SEOUL, South Korea — About 100 people were injured and an unspecified number were feared dead after being crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow street during Halloween festivities in the capital Seoul, South Korean officials said.
Choi Cheon-sik, an official from the National Fire Agency, said around 100 people were reported as injured during the crowd surge Saturday night in the Itaewon leisure district and around 50 were being treated for cardiac arrest as of early Sunday.
Choi said it was believed that people were crushed to death after a large crowd began pushing forward in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel, a major party spot in Seoul.
He said more than 400 emergency workers and 140 vehicles from around the nation, including all available personnel in Seoul, were deployed to the streets to treat the injured.
Officials didn’t immediately release a death toll, as they usually don’t until the deaths are confirmed at hospitals. The National Fire Agency separately said in a statement that officials were still trying to determine the exact number of emergency patients.
TV footage and photos from the scene showed ambulance vehicles lined up in streets amid a heavy police presence and emergency workers moving the injured in stretchers. Emergency workers and pedestrians were also seen performing CPR on people lying in the streets. Multiple people, apparently among those injured, were seen covered in yellow blankets.
Police also confirmed that dozens of people were being given CPR on Itaewon streets while many others have been taken to nearby hospitals.
A local police officer said he was also informed that a stampede occurred on Itaewon’s streets where a crowd of people gathered for Halloween festivities. The officer requested anonymity, saying the details of the incident was still under investigation.
Some local media reports earlier said the crush happened after a large number of people rushed to an Itaewon bar after hearing an unidentified celebrity visited there.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol issued a statement calling for officials to ensure swift treatment for those injured and review the safety of the festivity sites. He also instructed the Health Ministry to swiftly deploy disaster medical assistance teams and secure beds in nearby hospital to treat the injured.
Local media said around 100,000 people flocked to Itaewon streets for the Halloween festivities, which were the biggest in years following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in recent months.
As a statement of intent, it was about as blunt as they get.
North Korea has developed nuclear weapons and will never give them up, its leader, Kim Jong Un, told the world last month.
The move was “irreversible,” he said; the weapons represent the “dignity, body, and absolute power of the state” and Pyongyang will continue to develop them “as long as nuclear weapons exist on Earth.”
Kim may be no stranger to colorful language, but it is worth taking his vow – which he signed into law – seriously. Bear in mind that this is a dictator who cannot be voted out of power and who generally does what he says he will do.
Bear in mind too that North Korea has staged a record number of missile launches this year – more than 20; claims it is deploying tactical nuclear weapons to field units, something CNN cannot independently confirm; and is also believed to be ready for a seventh underground nuclear test.
All this has prompted a growing number of experts to question whether now is the time to call a spade a spade and accept that North Korea is in fact a nuclear state. Doing so would entail giving up once and for all the optimistic – some might say delusional – hopes that Pyongyang’s program is somehow incomplete or that it might yet be persuaded to give it up voluntarily.
As Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it: “We simply have to treat North Korea as it is, rather than as we would like it to be.”
From a purely factual point of view, North Korea has nuclear weapons, and few who follow events there closely dispute that.
A recent Nuclear Notebook column from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated that North Korea may have produced enough fissile material to build between 45 and 55 nuclear weapons. What’s more, the recent missile tests suggest it has a number of methods of delivering those weapons.
Publicly acknowledging this reality is, however, fraught with peril for countries such as the United States.
One of the most compelling reasons for Washington not to do so is its fears of sparking a nuclear arms race in Asia.
South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are just a few of the neighbors that would likely want to match Pyongyang’s status.
But some experts say that refusing to acknowledge North Korea’s nuclear prowess – in the face of increasingly obvious evidence to the contrary – does little to reassure these countries. Rather, the impression that allies have their heads in the sand may make them more nervous.
“Let’s accept (it), North Korea is a nuclear arms state, and North Korea has all necessary delivery systems including pretty efficient ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles),” said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a preeminent academic authority on North Korea.
A better approach, some suggest, might be to treat North Korea’s nuclear program in a similar way to Israel’s – with tacit acceptance.
That’s the solution favored by Jeffrey Lewis, an adjunct professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.
“I think that the crucial step that (US President Joe) Biden needs to take is to make clear both to himself and to the US government that we are not going to get North Korea to disarm and that is fundamentally accepting North Korea as a nuclear state. You don’t necessarily need to legally recognize it,” Lewis said.
Both Israel and India offer examples of what the US could aspire to in dealing with North Korea, he added.
Israel, widely believed to have started its nuclear program in the 1960s, has always claimed nuclear ambiguity while refusing to be a party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while India embraced nuclear ambiguity for decades before abandoning that policy with its 1998 nuclear test.
“In both of those cases, the US knew those countries had the bomb, but the deal was, if you don’t talk about it, if you don’t make an issue out of it, if you don’t cause political problems, then we’re not going to respond. I think that’s the same place we want to get to with North Korea,” Lewis said.
At present though, Washington shows no signs of abandoning its approach of hoping to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nukes.
Indeed, US Vice President Kamala Harris underlined it during a recent visit to the DMZ, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.
“Our shared goal – the United States and the Republic of Korea – is a complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Harris said.
That may be a worthy goal, but many experts see it as increasingly unrealistic.
“Nobody disagrees that denuclearization would be a very desirable outcome on the Korean Peninsula, it’s simply not a tractable one,” Panda said.
One problem standing in the way of denuclearization is that Kim’s likely biggest priority is ensuring the survival of his regime.
And if he wasn’t paranoid enough already, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (in which a nuclear power has attacked a non-nuclear power) will have served as a timely reinforcement of his belief that “nuclear weapons are the only reliable guarantee of security,” said Lankov, from Kookmin University.
Trying to convince Kim otherwise seems a non-starter, as Pyongyang has made clear it will not even consider engaging with a US administration that wants to talk about denuclearization.
“If America wants to talk about denuclearization, (North Korea is) not going to talk and if the Americans are not talking, (North Korea) will launch more and more missiles and better and better missiles,” Lankov said. “It’s a simple choice.”
There is also the problem that if North Korea’s increasingly concerned neighbors conclude Washington’s approach is going nowhere, this might itself bring about the arms race the US is so keen to avoid.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, a Korean think tank, is among the growing number of conservative voices calling for South Korea to build its own nuclear weapons program to counter Pyongyang’s.
Efforts to prevent North Korea developing nuclear weapons have “ended in failure,” he said, “and even now, pursuing denuclearization is like chasing a miracle.”
Still, however remote the denuclearization dream seems, there are those who say the alternative – of accepting North Korea’s nuclear status, however subtly – would be a mistake.
“We (would be) basically (saying to) Kim Jong Un, after all of this tug of war and rustling, (that) you’re just going to get what you want. The bigger question (then) of course is: where does that leave the entire region?” said Soo Kim, a former CIA officer who is now a researcher at US think tank RAND Corporation.
That leaves one other option open to the Biden administration and its allies, though it’s one that may seem unlikely in the current climate.
They could pursue a deal in which Pyongyang offers to freeze its arms development in return for sanctions relief.
In other words, not a million miles away from the deal Kim offered then US President Donald Trump at their summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019.
This option has its backers. “A freeze is a really solid way to start things out. It’s very hard to get rid of weapons that exist, but what is possible … is to prevent things from getting worse. It takes some of the pressure off and it opens up space for other kinds of negotiations,” said Lewis of the James Martin Center.
