LYON, France — A Greek Orthodox priest was shot Saturday while he was closing his church in the French city of Lyon, and authorities locked down part of the city to hunt for the assailant, police said.
The priest, a Greek citizen, is in a local hospital with life-threatening injuries after being hit in the abdomen, a police official told The Associated Press. The attacker was alone and fired from a hunting rifle, said the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.
Police cordoned off the largely residential neighborhood around the church and warned the public on social networks to stay away. As night fell on Lyon, an Associated Press reporter saw police tape and emergency vehicles throughout the neighborhood. National police tweeted that “a serious public security incident” was under way.
The reason for the shooting was unclear. It happened two days after an Islamic extremist knife attack at a Catholic church in the French city of Nice that killed three people, and amid ongoing tensions over a French newspaper’s publication of caricatures mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
French anti-terrorist authorities were not investigating Saturday’s shooting, although the interior minister activated a special emergency team to follow the case while the gunman was still at large.
Prime Minister Jean Castex reiterated government promises to deploy military forces at religious sites and schools. He said French people can “count on the nation to allow them to practice their religion in full safety and freedom.”
Seeking to calm tensions and to explain France’s defense of the prophet cartoons, President Emmanuel Macron gave an interview broadcast Saturday on Arabic network Al-Jazeera. Macron also tweeted that “our country has no problem with any religion. They are all practiced here freely! No stigmatization: France is committed to peace and living together in harmony.”
IZMIR, Turkey — Three young children and their mother were rescued alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in western Turkey on Saturday, some 23 hours after a powerful earthquake in the Aegean Sea killed at least 30 people and injured more than 800 others.
The Friday afternoon quake that struck Turkey’s Aegean coast and north of the Greek island of Samos registered a magnitude that Turkish authorities put at 6.6 while other seismology institutes said it measured 6.9. It toppled buildings in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, and triggered a small tsunami in the Seferihisar district and on the Greek island. Hundreds of aftershocks followed.
At least 28 people were killed in Izmir, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted. Among them was an elderly woman who drowned in the tsunami. But rescue teams on Saturday made contact with 38-year old Seher Perincek and her four children — ages 3, 7 and 10-year-old twins — inside a fallen building in Izmir and cleared a corridor to bring them out.
One by one, the mother and three of her children were removed from the rubble as rescuers applauded or hugged. Efforts were still underway to rescue the remaining child, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
The survivors, including 10-year-old Elzem Perincek, were moved into ambulances on stretchers. The girl was speaking and said one of her feet hurt.
“I’m fine; I was rescued because only one of my feet was pinned. That foot really hurt,” she said.
Earlier Saturday, search-and-rescue teams working on eight collapsed buildings lifted teenager Inci Okan out of the rubble of a devastated eight-floor apartment block. Her dog, Fistik, or Pistachio, was also rescued, Turkish media reported.
A video showed a female rescuer trying to calm down the 16-year-old girl under the rubble as she inserted a catheter. “I’m so scared,” the girl cried. “Can you hold my hand?”
“We are going to get out of here soon,” the rescuer, Edanur Dogan, said. “Your mother is waiting outside for you.”
Friends and relatives waited outside the building for news of loved ones still trapped inside, including employees of a dental clinic that was located on the ground floor.
Two other women, aged 53 and 35, were brought out from the rubble of another toppled two-story building earlier on Saturday.
In all, around 100 people have been rescued since the earthquake, Murat Kurum, the environment and urban planning minister, told reporters. It was unclear how many more people were trapped under buildings that were leveled.
Some 5,000 rescue personnel were working on the ground, Kurum said.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, or AFAD, said 885 people were injured in Izmir and three other provinces. The health minister said seven people were being treated in intensive care, with three of them in critical condition.
Two teenagers were killed on Samos after being struck by a collapsing wall. At least 19 people were injured on the island, with two, including a 14-year-old, being airlifted to Athens and seven hospitalized on the island, health authorities said.
The small tsunami that hit the Turkish coast also affected Samos, with seawater flooding streets in the main harbor town of Vathi. Authorities warned people to stay away from the coast and from potentially damaged buildings.
The earthquake, which the Istanbul-based Kandilli Institute said had a magnitude of 6.9, was centered in the Aegean northeast of Samos. AFAD said it measured 6.6. and hit at a depth of some 16 kilometers (10 miles).
It was felt across the eastern Greek islands and as far as Athens and in Bulgaria. In Turkey, it shook the regions of Aegean and Marmara, including Istanbul.
Turkey is crossed by fault lines and is prone to earthquakes. In 1999, two powerful quakes killed some 18,000 people in northwestern Turkey. Earthquakes are frequent in Greece as well.
Authorities warned residents in Izmir not to return to damaged buildings, saying they could collapse in strong aftershocks. Many people spent the night out in the streets, too frightened to return to their homes, even if they sustained no damage.
In a show of solidarity rare in recent months of tense bilateral relations, Greek and Turkish government officials issued mutual messages of solidarity, and the leaders of Greece and Turkey held a telephone conversation.
“I thank President Erdogan for his positive response to my call,” the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Saturday before traveling to Samos, where he visited the families of the teenagers who were killed.
Relations between Turkey and Greece have been particularly tense, with warships from both facing off in the eastern Mediterranean in a dispute over maritime boundaries and energy exploration rights. The ongoing tension has led to fears of open conflict between the two neighbors and nominal NATO allies.
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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey and Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Ayse Wieting contributed from Istanbul and Demetris Nellas from Athens.
Poland’s anti-abortion laws have always been among the most restrictive in Europe. Until this week the procedure was only permitted when the pregnancy posed a threat to the woman’s life; if there was a fatal fetal abnormality or in cases rape or incest.
However on Oct. 22 the country’s constitutional court ruled that a fatal fetal abnormality was not justification for terminating a pregnancy and violates the constitution. For the over 10 million women of reproductive age in Poland, this ruling effectively puts in place a complete ban on abortion.
According to official data, just over 1,100 legal abortions are performed annually in Poland–98% of which are in cases of fatal fetal abnormalities. The procedure prevented further pain and suffering for both the woman and the fetus.
While the court’s ruling has not yet come into force, many Polish hospitals have already stopped carrying out terminations. Women with scheduled procedures are having their appointments canceled. Women with a diagnosis of fatal fetal abnormality are not being provided with information and don’t know where to find help, left alone with their tragic news. At theFederation for Women and Family Planning we are getting calls from men asking for help for their wives or partners. The women are often so devastated they are unable to speak.
