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    Map: Tracking Tropical Storm Yagi

    Yagi was a tropical storm in the South China Sea Tuesday morning Hong Kong time, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center said in its latest advisory. The tropical storm had sustained wind speeds of 46 miles per hour.  All times on the map are Hong Kong time. By The New York Times Where will it rain? […] More

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    Hong Kong Taunts Italy With Pineapple Pizza After Olympics Fencing Win

    After a fencer from Hong Kong beat an Italian for a gold medal, Pizza Hut’s offer of free pineapple toppings in Hong Kong was the city’s second jab at Italy.Losing an Olympic fencing title bout to the champion from Hong Kong was difficult enough for the Italian. Then came the pizza slander.Cheung Ka Long’s triumph over Filippo Macchi of Italy in the gold medal bout in men’s foil on Monday has led to a sour fallout that has spilled off the fencing strip: Pizza Hut’s Hong Kong and Macao branch has offered free pineapple toppings on its pies as fans on social media praised the combination widely shunned by the losing side.“All Hong Kong people are very happy and excited today!” the branch said in a Facebook post on Tuesday announcing the offer, adding it was also celebrating a bronze medal the Chinese territory had won on Monday, in the women’s 200-meter freestyle.Pizza Hut Hong Kong and MacauFor Hong Kong, which has already doubled its total historical gold medal count, to four, this week, the Paris Olympics have been an occasion for major celebration. After winning one in 1996 and another in 2021, it has won two golds this year, both in fencing. Vivian Kong clinched a title in the women’s épée individual competition.People in Italy, which has the most Olympic fencing medals of any nation, were disgruntled after referees ruled in favor of Hong Kong in what was a tightly fought men’s foil match. Controversy surrounded the final point, awarded after referees replayed footage on three separate occasions while both players were convinced they had won.Cheung eventually came out on top, with a 15-14 victory. He became the first athlete from Hong Kong to win two Olympic gold medals, and the third man to defend his title in the event.“It’s insane for me because I try hard every day to fight, to come to Paris, to France, to qualify for the Olympics,” he said after his win. “Now, another dream has come true.”The Italian Fencing Federation said in a statement on Monday that it would file a formal complaint over what it called “unacceptable refereeing.”“Filippo Macchi is the real winner,” Paolo Azzi, the federation’s president, wrote on social media. “He was denied the gold he deserved.”In response, Hong Kong fans launched a full-scale assault on Italian cuisine. “I like pineapple pizza and pasta with soy sauce,” one user wrote on Cheung’s Instagram page. The comment was followed by others celebrating the scandalous faux pas in Italian cooking.Advertisements for Pizza Hut and KFC in Hong Kong, in 2022.Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images, via Getty ImagesMacchi, who was competing in his first Olympics, said on social media that he did not want to blame the referees.“A long time ago, a person dear to me, as well as a great champion, told me: ‘You always celebrate a medal!’” he wrote. “And indeed this medal deserves joy and happiness.” More

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    Hong Kong to Rule on Democrats in Largest National Security Trial

    Forty-seven pro-democracy activists face prison time for holding a primary election as Beijing cracks down on even peaceful political opposition.A Hong Kong court will begin issuing verdicts on Thursday in the city’s largest national security trial, as the authorities use sweeping powers imposed by Beijing to quash political dissent in the Chinese territory.The 47 pro-democracy activists and opposition leaders in the trial — including Benny Tai, a former law professor, and Joshua Wong, a protest leader and founder of a student group — face prison sentences, in some cases for perhaps as long as life. Their offense: holding a primary election to improve their chances in citywide polls.Most of the defendants have spent at least the last three years in detention ahead of and during the 118-day trial. On Thursday, judges picked by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader were set to start handing down verdicts on 16 of them who had pleaded not guilty. Those who are convicted will be sentenced later, along with 31 others who had entered guilty pleas.The expected convictions and the sentences to follow would effectively turn the vanguard of the city’s opposition, a hallmark of its once-vibrant political scene, into a generation of political prisoners. Some are former lawmakers who joined politics after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule by the British in 1997. Others are activists and legislators who have advocated self-determination for Hong Kong with more confrontational tactics. Several, like Mr. Wong, who rose to fame as a bespectacled teenage activist, were among the students leading large street occupations for the right to vote in 2014.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why a Tactic Used by Czars Is Back With a Vengeance