However, the Trump-era overtones might make this a non-starter. Asked if he thought President Biden might consider this tactic, Lewis smiled and said, “I’m a professor, so I specialize in giving advice that no one is ever going to take.”
But even if the Biden administration was so inclined, that ship may have sailed; the Kim of 2019 was far more willing to engage than the Kim of 2022.
And that, perhaps, is the biggest problem at the heart of all the options on the table: they rely on some form of engagement with North Korea – something entirely lacking at present.
Kim is now focused on his five-year plan for military modernization announced in January 2021 and no offers of talks from the Biden administration or others have yet turned his head in the slightest.
As Panda acknowledged, “There’s a set of cooperative options which would require the North Koreans being willing to sit down at the table and talk about some of those things with us. I don’t think that we are even close to sitting down with the North Koreans.”
And, in fairness to Kim, the reticence is not all down to Pyongyang.
“Big policy shifts in the US would require the President’s backing, and I really see no evidence that Joe Biden really sees the North Korean issue as deserving of tremendous political capital,” Panda said.
He added what many experts believe – and what even some US and South Korean lawmakers admit behind closed doors: “We will be living with a nuclear armed North Korea probably for a few decades to come at least.”
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean officials say there were no immediate reports of damage after a 4.1-magnitude earthquake shook a small agricultural county in the country’s central region.
South Korea’s weather agency said Saturday’s small earthquake in the town of Goesan was still the strongest of the 38 quakes that have occurred in the country this year and would have been powerful enough to topple objects or break windows.
Lee Jae-yeong, an official from the Safety Ministry’s disaster headquarters, said emergency officials from the central North Chungcheong province and surrounding regions received more than 50 calls from residents saying they felt the ground shaking. Lee said emergency workers haven’t yet received any reports of actual damage.
The office of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said he instructed officials to also review the safety of electricity and telecommunication systems, although there were no immediate reports of problems.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea on Friday in its first ballistic weapons launches in two weeks, as the U.S. military warned the North that the use of nuclear weapons “will result in the end of that regime.”
South Korea’s military detected the two launches from the North’s eastern coastal Tongchon area around midday on Friday, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. South Korea’s military has boosted its surveillance posture and maintains readiness amid close coordination with the United States, it said.
The U.S. Indo Pacific Command said the launches did not pose an immediate threat to the United States or its allies but highlighted the “destabilizing impact” of North Korea’s illicit nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
The back-to-back launches, the North’s first ballistic missile tests since Oct. 14, came on the final day of South Korea’s annual 12-day “Hoguk” field exercises, which also involved an unspecified number of U.S. troops this year. Next week, South Korean and U.S. air forces plan to conduct a large-scale training as well.
North Korea sees such regular drills by Seoul and Washington as practice for launching an attack on the North, though the allies say their exercises are defensive in nature.
Next week’s “Vigilant Storm” aerial drills are to run from Monday to Friday and involve about 140 South Korean warplanes and about 100 U.S. aircraft. The planes include sophisticated fighter jets like F-35 from both nations, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement earlier Friday.
Since late September, North Korea has launched a barrage of missiles toward the sea in what it called simulated tests of tactical nuclear weapons systems designed to attack South Korean and U.S. targets. North Korea says its testing activities were meant to issue a warning amid a series of South Korea-U.S. military drills. But some experts say Pyongyang has also used its rivals’ drills as a chance to test new weapons systems, boost its nuclear capability and increase its leverage in future dealings with Washington and Seoul.
Tongchon, the launch site for the North’s Friday launches, is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) away from the inter-Korean border. The area was apparently closer to South Korea than any other missile launch site North Korea has used so far this year.
South Korea and the United States have strongly warned North Korea against using its nuclear weapons preemptively.
The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy report issued on Thursday stated that any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies and partners “will result in the end of that regime.”
“There is no scenario in which the Kim regime could employ nuclear weapons and survive,” the report said. The Pentagon said it will continue to deter North Korean attacks through “forward posture,” including nuclear deterrence, integrated air and missile defenses, and close coordination and interoperability with South Korea.
During a visit to Tokyo on Tuesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman reiterated that the United States would fully use its military capabilities, “including nuclear,” to defend its allies South Korea and Japan.
There are concerns that the North could up the ante in the coming weeks by conducting its first nuclear test since 2017.
Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Thursday that a new nuclear test explosion by North Korea “would be yet another confirmation of a program which is moving full steam ahead in a way that is incredibly concerning.”
He said the U.N. agency has been observing preparations for a new test, which would be the North’s seventh overall, but gave no indication of whether an atomic blast is imminent.
In recent days, North Korea has also fired hundreds of shells in inter-Korean maritime buffer zones that the two Koreas established in 2018 to reduce frontline military tensions. North Korea has said the artillery firings were in reaction to South Korean live-fire exercises at land border areas.
On Monday, the rival Koreas exchanged warning shots along their disputed western sea boundary, a scene of past bloodshed and naval battles, as they accuse each other of violating the boundary.
Samsung has appointed Jay Y. Lee, its longtime de facto leader, as executive chairman.
The move was announced Thursday, making official who would continue to head up South Korea’s most valuable and well-known company. Lee had previously held the title of vice chairman.
Samsung’s board, which approved the change, “cited the current uncertain global business environment and the pressing need for stronger accountability and business stability,” the tech giant said in a statement.
It comes just months after Lee, the scion of one of South Korea’s most powerful families, was pardoned for crimes including embezzlement and bribery.
In August, Lee was personally excused by the country’s president for his alleged wrongdoing, with officials citing an economic crisis that required the attention of its top business leaders.
The pardon ended a five-year ban on Lee holding a formal position at Samsung. The billionaire was twice sent to prison but had been out on parole since last year.
Lee, also known widely as Lee Jae-yong, has been operating as Samsung’s de facto leader since 2014, when his father fell into coma after suffering a heart attack. The senior Lee died in 2020.
This week, the younger Lee marked the second anniversary of his father’s death, vowing in a staff meeting Tuesday “to preserve his legacy.”
“During this period, we have had to confront many challenges, and at times, we have struggled to make breakthroughs,” he said, according to a readout of remarks that Samsung shared with CNN Business. “Without a doubt, we are at a pivotal moment.”
“Now is the time to plan our next move,” Lee added.
The pledge coincides with an ambitious drive announced by Samsung in May, which will see the conglomerate pour more than $350 billion into its businesses and create 80,000 new jobs over the next five years.
Most of the jobs are expected to be in South Korea, and the funds will primarily go toward businesses such as chipmaking and biopharmaceuticals.
Samsung reported a 31% drop in operating profits Thursday, logging nearly 10.9 trillion Korean won ($7.6 billion) in the third quarter compared to 15.8 trillion won ($11.1 billion) in the same period last year.
In an earnings presentation, the company warned that “weak demand for mobile phones and TVs” were hurting its bottom line. While the company expects “demand to recover partially in 2023,” global economic pressure will likely continue to affect its performance, it said.
However, the group also enjoyed record sales. It said revenue had reached 76.8 trillion won (nearly $54 billion) in the third quarter, despite “a challenging business environment,” and still forecast its full-year revenue to surpass that of 2021.
Samsung shares ticked up nearly 1% in Seoul on Thursday following the announcements.
— CNN’s Yoonjung Seo in Seoul contributed to this report.