We try to support them as much as possible and there are some doctors who support them too. After our campaigning some hospitals have again begun to perform abortions but it is only a drop in the ocean of what is needed.
The ruling is an outrageous violation of women’s human rights. Women are being treated like living incubators. We do not have any rights, not even the fundamental human rights guaranteed by the Polish Constitution: the right to health, the right to private life, the right to equal treatment.
Not one word was said in defense of women during the debate. The fetus, called the “conceived child,” has the rights of an already existing life. During the Tribunal’s debate the most cruel statement was that we cannot “kill a conceived child” just because its birth would “reduce the comfort of a woman’s life.”
Forcing a woman to give birth to a child with severe, irreversible conditions is cruelty. Whether or not to keep the pregnancy should be the decision of the woman, or the woman and her partner. They will be the only ones to bear the traumatic consequences of this decision.
The politicians of the ruling party in Poland allowed the politicized Tribunal to issue what is a cruel and shameful decision. They hoped that the pandemic and the ban on public gatherings would prevent women from protesting. But they were wrong. Since Oct. 22 thousands of women have been protesting all over the country in hundreds of large cities, small towns and villages.
We will not stop fighting for our fundamental rights. Three out of four Poles are against tightening the laws on abortion and against the Tribunal’s ruling, and over 60% are in favor of further liberalizing Poland’s abortion laws. The court issued their judgment without any social legitimacy. The abortion law should have been proceeded in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, and not arbitrarily imposed by a few men in judge’s clothes, many of whom were former MPs and politicians from the ruling party.
We will not stop fighting for women’s rights, for the right to a legal and safe abortion, the same rights that other European women have. Making abortion illegal will not reduce the number of procedures, research shows. The ban only endangers women’s lives and health. Women without access to money and information, often from smaller towns and villages, will end their pregnancies in dangerous ways, on their own or by unsafe underground abortions. This is what we fear most. We are going to do everything we can to prevent this from happening and are in contact with foreign abortion clinics that are ready to to provide services to Polish women.
If even one woman is harmed by an unsafe abortion, we will hold the Polish state accountable. This week there was a general strike by Polish women. We walked out of work, and many employers supported the women and protested with them. We will continue to protest, and we will fight to the end.
The Oct. 29 TIME100 Talk featured conversations with U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, Governor of Tokyo Yuriko Koike, and Bridgewater Associates Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer Ray Dalio.
Saudi Arabian legal scholar Abdullah Alaoudh has become adept at spotting state-backed harassment. From the daily barrage of insults and death threats from the network of online bots and trolls known as the regime’s “flies,” Alaoudh says he’s learned to differentiate serious risks from annoyances, report threats to the appropriate local authorities, and continue with his human rights advocacy undeterred.
But a recent message stood out from the usual tirade in content if not in tone. In July, he received a Twitter message from somebody vowing to “take advantage of what they called the chaos in the U.S. and kill me on the streets,” Alhaoudh tells TIME by phone from Washington, where he is a senior fellow at Georgetown University. Although the message ended with a predictable sign-off, “your end is very close, traitor,” Alaoudh was more struck by what he took to be a reference to protests and unrest in the months leading up to the U.S. elections.
Online trolls are far from alone in keeping close tabs on the Nov. 3 elections.For dissidents living outside the Kingdom, the American election has personal as well as political implications. On one side is an incumbent who has boasted he “saved [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s] ass” from recriminations over his alleged role in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.On the other is Democratic challenger Joe Biden, who last year said he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” singled out the kingdom for “murdering children” in Yemen, and said there’s“very little social redeeming value in the present Saudi leadership.”
For some, like Alaoudh, those words offer a glimmer of hope that relatives detained in the kingdom might have improved prospects of release should Biden win in November.“I hope a new administration that signals a new approach to Saudi Arabia can really ask for the release of political prisoners,” says Alaoudh, whose father, the reformist Muslim scholar Salman al-Odah was arrested in September 2017 and faces the death penalty. Alaoudh is wary of reading too much into U.S. election campaign rhetoric, he says, “but what I’m sure of is that a Biden Administration would not be as compliant and affectionate with Saudi Arabia as Trump has been.”
Al-Odah is one of hundreds detained or imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for activism of criticism of the government. He was arrested only hours after he tweeted a message to his 14 million followers calling on Saudi Arabia to end its blockade of the tiny Gulf Emirate of Qatar, Alaoudh says. Although he has languished in pre-trial detention for more than three years, Saudi Arabia executed a record number of people in 2019. Court documents list al-Odah’s charges as including spreading corruption by calling for a constitutional monarchy, stirring public discord, alleged membership of the Muslim Brotherhood, and “mocking the government’s achievements.”
Saudi Arabia was the destination for Trump’s first trip overseas in May 2017, a visit that set the tone for the strong alliance that has persisted ever since. Photographs of Trump palming a glowing orb alongside Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman made headlines, as have his claims of the number of jobs the bumper deals he struck in the kingdom would create, ranging from 450,000 to “a million,”(the actual total is between 20,000 to 40,000, according to Mayreportby the Center for International Policy.)
But subsequent behind-the-scenes meetings between Trump’s special advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner’s and King Salman’s son Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) proved at least as significant as the President’s headline announcements. MBS isreportedto have bragged to the powerful Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohamed bin Zayed that he had Kushner “in his pocket.”
Whether the First Family’s relations with MBS are a product of the Trump’s general embrace of authoritarians, the historic ties between the U.S. and the Al Saud that date back to 1943, or business interests in the region is unclear, says Stephen McInerney, Executive Director at the non-partisan Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED). What is clear, he says, is that “Trump and his family—and in particular Jared Kushner—have close personal ties to Mohammed Bin Salman.”
That closeness has translated into a reluctance to confront Saudi Arabia over its human rights abuses. Although McInerney says this has been the case for past administrations, the extent to which the U.S. President has “gone out of his way to cover for MBS” has caused alarm, even among those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo: “at times there has been real bipartisan frustration or even outrage with him.”
No case demonstrates this more clearly than that of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist murdered and dismembered inside the Kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. Two weeks after Khashoggi’s murder, Trump publicly mulled the possibility he was killed by a “rogue actor” — in line with what would become the Saudi narrative as outrage grew.After the Washington Postreported that the CIA had concluded that MBS had ordered Khashoggi’s death, Trump refuted the report. In 2019, Trump disregarded a law requiring a report to Congress on who was responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.
