Hong Kong national security law: US taps allies Britain, Australia and Canada to pressure China

Countries call on China to honour the Sino-British Joint Declaration in a statement

The four foreign ministers say the national security law would undermine the ‘one country, two systems framework’

4 OF THE 5 EYES

Mark Magnier in United States and Stuart Lau
Published: 11:57pm, 28 May, 2020

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29 May 2020

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and three of his counterparts called on China to honour its commitments made under the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Photo: DPA

The US has stepped up diplomatic pressure against
China’s move to impose a national security law on Hong Kong, forming a common position with the UK, Australia and Canada.

In a four-nation statement, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his counterparts called on China to work with Hongkongers on forging a way forward to honour its commitments made under the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

“China’s decision to impose the new national security law on Hong Kong lies in direct conflict with its international obligations under the principles of the legally binding, UN-registered Sino-British Joint Declaration,” said the statement, which was also signed by UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s foreign minister.

The four foreign ministers said Thursday the national security law would undermine the “one country, two systems framework”.

If the Chinese Communist Party thinks that they’re going to continue to break their promises to the world, to openly defy the rule of law, the United States of America is going to stand up and tell them noMorgan Ortagus, US State Department spokeswoman

“It also raises the prospect of prosecution in Hong Kong for political crimes, and undermines existing commitments to protect the rights of Hong Kong people,” they said.

Issued hours after China’s National People’s Congress nearly unanimously endorsed the law, the statement by the four countries asked Beijing to work things out with Hongkongers.

“As Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity are jeopardised by the new imposition, we call on the government of China to work with the [Hong Kong government] and the people of Hong Kong to find a mutually acceptable accommodation that will honour China’s international obligations under the UN-filed Sino-British Joint Declaration,” the statement said.

It did not mention what action might be taken should China fail to do so.

State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in an interview on Thursday that the US continues to confer with other allies in a bid to garner more countries to speak out against China’s toughening stance toward Hong Kong, although she did not cite specifics.

In response to Beijing’s assertion that the new law targets “a very narrow category of acts that seriously jeopardise national security and has no impact on Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy”, Ortegus said the US obviously disagrees.

“We will continue to look for ways that we can support the people of Hong Kong and support these protests,” she said. “But if the Chinese Communist Party thinks that they’re going to continue to break their promises to the world, to openly defy the rule of law, the United States of America is going to stand up and tell them no.”

The Thursday statement came a day after Pompeo told Congress that Hong Kong no longer enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, an assessment that paved the way for further action, including tariffs, sanctions and visa treatments.

Beijing has said the joint declaration, reached between UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang in 1984, was no longer valid since Hong Kong’s handover of sovereignty in 1997.

The European Union, which is not part of the four-country statement, insisted that it had been in dialogue with US, UK, Australia and Japan to discuss issues about Hong Kong All 27 EU foreign ministers will discuss the situation on Friday in a scheduled meeting. They will also discuss future EU-China relations.

New Zealand, the other country of the Five Eyes security alliance, did not join the statement.

Analysts said they expect the EU parliament to, at a minimum, sign on to Thursday’s joint statement.

“The challenge is to lay out steps to a solution,” said Michael Davis, a research scholar at Columbia University and former University of Hong Kong law professor. “China has been quite expert at playing countries in Europe against each other under a united front strategy. Whether those countries will find common ground will be the challenge.”

Acts that made Hong Kong a pawn in US-China battleground
29 May 2020


Analysts said Thursday’s joint statement shows the four signatories are in agreement on calling out Beijing for violating commitments it made to the UK and the global community over Hong Kong’s future, and on voicing concern over civil liberties and autonomy in the city. But there is little indication of multilateral concrete steps.

“The joint statement does not suggest any consequence,” Davis added. “So at this point it is a gentle nudge for Beijing to pause and consider the concerns being raised by Hong Kong people and the international community.”

China's proposed national security law for Hong Kong is in direct conflict with its obligations under the Joint Declaration. If enacted, this law would violate Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms. UK and are deeply concerned.
https://t.co/bbGgJgHklw
pic.twitter.com/e7eQySFDFX
— Dominic Raab (@DominicRaab)
May 28, 2020

The US has threatened sanctions, tariffs, asset seizures and visa treatment. The UK has proposed immigration changes, announcing on Thursday that Hongkongers with British National (Overseas) passports will be offered a path to British citizenship if China enforces the national security law in the city.

However, it is not clear that Beijing cares much about Hong Kong residents who chose the special BN(O) status. prior to the 1997 handover.

With US-China diplomatic channels badly clogged by mistrust, analysts say the two economic giants are signalling through the press and their actions as they try to assess each other’s position.

“We’re posturing,” William Zarit, senior counsellor with the Cohen Group consultancy said, even as China moves ahead with tough new Hong Kong security and sedition legislation.