The third time’s the charm in the New York bar exam for Kei Komuro, a law clerk at law firm Lowenstein Sandler and the husband of Japan’s Princess Mako.
Komuro’s name appeared on the list of those who passed New York’s July bar exam released October 20, after the Japanese press zeroed in on his failure to pass the July 2021 and February 2022 attorney licensing tests.
He beat the odds as a repeat bar-taker – just 23% of the more than 1,600 people who took the July exam after failing at least once passed, according to statistics from the New York Board of Law Examiners. The pass rate for those taking the exam for the first time in July was 75%.
Komuro has been an object of fascination and scrutiny in his native Japan for years, partly due to his status as a commoner. Princess Mako, the niece of Emperor Naruhito, who is now known as Mako Komuro, is no longer a member of the imperial family following the couple’s October 2021 marriage.
Komuro graduated with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Fordham University School of Law in May 2021 and has been working as a law clerk in Lowenstein Sandler’s New York headquarters for the past year – a designation firms typically bestow on new hires who have not yet passed the bar exam.
His success in the latest bar exam clears the way for him to be elevated to associate at Lowenstein, though the firm did not respond to requests Monday for clarification on his current status. Komuro, who works in the firm’s corporate and technology groups, also did not respond to requests for comment.
With more than 300 attorneys, Lowenstein Sandler is the 140th-largest law firm in the country and ranked 103rd in US law firm revenue with $392 million in 2021, according to the American Lawyer.
Bar exam tutors say the test is especially difficult for non-native English speakers. The pass rate for foreign-educated lawyers, or LL.M.s, was 44% in July. Komuro began his US legal studies in Fordham’s LL.M. program in 2017 before transferring over to its J.D. program. The first-time bar exam pass rate among Fordham’s 2021 J.D.s was 94%.
July’s bar exam passers are scheduled to be officially admitted into the New York bar on January 11.
In trading outside of mainland China, the yuan briefly plunged to around 7.36 per dollar early Tuesday, the lowest level on record, according Refinitiv, which has data going back to 2010. It then pared losses, trading at 7.33 by 1 pm Hong Kong time.
On the tightly managed domestic market, the yuan also dropped sharply on Tuesday, hitting the weakest level in nearly 15 years.
The declines came alongside a historic market rout for Chinese assets worldwide. On Monday, Chinese stocks plummeted in Hong Kong and New York, wiping out billions of dollars in their market value. Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng
(HSI) Index closed down 6.4%. The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index also dived more than 14%. On Tuesday, the Hang Seng
(HSI) rebounded slightly, up 0.8% by noon.
The huge sell-offs came just days after the ruling Communist Party unveiled its new leadership for the next five years. In addition to securing an unprecedented third term as party chief, Xi packed his new leadership team with staunch loyalists.
A number of senior officials who have backed market reforms and opening up the economy were missing from the new top team, stirring concerns about the future direction of the country and its relations with the United States.
International investors spooked by the outcome of the Communist Party’s leadership reshuffle dumped Chinese assets despite the release of stronger-than-expected GDP data. They’re worried that Xi’s tightening grip on power will lead to the continuation of Beijing’s existing policies and further dent the economy.
China’s leadership reshuffle “sparked worries about the continuation of market-unfavourable policies and increasing risk of policy mistakes under President Xi’s power domination in coming years,” said Ken Cheung, chief Asian forex strategist at Mizuho Bank.
“Foreign investors took action to cut their exposure on Chinese assets,” he said, adding that the Chinese currency was faced with mounting capital outflow pressure.
The Chinese yuan, together with other major global currencies, has weakened rapidly against the dollar in recent months. The greenback has surged to the highest level in two decades against a basket of major counterparts, boosted by a hawkish Fed that attempts to contain runaway inflation.
So far this year, the yuan has slumped more than 15% against the dollar, on track to log its worst year since 1994 — whenChina devalued its currency by 33% overnight as part of market reforms.
Foreign investors spooked by the outcome of the Communist Party’s leadership reshuffle dumped Chinese equities and the yuan despite the release of stronger-than-expected GDP data. They’re worried that Xi’s tightening grip on power will lead to the continuation of Beijing’s existing policies and further dent the economy.
Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng
(HSI) Index plunged 6.4% on Monday, marking its biggest daily drop since November 2008. The index closed at its lowest level since April 2009.
The Chinese yuan weakened sharply, hitting a fresh 14-year low against the US dollar on the onshore market. On the offshore market, where it can trade more freely, the currency tumbled 0.8%, hovering near its weakest level on record, even as the Chinese economy grew 3.9% in the third quarter from a year ago, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Economists polled by Reuters had expected growth of 3.4%.
The sharp sell-off came one day after the ruling Communist Party unveiled its new leadership for the next five years. In addition to securing an unprecedented third term as party chief, Xi packed his new leadership team with staunch loyalists.
A number of senior officials who have backed market reforms and opening up the economy were missing from the new top team, stirring concerns about the future direction of the country and its relations with the United States. Those pushed aside included Premier Li Keqiang, Vice Premier Liu He, and central bank governor Yi Gang.
“It appears that the leadership reshuffle spooked foreign investors to offload their Chinese investment, sparking heavy sell-offs in Hong Kong-listed Chinese equities,” said Ken Cheung, chief Asian forex strategist at Mizuho bank.
The GDP data marked a pick-up from the 0.4% increase in the second quarter, when China’s economy was battered by widespread Covid lockdowns. Shanghai, the nation’s financial center and a key global trade hub, was shut down for two months in April and May. But the growth rate was still below the annual official target that the government set earlier this year.
“The outlook remains gloomy,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist for Capital Economics, in a research report on Monday.
“There is no prospect of China lifting its zero-Covid policy in the near future, and we don’t expect any meaningful relaxation before 2024,” he added.
Coupled with a further weakening in the global economy and a persistent slump in China’s real estate, all the headwinds will continue to pressure the Chinese economy, he said.
Evans-Pritchard expected China’s official GDP to grow by only 2.5% this year and by 3.5% in 2023.
Monday’s GDP data were initially scheduled for release on October 18 during the Chinese Communist Party’s congress, but were postponed without explanation.
The possibility that policies such as zero-Covid, which has resulted in sweeping lockdowns to contain the virus, and “Common Prosperity” — Xi’s bid to redistribute wealth — could be escalated was causing concern, Cheung said.
“With the Politburo Standing Committee composed of President Xi’s close allies, market participants read the implications as President Xi’s power consolidation and the policy continuation,” he added.
Mitul Kotecha, head of emerging markets strategy at TD Securities, also pointed out that the disappearance of pro-reform officials from the new leadership bodes ill for the future of China’s private sector.
“The departure of perceived pro-stimulus officials and reformers from the Politburo Standing Committee and replacement with allies of Xi, suggests that ‘Common Prosperity’ will be the overriding push of officials,” Kotecha said.
Under the banner of the “Common Prosperity” campaign, Beijing launched a sweeping crackdown on the country’s private enterprise, which shook almost every industry to its core.
“The [market] reaction in our view is consistent with the reduced prospects of significant stimulus or changes to zero-Covid policy. Overall, prospects of a re-acceleration of growth are limited,” Kotecha said.
On the tightly controlled domestic market in China, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dropped 2%. The tech-heavy Shenzhen Component Index lost 2.1%.
The Hang Seng Tech Index, which tracks the 30 largest technology firms listed in Hong Kong, plunged 9.7%.