This March, bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a letter to acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell urging him to declassify information on Saudi Arabia’s killing of the journalist after they were given a redacted copy.
“I have no doubt that Donald Trump did protect and save whatever part of MBS’s body,” Agnes Callamard,the U.N.’s special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings tells TIME, referring to the now notorious comments the president made to veteran investigative reporter Bob Woodward that he saved the crown prince’s “ass.”Trump “protected the individual rather than the state,” she says.
Callamard says she would expect a Biden administration, “at a minimum, not to undermine the U.S.’s own democratic processes,” as Trump did in vetoing bipartisan bills pertaining to the Khashoggi murder and the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia that were used in the Yemen war. In May, Trump fired a state department watchdog who was in the process of investigating the declaration of a “national emergency” to justify those arms sales. Callamard adds that she would also expect a President Biden to not “justify violations by others or suggest that the U.S. doesn’t care about violations because of its economic interests.”
As a Democratic candidate, Biden has taken a tough tone on Saudi Arabia. A statement on his campaign website says as President Biden would “reassess” relations with the Kingdom, “end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.” The statement adds that Biden will “defend the right of activists, political dissidents, and journalists around the world to speak their minds freely without fear of persecution and violence.”
What that means in practice remains an open question — especially as, when Biden was Vice-President, the Obama Administration supported Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen and sold more arms to the kingdom than any of his Republican or Democratic predecessors.“I think there would be some international debate between those who want a very assertive change in the U.S.–Saudi relationship and those who would be more cautious,” says McInerney. “The more cautious approach would be in line with historical precedent.”
In recent interviews, severaldiplomatic and intelligence sources told Reutersit was unlikely that Biden would upend U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia but that he might place stronger conditions on U.S. support—for example, demanding public concessions such as the release of jailed women’s rights defenders.
Most prominent among those defenders is Loujain al Hathloul. Arrested only weeks before MBS lifted the Kingdom’s long-standing ban on women driving she had long pushed for, Saudi authorities tortured and sexually abused al Hathloul while she was in prison, her family says. On Oct 27, Hathloul began a new hunger strike in protest at authorities’ refusal to grant her a family visit in two months.
Hathloul’s Berlin-based sister Lina al Hathloul tells TIME she has “no doubt” Saudi authorities would have treated her sister differently had Trump’s administration raised any objection. “The only thing that allows them to ignore all the international pressure is that the White House has not talked about it, and has not given a clear message to the Saudis telling them that they don’t agree with this,” Hathloul says.
If Trump is re-elected, then experts see little chance of him changing tack—in fact, says Callamard, it would pose “a real test” for the resilience of the democratic institutions committed to upholding the rules-based order.
In the meantime, not everyone is waiting in expectation for justice to come from the Oval Office. Last week Khashoggi’s widow Hatice Cengiz filed a Federal Lawsuit at a Washington D.C. court aimed at suing MBS and more than 20 “co-conspirators” over her husband’s murder.
Joining Cengiz as a claimant in the lawsuit is Democracy for the Arab World (DAWN), the civil society organization Khashoggi was working to build before his death.“Just the fact that we are filing the lawsuit here in Washington D.C. is a sign that we still have faith that there are other ways to pressure the Saudi government,” says Alaoudh, who serves as DAWN’s research director. “That’s the case no matter who wins the election.”
(ISTANBUL) — A strong earthquake struck Friday between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Samos, collapsing several buildings in Turkey’s western Izmir province and leaving at least four people dead.
Dozens more were injured, while some damage to buildings and the road network, and four light injuries were also reported on Samos.
Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted that four people were killed in Izmir and 120 were injured. He said 38 ambulances, two ambulance helicopters and 35 medical rescue teams were working in Izmir.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.9 with an epicenter 13 kilometers (8 miles) north northeast of the Greek island of Samos. The United States Geological Survey put the magnitude at 7.0. It is common for preliminary magnitudes to differ in the early hours and days after a quake. Multiple aftershocks struck the region.
A strong earthquake struck Friday between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Samos, collapsing several buildings in Turkey’s western Izmir province and causing some damage in Samos. There were reports of people trapped beneath rubble in Izmir.
Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency said three injured people were pulled from the wreckage of a building in Izmir. Some damage was also reported on the Greek island of Samos, to buildings and the road network. The director of the hospital in Samos said four people were treated there for light injuries.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said the earthquake was centered in the Aegean at a depth of 16,5 kilometers (10.3 miles) and registered at a 6.6 magnitude. The emergency authority said it sent search and rescue teams to Izmir.
The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.9, with an epicenter 13 kilometers (8 miles) north northeast of the Greek island of Samos. The United States Geological Survey put the magnitude at 7.0. It is common for preliminary magnitudes to differ in the early hours and days after a quake. Multiple aftershocks struck the region.
Izmir mayor Tunc Soyer told CNN Turk that about 20 buildings collapsed. The city is the third biggest in Turkey with about 4,5 million residents. Turkey’s interior minister tweeted six buildings in Izmir were destroyed. He said there were small cracks in some buildings in six other provinces.
The environment and urban planning minister, Murat Kurum, said people were trapped under the wreckage and rescue efforts were underway.
Videos posted on Twitter showed flooding in the immediate aftermath of the quake in Izmir’s Seferhisar district. Turkish officials and broadcasters called on people to stay off the streets after reports of traffic congestion.
Turkish media showed wreckage of a multiple-story building in central Izmir, with people climbing it to start rescue efforts. Turkish media showed at least one woman being helped from the rubble of a collapsed building. Smoke was filmed in several spots in central Izmir.
Turkish media said the earthquake was felt across the regions of Aegean and Marmara, including Istanbul. Istanbul’s governor said there were no reports of damage in the city, Turkey’s largest.
The quake was felt across the eastern Greek islands and as far as the Greek capital, Athens, and in Bulgaria.
Greek seismologist Efthymios Lekkas told Greek state television ERT that it was still too early to say whether this was the main earthquake, although he said it was likely it was.
“It is an event that is evolving,” Lekkas said, adding that some damage had been reported in parts of Samos.
A tsunami warning was issued, with residents of the Samos area told to stay away from the coastline. Water rose above the dock in the main harbor of Samos and flooded the street.
Residents have also been told to stay away from buildings, as aftershocks continued to rattle the area. Local officials told state media there were reports of damage to buildings and part of the island’s road network.
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Becatoros reported from Athens. Amer Cohadzic in Sarajevo, Bosnia, contributed.