“What I’m hoping is that our policymakers will take into consideration the benefits, the values, of the Hong Kong people,” he added, speaking at an event co-sponsored by Concordia and the China General Chamber of Commerce.

The usually partisan US Congress is almost unanimously in favour of taking a tougher line on China, which points to President Donald Trump enacting some sort of punitive measures against Hong Kong in a US election year.

China’s top legislature approves national security bill for Hong Kong

“We should all be speaking out against that security act, not just the United States, the EU, people around the world should be speaking out against it,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, in a press conference Thursday.

“Hong Kong is so much part of the vitality of trade and commerce that goes into mainland China, you would think that they would want that vitality to continue. But President Xi is a very oppressive tyrant,” she added.

Beijing’s passage of the security law – and Thursday’s joint statement – has widened political fissures within Canada, giving rise to “very strong countervailing pressures” on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from political opponents, said Fen Hampson, an international affairs expert at Ottawa’s Carleton University.

Trudeau has tried to improve relations after Canada’s 2018 arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of US authorities and Beijing’s arrest days later of two Canadians living in China, a move widely seen in Canada as retaliatory hostage-taking.

The Canadian prime minister from the Liberal Party now faces growing calls for action against China, particularly from the opposition Conservative Party, Hampson said, as well as others “who say we should never do business with China, it’s an autocratic regime, whose values are completely antithetical to Canadian values”, he added.


Additional reporting by Robert Delaney and Owen Churchill

The birth of butter chicken, invented to feed a busload of refugees

A dish so ubiquitous on menus people mistake it for a Western invention, butter chicken is as authentically Indian as Indian food gets, inventor’s grandson says

It was created by chance at a restaurant in Delhi owned by three Punjabi Hindu refugees, when a big group arrived late for a meal and the chefs had to improvise
Alkira Reinfrank Published 26 May, 2020

The story of butter chicken – like this one held by Hong Kong chef Palash Mitra – is one of three hard-working refugees, a hugely popular Delhi restaurant and an accidental flavour combination born out of necessity and leftover tandoori chicken. Photo: K.Y. Cheng
Few people, when tucking into a serving of butter chicken, would think about the history of the Indian dish. For Raghav Jaggi, however, this aromatic staple is more than a taste of home – it’s his family’s legacy.

His grandfather, Kundan Lal Jaggi, dedicated his life to tandoori cuisine and is one of three Punjabi Hindu refugees celebrated for inventing butter chicken.

Few other dishes can evoke such a passionate and varied response from diners but, whether it’s religiously ordered or desperately avoided, there’s no denying the dish has helped popularise Indian cuisine globally.

“Butter chicken is a lifestyle,” Jaggi, 39, says with a chuckle, from his home in New York.

The significance of his grandfather’s endeavours aren’t lost on Jaggi, who warmly remembers Friday afternoons as a boy in Delhi,

India, that were spent eating creamy butter chicken – called murgh makhani in Hindi.

“Butter chicken is a very critical and important part of the Indian culinary journey,” Jaggi says. “If you really look at Indian food and how popular it is in the world, some of the creations that my grandfather made in his kitchen are the reason Indian food is so popular.”

The dish is so ubiquitous on menus outside the South Asian country today that people often mistake it as a Western invention, like chicken tikka masala. But butter chicken, traditionally made with marinated chicken cooked in a tandoor oven and served in a creamy tomato gravy, “is as authentically Indian as Indian food gets”, Jaggi says.

Kundan Lal Jaggi is one of three Punjabi Hindu refugees celebrated for creating butter chicken. Photo: courtesy of Amit Bagga

The story of butter chicken – which dates back to the late 1940s – is one of three hard-working refugees, a star-studded Delhi restaurant and an accidental flavour combination born out of necessity.

Partition of India in 1947, Kundan Lal Jaggi, Kundan Lal Gujral and Thakur Dass fled Peshawar – in northwest Pakistan today – for Delhi.

The division of British India into two independent states – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – displaced about 15 million people along religious lines. The death toll from that time of upheaval is still disputed, with figures ranging from 200,000 to 2 million.

In the pre-Partition days, Kundan Lal Jaggi and Kundan Lal Gujral had worked in a famed tandoori restaurant in Peshawar called Moti Mahal, while Thakur Dass worked across the road.

Mokha Singh Lamba (in the middle row, centre) and Kundan Lal Jaggi (far left, standing) in Peshawar. Photo: courtesy of Amit Bagga

“My grandad, like many other Hindu Punjabis, left everything that he had in what is now
Pakistan and moved to India. Delhi, particularly the area known as Daryaganj, became the hub for a number of these refugees,” says Jaggi, who describes his grandfather as an extremely resilient and humble man.

Working in kitchens is all Kundan Lal Jaggi knew. He left school at the age of 15 to make money, and began by cleaning tandoors, before moving up through the ranks to become a master of the clay oven, roasting meats and naans at extremely high temperatures.