    Authoritarian governments have long sought to target dissidents abroad. But the digital age may have given them stronger motives, and better tools, for transnational repression.Diplomatic tensions are rising here in London. On Tuesday, the British foreign ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador for an official reprimand. The day before, the police charged three men with aiding the Hong Kong intelligence service and forcing entry into a residential address.In a statement, the Foreign Office criticized “the recent pattern of behavior directed by China against the U.K,” and cited, among other things, Hong Kong’s issuing of bounties for information on dissidents who have resettled in Britain and elsewhere.I’m not going to speculate on whether the three men are guilty or innocent, as their court case is ongoing. But the arrests have drawn attention to the phenomenon of “transnational repression,” in which autocratic governments surveil, harass or even attack their own citizens abroad. Last month, following a string of attacks on Iranian journalists, Reporters Without Borders proclaimed London a “hot spot” for the phenomenon.Although transnational repression is an old practice, it appears to be gaining prevalence. Globalization and the internet have made it easier for exiles to engage in activism, and have also increased autocracies’ desire — and ability — to crack down on political activity in their diasporas.“Everyone is online,” said Dana Moss, a professor at Notre Dame who coedited a recent book about transnational repression. “And we all have tracking devices called smartphones in our pockets.”Is transnational repression on the rise, or does it just feel like that?“This is a very old phenomenon,” said Marlies Glasius, a professor of international relations at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. “We know that the czarist regimes, for instance, kept tabs on Russian dissidents in Paris.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Heavy Rains and a Water Spout Hit Southern China

    Bad weather in Guangdong Province forced evacuations as forecasters warned of more rain and potential flooding.Torrential rain battered Southern China on Sunday, causing flooding and forcing tens of thousands of evacuations in the country’s most populous province, as a waterspout appeared briefly in Hong Kong and forecasters warned of potentially severe flooding.Rain has been falling in Guangdong, which has a population of about 127 million people, since last week. It intensified over the weekend, hammering the north of the province and the Pearl River Delta in the south, which includes Guangdong’s capital, Guangzhou, as well as the cities of Hong Kong and Macau.The city of Yingde, in Guangdong’s north, received nearly a foot of rain from Friday to Sunday, the state owned China Daily newspaper reported on Sunday. Nearly 20,000 people were evacuated and nine rivers were at risk of overflowing, it said.In Guangzhou, the Longxue neighborhood received nearly five inches of rain over four hours on Sunday morning, the highest amount in the province. The Beijiang River, a tributary of the Pearl River, flooded on Saturday night, China’s Ministry of Water Resources said on Sunday. As the downpour continued, the river faced a risk of a “exceptionally large” flooding through Monday, the ministry said.And in Hong Kong, a Chinese territory south of Guangdong, a waterspout was sighted over water by the local meteorological agency on Sunday morning. Waterspouts are whirling columns of air and water mist that form when cold air moves over warmer water, drawing up moisture.There were no reports of the waterspout causing damage, and a rainstorm warning for the city was canceled at 2 p.m. But forecasters warned of violent winds and possible flooding.Heavy rain was also affecting parts of the neighboring Chinese provinces of Guangxi, Jiangxi and Fujian on Sunday.The heaviest rain was forecast to shift from the north to the east of Guangdong on Monday, and some areas could receive up to 10 inches of rain over 24 hours, according to the China Weather Network, an arm of the country’s meteorological authority. The rainfall was expected to begin easing on Tuesday.Thunderstorms and sometimes heavy showers were also forecast for Hong Kong on Monday. More

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    Outdoor Art to See in Hong Kong This Spring

    Eye-popping pieces are cropping up around Victoria Harbor this month, just in time for Art Basel Hong Kong.This month, just before Art Basel Hong Kong begins, an array of artworks — some towering, some glowing, another harking back to old Hong Kong — will pop up outside the walls of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center.Five of these new, large-scale works were commissioned by a department of Hong Kong’s government for its outdoor art project, “Art@Harbour,” the harbor being Victoria Harbor, which separates Hong Kong Island from the Kowloon Peninsula.Another piece was jointly commissioned by M+, Hong Kong’s contemporary art museum, and Art Basel Hong Kong. That work, a new black-and-white film by the Chinese artist and filmmaker Yang Fudong, “Sparrow on the Sea,” will be projected on the museum’s facade nightly.One of the “Art@Harbour” projects, “Schrödinger’s Bed,” is by the Hong Kong artist Dylan Kwok.Mr. Kwok’s work is named after Schrödinger’s cat, the famous thought experiment by the theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger.That experiment, which the scientist proposed as a commentary on quantum mechanics, suggests that, if a cat is inside a sealed box with something which may kill it, it is impossible to know whether the cat is alive or dead until you observe the cat. So, until you open the box, the cat is at once both dead and alive.Mr. Kwok explained by email that his installation, in Tamar Park, a waterfront green space in the Admiralty district, “consists of nine futuristic daybeds that are placed in a tic-tac-toe alignment. Six inflatable cats in checkerboard patterns are (randomly) seated or lay on six daybeds out of the total of nine.” These outdoor couches are programmed to glow in differing patterns from 6 p.m. to midnight, he added, to surprise visitors sitting on them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Real Estate Giant China Evergrande Will Be Liquidated

