China

HONG KONG (AP) — Student unions from two Hong Kong universities have turned down invitations from city leader Carrie Lam for talks about the recent unrest over her proposal to allow the extradition of suspects to mainland China.

Student leaders said at a news conference Friday that they do not think Lam is being sincere in her offer of closed-door meetings. They say any meeting should be public and include a wider representation.

HONG KONG (AP) — It was almost noon on Monday when hundreds of protesters outside Hong Kong’s legislature voted to break in.

Watching from the side, one protester disagreed. They were too few, 19-year-old Daisy Chan worried, and the police presence was heavy.

As hours passed, thousands more trickled into the plaza and a nearby roundabout. The police retreated into the building. Angry protesters shattered windows with carts, sledgehammers and metal barricades.

4 July 2019; DW: China said its relations with the UK have been damaged after the foreign office threatened "serious consequences" over the reaction to protests in Hong Kong. 

Foreign Secretary and candidate for the Conservative party leadership, Jeremy Hunt appeared to back down on his comments when he said on Thursday that he had not backed violent protests in Hong Kong: "Let me be clear what I said.

BEIJING (AP) — A tornado blew through a city in northeast China, damaging factories and buildings, killing six people and injuring another 190, state media reported Thursday.

The tornado hit Kaiyuan, a county-level city in Liaoning province, late Wednesday afternoon, local authorities said in a brief online statement. Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed a stretch of collapsed low-rise buildings where firefighters were working through the debris. Glass windows in homes and cars were blown out.

HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker expressed fears Thursday that the situation could worsen after police announced the arrests of more than a dozen people following protests earlier this week.

Legislative Council member Claudia Mo called on people to understand the frustration and anger of the mostly youthful protesters, even if they have technically broken the law.

“I am terribly worried that a massive kind of round-up of protesters could trigger very negative sentiment on the part of the young,” she told reporters. “Things could get worse.”

BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhua) -- A joint research team made up of Chinese and Japanese scientists has discovered the highest energy cosmic gamma rays ever observed from an observatory in Tibet, opening a new window to explore the extreme universe.

The energy of the gamma rays is as high as 450 TeV, equivalent to 45 billion times of the energy of X-rays for medical diagnosis, researchers from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said at a press conference on Wednesday.

HONG KONG, July 2 (Xinhua) -- While people from all walks of life in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) were enjoying the great festivities to commemorate the return of Hong Kong to the motherland and the establishment of the HKSAR Monday, some ultra-radicals' violent acts of storming the region's Legislative Council (LegCo) complex posed an ugly contrast.

They stormed the LegCo complex in a violent manner, wantonly damaging facilities there.

2 July 2019; DW: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Beijing on Tuesday to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, as the two countries seek to build on budding economic and political ties at a time both are experiencing a low point in their relations with the United States. 

2 July 2019; DW: Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam condemned the "extremely violent" storming of the city's parliament, describing the scene as "heartbreaking and shocking," during a speech early Tuesday morning.

BEIJING, July 2 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) is a very dynamic organization and by far the most successful political organization in the world, according to a prominent China expert from Britain.

Martin Jacques, a senior fellow at Cambridge University, made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua on the sidelines of the second Wanshou Dialogue on Global Security, which lasts from Monday to Wednesday.

Jacques said the CPC has been very successful at reinventing itself to move with the times, which is quite difficult for big parties like the CPC.