Palash Mitra making butter chicken in a tandoor oven at Rajasthan Rifles restaurant in Hong Kong. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Arriving in Delhi with few possessions, he decided to open a tandoori restaurant in the Daryaganj area with Kundan Lal Gujral and Thakur Dass. The trio named it Moti Mahal, after the closed restaurant from their hometown, with the blessing of its former owner, Mokha Singh Lamba.

One night, a few months after opening, a busload of refugees came late to the restaurant in search of a meal, but there were only a few dry tandoori chickens left.

“There were truckloads of refugees coming into the area, and at that time you never refused food to anyone,” Jaggi says.

Moti Mahal’s original team in 1947 outside the restaurant. 

Photo: courtesy of Amit Bagga

Kundan Lal Jaggi decided to create a simple sauce of cream, tomatoes and a few spices infused with the smoky tandoori chicken, “so that people could use the naan and dip it into the gravy if they were not able to get a bite of chicken”.

“It was rich enough to give them enough [sustenance] to survive another day, and it was totally by chance. Everyone loved the dish so much they asked for it again the next day. And the day after, the same thing happened,” Jaggi says. It was so popular, it was made a permanent fixture on the menu and became one of the dishes that defined the restaurant.

Moti Mahal was one of the most iconic restaurants in the Indian capital for the next 45 years, says Jaggi, and popularised tandoori cuisine.

Kundan Lal Jaggi (second from left) with celebrity guests. 

Photo: courtesy of Amit Bagga

In the late 1940s in Delhi, most of the population was vegetarian, while the newly arrived migrants were meat eaters. To ensure vegetarians could enjoy a meat-free version of the dish, Jaggi says, his grandfather invented dal makhani, which has also found global fame.

“Moti Mahal was a turning point for India. People used to travel from abroad to eat there. It was a landmark,” says Palash Mitra, 39, head chef of the world’s first Michelin-starred Pakistani restaurant, New Punjab Club, in Hong Kong.

It attracted the likes of India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, former US President Richard Nixon, former US first lady Jackie Kennedy and countless Bollywood stars, Jaggi says.

Able to seat up to 350 people, Moti Mahal also helped introduce a dining-out culture to India. “Kundan Lal Jaggi represented his north Indian heritage really well and took Indian food out onto the world’s stage,” says Mitra, who is also the culinary director of Southeast Asian cuisine at the Black Sheep Restaurants group in Hong Kong.

“Kundan Lal [Jaggi] is probably one of the first Indian chefs-cum-restaurant owners in the true sense, like a French chef. He was the chef of his own restaurant, he was selling food commercially, he made a big business out of it.”

A picture of the Moti Mahal kitchen from the 1970s. 

Photo: courtesy of Amit Bagga

To keep up with demand, the trio opened four venues across Delhi and even ran their own poultry farm, enabling them to acquire up to 600 chickens a day for their restaurants. In the 1950s, then-Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed Moti Mahal as the official caterer of India’s Republic Day, meaning they needed to feed “a few thousand people in a single day”.

Mitra believes the invention of butter chicken was no accident. “He did a massive service to Indian cuisine and he should be celebrated more,” he says.

Mitra still remembers the first time he tried butter chicken as a 12-year-old. It was the first time he had eaten meat, and “the smokiness, the texture and flavour was something totally unique”.

“It was a turning point in my life. I said, ‘I am not going to eat vegetables any more,’” says Mitra, whose restaurants are known for their succulent meat offerings cooked in a tandoor oven.

Palash Mitra cutting up meat for butter chicken at Rajasthan Rifles. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

As chefs from Moti Mahal moved on to work at new restaurants or to open their own, they took the butter chicken recipe with them, says Jaggi – and the dish swept across India.

Mitra says the dish’s global spread coincided with migration of Indian labourers – specifically Punjabis – to the West.

“When they travelled, they took their food with them. You can take the Punjabi away from Punjab, but you can’t take the Punjab out of the Punjabi. So they will create butter chicken anywhere they go,” he says.

“Butter chicken is not the only dish that represents India or Punjabi food, but it significantly demonstrates the culinary history and landscape of the country.”

Last year, Raghav Jaggi (left) and Amit Bagga opened Daryaganj, a restaurant chain in Delhi. Photo: courtesy of Amit Bagga

The trio behind Moti Mahal eventually retired, selling their empire as a franchise in 1992. As ubiquitous as the dish is, so too is the name Moti Mahal. Thousands of Indian restaurants worldwide bear the name, although they have no affiliation with the original restaurants.

Last year, Jaggi and his childhood friend Amit Bagga opened Daryaganj, a new restaurant chain in Delhi, as a tribute to his grandfather’s legacy and named after the area where Kundan Lal Jaggi opened his first restaurant. Their four venues celebrate north Indian cuisine – including butter chicken – using Kundan Lal Jaggi’s original recipes. Unsurprisingly, butter chicken and dal makhani make up 43 per cent of all orders.

