously described the protests as riots, but has also called on China to end the discord in a “humanitarian” way. He said a crackdown could make his efforts to end a damaging trade war with China “very hard.”Mattis said China’s effort to pass a law to allow people in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China was in breach of the “one country, two systems” formula under which British control of Hong Kong was ended in 1997.“They said it would be two systems, and the extradition law was a violation of that,” said Mattis, who is promoting a new memoir about his role in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Although the extradition bill was withdrawn last week after months of unrest, the mass protests in streets and public places across Hong Kong continue, having grown into a broader pro-democracy backlash against the Chinese government.Protesters marched outside the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong over the weekend, urging Trump to help “liberate” the city. Hong Kong police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds.“We have to be careful: We don’t want to say we’re going to land the 82nd Airborne Division in Hong Kong to do this,” he said. “But morally? Yeah, I think we have to stand with them.”In his nearly two years as defense secretary, Mattis had tried to forge a relationship with the Chinese military, worried that tense relations between the two countries could boil over into conflict.Mattis resigned from Trump’s administration a day after Trump’s plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria became public. His resignation letter was widely seen as a sharp critique of Trump’s approach to national security, including what Mattis saw as a failure to value American allies around the world.Although there had been speculation that Mattis might enter the political arena, he has since declined to share his views on Trump, saying it is inappropriate for military figures to pontificate on politics.Mattis also said he was surprised by the news last weekend that Trump had invited Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders for peace talks in the United States. Trump said he canceled the talks after the insurgent group claimed responsibility for an attack in Kabul that killed an American soldier and 11 other people.“I salute people who try to bring wars to an end,” Mattis said. The Taliban, however, had repeatedly failed to break with al Qaeda, the militant group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, he said.“The Taliban was offered: If you break with al Qaeda, we have no problem with you,” Mattis said. “President (George W.) Bush offered that, President Obama offered that, President Trump has offered that, and they’ve declined. So yes, I was very surprised that we were at that point.”Asked on Monday whether he had confidence in Trump’s leadership, he said only that he had “great confidence” in American voters and in the U.S. Constitution.“If we will employ our constitutional checks and balances correctly, this big experiment will continue,” Mattis said.
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Thousands of students formed human chains outside schools across Hong Kong on Monday to show solidarity after violent weekend clashes between police and activists pushing for democratic reforms in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.The silent protest came as the Hong Kong government condemned the illegal behavior of radical protesters” and warned the U.S. to stay out of its affairs.Thousands of demonstrators held a peaceful march Sunday to the U.S. Consulate to seek Washington’s support, but violence erupted hours later in a business and retail district as protesters vandalized subway stations, set fires and blocked traffic, prompting police to fire tear gas.Hong Kong’s government agreed last week to withdraw an extradition bill that sparked a summer of protests, but demonstrators want other demands to be met, including direct elections of city leaders and an independent inquiry into police actions.Protesters in their Sunday march appealed to President Donald Trump to “stand with Hong Kong” and ensure Congress passes a bill that would impose economic sanctions and penalties on Hong Kong and mainland China officials found to suppress democracy and human rights in the city.Hong Kong’s government expressed regret over the U.S. bill, known as the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. It said in a statement Monday that “foreign legislatures should not interfere in any form in the internal affairs” of Hong Kong.The government said it was “very much in Hong Kong’s own interest to maintain our autonomy to safeguard our interests and advantages under the `one country, two systems’ principle” introduced when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week said Congress looks forward to “swiftly advancing” the Hong Kong bill because the city deserves real autonomy and freedom from fear.The unrest has become the biggest challenge to Beijing’s rule since it took over Hong Kong, and is an embarrassment to its ruling Communist Party ahead of Oct. 1 celebrations of its 70th year in power. Beijing has slammed the protests as effort by criminals to split the territory from China, backed by what it said were hostile foreigners.
 
Trump has suggested it’s a matter for China to handle, though he also has said that no violence should be used. Political analysts suggest his response was muted to avoid disrupting talks with China over their tariff war.High school and university students across Hong Kong held hands on Monday, following similar protests last week, forming long human chains that snaked into the streets outside their schools. They were joined by many graduates wearing the protesters’ trademark black tops and masks.Many also rallied against what they viewed as excessive use of force by police, with one student carrying a placard that read “Stop violence, we are not rioters.”Anger was fueled over the weekend after images of a youth being bloodily beaten up by riot police at a subway station were widely shared on social media. The boy, who didn’t fight back, was pinned to the floor and appeared unconscious under a pool of blood.Police public relations chief Tse Chun-chung said Monday that police have received complaints about the case and are investigating. He said police were doing their best to handle escalating violence, with “radical” protesters attacking police and trying to snatch their weapons. He said 157 people had been detained since Friday.Hong Kong journalists, some wearing helmets and gas masks, complained at the police briefing Monday that riot police had used pepper spray and threatened media personnel covering the weekend clashes.Separately, well-known Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong was released Monday, a day after he was detained at the airport.
 
Wong, a leader of Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy protest movement, was among several people held last month and charged with inciting people to join a protest in June. His prosecution comes after his release from prison in June for a two-month sentence related to the 2014 protests.A court said Wong’s overseas trips had been approved earlier and his detention was due to procedural errors.Wong, who visited Taiwan last week, told reporters before he flew off to Germany and then the U.S. that he would continue to raise global awareness about Hong Kong’s fight for democratic reforms.German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas welcomed Wong’s release and said he was prepared to meet him.“We hope that the conflict there will be de-escalated bit by bit, but without that entailing the rights people are entitled to _ namely the right to express their opinion, including on the street _ in any way being limited,” Maas told reporters in Berlin.
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Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China and any form of  secessionism “will be crushed,” state media said on Monday, a day after demonstrators rallied at the U.S. consulate to ask for help in bringing democracy to city.The China Daily newspaper said Sunday’s rally in Hong Kong was proof that foreign forces were behind the protests, which began in mid-June, and warned that demonstrators should “stop trying the patience of the central government”.Chinese officials have accused foreign forces of trying to hurt Beijing by creating chaos in Hong Kong over a hugely unpopular extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be tried in Communist Party-controlled courts.Anger over the bill grew into sometimes violent protests calling for more freedoms for Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula. Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam formally scrapped the bill last week as part of concessions aimed at ending the protests.”Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China – and that is the bottom line no one should challenge, not the demonstrators, not the foreign forces playing their dirty games,” the China Daily said in an editorial.”The demonstrations in Hong Kong are not about rights or democracy. They are a result of foreign interference. Lest the central government’s restraint be misconstrued as weakness, let it be clear secessionism in any form will be crushed,” it said.State news agency Xinhua said in a separate commentary that the rule of law needed to be manifested and that Hong Kong could pay a larger and heavier penalty should the current situation continue. 
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