Shares of Alibaba
(BABA) and Tencent
(TCEHY) — the crown jewels of China’s technology sector — both plummeted more than 11%, wiping a combined $54 billion off their stock market value.
The sell-off spilled over into the United States as well. Shares of Alibaba and several other leading Chinese stocks trading in New York, such as EV companies Nio
(NIO) and Xpeng, Alibaba rivals JD.com
(JD) and Pinduoduo
(PDD) and search engine Baidu
(BIDU), were all down sharply Thursday afternoon.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Any changes to the China-Taiwan relationship must come about peacefully, a visiting German lawmaker said Monday, two days after China’s ruling Communist Party wrote its rejection of Taiwan independence into its charter.
A German parliamentary delegation focusing on human rights met Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen at her office on Monday. The lawmakers expressed interest in how Taiwan would handle threats from China.
“Taiwan is really facing military threats,” delegation head Peter Heidt said. “From Germany’s point of view, changes to the cross-strait status quo, if any, must be based on peaceful means. Also, these changes must be made after both sides have reached a consensus.”
China claims Taiwan as its territory and says the self-governing island about 160 kilometers (100 miles) off its east coast must come under its control.
The Chinese Communist Party, on the last day of a major congress that confirmed a third five-year term for leader Xi Jinping, inserted a statement into the party constitution on Saturday “resolutely opposing and deterring separatists” seeking Taiwan’s independence.
“We note Xi Jinping’s intimidation against Taiwan in China’s 20th party congress. We also note the reaction of mainland China after Pelosi visited Taiwan,” he said, referring to the large-scale military drills held after the visit of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in July.
Tsai did not refer to the amending of the Communist Party’s constitution in her remarks. But her government’s Mainland Affairs Council issued a statement Saturday urging China to break away from the mindset of confronting or even conquering the island, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.
The statement said their differences should be resolved in a peaceful manner.
At the opening of China’s weeklong party congress, Xi said Beijing would continue to strive for peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan but refused to renounce the possible use of force. The two sides split in 1949 after a civil war.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council responded that the island’s 23 million people have the right to decide their own future and urged Beijing to stop imposing its political framework and its military coercion.
The German delegation arrived on Sunday and was expected to leave on Wednesday. It is the second German parliamentary group visiting Taiwan this month.
BEIJING — China’s economic growth accelerated in the latest quarter but still was among the slowest in decades as the country wrestled with repeated closures of cities to fight virus outbreaks.
The world’s second-largest economy grew by 3.9% over a year earlier in the three months ending in September, up from the previous quarter’s 0.4%, official data showed Monday. For the first nine months of the year, growth was 3% over a year earlier.
A news conference to announce the figures last week during a meeting of the ruling Communist Party was postponed without explanation. The National Statistics Bureau released the figures on its website without advance notice of the timing.
No data were immediately released for growth compared with the previous quarter, the way data for other major economies are measured. The economy shrank by 2.6% in the quarter ending in June compared with the previous three-month period.
The ruling party is trying to revive economic growth while enforcing its “Zero COVID” strategy that has temporarily shut down Shanghai and other industrial centers while other countries are lifting travel curbs and reviving trade.
The slump hurts China’s trading partners by depressing demand for imported oil, food and consumer goods.
Repeated shutdowns and uncertainty about business conditions have devastated entrepreneurs who generate China’s new wealth and jobs. Small retailers and restaurants have closed. Others say they are struggling to stay afloat.
Other major economies report growth compared with the previous quarter, which makes their levels look lower than China’s. Beijing for decades reported only growth compared with the previous year, which hid short-term fluctuations, but it has started to release quarter-on-quarter figures.
Forecasters say Beijing is using cautious, targeted stimulus instead of across-the-board spending, a strategy that will take longer to show results. Chinese leaders worry too much spending might push up politically sensitive housing costs or corporate debt they worry is dangerously high.
Growth for the first half of the year was 2.5% over a year earlier, one of the weakest levels in the past three decades.
SEOUL, South Korea — The rival Koreas exchanged warning shots along their disputed western sea boundary on Monday, their militaries said, amid heightened animosities over North Korea’s recent barrage of weapons tests.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that its navy broadcast warnings and fired warning shots to repel a North Korean merchant ship that it says violated the sea boundary early Monday.
North Korea’s military said its coastal defense units responded by firing 10 rounds of artillery warning shots toward its territorial waters, where “naval enemy movement was detected.” It accused a South Korean navy ship of intruding into North Korean waters on the pretext of cracking down on an unidentified ship.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North Korean artillery firings breached a 2018 inter-Korean accord on reducing military animosities and undermines stability on the Korean Peninsula. It said the North Korean shells didn’t land in South Korean waters but South Korea is boosting its military readiness.
There were no reports of clashes between the Koreas, but the poorly marked sea boundary off the Korean Peninsula’s west coast is a source of long-running animosities between the Koreas. It’s a scene of several bloody inter-Korean naval skirmishes and violence in recent years, including the North’s shelling of a South Korean island and its alleged torpedoing of a South Korean navy ship that killed a total of 50 people in 2010.
In recent weeks, North Korea has carried out a string of weapons tests in response to what it calls provocative joint military drills between South Korea and the United States. Some observers say North Korea could extend its spate of testing or launch provocations near the western sea border as South Korean and U.S. militaries are continuing their combined military exercises.
Washington and Seoul had scaled back or canceled their regular drills in recent years to support their now-dormant nuclear diplomacy with North Korea or guard against the COVID-19 pandemic. But the allies have been reviving or expanding those trainings since the May inauguration of conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who vows a tougher stance on North Korean provocation.
In its Monday statement, the General Staff of the North’s Korean People’s Army accused South Korea of provoking animosities near their land border as well with its own artillery tests and propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts. South Korea has already confirmed it performed artillery firings last week as part of its regular military exercises, but didn’t immediately respond to the North’s claim on the loudspeaker broadcasts.
“The KPA General Staff once again sends a grave warning to the enemies who made even naval intrusion in the wake of such provocations as the recent artillery firing and loudspeaker broadcasting on the ground front,” the North’s statement said.
In 2018, the two Koreas dismantled huge loudspeakers used to blare Cold War-style propaganda across their tense border as part of their reconciliation steps at the start of the now-dormant nuclear diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington. If South Korea had restarted its propaganda broadcasts, that could trigger a strong North Korean response as it was previously extremely sensitive to South Korean broadcasts of criticism of its human rights situation, world news and K-pop songs. Most of North Korea’s 26 million people have no official access to foreign TV and radio programs.
“Pyongyang’s politics of blaming external threats and projecting confidence in military capabilities can motivate greater risk taking,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “North Korean probing of South Korean perimeter defenses could lead to a serious exchange of fire and unintended escalation.”
Since Sept. 25, North Korea has fired 15 missiles and hundreds of artillery shells toward the sea.
The missile launches were largely designed to protest U.S.-South Korean trainings near the Korean Peninsula that involved an U.S. aircraft carrier for the first time in five years. North Korea said its artillery firing drills were staged as countermeasures against similar South Korean artillery drills at border areas.
Seoul and Washington routinely conduct military drills to maintain their readiness against potential North Korean aggressions. The allies say their drills are defensive in nature, but North Korea views them as an invasion rehearsal.
South Korean military is under annual field exercises set to end this Friday. This year’s drills involve an unspecified number of U.S. troops.