Kundan Lal Jaggi died in Delhi in 2018, aged 94, at peace and out of the limelight, as he would have wanted, his grandson says.

“Everything they [the three restaurateurs] did was out of pure love, ensuring they could share their love and food with the larger community,” Jaggi says. “What fortune my grandfather would have created, what empire he would have set, how the next generation and my generation would flourish, to be honest, he had zero clue.”

Additional reporting by Yang Yang and Bernice Chan

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: A legacy to be savoured


Alkira Reinfrank is a digital production editor and reporter with the South China Morning Post, where she also co-hosts the award-winning podcast Eat Drink Asia. Before moving to Hong Kong, Alkira worked as a multiplatform reporter with ABC News and WIN News in Australia. Alkira has appeared on BBC World News, BBC World Service, The Project (Australia), i24 News (Israel) and triple J Hack (Australia).

US-China trade war slashes US$1.7 trillion from American companies’ market caps, Federal Reserve Bank of New York says

Higher tariffs are poised to reduce American firms’ investment growth rate by nearly 2 percentage points

Companies with exposure to China more affected as a slowdown in the Chinese economy reduces the return on investment American companies make there


Jodi Xu Klein in New York 29 May, 2020


Cargo cranes are used to take containers off of a Yang Ming Marine Transport boat at the Port of Tacoma in Washington last year. Photo: AP

The US trade war with China has slashed US$1.7 trillion from American companies’ market value, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said in a Thursday report.

The higher tariffs, a tool to create a trade barrier against other countries, are poised to reduce American firms’ investment growth rate by nearly 2 percentage points.

The increased cost has already cut US investment expansion by 0.3 percentage points through the end of 2019 and will decrease by another 1.6 percentage points this year, according to the report published on Thursday by authors led by economist Mary Amiti, a vice-president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

American firms bore almost all the cost of higher US import duties, and those that export to China also became less profitable due to Chinese tariffs, a finding that countered US President Donald Trump’s narrative that China is paying the tariffs.

The researchers, also including Columbia University’s Sang Hoon Kong and David Weinstein, used the comparison of stock prices to estimate lower expected profitability that in turn hurts future investment growth. The central bank’s research found that trade war announcements were associated with 8.9 per cent in stock price declines.

The study used the direct link between a firm’s market-to-book value and the firm’s investment outlays, a well-established correlation, to calculate growth, said Amiti in the research.

Factors that contribute to the reduction in future growth for American companies include greater policy uncertainty and changes in economic conditions due to the trade conflict.

Companies with exposure to China are more affected by the trade dispute as a slowdown in the Chinese economy reduced the return on investment that American companies made there, the researchers found.



“Discussions of the trade war often focus only on US exports to and imports from China, missing the much larger exposure of US firms emanating from their subsidiaries in China,” the report said.
About 46 per cent of 3,000 US companies included in this report are exposed to China through importing, exporting or selling through subsidiaries. They generated an average of 2.3 per cent in revenue from China.

The Trump administration started slapping new tariffs on more than US$300 billion of Chinese goods in 2018 in order to correct the widening trade deficit the US had with China.

Despite a phase one trade deal the two countries struck in January that put the drawn-on conflict on pause and prevented the latest batch of planned tariffs from going into effect, hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs remain in place.

Trump and his senior advisers have insisted that China is paying the cost. But earlier research have shown that American companies and consumers are “paying almost the full cost of US tariffs”, according to a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research published in January.
In November  research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the prices Chinese firms charged have barely budged, meaning the increased part of the cost was borne by US companies and consumers, estimated at around US$40 billion annually.

Jodi Xu Klein  is an award-winning business journalist with 20 years of experience. She joined the Post in 2017, after a decade based in the US reporting for The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. She was part of the Time Magazine team that won the Henry R. Luce Award, breaking the China SARS story.

Could American banks get caught in the middle of US-China rift over Hong Kong?

A gateway to China, Hong Kong also serves as an important regional hub for America’s largest lenders

American banks accounted for about 5 per cent of total assets in the city last year, according to HKMA


THIS WILL APPLY TO CANADIAN BANK'S OPERATING OUT OF HONG KONG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_in_Hong_Kong


Chad Bray Published: 29 May, 2020  SCMP
It would be a ‘serious mistake’ to jeopardise Hong Kong’s special status, which is fundamental to its role as an attractive investment destination and international financial hub, the US Chamber of Commerce said this week. Photo: Felix Wong

A gateway for capital flowing in and out of mainland China, Hong Kong has for decades also served as a lucrative regional hub for America’s biggest banks operating in Asia.

But, rising tensions between the United States and China are threatening to leave foreign lenders – and billions of dollars in potential revenue as the mainland’s financial services industry opens up further – stuck in the middle.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Hong Kong no longer maintained a “high degree of autonomy” from China, after the National People’s Congress (NPC) said it would adopt new national security legislation tailor-made for the city following months of anti-government street protests. The resolution was passed by a near unanimous vote on Thursday.