The bushfires that scorched vast tracts of Australia in late 2019 and early 2020 were just a glimpse of what’s to come as global temperatures rise, a landmark report made public on Friday warned.
The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, which was commissioned by the Australian government, says that global warming over the next 20 to 30 years is inevitable, and Australia must adapt to further changes to the climate.
“Australia will have more hot days and fewer cool days. Sea levels are also projected to continue to rise,” the inquiry, led by a former chief of the Australian Defense Force, a former federal court judge and a climate policy expert, found. “Tropical cyclones are projected to decrease in number, but increase in intensity. Floods and bushfires are expected to become more frequent and more intense.”
Climate activists say they are hopeful the report will help break the country’s deadlock on climate reform—and spur a government that had been largely ambivalent on the issue into action.
“Climate change is real, climate change is affecting all of us and it’s time for urgent action,” says Greg Mullins, the former fire chief of New South Wales. “It’s time for the government to listen.”
Although fires are an annual occurrence on the continent, last season’s apocalyptic blazes, known as the “Black Summer” fires, burned up to 83 million acres, an area twice the size of Florida. The report’s findings come as fires rage on America’s West Coast. More than 90,000 people were urged this week to flee their California homes as Santa Ana winds fueled fires. Already, it has been a record-breaking fire season in the U.S., with wildfires tearing across parts of California, Oregon and Washington.
Australia’s last fire season was one of the worst on record, too. More than 30 people died in the blazes, including at least nine firefighters. More than 400 people may have been killed by smoke pollution from the fires, according to a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia. More than 3,000 homes and many other buildings were destroyed, and one researcher, in a widely shared figure, projected that as many as 480 million animals have been killed or would die in the state of New South Wales—where Sydney is located—alone.
The authors did not urge specific action to reduce Australia’s green house gas emissions—most of the report’s 80 recommendations revolved around practical ways to improve Australia’s natural disaster response. Mullins, who is also a councillor at the non-profit Climate Council, says the report makes a stronger statement on climate change than he expected. “It calls for mitigation across all sectors,” says Mullins. “I take that as code for the government must be serious with your policies on climate change.”
A quick search shows the phrase “climate” used 355 times in the 594 page document (in 67 of those instances the phrase “climate change” was used.)
Brett Hemming— Getty ImagesA kangaroo escapes the fire as the fire front approaches a property in Colo Heights, Australia on Nov. 15, 2019.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison faced criticism for his response to the crisis and his stance on climate change. He has said he believes climate change could be creating the weather conditions that have made this past bushfire season one of the most disastrous on record; 2019 was Australia’s hottest and driest year on record. A study published in March 2020 found that human-caused climate change increased the risk of the weather conditions that drove the fires by at least 30%.
But Morrison has argued that there is no direct link between Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and the severity of the fires. “To suggest that with just 1.3% of global emissions, that Australia doing something differently, more or less, would have changed the fire outcome this season,” he told an Australian radio station, “I don’t think that stands up to any credible scientific evidence at all.”
That ignores the fact that Australia is one of the highest per capita emitters of carbon dioxide in the world, according to Climate Analytics, an advocacy group that tracks climate data. It is also one of the world’s leading exporters of coal. Accounting for fossil fuel exports increases the country’s footprint to about 5% of global emissions, equivalent to the world’s fifth largest emitter, according to Climate Analytics.
Australia ratified the Paris Agreement in 2016; the country agreed to cut its emissions by at least 26% from 2005 levels by 2030. But as fires raged in Australia, the Morrison government was accused of trying to “cheat” on its Paris Agreement obligations to reduce carbon emissions during December 2019 climate talks in Madrid.
Mullins says that he hopes the report will shake the Australian government into action. “Our federal government is recalcitrant on acknowledging climate change and definitely on taking action to reduce emissions,” he says.
That he says, is out of touch with the beliefs of Australian people; a recent report by the think-tank the Australia Institute found that 82% of Australians are concerned that climate change will lead to more bushfires. This report, he says, “adds more fuel to the fire.”
TAOYUAN, Taiwan — Two lesbian couples tied the knot in a mass wedding held by Taiwan’s military on Friday in a historic celebration with their peers.
Taiwan is the only place in Asia to have legalized same-sex marriage, with more than 4,000 such couples marrying since the legislation passed in May 2019. The mass wedding with 188 couples was the first time same-sex couples have been wed and celebrated at a military ceremony.
Both couples viewed their ceremonies with a sense of responsibility towards representing the LGBT community.
“We are hoping that more LGBT people in the military can bravely stand up, because our military is very open-minded. In matters of love, everyone will be treated equally,” said Chen Ying-hsuan, 27, an army lieutenant who married Li Li-chen, 26.
Chen wore a rainbow wristband and said she has always been open about her sexual orientation while serving.
The ceremony at an army base in the northern city of Taoyuan was brief. The couples took part in a parade and then exchanged rings in front of an audience of family members and their senior officers.
Yumi Meng, 37, and her wife, army Maj. Wang Yi, 36, wiped back tears as they exchanged rings. Meng wore sneakers under her wedding dress, while Wang wore her officer’s uniform. They each carried a pride flag throughout the ceremony.
Meng’s parents had not come to the celebration, but in support both of Wang’s parents as well as her teacher came out to support the couple.
“I really feel that this is a huge breakthrough for the military because before gay people really had to go through a lot,” said Amy Chao, mother to Wang. “Perhaps for heterosexual couples, it’s just a paper, but it’s very important for gay couples, if you’re sick or have to have a major surgery, if you don’t have this, then you are nothing, you can’t make a decision.”
Since same-sex marriage became legal in Taiwan, 4,021 such couples have married, with 69% of them lesbian couples, according to the most recent government data.
The military seemed an unlikely institution to be the site of a same-sex marriage, but in recent years has opened up, said Victoria Hsu, the Co-founder of Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights. “We hope this is a good sign to show that the armed forces’ attitude towards the LGBT community is becoming more supportive than before in Taiwan.”
That attitude was on full display Friday as it welcomed dozens of reporters to the wedding.
“Our attitude is that everyone should be treated equally, and we congratulate each and every couple, and this shows that our military’s position is open-minded, progressive and with the times,” Lt. Gen. Yang An told reporters at the wedding.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealanders voted to legalize euthanasia in a binding referendum, but preliminary results released Friday showed they likely would not legalize marijuana.
With about 83% of votes counted, New Zealanders emphatically endorsed the euthanasia measure with 65% voting in favor and 34% voting against.