Next week, South Korea and the United States are to hold joint air force drills involving some 240 warplanes, including F-35 fighters operated by both nations. The drills are aimed at inspecting the two countries’ joint operation capabilities and improve combat readiness, the South Korean military said Tuesday.
Some experts say North Korea’s recent missile tests suggest its leader Kim Jong Un has no intentions of resuming stalled nuclear diplomacy with Washington anytime soon as he would want to focus on further modernizing his nuclear arsenal to boost his leverage in future negotiations with the United States.
The 2022 midterm elections are now just weeks away, and with control of both chambers of Congress and dozens of governorships, secretaries of state and attorneys general posts on the line, it’s important to know both how and when to vote in your state. To help you plan your vote, CNN has gathered the deadlines for early in-person voting, absentee/mail-in voting and for voter registration in each of the 50 states leading up to Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 8.
Here’s what else you need to know to Start Your Week Smart.
• Chinese leader Xi Jinping has formally stepped into his norm-breaking third term ruling China with an iron grip on power as he revealed a new leadership team today stacked with loyal allies.
• Hurricane Roslyn slammed into Mexico’s Pacific coast as a major Category 3 storm today, bringing dangerous storm surge and flooding to parts of the country, forecasters said.
• Boris Johnson is trying to win enough support to make what would be a stunning comeback as Britain’s prime minister, as senior Conservative politicians declared their support for former finance minister Rishi Sunak. The two men have become the early favorites to replace Liz Truss, who announced her resignation last week.
• Dietrich Mateschitz, the owner and co-founder of the sports drink company Red Bull, has died, the company announced Saturday. He was 78. As well as turning his energy drink into a market leader, the Austrian billionaire also founded one of the most successful Formula One teams in recent history.
• The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol announced on Friday that the panel has officially sent a subpoena to former President Donald Trump as it paints him as the central figure in the multi-step plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Monday
Opening statements are scheduled to begin in the sexual assault trial of disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein in Los Angeles. Weinstein, 70, was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape charges in New York more than two years ago and sentenced to 23 years in prison. In Los Angeles, Weinstein faces multiple sexual assault charges that he pleaded not guilty to last year.
A Moscow regional court has set October 25 as an appeal date for WNBA star Brittney Griner. Griner was sentenced to nine years of jail time in early August for deliberately smuggling drugs into Russia. She was arrested with less than 1 gram of cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport on February 17.
In what has become one of the most closely watched Senate contests in the country, Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman and Republican candidate Mehmet Oz will face each other in a televised debate in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Fetterman, who had a near-fatal stroke more than five months ago, has faced a number of questions about transparency surrounding his health and recovery. Fetterman’s primary care physician released a medical report earlier this month stating that the candidate is “recovering well from his stroke” and “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office.”
Wednesday
Hillary Clinton – former secretary of state and 2016 Democratic nominee for President – turns 75.
In this week’s One Thing podcast, CNN Chief International Investigative Correspondent Nima Elbagir joins us from Northern Iraq, where some Iranian dissidents have fled a brutal crackdown in response to nationwide protests set off by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. We explore if these protests will bring lasting change and hear from one Iranian-Kurdish activist who is now taking up arms across the border. Listen here.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation in front of 10 Downing Street in London on Thursday, October 20.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
a drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, October 17. A wave of drone attacks pummeled the capital city early Monday as commuters headed to work.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
ended a 15-game losing streak against Alabama. They won 52-49 with a last second 40-yard field goal.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
Mississippi to record lows.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
20th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sunday, October 16. Xi is poised to secure a norm-breaking third term in power.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
as it splashes down off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, on Friday, October 14, with European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins. They are returning after 170 days aboard the International Space Station.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
James Webb Space Telescope. It shows a highly detailed view of the Pillars of Creation, a vista of three looming towers made of interstellar dust and gas that’s speckled with newly formed stars. The area, which lies within the Eagle Nebula about 6,500 light-years from Earth, had previously been captured by the Hubble Telescope in 1995, creating an image deemed “iconic” by space observers.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
found him not liable for battery on allegations he picked up actor Anthony Rapp and briefly laid on top of him in a bed after a party in 1986. Jurors deliberated for about an hour and concluded Rapp did not prove that Spacey “touched a sexual or intimate part” of him.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
warned it could take up to six months for the water to recede in the wake of the country’s “unprecedented” flooding.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
expelled from the United States on Monday, October 17.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
See last week in 32 photos.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
Check out more moving, fascinating and thought-provoking images from the week that was, curated by CNN Photos.
TV and streaming
The season finale of “House of the Dragon,” the “Game of Thrones” prequel that takes place almost 200 years before the events of its predecessor, airs tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO. (HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
“The Good Nurse,” starring Oscar winners Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain, tells the story of an infamous caregiver implicated in the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients. It begins streaming on Netflix Wednesday.
Four teams remain in the battle to reach the 2022 World Series, which begins on Friday. Later today, the San Diego Padres face the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. On Saturday, the Phillies beat the Padres to take a 3-1 lead in the series. The Houston Astros, meanwhile, play the New York Yankees tonight in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series. Houston leads that series 3-0.
Take CNN’s weekly news quiz to see how much you remember from the week that was! So far, 66% of fellow quiz fans have gotten eight or more questions right. How will you fare?
‘Beautiful’
A lot has changed about the world in the last 20 years, but Christina Aguilera still thinks you’re beautiful – despite what social media sometimes tells us. Watch the updated version of her “Beautiful” music video released last week that takes aim at the messages often delivered through social media that have negative effects on our body image and mental health. (Click here to view)
BEIJING — President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades, increased his dominance when he was named Sunday to another term as head of the ruling Communist Party in a break with tradition and promoted allies who support his vision of tighter control over society and the struggling economy.
Xi, who took power in 2012, was awarded a third five-year term as general secretary, discarding a party custom under which his predecessor left after 10 years. The 69-year-old leader is expected by some to try to stay in power for life.
On Saturday, Xi’s predecessor, 79-year-old Hu Jintao, abruptly left a meeting of the party Central Committee with an aide holding his arm. That prompted questions about whether Xi was flexing his powers by expelling other party leaders. The official Xinhua News Agency later reported Hu was in poor health and needed to rest.
The party also named a seven-member Standing Committee, its inner circle of power, dominated by Xi allies after Premier Li Keqiang, the No. 2 leader and an advocate of market-style reform and private enterprise, was dropped from the leadership on Saturday. That was despite Li being a year younger than the party’s informal retirement age of 68.
Xi and the other Standing Committee members appeared for the first time as a group before reporters Sunday in the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China’s ceremonial legislature in central Beijing.
Xi announced Li Qiang, a former Shanghai party secretary who is no relation to Li Keqiang, was the No. 2 member and Zhao Leji, a member of the previous committee, was promoted to No. 3. The No. 2 committee member since the 1990s has become premier while the No. 3 heads the legislature. Those posts are to be assigned when the legislature meets next year.
Leadership changes were announced as the party wrapped up a twice-a-decade congress that was closely watched for signs of initiatives to reverse an economic slump or changes in a severe “zero-COVID” strategy that has shut down cities and disrupted business. Officials disappointed investors and the Chinese public by announcing no changes.
The lineup appeared to reflect what some commentators called “Maximum Xi,” valuing loyalty over ability. Some new Standing Committee members lack national-level government experience that typically is seen as a requirement for the post.