    After multiple delays and even a few faint glimmers of hope, a Hong Kong court has sounded the death knell for what was once China’s biggest real estate firm.Months after China Evergrande ran out of cash and defaulted in 2021, investors around the world scooped up the property developer’s discounted I.O.U.’s, betting that the Chinese government would eventually step in to bail it out.On Monday it became clear just how misguided that bet was. After two years in limbo, Evergrande was ordered by a court in Hong Kong to liquidate, a move that will set off a race by lawyers to find and grab anything belonging to Evergrande that can be sold.The order is also likely to send shock waves through financial markets that are already skittish about China’s economy.Evergrande is a real estate developer with more than $300 billion in debt, sitting in the middle of the world’s biggest housing crisis. There isn’t much left in its sprawling empire that is worth much. And even those assets may be off limits because property in China has become intertwined with politics.Evergrande, as well as other developers, overbuilt and over promised, taking money for apartments that had not been built and leaving hundreds of thousands of home buyers waiting on their apartments. Now that dozens of these companies have defaulted, the government is frantically trying to force them to finish the apartments, putting everyone in a difficult position because contractors and builders have not been paid for years.What happens next in the unwinding of Evergrande will test the belief long held by foreign investors that China will treat them fairly. The outcome could help spur or further tamp down the flow of money into Chinese markets when global confidence in China is already shaken.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    In Hong Kong, 47 Democracy Leaders on Trial for Security Charges