The Trump administration has not said what actions it might take in response other than President Donald Trump saying he planned to do “something” this week. The declaration represents the latest firestorm, as relations have deteriorated dramatically between the world’s two biggest economies in recent years.

“We expect the latest move to have considerable implications for the city, with the threat of higher tariffs, sanctions, as well as tougher investment and visa rules between Hong Kong and the US, including potential sanctions on businesses – particularly banks – operating in the city found to be supporting anyone in violation of the ‘one country, two systems’ model,” said Benjamin Quinlan, managing partner of consultancy Quinlan & Associates.

The US was Hong Kong’s second-largest trading partner after mainland China, according to Hong Kong’s Trade and Industry Department. American banks accounted for 5 per cent of the banking sector in the city in 2019, with about US$166 billion in total assets, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s de facto central bank.

Since Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, the special administration region has held a special status with the US, allowing it as a free port to avoid tariffs the US has placed on China and to import goods the US has restricted from being shipped to the mainland.

“It would be a serious mistake on many levels to jeopardise Hong Kong’s special status, which is fundamental to its role as an attractive investment destination and international financial hub,” the US Chamber of Commerce said on Tuesday.

The US response could range from sanctioning individuals and Chinese companies – including Hong Kong’s members of the NPC – and restricting visas to the “nuclear option” of using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to prevent future investment or transfer of funds to Chinese-related entities or persons.

Enacting the IEEPA would require the president to declare that there is an unusual and extraordinary threat to the US and consult Congress. It has typically been used to sanction countries that fund terrorism, or which are developing nuclear weapons, such as North Korea.

Martin Petch, senior credit officer in the sovereign risk group at Moody’s Investors Service, said changed international perceptions of Hong Kong could add downward pressure to the city’s credit rating. “This will particularly be the case if the international response, in turn, leads to a weakening of Hong Kong’s role as an international economic and financial centre,” he said.

For US banks, Hong Kong has been a significant hub for corporate and investment banking, both inside and outside mainland China, and, increasingly, wealth management, as China has grown wealthier.

Last year, American banks played key roles in some of the biggest listings in the city. Hong Kong has led global fundraising for seven of the past 11 years.

Citigroup, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley all served as joint global coordinators for Alibaba Group Holding’s US$12.9 billion secondary listing in Hong Kong, the biggest listing in the city and the second-largest globally in 2019. JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley also were joint sponsors of the US$5.7 billion initial public offering last year of Budweiser Brewing Company APAC, the Asia-Pacific arm of Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Chinese technology companies JD.com and NetEase are preparing for their own secondary listings in the city later this year.

American banks accounted for 19 per cent of investment banking fees booked in Hong Kong last year, or about US$309.8 million, according to data provider Refinitiv. Overall, investment banks earned US$1.63 billion in fees last year.

Citigroup, which also operates 16 retail banking branches in the city, traces its history in Hong Kong back to 1902. The city serves as one of its main hubs in the Asia-Pacific region, with about 4,500 employees, and accounted for about 15 per cent of the bank’s revenue in the region.

The bank, which does not break out its results for Hong Kong, reported US$1.58 billion in profit from continuing operations in its global consumer bank in Asia last year, and profit from continuing operations of US$3.46 billion in its institutional clients business. Its regional chief executive is based in Hong Kong.

“Citi’s exposure to Hong Kong includes top local corporates and US and [multinational] names, and is around 3 per cent of our total exposure,” a bank spokesman said. The bank is monitoring events closely in Hong Kong and remains committed to the city, the spokesman said. The bank’s deposits and loans have increased in Hong Kong in the past year and it has not seen capital flight from the city, he added.

The city also serves as the regional headquarters for Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. JPMorgan’s Asia-Pacific CEO, who oversees 17 markets in the region, is based in Hong Kong.

Goldman employs about 1,700 people in Hong Kong and another 250 onshore in mainland China, with most of the regional business heads at Goldman based in the city. Overall, Asia-Pacific accounted for 13 per cent of its revenue last year, or about US$4.65 billion.

Morgan Stanley has about 2,000 employees in the city, and Asia-Pacific as a whole accounted for US$5.13 in revenue in 2019, or about 17 per cent of the bank’s total revenue.

Like many of their American and European rivals, Goldman, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley have moved to take majority control of their securities operations in mainland China in the past year, as Beijing has relaxed foreign ownership rules for securities firms, asset managers and insurance companies.

The opening of mainland China’s financial services sector, however, is not expected to represent a shift of personnel out of Hong Kong, but an opportunity to access the country’s domestic market, bankers said. Capital controls in mainland China mean Hong Kong will remain an attractive market for Chinese companies seeking to access foreign investors, they said.