The “No” vote on marijuana was much closer, with 53% voting against legalizing the drug for recreational use and 46% voting in favor. That left open a slight chance the measure could still pass once all special votes were counted next week, although it would require a huge swing.
In past elections, special votes — which include those cast by overseas voters — have tended to be more liberal than general votes, giving proponents of marijuana legalization some hope the measure could still pass.
Proponents of marijuana legalization were frustrated that popular Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wouldn’t reveal how she intended to vote ahead the Oct. 17 ballot, saying she wanted to leave the decision to New Zealanders. Ardern said Friday after the results were released that she had voted in favor of both referendums.
Conservative lawmaker Nick Smith, from the opposition National Party, welcomed the preliminary marijuana result.
“This is a victory for common sense. Research shows cannabis causes mental health problems, reduced motivation and educational achievement, and increased road and workplace deaths,” he said. “New Zealanders have rightly concluded that legalizing recreational cannabis would normalize it, make it more available, increase its use and cause more harm.”
But liberal lawmaker Chlöe Swarbrick, from the Green Party, said they had long assumed the vote would be close and they needed to wait until the specials were counted.
“We have said from the outset that this would always come down to voter turnout. We’ve had record numbers of special votes, so I remain optimistic,” she said. “New Zealand has had a really mature and ever-evolving conversation about drug laws in this country and we’ve come really far in the last three years.”
The euthanasia measure, which would also allow assisted suicide and takes effect in November 2021, would apply to adults who have terminal illnesses, are likely to die within six months, and are enduring “unbearable” suffering. Other countries that allow some form of euthanasia include The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Belgium and Colombia.
The marijuana measure would allow people to buy up to 14 grams (0.5 ounce) a day and grow two plants. It was a non-binding vote, so if voters approved it, legislation would have to be passed to implement it. Ardern had promised to respect the outcome and bring forward the legislation, if it was necessary.
Other countries that have legalized or decriminalized recreational marijuana include Canada, South Africa, Uruguay, Georgia plus a number of U.S. states.
(LONDON) — Officials in Britain’s opposition Labour Party failed to stamp out anti-Semitism and committed “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination,” the U.K. equalities watchdog said Thursday in a scathing report. Labour’s leader said the findings were “a day of shame” for the party.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission found “significant failings” and a “lack of leadership” in how the left-of-center party handled allegations of anti-Semitism among its members.
Labour leader Keir Starmer promised “a culture change in the Labour Party,” saying there would be “no more denials or excuses.”
“It is a day of shame for the Labour Party,” Starmer said. “We have failed Jewish people, our members, our supporters and the British public.”
His predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who led the party when the acts described in the report occurred, accused opponents of exaggerating the problem for “political reasons.”
The party responded by suspending Corbyn, who has represented Labour in Parliament since 1983.
Labour has been grappling with allegations that anti-Semitism was allowed to fester under the 2015-2019 leadership of Corbyn, a long-time supporter of Palestinians and a critic of Israel.
In a 130-page report, the commission said in two cases party officers committed “unlawful harassment” against Jewish people and their allies. It said there were many more accounts of harassment by ordinary party members, but that Labour could not be held legally accountable for them since the perpetrators did not hold any official roles.
The equality commission also said there was “evidence of political interference in the handling of anti-Semitism complaints” by the party leader’s office, and that the interference was unlawful.
“Some complaints were unjustifiably not investigated at all,” the report said.
It said there was “a culture within the party which, at best, did not do enough to prevent anti-Semitism and, at worst, could be seen to accept it.”
The commission does not have the power to bring criminal charges, but made recommendations for change, which the party is legally bound to act on.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, said the report marked a “historic nadir for the Labour Party.”
Corbyn stepped down as party leader in December after Labour had its worst general election showing since 1935. The party governed Britain for 13 years from 1997 but has been out of office since 2010.
Starmer, elected leader in April, has vowed to stamp out prejudice and restore relations between the party and the Jewish community. He is also trying to steer the Social Democratic party back toward the political center fter the divisive tenure of Corbyn, a staunch socialist. Corbyn has strong grassroots support but led Labour to two successive election defeats.
Corbyn said he regretted that Thursday’s report “took longer to deliver … change than it should.” But he added that “the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party.”
After the comments, Labour said it was suspending Corbyn pending an investigation.
“If after all the pain, all the grief, and all the evidence in this report, there are still those who think there’s no problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, that it’s all exaggerated, or a factional attack, then, frankly, you are part of the problem, too,” Starmer said. “And you should be nowhere near the Labour Party, either.”
(PARIS) — French anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating a knife attack at a church in the Mediterranean city of Nice that killed two people and wounded several others at a time when French authorities are on high alert for extremist violence.
The assailant was arrested after the Thursday morning attack at the Notre Dame Church and taken to a nearby hospital after being injured during his arrest, a police official said. He was believed to be acting alone and police are not searching for other assailants, the official said. She was not authorized to be publicly named.
The anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office said an investigation was opened into an attack with a terrorist connection.
Images on French media showed the neighborhood locked down and surrounded by police and emergency vehicles. Sounds of explosions could be heard as sappers exploded suspicious objects.
The exact motive of the attack was unclear but comes as France is under alert for Islamic extremist acts amid tensions over caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad published by satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo, and after two other recent attacks in France with links to the cartoons.
The lower house of parliament suspended a debate on new virus restrictions and held a moment of silence Thursday for the victims. The prime minister rushed from the hall to head to a crisis center overseeing the aftermath of the attack.
Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi said the attacker shouted “Allahu akbar!” repeatedly as police apprehended him and that “the meaning of his gesture left no doubt.”
Speaking to reporters in Nice, Estrosi said two people were killed inside the church and a third person who escaped to a nearby bar was in a life-threatening condition.
While many countries around the world are hitting new highs in coronavirus cases, Taiwan has achieved a different kind of record — 200 days without a locally transmitted case.
Taiwan holds the world’s best virus record by far and reached the new landmark on Thursday, even as the pathogen explodes anew in Europe and the U.S. Taiwan’s last local case came on April 12; there has been no second wave.
What did this island with 23 million people do right? It has had 550 confirmed cases, with only seven deaths. Experts say closing borders early and tightly regulating travel have gone a long way toward fighting the virus. Other factors include rigorous contact tracing, technology-enforced quarantine and universal mask wearing. Further, Taiwan’s deadly experience with SARS has scared people into compliance.