    Forty-seven defendants, including well-known figures like Joshua Wong, are charged with subversion under the national security law that China imposed in 2020.The political candidates represented the vanguard of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Numbering in the dozens, they had planned to run for the city’s legislature in 2020, after months of turbulent protests calling for greater freedom from China.By the time the election was held, more than a year later, none of the candidates could run. Most were in jail, where many still languish today, charged with subversion in the largest case yet involving the national security law Beijing imposed on the city in 2020. Their arrests laid bare the lengths to which China’s government would go to crush dissent in Hong Kong, which was long accustomed to many of the freedoms of speech and assembly found in the West.After years of fits and starts, the trial involving the 47 pro-democracy lawmakers, academics and activists began on Monday at a courthouse in Hong Kong amid tight security. Large police vehicles lined the roads nearby as a line of more than 100 people snaked around the courthouse in the early morning, waiting to enter. Because there were so many defendants, the court broadcast the proceedings into several other rooms.Of the 47 defendants, only 16 are contesting the charges. The rest entered guilty pleas, including Joshua Wong, one of the most globally recognized Hong Kong pro-democracy figures, and Benny Tai, a former law professor. As one of the defendants, Ng Kin-wai, a former district official, took the stand, he declared, sarcastically: “I tried to commit subversion against the totalitarian regime, but failed. I plead guilty.”Most of the defendants, if not all, are expected to receive prison sentences, which could range from less than three years to life.Joshua Wong at a news conference in 2020.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“The trial of the 47 represents a turning point in the crackdown because it reveals the true purpose of the national security law,” said Victoria Hui, an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame who studies Hong Kong.“They’re not targeting a small minority of people throwing petrol bombs,” Professor Hui said. “Those people have already been arrested. Instead, they’re targeting the legitimate opposition, people who believed there was still a little bit left to defend of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedom.”Already, the defendants’ arrests and lengthy detention have dealt a blow to the remaining vestiges of civil society. The 47 defendants, who comprise 42 opposition candidates and five election organizers, come from a cross-section of Hong Kong — politicians, academics, union organizers and journalists.They include Claudia Mo, 66, a veteran journalist-turned-politician known to many as “Auntie Mo”; Eddie Chu, 45, a former legislator and early champion of the city’s “localist” movement, which aimed to preserve Hong Kong’s identity; Carol Ng, 52, an ex-flight attendant and labor activist; and Gwyneth Ho, 32, a former journalist, who famously reported from the scene of a mob attack on antigovernment demonstrators trapped in a subway station.Covid-19 in ChinaThe decision by the Chinese government to cast aside its restrictive “zero Covid” policy at the end of 2022 set off an explosive Covid outbreak.A Receding Wave: Two months after China abandoned its Covid rules, the worst seems to have passed, and the government is eager to shift attention to economic recovery. Economic Challenges: Years of Covid lockdowns took a brutal toll on Chinese businesses. Now, the rapid spread of the virus after a chaotic reopening has deprived them of workers and customers.Digital Finger-Pointing: The Communist Party’s efforts to limit discord over its sudden “zero Covid” pivot are being challenged with increasing rancor on the internet.To take stock of the group’s plight is to recognize how much Hong Kong has been transformed since pro-democracy protests erupted in 2019.A stream of people waiting to vote in an unofficial primary election in Hong Kong in 2020.Jerome Favre/EPA, via ShutterstockChina’s subsequent crackdown brought changes that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: an ideological makeover of the public education system; the demise of one of Asia’s most staunchly independent media industries; the arrest of Hong Kong’s highest-ranking Roman Catholic cleric, the nonagenarian Cardinal Joseph Zen; and the erasure of political opposition in Hong Kong’s legislature, paving the way for passage of pro-Beijing laws like a “patriots only” litmus test for political candidates. The high degree of autonomy Hong Kong was promised for 50 years after Britain returned the former colony to China in 1997 has all but eroded.No change, however, has been more dramatic than those taking place in Hong Kong’s legal system, which has been superseded by the national security law — a harsh reality being felt acutely by the 47 democrats.They are charged with trying to subvert state power for their roles in an unofficial “primary election.” The poll was an attempt by the opposition to select its best candidates, as part of a last-ditch effort to win enough seats in the legislature to block the government’s budget. The budget maneuver, sanctioned under Hong Kong law, could have dissolved the legislature and forced Carrie Lam, then the city’s top official, to step down.Nearly three-quarters of the 47 democrats are currently in jail — and, in most cases, have been since they were formally charged nearly two years ago, on Feb. 28, 2021. Such long detention is unusual for Hong Kong, where defendants in other types of cases are often able to get bail. The national security law’s sweeping provisions, however, include a high threshold for bail, which in effect lets the authorities hold defendants for months or even years before trial. Critics say that amounts to a presumption that defendants are guilty.Supporters unfurling banners calling for the release of Hong Kong’s 47 defendants in 2021.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesSupporters of the activists say their detention has caused enormous mental strain, particularly for those held in solitary confinement. Some of them are already in prison, serving sentences on other charges. Sam Cheung, a 27-year-old elected official representing a small district, missed the birth of his first child. Tiffany Yuen, 29, another district official, was not permitted to leave prison for the funeral of her grandmother.Mr. Tai, the former law professor, is expected to receive the harshest sentence at the end of the 90-day trial because of his role devising the plan to hold the primary election.The security law requires judges to impose minimum sentences anywhere from three to 10 years, but defendants can receive lighter punishments if they testify against others. Prosecutors have already indicated that three of the 47 democrats who helped organize the primary had agreed to provide testimony.Activists and legal experts say the strategy is designed to sow mistrust among the defendants and, combined with the grueling detentions, break their morale, to make them more willing to cooperate with prosecutors. The coercive tactic, scholars say, highlights another way that Hong Kong is adopting norms from mainland China.“So far as you get a guilty plea, that gives the regime the opportunity to make the point that these wrongdoers have known the error in their ways,” said Eva Pils, a law scholar at Kings College London who studies China.The penalizing of political opposition in Hong Kong’s legislature paved the way for the passage of pro-Beijing laws, including a “patriots-only” litmus test for political candidates.Anthony Kwan/Getty ImagesBy pressuring the defendants individually, the authorities also undermine the democracy movement overall, said Ted Hui, a former lawmaker who fled Hong Kong a month before the 47 were arrested.While acknowledging the emotional distress the group was under, Mr. Hui said that for any defendant to provide evidence that could implicate another would amount to a betrayal.“I understand the circumstances, but I’m still angry and heartbroken,” Mr. Hui said by telephone from Adelaide, Australia. “I also cannot say it’s entirely their fault, because the circumstances are created by the pressures of the regime. This has hurt the democracy movement. That is one of the goals achieved by the regime — to divide us.”The trial has stirred difficult and complicated emotions within the small community of lawmakers and activists who were able to flee Hong Kong before they could be arrested.Nathan Law, a prominent pro-democracy advocate and candidate in the primary election who escaped days before the passage of the national security law, said it was painful to read about close friends and fellow activists such as Mr. Wong facing long prison terms.“They were just participating in a primary election,” Mr. Law said from London. “None of us would think of that as something that would be named as subversion that could lead to years of imprisonment.” “Through these cases, you also understand that the Hong Kong we used to know is gone,” he said.The trial of the 47 is one of several national security cases winding their way through Hong Kong’s courts. Few have attracted more attention than that of Jimmy Lai, the 75-year-old founder of the tabloid newspaper Apple Daily, which was forced to close down in 2021. Mr. Lai, a longtime critic of China’s ruling Communist Party, has been serving a five-year, nine-month sentence on what human rights groups say are trumped-up charges of fraud. He is also facing trial on the national security offense of colluding with foreign forces.The ratcheting-up of prosecutions marks the beginning of a new, more authoritarian era in Hong Kong, observers say, one in which political persecution will be used to strike fear in people so that few will consider protesting or challenging Beijing’s authority again.“What they’re trying to do is to redraw the lines of acceptable, peaceful political activity,” said Thomas Kellogg, the executive director of the Center for Asian Law. More