Rising US-China tensions and the return of protests to Hong Kong’s streets over the national security law have also renewed questions about Hong Kong’s future attractiveness to expats.

“For much of my time here, it was seen from an earnings, career and lifestyle perspective as one of the best places in the world to work in financial services. A very attractive kind of career destination city,” said John Mullally, regional director for southern China and Hong Kong financial services at search firm Robert Walters. “That has definitely changed. The protests have played a big part in that.”

However, the lifestyle afforded to financial services workers in the city still makes it an attractive location for expats, according to Abimanu Jeyakumar, head of North Asia at headhunter Selby Jennings.

“At the moment, with the new bill being passed, it does cause another barrier to overcome when it comes to relocating staff,” Jeyakumar said. “[Hong Kong has] always been a conduit for Chinese investments into the international market and international investments into China. I think a lot of banks are waiting to see how this plays out. This could bode an opportunity, or a challenge.”

Additional reporting by Alison Tudor-Ackroyd.


Chad Bray
Chad is a senior business reporter focused on finance. He has previously written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.

Gabby Giffords' Group Condemned Trump For Sharing A Video Saying "The Only Good Democrat Is A Dead Democrat"

Giffords was almost killed by a gunman in 2011 when she was a Democrat representing Arizona in Congress.

Julia ReinsteinBuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on May 28, 2020Tweet

President Donald Trump retweeted a video on Thursday in which a supporter said that "the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat," earning the condemnation of prominent Democrats — including the anti–gun violence group founded by Gabby Giffords, the former Democratic member of Congress who was almost assassinated by a gunman in 2011.

Peter Ambler, cofounder of Giffords' organization, told BuzzFeed News the US had already "seen the deadly consequences of the twin threats of hateful rhetoric and loose gun laws."

"My hometown of El Paso suffered a horrific tragedy because a man motivated by hate drove 10 hours to slaughter Latinos with a gun," Ambler said. "We've already seen armed men enter state capitals in attempts to intimidate lawmakers navigating pandemic response."

"Trump’s encouragement of violence, harassment, and intolerance is a threat to our core democratic institutions, and it's going to result in further violence and tragedy," he said. "It must end now.”

Tom Brenner / Getty Images

In the video shared by the president, which was posted Wednesday by the account "Cowboys for Trump," Couy Griffin, an Otero County, New Mexico, commissioner, can be heard speaking at a rally against the state's restrictions to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The May 17 protest in the city of Truth or Consequences was held after a local church received a cease-and-desist order for illegally holding in-person services, according to NM Political Report.

“I’ve come to a place where I’ve come to the conclusion that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat," Griffin says in the recorded speech, to cheers and applause.



Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

Thank you Cowboys. See you in New Mexico! https://t.co/aCRJeskUA804:00 AM - 28 May 2020
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After the cheers die down, Griffin then adds that he does not mean that "in the physical sense."

"I don’t say that in the physical sense, and I can already see the videos getting edited where it says I wanna go murder Democrats," Griffin says. "No, I say that in the political sense, because the Democratic agenda and policy is anti-American right now."


Trump retweeted the Cowboys for Trump video at midnight on Thursday, saying, "Thank you Cowboys. See you in New Mexico!"

In response to questions about the tweet, a White House spokesman told BuzzFeed News the president condemns violence.

"The President and the entire administration condemn violence in all forms as we have stated many times," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in an email.

Griffin was photographed meeting Trump in the Oval Office in February, reportedly after he and a group of supporters rode horseback from Cumberland, Maryland, to Washington, DC, in support of Trump's declaration of a national emergency to build a wall along the US–Mexico border.

Trump's sharing of the video was also criticized by Beto O'Rourke, the former Texas representative who made an unsuccessful presidential run last year on a gun control platform.



Beto O'Rourke@BetoORourke
ter·ror·ism /ˈterəˌrizəm/ noun: terrorism the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.04:36 PM - 28 May 2020
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New Mexico political leaders have called for Griffin to resign over his remarks, which Lt. Gov. Howie Morales called "incredibly irresponsible."

“Violent speech like this has no place in New Mexico politics,” said Democratic Party of New Mexico chair Marg Elliston.

Member of Griffin's own party denounced his statements, with the New Mexico Young Republicans calling for him to apologize and saying "such an outrageous statement is contrary to the pro-life Republican Party platform."

The New Mexico GOP tweeted that "any statements, whether in jest or serious about harming another individual are just plain wrong."

New Mexico GOP@NewMexicoGOP
The Republican Party of New Mexico wants to state for the record that any statements, whether in jest or serious about harming another individual are just plain wrong.07:11 PM - 20 May 2020
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In an interview with ABC-7, Griffin said he would not resign.

"If their demand was warranted, then I would consider it," Griffin said. "But their demand for me to step down because of that instance in which I said 'the only good Democrat is a dead democrat' when I was talking about politics to begin with — I believe it's unwarranted."