“Taiwan is the only major country that has so far been able to keep community transmission of Covid eliminated,” said Peter Collignon, an infectious disease physician and professor at the Australian National University Medical School. Taiwan “probably had the best result around the world,” he said, and it’s “even more impressive” for an economy with a population about the same size as Australia’s, with many people living close to one another in apartments.
Taiwan will be among the few economies to grow this year, with the government in August forecasting that the gross domestic product will expand 1.56% in 2020.
Still, Taiwan isn’t out of the woods yet as it recorded 20 imported cases in the past two weeks, mostly from Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Indonesia. And others that fought the virus well initially, like Singapore and Japan, then had spikes in cases.
What countries with surging infections can take away from Taiwan’s experience is that nothing works without contact tracing those who have tested positive and then quarantining them, said Chen Chien-jen, Taiwan’s former vice president and an epidemiologist, in an interview.
Also, as it’s not easy to make people stay in quarantine, Taiwan has taken steps to provide meal and grocery delivery and even some friendly contact via Line Bot, a robot that texts and chats. There is also punishment — those who break quarantine face fines of up to NT$1million ($35,000).
Here is how Taiwan has achieved its milestone:
Border control
Taiwan shut down to all non-residents shortly after the pandemic broke out in January and has kept tight control over its borders since.
“Taiwan’s continual success is due to strict enforcement of border control,” says Jason Wang,director of Stanford University’s Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention. That includes symptom-based surveillance before travelers board flights and digital fence tracking via cellular signals to ensure their compliance with a 14-day quarantine, he said.
Masks, distribution
The decision to stockpile and have central distribution of face masks played a key role in Taiwan’s success. The government early in the pandemic stockpiled all domestically produced face masks and banned export. Within four months, companies increased production from 2 million to 20 million units a day, enabling the island to ration masks to residents on a regular basis.
Contact tracing, quarantine
Taiwan has world-class contact tracing — on average, linking 20 to 30 contacts to each confirmed case. In extreme situations, such as that of a worker at a Taipei City hostess club who contracted the virus, the government tracked down as many as 150 contacts. Then, all contacts must undergo a 14-day home quarantine, even if they test negative.
So far, about 340,000 people have been under home quarantine, with fewer than 1,000 fined for breaking it. That means 99.7% have complied, according to Chen. “We sacrificed 14 days of 340,000 people in exchange for normal lives for 23 million people,” Chen said.
SARS experience
The painful lessons of past epidemics paved the way of Taiwan’s success in fighting Covid. It began building an emergency-response network for containing infectious diseases after its experience with SARS in 2003, when hundreds became ill and at least 73 died, for the world’s third-highest infection rate. Taiwan later experienced pandemics like bird flu and influenza H1N1. As a result, its residents are acutely aware of disease-fighting habits like hand-washing and mask wearing.
On China’s National Day this year, Thai student Bunkueanun “Francis” Paothong performed a song outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok. “Arise! Ye who would not be slaves again,” a video posted on Twitter showed him operatically singing into the humid evening.
The words famously open China’s national anthem, “The March of the Volunteers.” But they also appear in “Glory to Hong Kong”—the unofficial anthem of Hong Kong’s democracy movement—and it was this that Francis was singing at the Oct. 1 protest. “For Hong Kong, may glory reign!” he intoned.
Written and composed anonymously last year, the song has come to represent Hong Kong’s youth-driven rebellion against Beijing. But its four stanzas are now also sung in Thailand where protesters against the military-backed government and the monarchy are not only adopting tactics of resistance from their Hong Kong counterparts but are also cross-promoting causes.
Though their demands may be different, solidarity between the movements has been building for months. Activists have now joined forces in a so-called “Milk Tea Alliance,” a loose, transnational network of youth who see themselves as engaged in similar fights against authoritarianism and who have mostly come of age amid China’s growing influence in the region.
Named for a beverage popular in Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the #MilkTeaAlliance was forged in the crucible of a meme war in April that pitted Chinese nationalists against democratically minded young people in those places. But it has since spilled into something bigger.
“In each of our countries we face different issues, but when it comes down to it, we share the ideals of democracy,” Francis tells TIME.
Online, the hashtag has been used to push a boycott of Disney’s remake of Mulan and to raise awareness about China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet. Offline, the solidarity its has inspired has increasingly driven real-world action.
Romeo GACAD—AFP/Getty Images Bunkueanun “Francis” Paothongsings during a Milk Tea Alliance protest outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok on Oct. 1, 2020.
In Thailand, demonstrators have chanted “Free Hong Kong,” and waved Hong Kong democracy and Taiwan independence flags. In Taipei, activists, dissidents and students have gathered to show their support for the Thai protests.
“The idea is that we can speak for each other’s values within a relatively safer environment,” says Ted Hui, a Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker who organized an Oct. 19 rally outside the Thai consulate in support of Thai protesters.
Other politicians have taken notice. Taiwan’s vice president has used the hashtag, as has the spokesperson from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“I think this kind of pan-Asian collaboration and solidarity will just enhance the unity of the youth movements and also help China realize their soft power expansion and Wolf Warrior diplomacy is not working,” says prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong.
The alliance, he tells TIME, has vast potential to expand. “If anyone believes in democracy and freedom and is against the authoritarian crackdown, they could also recognize themselves as part of the Milk Tea Alliance.”
The hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance first sprang up on Twitter in April, to counter attacks by pro-Beijing trolls and bots on a Thai celebrity perceived to have slighted China. Actor and teen idol Vachirawit Chivaaree, known as “Bright,” had liked a tweet showing four different cities, including Hong Kong, with a caption that referred to them as “countries.” (Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous territory but being under Chinese sovereignty is not independent.)
Soon, he was bombarded by the kind of jingoistic outrage normally reserved for foreign brands like the N.B.A., Apple and Gap that have irked Beijing. In Bright’s case, patriotic Chinese social media users surmounted the country’s internet firewall to correct the record on Hong Kong’s status.
His apology failed to mollify the internet horde. They dug up more geopolitical offenses in social media accounts belonging to his girlfriend, Weeraya “Nnevvy” Sukaram, including an Instagram post that appeared to suggest the independence of self-ruled democratic Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory.
Bright and Nnevvy’s fans shot back with humorous memes and other counterattacks. Then, the Chinese trolls misfired: they focused their criticism on the Thai government, economy and monarchy, much to the delight of young Thai social media users who enthusiastically agreed. Hong Kong and Taiwanese users started chiming in too, sensing an ideological affinity with the Thais in the fight against autocracy and Beijing’s Twitter army.