The promotion of Li Qiang was especially unusual because it puts him in line to be premier despite not having experience as a Cabinet minister or vice premier. However, he is regarded as close to Xi after the two worked together early in their careers in Zhejiang province in the early 2000s.
Li Keqiang is the top economic official but was sidelined over the past decade by Xi, who put himself in charge of policymaking bodies and wants a bigger state role in business and technology development.
Li Keqiang was excluded Saturday from the list of the party’s new 205-member Central Committee, from which the Standing Committee is picked. He is due to step down as premier next year.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has formally stepped into his third term ruling China with an iron grip on power, breaking with recent precedent to secure another five years in power, as he revealed a top leadership body stacked with loyal allies.
On Sunday, following the close of the Communist Party Congress, seven men – namely Xi Jinping, Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, Li Xi and Ding Xuexiang – were announced as members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top ruling body.
They now compose the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s most powerful decision-making body, and will sit atop of the party to drive the world’s second-largest economy over the coming half decade.
The line-up was more stacked with staunch Xi loyalists that some watchers of elite Chinese politics had predicted – making clear that Xi has consolidated his power both in the public eye and in the closed-door meetings where leadership decisions are made.
Noticeably absent from the line-up was Hu Chunhua, 59, a vice premier outside Xi’s orbit who had previously been touted as a potential successor to Xi and a candidate for the Standing Committee.
Instead, Xi had filled the four open spots on the seven-member body with Xi long-time allies and proteges, Li Qiang, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang and Li Xi, clearing the path for him to rule for a third term with minimal internal resistance – and underlining that affinity to Xi trumps all else in China’s current political landscape.
“The current situation is something unprecedented … this new line-up is not a product of power sharing or horse trading among different factions, but basically it is the result or consequence from Xi’s authority,” said Chen Gang, senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.
“For the party’s decision-making, I think that we have entered a really a new era, as Xi now controls almost every aspect concerning policy making and decision making … we’re seeing a kind of re-centralised bureaucracy in China, which will definitely impact the future China’s economic foreign policy trajectory,” he said.
Jolie’s nerves were running high as she walked into the campus of Goldsmiths, the University of London, last Friday morning. She’d planned to arrive early enough that the campus would be deserted, but her fellow students were already beginning to filter in to start their day.
In the hallway of an academic building, Jolie, who’d worn a face mask to obscure her identity, waited for the right moment to reach into her bag for the source of her nervousness – several pieces of A4-size paper she had printed out in the small hours of the night.
Finally, when she made sure none of the students – especially those who, like Jolie, come from China – were watching, she quickly pasted one of them on a notice board.
“Life not zero-Covid policy, freedom not martial-lawish lockdown, dignity not lies, reform not cultural revolution, votes not dictatorship, citizens not slaves,” it read, in English.
The day before, these words, in Chinese, had been handwritten in red paint on a banner hanging over a busy overpass thousands of miles away in Beijing, in a rare, bold protest against China’s top leader Xi Jinping.
Another banner on the Sitong Bridge denounced Xi as a “dictator” and “national traitor” and called for his removal – just days before a key Communist Party meeting at which he is set to secure a precedent-breaking third term.
Both banners were swiftly removed by police and all mentions of the protest wiped from the Chinese internet. But the short-lived display of political defiance – which is almost unimaginable in Xi’s authoritarian surveillance state–has resonated far beyond the Chinese capital, sparking acts of solidarity from Chinese nationals inside China and across the globe.
Over the past week, as party elites gathered in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to extoll Xi and his policies at the 20th Party Congress, anti-Xi slogans echoing the Sitong Bridge banners have popped up in a growing number of Chinese cities and hundreds of universities worldwide.
In China, the slogans were scrawled on walls and doors in public bathrooms – one of the last places spared the watchful eyes of the country’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras.
Overseas, many anti-Xi posters were put up by Chinese students like Jolie, who have long learned to keep their critical political views to themselves due to a culture of fear. Under Xi, the party has ramped up surveillance and control of the Chinese diaspora, intimidating and harassing those who dare to speak out and threatening their families back home.
CNN spoke with two Chinese citizens who scribbled protest slogans in bathroom stalls and half a dozen overseas Chinese students who put up anti-Xi posters on their campuses. As with Jolie, CNN agreed to protect their identities with pseudonyms and anonymity due to the sensitivity of their actions.
Many said they were shocked and moved by the Sitong Bridge demonstration and felt compelled to show support for the lone protester, who has not been heard of since and is likely to face lifelong repercussions. He has come to be known as the “Bridge Man,” in a nod to the unidentified “Tank Man” who faced down a column of tanks on Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace the day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.
Few of them believe their political actions will lead to real changes on the ground. But with Xi emerging triumphant from the Party Congress with the potential for lifelong rule, the proliferation of anti-Xi slogans are a timely reminder that despite his relentless crushing of dissent, the powerful leader may always face undercurrents of resistance.
As China’s online censors went into overdrive last week to scrub out all discussions about the Sitong Bridge protest, some social media users shared an old Chinese saying: “A tiny spark can set the prairie ablaze.”
It would appear that the fire started by the “Bridge Man” has done just that, setting off an unprecedented show of dissent against Xi’s leadership and authoritarian rule among mainland Chinese nationals.
The Chinese government’s policies and actions have sparked outcries online and protests in the streets before. But in most cases, the anger has focused on local authorities and few have attacked Xi himself so directly or blatantly.
Critics of Xi have paid a heavy price. Two years ago, Ren Zhiqiang, a Chinese billionaire who criticized Xi’s handling of China’s initial Covid-19 outbreak and called the top leader a power-hungry “clown,” was jailed for 18 years on corruption charges.
But the risks of speaking out did not deter Raven Wu, a university senior in eastern China. Inspired by the “Bridge Man,” Wu left a message in English in a bathroom stall to share his call for freedom, dignity, reform, and democracy. Below the message, he drew a picture of Winnie the Pooh wearing a crown, with a “no” sign drawn over it. (Xi has been compared to the chubby cartoon bear by Chinese social media users.)
“I felt a long-lost sense of liberation when I was scribbling,” Wu said. “In this country of extreme cultural and political censorship, no political self-expression is allowed. I felt satisfied that for the first time in my life as a Chinese citizen, I did the right thing for the people.”
There was also the fear of being found out by the school – and the consequences, but he managed to push it aside. Wu, whose own political awakening came in high school when he heard about the Tiananmen Square massacre by chance, hoped his scribbles could cause a ripple of change – however small – among those who saw them.
He is deeply worried about China’s future. Over the past two years, “despairing news” has repeatedly shocked him, he said.
“Just like Xi’s nickname ‘the Accelerator-in-Chief,’ he is leading the country into the abyss … The most desperate thing is that through the [Party Congress], Xi Jinping will likely establish his status as the emperor and double down on his policies.”
Chen Qiang, a fresh graduate in southwestern China, shared that bleak outlook – the economy is faltering, and censorship is becoming ever more stringent, he said.
Chen had tried to share the Sitong Bridge protest on WeChat, China’s super app, but it kept getting censored. So he thought to himself: why don’t I write the slogans in nearby places to let more people know about him?
He found a public restroom and wrote the original Chinese version of the slogan on a toilet stall door. As he scrawled on, he was gripped by a paralyzing fear of being caught by the strict surveillance. But he forced himself to continue. “(The Beijing protester) had sacrificed his life or the freedom of the rest of his life to do what he did. I think we should also be obliged to do something that we can do,” he said.