In an interview with the Daily Beast, Griffin admitted he should have chosen his words better.

“I could’ve chosen a different verbiage, you know. I guess I need to be more careful when I choose the words that I speak,” Griffin said. “But you know, it’s just so hypocritical of the left how they’re blowing this up, like I’m some hate-speech murderer.”

But Griffin also said he would not rule out violence as a tactic for the reopening protests.


Jeenah Moon / Getty Images
Couy Griffi

“I’ll tell you what, partner, as far as I’m concerned, there’s not an option that’s not on the table,” Griffin said.

He also repeated to the Daily Beast that "the only good Democrat is a dead Democratic," and said he thinks some Democrats, including Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, could be guilty of treason and even suggested they be punished by execution for it.

“You get to pick your poison: You either go before a firing squad, or you get the end of the rope,” Griffin said.
Griffin has a history of calling for violence and the execution of Democrats.

According to KRWG, he has repeatedly said Democrats should be hanged for "treason" and has said laws requiring masks could result in "civil war."

Griffin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.

Julia Reinstein is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New Yor

Friends Say George Floyd Always Went Out Of His Way To Help People Who Were Less Fortunate

"He was articulate. He was grounded. He was spiritual. He was an athlete. He was an organizer. He was a comforter. He was an encourager."

Amber JamiesonBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on May 27, 2020

Facebook: christina.u.dawson

“One day it’s going to be you and God. You’re going up or you’re going down,” George Floyd says in a video circulating on social media in which he calls on young people to avoid gun violence.

Floyd, 46, died in police custody on Monday after a white police officer pushed his knee into his neck on the ground outside a supermarket in Minneapolis. Video footage showed Floyd saying "I can't breathe" until he became unresponsive, but even then the officer continued to keep him in a neck hold.

Floyd's family did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment, but they, along with friends, have been sharing stories of his life online and with the media.

Floyd, also known as Big Floyd, reinvented himself over and over again. In the 1990s, he was part of a rap crew from Houston's Third Ward, working with DJ Screw, a well-known local musician.

“Floyd was my brother. We called each other 'Twin,'” former NBA player Stephen Jackson said in a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday. Jackson, who grew up with Floyd in the Third Ward, shared photos of him in his high school football uniform.

Instagram: @_stak5_

"Made it to state championship," Jackson wrote. "Bruh wasn’t no bum. Had hoop game too."

The mother of his 6-year-old daughter told the Houston Chronicle that he'd received a football scholarship to Florida State University after playing for Yates High School.

In recent years, Floyd moved to Minnesota.

"He was changing his life," Jackson said in the Instagram video. "He went to Minnesota. He was driving trucks. I just sent him up two or three boxes of clothes. My boy was doing what he was supposed to do."

Vanita Williams, a friend, met Floyd through his work driving trucks and as a security guard at a downtown Salvation Army homeless shelter.

Instagram: @_stak5_

"He was sober. He showed me resources," Williams said. "He gave us hugs and told us it was going to be OK. He told us we could make it. He was such a big brother to me."

Williams said Floyd embraced people of all backgrounds, including trans people, sex workers, people experiencing homelessness, and people with addictions.

"He gravitated towards the less fortunate," Williams said, "the downtrodden, the ones they said wasn't going to make it."

She said Floyd would give people a few dollars, new clothes, or whatever small thing he could.

"Whatever he needed to do, he would help you," she said.

He also worked as a security guard at Conga Latin Bistro in Minneapolis.

"This person was my employee, and a very good friend," Jovanni Thunstrom wrote on Facebook. Thunstrom also told local station KSTP that Floyd would drive patrons who were drunk home to make sure they were safe.

“He wanted me to teach him how to Bachata dance," Thunstrom said. "And I gave up because I couldn't turn him because he was [6 feet 6 inches]."

Facebook

His former girlfriend Christina Dawson shared photos of Floyd smiling, wearing his security T-shirt, and cuddling a dog.

"They really killed my baby!!" she posted. "THAT KING DID NOT HAVE TO DIE BEFORE HIS TIME."

Instagram: @_stak5_

Floyd was popular with women because of his charm and height, Williams said.

"There’s going to be so many women going to come out of the woodwork when they hear," she added. "He was a big teddy bear."

She added, "You could talk to a thousand people and nobody is going to have anything bad to say about him."

His brothers and cousin also spoke to CNN's Don Lemon about their search for justice after the four officers involved were fired.

"It definitely warms my heart to see we have so many people willing to support and to protest and to give him a voice," said his cousin Tera Brown, "and keep this going because he was a very loving person. And he didn't deserve what happened to him."

His friends agreed.

"He was articulate. He was grounded. He was spiritual. He was an athlete. He was an organizer. He was a comforter. He was an encourager," Williams told BuzzFeed News. "I could just go on and on and on about who he was."