“The authoritarian Thai government has censored us for decades … and now certain Chinese nationalists are trying to use [Chinese Communist Party] CCP propaganda to tell us what we can and cannot think about Hong Kong and Taiwan. That’s unacceptable to those of us who believe in freedom of thought and speech,” the Taiwan Alliance for Thai Democracy, a group of Thai students living in Taiwan, stated in an email to TIME.
Once the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok weighed in with a statement insisting “the recent online noises only reflect bias and ignorance,” the resistance solidified.
“While the movement started as a trend, state opposition to it has turned it into a cohesive movement for change which is spreading beyond young people alone,” says Paul Chambers, a Thai politics expert at Naresuan University’s College of Asean Community Studies.
What are the goals of the Milk Tea Alliance?
The preparation of milk tea varies in Thailand (where a food dye gives it its signature bright terracotta color), Hong Kong (where a combination of Sri Lankan black tea and tea dust give it extra potency), and Taiwan (where the addition of tapioca pearls was popularized). In similar fashion, the political struggles in each of these places have their own characteristics.
In Thailand, students have taken to the streets demanding fresh elections under a new constitution, as well as curbs to the powerful monarchy’s prerogatives. In Hong Kong, protesters fear the loss of their city’s political freedoms under an ever-encroaching Beijing. And in Taiwan, activists are anxious over the CCP’s pledge to reunify the island by force if necessary.
Yet each of these struggles also share in the existential battle between democracy and dictatorship.
“I think the alliance proves that democracy is a universal [not just Western] value,” says Tattep “Ford” Ruangprapaikitsere, one of the Thai protest organizers. “Democracy is the only form of government that gives the opportunity for all people to fulfill their dreams.”
Asian activists have also found a common adversary in Beijing—a key ally of Thailand’s military-aligned government.
“The milk tea alliance could potentially turn into a genuine transnational anti-authoritarian movement—a rejection of the Chinese authoritarian model,” says Roger Huang, a politics lecturer at Sydney’s Macquarie University. “There may be some repercussions for China: governments could justify any backlash against China’s more aggressive actions in the region by citing popular opinion.”
Lauren DeCicca—Getty ImagesPro-democracy protesters gather at Victory Monument in Bangkok, Thailand on Oct. 21, 2020.
The coalition has come into existence as negative views of China reach fresh highs in many advanced economies, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. While the coronavirus pandemic—which emerged in China late last year—caused a reputational hit, recent trade and diplomatic disputes with neighboring countries have also prompted anger.
According to Sitthiphon Kruarattikan, director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, the formation of the Milk Tea Alliance “reflects that China is still unsuccessful in cultivating soft power or winning hearts and minds of their Taiwan compatriots and neighboring countries.”
What does China say about the Milk Tea Alliance?
China’s foreign ministry has dismissed the coalition. “People who are pro-Hong Kong independence or pro-Taiwan independence often collude online, this is nothing new. Their conspiracy will never succeed,” spokesman Zhao Lijian told Reuters.
But supporters of the alliance say they are not anti-Chinese per se—instead they are simply finding affinity in their shared pursuit of liberal democracy.
Joshua Wong, in Hong Kong, insists the aim goes beyond opposition to any one country. “It’s not about being anti-Chinese government only, but [about] anti-authoritarian rule everywhere,” he says.
Activists say the outpouring of solidarity makes them feel less alone in their struggle. Social media has also made it much easier for like-minded protesters to band together and find strength in numbers, says Veronica Mak, a sociology professor at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.
“The young people know that their political capital is weak because they don’t have money, and not many of them have political connections. But they have found support and political resonance online,” she says, and that has given them more influence.
Photo by Isaac Wong/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesA man wearing a face mask walks past “#StandWithThailand” graffiti in Hong Kong on Oct. 18, 2020.
Their camaraderie has also opened up a vital pipeline for sharing tactics.
“[We’re] not only talking, we’ve also gotten a lot of knowledge and information from the movement in Hong Kong,” says Ford, the Thai protest organizer.
From tips on staying safe on the barricades to extinguishing smoking tear gas canisters and conducting leaderless rallies that melt away before police can effectively counterattack, Hong Kong has exported its decentralized protest techniques around the world. Activists in the United States, Catalonia, Nigeria and Indonesia have all borrowed from Hong Kong’s playbook.
Some supporters of the Milk Tea Alliance see an opening to join forces across all these movements.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” self-exiled Hong Kong activist Nathan Law recently tweeted, quoting Martin Luther King while expressing support for Thailand and the Milk Tea Alliance.
And while the alliance remains a fledgling movement for now, it has potential for growth.
“We are connected via these common dreams,” says Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, a prominent Thai activist. “It empowers us to have more energy to fight.”
In a speech last week to commemorate 70 years since China’s entry into the Korean War, President Xi Jinping launched a thinly-veiled attack on the U.S. “No blackmailing, blocking or extreme pressuring will work” for those seeking to become “boss of the world,” Xi told veterans and cadres crammed into Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. The 1950-53 Korean War, he went on, “broke the myth that the U.S. military is invincible.”
With U.S.-China relations at a decades-long nadir, it was fitting that Xi threw down the gauntlet on the anniversary of one of the only times the People’s Liberation Army and U.S. troops have faced off on the battlefield—a conflict still known in China as the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.”
The upcoming U.S. election on Nov. 3 could be a turning point for American foreign policy, particularly regarding Beijing, which has borne the brunt of the Trump Administration’s sledgehammer approach to diplomacy. Chinese trade practices, tech companies, diplomats and even students have been in the crosshairs, feeding Beijing’s paranoia that the U.S. is pursuing a Soviet-era policy of containment.
Much hangs in the balance: economics, nuclear proliferation, the climate crisis, human rights as well as possible military confrontations. Whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden controls the White House may decide if the last four years of rancor was an aberration or the new normal for relations between the world’s top two economies.
“China, of course, is very concerned about the election,” says Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing. “If Biden wins, he may take a multilateral approach, more coherence with U.S. alliances. If Trump wins, he’ll definitely continue harsh policies toward China.”
But whoever sits in the Oval Office in January, a return to fulsome engagement appears off the table.
AFP via Getty ImagesContainers are stacked at the port in Qingdao, in China’s eastern Shandong province on November 8, 2019. – China’s exports suffered their third month of decline in October, and while the drop was less than expected there were warnings on November 8 of more pain to come as the US trade war rumbles on.
