Robert Delaney

The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act and the US Congress’ 150-odd other pieces of China-related legislation underscore elder statesman Henry Kissinger’s recent assertion that the US and China are “in the foothills” of a new cold war. Perhaps we’re even further up, above the tree line. As recriminations beget more recriminations and new fronts in the ideological battle seem to open every week, Washington’s wannabe cold warriors need to pause and reassess. The non-stop news around the advance of the Hong Kong act and the stand-off at Polytechnic University last week obscured new data released by the Institute of International Education and the State Department showing that the number o

A US bill that could leverage diplomatic and economic pressure to ensure the “sufficient autonomy” of Hong Kong moved quickly through the American legislative process and has now arrived on the desk of President Donald Trump. Trump has the power to veto the legislation. But with the bill having almost no objections from lawmakers, he is expected to sign it into law. To give an idea, the Senate passed its version of the bill unanimously and the House pushed it through with a vote of 417-1.  The legislation has infuriated China, who view it as “meddling in the internal affairs of China.” Beijing summoned a senior US diplomat to complain and the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily said t

The US Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that could put diplomatic and economic pressure on the Hong Kong and Beijing governments over what American lawmakers said were human rights abuses.  While not yet law, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act could alter the relationships between Washington, Beijing and Hong Kong. What does the act do? The bill’s sponsor, Florida Republican Marco Rubio, said it would hold accountable officials for Hong Kong’s “eroding autonomy and human rights violations.” In practice, the act calls for sanctions against anyone deemed to have violated freedoms guaranteed under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, a constitutional document that underpins the city’s special statu

Sun Hang, a 19-year-old first-year student from eastern China’s Zhejiang province, decided to study in the United States at George Washington University despite his concern about growing US-China tensions and the US government’s increasingly restrictive visa policy. “It will allow me to have a good resume, get a good job in China and enjoy myself,” said Sun, a history major dressed in a long black coat against the cold.  “US education is much better” than that in Australia or England, partly because of its better reputation, he added.  The allure of a US education for many Chinese appears, at first glance, to be holding firm.  Despite the US-China trade war, growing mutual distrust and a ram

President Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro faked an expert in his anti-China books, and the volumes’ publisher wants readers to know it. All reprints of Navarro’s supposedly non-fiction Death by China will “alert” readers that the Harvard-educated economist Ron Vara quoted within its pages is fabricated, according to Pearson, which owns the book’s publisher Prentice Hall. The 2011 book, which levels a laundry list of accusations against China’s trade practices, including deliberately harming Americans with dangerous consumer goods, came under renewed scrutiny this week following a report that one of its sources does not exist. The move follows a report by The Chronicle Review citing Death

Washington’s flood of ill will toward Beijing may be spilling onto America’s streets, according to pundits and policymakers measuring the impact of a Twitter post that sparked the National Basketball Association’s China crisis. The now-deleted tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting Hong Kong protests has elevated the topic of China’s censorship among Americans in a bigger way than President Donald Trump’s trade war has highlighted trade imbalances, copyright violations and a host of other issues the US government has been pressuring Beijing about for decades. “Nobody knows what an entity list is,” said Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute

The Trump administration on Tuesday imposed visa restrictions on Chinese government officials suspected of repressing Uygurs and other ethnic minorities in China. The sanctions target Chinese officials “who are believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, the detention or abuse of Uygurs, Kazakhs or other members of Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang, China,” said the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  The announcement came a day after the Commerce Department decided to blacklist 28 Chinese entities and firms allegedly linked to abuses in Xinjiang. The organizations are blocked from buying products from US companies without approval from Washington. China has forcibly detained over one mil

China’s National Day festivities and the police shooting of an anti-government protester in Hong Kong revealed the rift Tuesday between President Donald Trump and his Republican Party when it comes to sentiments toward Beijing. The juxtaposition of China’s celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China with reports that an 18-year-old protester had been shot in the chest by Hong Kong police drew overwhelmingly sympathetic reactions in Washington towards the wounded youth. While Trump tweeted his congratulations to Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese people on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, Republican lawmakers di

US House speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday threw her support behind legislation meant to back Hong Kong’s anti-government protesters. Speaking at a news conference featuring Hong Kong activists Joshua Wong and Denise Ho, who testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on Tuesday, Pelosi said she would bring the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 to a vote “as soon as possible.” The bill, which has angered Beijing, is currently under review in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and an identical version is in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Shortly after Wong and Ho testified in Washington on Tuesday, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang w

President Donald Trump on Thursday urged his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to meet with anti-government protesters in Hong Kong. Trump was apparently clarifying comments he made a day earlier that were taken as a suggestion that Trump himself wanted to meet with Xi over the political crisis in the semi-autonomous Chinese region. If President Xi would meet directly and personally with the protesters, there would be a happy and enlightened ending to the Hong Kong problem. I have no doubt! https://t.co/eFxMjgsG1K — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2019 In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Trump appeared to link for the first time the US-China trade talks to the Hong Kong protests.