Chen described himself as a patriot. “However I don’t love the (Communist) Party. I have feelings for China, but not the government.”
So far, the spread of the slogans appears limited.
A number of pro-democracy Instagram accounts run by anonymous Chinese nationals have been keeping track of the anti-Xi graffiti and posters. Citizensdailycn, an account with 32,000 followers, said it received around three dozen reports from mainland China, about half of which involved bathrooms. Northern_Square, with 42,000 followers, said it received eight reports of slogans in bathrooms, which users said were from cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Wuhan.
The movement has been dubbed by some as the “Toilet Revolution” – in a jibe against Xi’s campaign to improve the sanitary conditions at public restrooms in China, and a nod to the location of much of the anti-Xi messaging.
Wu, the student in Eastern China, applauded the term for its “ironic effect.” But he said it also offers an inspiration. “Even in a cramped space like the toilet, as long as you have a revolutionary heart, you can make your own contribution,” he said.
For Chen, the term is a stark reminder of the highly limited space of free expression in China.
“Due to censorship and surveillance, people can only express political opinions by writing slogans in places like toilets. It is sad that we have been oppressed to this extent,” Chen said.
For many overseas Chinese students, including Jolie, it is their first time to have taken political action, driven by a mixture of awe and guilt toward the “Bridge Man” and a sense of duty to show solidarity.
Among the posters on the notice boards of Goldsmiths, the University of London, is one with a photo of the Sitong Bridge protest, which showed a plume of dark smoke billowing up from the bridge.
Above it, a Chinese sentence printed in red reads: “The courage of one person should not be without echo.”
Putting up protest posters “is the smallest thing, but the biggest I can do now – not because of my ability but because of my lack of courage,” Jolie said,pointing to her relative safety acting outside China’s borders.
Others expressed a similar sense of guilt. “I feel ashamed. If I were in Beijing now, I would never have the courage to do such a thing,” said Yvonne Li, who graduated from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands last year.
Li and a friend put up a hundred posters on campus and in the city center, including around China Town.
“I really wanted to cry when I first saw the protest on Instagram. I felt politically depressed reading Chinese news everyday. I couldn’t see any hope. But when I saw this brave man, I realized there is still a glimmer of light,” she said.
The two Instagram accounts, Citizensdailycn and Northern_square, said they each received more than 1,000 submissions of anti-Xi posters from the Chinese diaspora. According to Citizensdailycn’s tally, the posters have been sighted at 320 universities across the world.
Teng Biao, a human rights lawyer and visiting professor at the University of Chicago, said he is struck by how fast the overseas opposition to Xi has gathered pace and how far it has spread.
When Xi scrapped presidential term limits in 2018, posters featuring the slogan “Not My President” and Xi’s face had surfaced in some universities outside China – but the scale paled in comparison, Teng noted.
“In the past, there were only sporadic protests by overseas Chinese dissidents. Voices from university campuses were predominantly supporting the Chinese government and leadership,” he said.
In recent years, as Xi stoked nationalism at home and pursued an assertive foreign policy abroad, an increasing number of overseas Chinese students have stepped forward to defend Beijing from any criticism or perceived slights – sometimes with the blessing of Chinese embassies.
There were protests when a university invited the Dalai Lama to be a guest speaker; rebukes for professors perceived to have “anti-China” content in their lectures; and clashes when other campus groups expressed support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.
But as the widespread anti-Xi posters have shown, the rising nationalistic sentiment is by no means representative of all Chinese students overseas. Most often, those who do not agree with the party and its policies simply choose to stay silent. For them, the stakes of openly criticizing Beijing are just too high. In past years, those who spoke out have faced harassment and intimidation, retaliation against family back home, and lengthy prison terms upon returning to China.
“Even liberal democracies are influenced by China’s long arm of repression. The Chinese government has a large amount of spies and informants, monitoring overseas Chinese through various United Front-linked organizations,” Teng said, referring to a party body responsible for influence and infiltration operations abroad.
Teng said Beijing has extended its grip on Chinese student bodies abroad to police the speech and actions of its nationals overseas – and to make sure the party line is observed even on foreign campuses.
“The fact that so many students are willing to take the risk shows how widespread the anger is over Xi’s decade of moving backward.”
Most students CNN spoke with said they were worried about being spotted with the posters by Beijing’s supporters, who they fear could expose them on Chinese social media or report them to the embassies.
“We were scared and kept looking around. I found it absurd at the time and reflected briefly upon it – what we were doing is completely legal here (in the Netherlands), but we were still afraid of being seen by other Chinese students,” said Chen, the recent graduate in Rotterdam.
The fear of being betrayed by peers has weighed heavily on Jolie, the student in London, in particular while growing up in China with views that differed from the party line. “I was feeling really lonely,” she said. “The horrible (thing) is that your friends and classmates may report you.”
But as she showed solidarity for the “Bridge Man,” she also found solidarity in others who did the same. In the day following the protest in Beijing, Jolie saw on Instagram an outpouring of photos showing protest posters from all over the world.
“I was so moved and also a little bit shocked that (I) have many friends, although I don’t know them, and I felt a very strong emotion,” she said. “I just thought – my friends, how can I contact you, how can I find you, how can we recognize each other?”
Sometimes, all it takes is a knowing smile from a fellow Chinese student – or a new protest poster that crops up on the same notice board – to make the students feel reassured.
“It’s important to tell each other that we’re not alone,” said a Chinese student at McGill University in Quebec.
“(After) I first hung the posters, I went back to see if they were still there and I would see another small poster hung by someone else and I just feel really safe and comforted.”
“I feel like it is my responsibility to do this,” they said. If they didn’t do anything, “it’s just going to be over, and I just don’t want it to be over so quickly without any consequences.”
In China, the party will also be watching closely for any consequences. Having tightened its grip on all aspects of life, launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent, wiped out much of civil society and built a high-tech surveillance state, the party’s hold on power appears firmer than ever.
But the extensive censorship around the Sitong Bridge protest also betrays its paranoia.
“Maybe (the bridge protester) is the only one with such courage and willingness to sacrifice, but there may be millions of other Chinese people who share his views,” said Matt, a Chinese student at Columbia University in New York.
“He let me realize that there are still such people in China, and I want others to know that, too. Not everyone is brainwashed. (We’re) still a nation with ideals and hopes.”
Disclosure of the documents’ contents could expose US intelligence-gathering methods, people familiar with the matter told the Post. At least one of the documents describes Iran’s missile program and others described highly sensitive intelligence involving China.
The Post’s sources characterized the documents as among the most sensitive recovered by the FBI since it began its investigation of the former President and his aides into the potential mishandling of classified information.
A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment to the Post on Friday morning.
The people familiar with the matter who spoke to the Post said many of the more sensitive documents taken to the resort are analysis papers that do not contain sources’ names, though they can still provide insight to foreign adversaries. Some of the documents are only available to the highest-level officials in the US government, such as the President or Cabinet members.
CNN has reported that since the FBI search in August, the US intelligence community has restarted work on both the classification review and the so-called damage assessment related to Trump’s storage of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago.
The damage assessment is a long-term analytic product that will study what the risk would be to US national security if the material stored at Mar-a-Lago were to be exposed. The classification review is designed to review each document to establish that its classification markings are current.