• 
  Amber Jamieson is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

  Contact Amber Jamieson at amber.jamieson@buzzfeed.com.

  Got a confidential tip? Submit it here.
• 
  

Congress Asked The CDC For Data On How The Coronavirus Is Affecting Communities Of Color. The CDC Sent Back Links To Its Public Website.

“The Trump Administration would prefer to ignore the disproportionate impact this crisis is having on communities of color,” said Sen. Patty Murray.

Kadia GobaBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

Washington, DC

Posted on May 28, 2020, at 11:05 a.m. ET

Robyn Beck / Getty Images

Local residents fill out paperwork at a mobile COVID-19 testing station in Compton, California, April 28. St. John's Well Child and Family Center is providing testing sites in African American and Latino communities that have been neglected in terms of testing as compared to wealthier areas of Los Angeles County.

BuzzFeed News has reporters around the world bringing you trustworthy stories about the impact of the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

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WASHINGTON — As communities of color are disproportionately dying from the coronavirus, Congress asked the CDC to collect national data on the race and ethnicity of COVID-19 cases and deaths.

On the day of the deadline set in law by Congress, the CDC responded with a page of links that referred back to its public website.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, “should be embarrassed by the lazy, incomplete, 2.5-page copy-and-paste job it calls a ‘report’ on the racial disparities of COVID-19 cases,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted last week.

Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC, sent the report to Congress on March 15. The links that CDC forwarded include some racial and ethnic data on the coronavirus, but it is incomplete. The report includes a link to the CDC’s updating data on cases and deaths across the US, but only includes race and ethnicity information for less than half of the 1.7 million people who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The report also linked to the CDC’s data on hospitalizations broken down by race and ethnicity, but that page only includes data from specific network hospitals in 14 states, totaling just about 10% of the US population.

“This wholly inadequate response tells us nothing except what we already knew: the Trump Administration would prefer to ignore the disproportionate impact this crisis is having on communities of color,” Sen. Patty Murray, the lead Democrat on a Senate Health Committee, said in a statement.

The CDC did not respond to several questions on how it obtained its data or the timeframe in which it will update the information. And while incomplete, Redfield wrote that the CDC data does suggest “a disproportionate burden of illness and death among racial and ethnic minority groups,” adding that “studies are underway to confirm these data.” The CDC did not respond to BuzzFeed News’ requests to specify what kind of studies are being conducted.

The report comes after Congress passed its most recent coronavirus stimulus package, which required the CDC to report COVID-19 race and ethnicity data to several congressional committees, as they investigate the disproportionate effects of COVID-19 on black and Hispanic people.

Last month, a group of bipartisan members of Congress urged the Trump administration to gather data on high-risk communities in order to better understand the racial disparity and aid those communities in response to the pandemic.

Health experts say complete reports are key to addressing COVID-19 disparities in communities of color.

“Thus far, the fragmented data we are getting from HHS, state, and local sources paint a very fragmented, but troubling picture,” Northeastern University health policy expert Leo Beletsky told BuzzFeed News in an email. “Systematic national data are necessary to understand the full scope of the issue and to target resources where they are most needed.

Beletsky went further to suggest the administration’s slow-walk of the data is an effort to avoid criticism of its coronavirus response and conversations about longstanding health disparities among people of color.

“Ultimately, these data will force some very difficult conversations about bungled responses so far, as well as about broader questions of race and racism in America. This is why agencies are dragging their feet on making these analyses available to lawmakers and the public.”

Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who also signed onto the initial letter to the CDC asking for race and ethnicity data for COVID-19, told reporters on Wednesday that black people represent nearly 40% of all COVID-19 cases in Boston (38% according to city data), despite being 25% of the population.

“We will use every tool at our disposal to uncover why this administration waited so long to take any action and make clear the grave consequences of their inaction,” Pressley told reporters on a call. “And while oversight is critical, we must also keep up the pressure on this administration to take action now before we are robbed, unnecessarily, of even more lives.”

Sen. Tim Scott, the lone black Republican senator and the only GOP member to call on the CDC to provide race and ethnicity data of COVID-19 victims, is instead urging states to report their own data.

“In South Carolina, we regularly receive and can readily access disaggregated demographic data on both cases and fatalities,” Scott told BuzzFeed News in a statement. “Our model is effective and consistent, and I hope other states and stakeholders would follow suit in reporting these critical numbers that can only help us stop the spread in our most vulnerable communities.”

As of Wednesday, black people, who make up about 27% of South Carolina’s population, accounted for 52% of the coronavirus cases, according to state data.

The House-passed Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act (HEROES) also would require the CDC to provide race and ethnicity data to Congress with money to assist states with their collection of data. But that bill has not passed the Senate, where Republicans have said the legislation is dead on arrival.

In the meantime, the CDC is still required to provide another report within 30 days of the one just released.

“We are not done pushing for answers and action here, not by a long shot,” Murray said.