Global rivalry between the U.S. and China
Washington’s attempts to isolate Beijing from an integrated and interconnected global economy have forced U.S. companies to relinquish established supply chains in China. Senior administration hawks like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have also openly questioned the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and called for regime change.
As a result, the U.S. is losing the goodwill of ordinary Chinese, with moderate voices within society replaced by resurgent nationalism. Meanwhile, the vacuum created by the Trump Administration’s America First approach has allowed Beijing to co-opt international institutions. China now sits on the U.N. Human Rights Council despite detaining one million Muslims in its far west region of Xinjiang. It champions the Paris Climate Accords and free trade despite, being the world’s worst polluter and propping up key industries with state funds.
This has allowed China to develop a narrative that it is reasserting its rightful place in global leadership while the U.S is in terminal decline—riven by income inequality, political polarization, racial injustice and toxic nativism. That has been strengthened this year by Trump’s inability or unwillingness to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. while China has successfully controlled the coronavirus within its borders and is the only major economy heading for growth this year.
At the same time, China has torpedoed some of its relationships around the world as it seeks to swell its influence. When the normally urbane Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Europe late August—ironically to smooth trade tensions—he threatened Norway with reprisals were it to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Hong Kong protesters, and swore that the president of the Czech senate would pay a “heavy price” for visiting the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province. (The affront prompted the Mayor of Prague to brand Chinese diplomats “rude clowns.”) On Oct. 21, China responded to Sweden’s decision to ban Huawei from its 5G network by threatening a “negative impact” on Swedish companies.
Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesU.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Xi Jinping, China’s president, shake hands during a news conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2017.
China’s military capability
Worryingly, Beijing’s hawkish Wolf Warrior diplomacy has gone beyond rhetoric and strayed into saber-rattling with U.S. allies. In recent months, China has ramped up military drills around Taiwan, sailed a record number of sorties into Japan’s territorial waters and engaged in deadly Himalayan border clashes with India. This appears to be more than mere chest-thumping; analysts suspect that China may be pitting its formidable yet untested military against unprepared foes in order to better gauge its own capabilities as well as the likelihood of an international backlash.
“India is a perfect target because it’s not a treaty ally of anybody,” says John Pomfret, a former Beijing bureau chief for the WashingtonPost and author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. “You push the Indians around a little bit, declare victory and leave. That would signal the rest of the world that China’s big and bad and can do this type of stuff so watch out.”
Beijing insists that it is the victim of Indian aggression in the recent Himalayan skirmishes. But it is less meek about designs for Taiwan, which split politically from the mainland following China’s 1927-1949 civil war and is by far the CCP’s most coveted prize. Xi considers reuniting the island with the mainland a historic “mission” and analysts agree it is the most likely issue to force a military confrontation between the superpowers.
In an Oct. 10 speech, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen called for “reconciliation and peaceful dialogue” with Beijing. Instead, Beijing responded within hours by releasing previously unseen footage of a large-scale military exercise simulating the invasion of an unidentified island, as well as video of a staged confession from a Taiwanese businessman charged with spying on the mainland.
Oriana Skylar Mastro, a specialist on China’s military at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, says that up until 2015 the main consideration of Chinese military leaders was Washington’s resolve to defend Taiwan. Now, however, she says they tell her: “It doesn’t matter. We would still win.”
The veracity of those sentiments is a matter of hot debate, but concerningly, “China has a remarkable tendency to overestimate its power,” says Pomfret. In September, the PLA Air Force released a video on its official social media showing nuclear-capable H-6 bombers carrying out a simulated raid on what looks like Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. Pacific island of Guam. In a clear reference to U.S. support for Taiwan, Xi told the Great Hall of the People last week that any attempt to invade or separate China’s “sacred territory” will be met “with a head-on blow!”
Photo by Andrea Verdelli/Getty ImagesSoldiers of the People’s Liberation Army march during a parade to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, at Tiananmen Square on October 1, 2019 in Beijing, China.
Sino-U.S. relations after the election
It’s a precarious situation in need of deft diplomacy. Some China hawks in the Trump Administration are calling for Taiwan to be provided with an explicit U.S. defense guarantee. But that would be “provocative and expensive,” says Benjamin H. Friedman, policy director for the nonpartisan Defense Priorities think tank. “I’m not in favor.”
Trump’s distaste for multinational institutions like NATO, and dislike of U.S. troop deployments overseas, has made America’s allies take their own security more seriously. On Monday, the U.S. State Department approved the sale of 100 Boeing-made Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems to Taiwan in a deal worth as much as $2.37 billion, prompting China to impose sanctions on the U.S. companies involved.
“Taiwan could do more, Japan could do more,” says Friedman. “They could buy more defensive systems, particularly mobile missiles and radar that will make it harder to be invaded.”
Biden, by contrast, has voiced support for a multilateral approach in the region, restoring America’s role in global governance and re-establishing a liberal democratic order. Writing on Oct. 22 in World Journal, America’s largest Chinese-language newspaper, Biden vowed to “stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity and values in the Asia-Pacific region … That includes deepening our ties with Taiwan, a leading democracy, major economy, technology powerhouse—and a shining example of how an open society can effectively contain COVID-19.”
Biden has railed against Trump’s trade war—which studies estimate has trimmed 0.7% from U.S. GDP—and would likely rollback many tariffs. He also said that he would organize and host a global Summit for Democracy to “renew the spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the free world” during his first year in office.
Reasserting such historic alliances could cause Beijing much heartburn. “We are 25% of the world’s economy,” Biden told the audience at the final presidential debate Oct. 23. “We need to have the rest of our friends with us saying to China, ‘These are the rules, you play by them or you will pay the price for not playing by them, economically.’”
While there’s no doubt that Biden would be tougher on China than Obama, many in diplomatic circles hope he could reopen lines of communication with Beijing to seek pragmatic solutions on trade, the environment, human rights and other issues. America still has many tools. The dollar’s role as global reserve currency has become more important during the pandemic. And the U.S. still boasts the world’s biggest economy, spearheading innovation.
But the U.S. has never faced a rival that can compete economically and militarily as China can. In the week before his Korean War anniversary speech, Xi addressed the nation on state-run television: “We Chinese know well we must speak to invaders with the language they understand,” he said. “So we use war to stop war, we use military might to stop hostility, we win peace and respect with victory. In the face of difficulty or danger, our legs do not tremble, our backs do not bend.”