On Thursday, CNN reported that Trump’s legal team is weighing whether to allow federal agents to return to the former President’s Florida residence, and potentially conduct a supervised search, to satisfy the Justice Department’s demands that all sensitive government documents are returned, sources tell CNN.
In private discussions with Trump’s team as well as court filings, the Justice Department has made clear that it believes Trump failed to comply with a May subpoena ordering the return of all documents marked as classified and that more government records remain missing.
Some in Trump’s inner circle aren’t convinced there are any remaining government documents, after the FBI seized nearly 22,000 pages when they executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August.
China’s former top leader, Hu Jintao, was unexpectedly led out of Saturday’s closing ceremony of the Communist Party Congress, in a moment of drama during what is typically a highly choreographed event.
Hu, 79, was seated in a prominent position at the front table in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, directly next to his successor, current leader Xi Jinping, when he was approached by a staff member, video of the meeting shows.
While seated, Hu appeared to talk briefly with the male staff member, while China’s third most senior leader, Li Zhanshu, who was seated to his other side, had his hand on the chair behind Hu’s back.
Hu then appeared to rise after being lifted up by the staff member, who’d taken the former leader by the arm, while Kong Shaoxun, head of the party’s secretariat came over. Hu spoke with the two men briefly and initially appeared reluctant to leave.
Hu was then escorted by the two men from his seat, with the staff member holding his arm, as other party members seated behind the main table looked on. The circumstances surrounding Hu’s exit are not clear.
On his way out, Hu was seen to pause and appeared to say something to Xi and then patted Premier Li Keqiang on the shoulder. Both Xi and Li appeared to nod. It was not clear what Xi said in reply.
At one point, while Hu was still seated, Xi appeared to place his hand over a document that Hu was attempting to reach for preventing him from doing so.
In another moment, after Hu was standing and apparently remonstrating with the two men before making his exit, Li Zhanshu appeared to try and rise from his seat, but was directed back down by a tug on his suit jacket by fellow Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning, seated next to him.
Hu, who retired in 2013, has been seen in increasingly frail health in public in recent years.
Due to the opacity of Chinese elite politics, the party is unlikely to offer a public explanation on Hu’s sudden exit. The dramatic moment has not been reported anywhere in Chinese media, or discussed on Chinese social media, where such conversation is highly-restricted. But it has set off a firestorm of speculation overseas.
CNN was censored on air in China when reporting on Hu’s exit from the meeting Saturday.
Hu’s departure came after the Congress’s more than 2,000 delegates had rubber-stamped the new members of the party’s elite Central Committee during a private session, and before delegates were called on to endorse the party’s work report during a session open to journalists.
The newly announced 205-member Central Committee did not include Li Keqiang and fellow Standing Committee member Wang Yang, who are both considered Hu’s proteges. This means neither will retain their seats in the Standing Committee, the party’s top-decision making body, though both are 67, one year short of the unofficial retirement age. Xi, who is 69, is included in the list of new Central Committee members.
The line-up of the Standing Committee will be revealed Sunday, one day after the close of the Congress. Xi, who is widely seen to have cemented power by eliminating rivals and dampening the lingering influence of party elders, is expected to be re-confirmed as party chief in a norm-breaking move and surround himself with allies.
BEIJING — A major weeklong meeting of China’s ruling Communist Party was expected to approve changes to the party constitution on Saturday that could further enhance Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s hold on power.
The closing session was underway with about 2,000 delegates — wearing blue surgical masks under China’s strict zero-COVID policy — in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.
They formally elected a new Central Committee of about 200 members to govern the party for the next five years, state media said. Xi is expected to retain the top spot when the new leadership of the party is unveiled Sunday.
Foreign media were not allowed into the first part of the meeting, presumably when the voting was taking place.
Police were stationed along major roads, with bright red-clad neighborhood watch workers at regular intervals in between, to keep an eye out for any potential disruptions.
An individual caught authorities by surprise last week by unfurling banners from an overpass in Beijing that called for Xi’s removal and attacked his government’s tough pandemic restrictions.
The party congress sets the nation’s agenda for the coming five years. A report read by Xi at the opening session a week ago showed a determination to stay on the current path in the face of domestic and international challenges.
Xi has emerged during his first decade in power as one of China’s most powerful leaders in modern times, rivaling Mao Zedong, who founded the communist state in 1949 and led the country for a quarter-century.
An expected third five-year term as party leader would break an unofficial two-term limit that was instituted to try to prevent the excesses of Mao’s one-person rule, notably the tumultuous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, under which Xi suffered as a youth.
Xi has put loyalists in key positions and taken personal charge of policy working groups. In contrast, factions within the party discussed ideas internally under his two immediate predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, said Ho-fung Hung, a professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University.
“Right now, you don’t really see a lot of internal party debates about these different policies and there is only one voice there,” he said.
————
Associated Press writer Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
Chinese national flags flutter on the Great Hall of the People on October 16.
(VCG/Getty Images)
For more than two decades, a new general secretary has been appointed at every other Communist Party Congress.
But since the last Congress in 2017, Xi Jinping has signaled plans to keep a firm grip on all aspects of what’s considered a trifecta of power in China: control over the party, the state and the military.
At the last Congress in 2017, he broke with tradition and did not elevate a potential successor to the Standing Committee.
Then, months later, China’s rubber-stamp legislature eliminated the term limits for President of China. This was widely seen as enabling Xi to continue to a third term as head of state, while also retaining his control of the Communist Party – where the true power lies.
While there are no formal term limits for general secretary, staying in the top party role would also require Xi to break with another unwritten rule: the party’s informal age limit.
Abandoning term limits: The norm is that senior officials who are 68 or older at the time of the Congress will retire. At 69, Xi would flout this recent convention by staying in power.
What’s less clear is whether he will seek to give other Politburo allies exemptions, disrupting one of the few neutral methods the party has to ensure turnover, or whether, in contrast, he could lower the retirement age for others to oust some existing members.
Changing the constitution: Xi is also expected to strengthen his legacy, likely through amendments to the party constitution — a regular feature of each Congress.
Last month, the Politburo discussed these changes during a scheduled meeting, according to a government statement that did not include specifics.
In 2017, Xi became the first leader since Mao Zedong — Communist China’s founder — to have his philosophy added to the constitution while still in power. Oservers have suggested Xi’s key principles could be further enshrined this time around.
These details will be signs of how much power Xi holds within the upper echelons of the party – and how strong his backing is as he steps into his expected, norm-breaking third term leading one of the world’s most powerful countries.
a drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Monday, October 17. A wave of drone attacks pummeled the capital city early Monday as commuters headed to work.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
ended a 15-game losing streak against Alabama. They won 52-49 with a last second 40-yard field goal.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
Mississippi to record lows.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
20th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sunday, October 16. Xi is poised to secure a norm-breaking third term in power.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
as it splashes down off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, on Friday, October 14, with European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins. They are returning after 170 days aboard the International Space Station.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
James Webb Space Telescope. It shows a highly detailed view of the 
found him not liable for battery on allegations he picked up actor Anthony Rapp and briefly laid on top of him in a bed after a party in 1986. Jurors deliberated for about an hour and concluded Rapp did not prove that Spacey “touched a sexual or intimate part” of him.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
warned it could take up to six months for the water to recede in the wake of the country’s 
expelled from the United States on Monday, October 17.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
deadly drone attacks.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
See last week in 32 photos.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img”/>
