Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Sunday 30 November 2014
China urges Taiwan to keep ties after poll loss
China urged Taiwan to protect the gains of landmark cooperation between the mainland and the self-ruled island after Taiwan's pro-Beijing ruling party was routed in local elections.
The defeat in Saturday's elections of the Nationalist Party, which lost nine cities and counties, including its longtime strongholds Taipei, the capital, and the major central city of Taichung, led to the resignation of Premier Jiang Yi-huah, who heads the Cabinet. President Ma Ying-jeou promised to make changes.
The election losses could jeopardize six years of talks with China that have led to 21 agreements, helping to lift Taiwan's half-trillion-dollar economy, while raising Beijing's hopes for political reunification. Beijing has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, but since taking office in 2008, Ma has set aside the old disputes to ease tensions through talks.
A top Chinese official on Saturday night urged people in Taiwan to protect those gains.
"We hope compatriots across the Strait will cherish hard-won fruits of cross-strait relations, and jointly safeguard and continue to push forward peaceful development of cross-strait relations," said Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office.
Taiwanese have been watching closely as Beijing takes a hard-line stance on demands for democratic rule in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese city that has been gripped by more two months of pro-democracy protests.
The heavy losses will make it tougher for Ma's Nationalists to hold onto the presidency in 2016.
"I must express apologies to the Nationalist Party and its supporters for making everyone disappointed," Ma told a news conference. "I've received the message people have sent via these elections. It's my responsibility and I will quickly offer a party reform plan to address everyone's demands. I won't avoid responsibility."
The chief opposition Democratic Progressive Party picked up seven offices in Saturday's elections. It favors continuing talks with China's Communist leadership, but disputes the dialogue framework that binds the two sides under Beijing's jurisdiction, instead preferring talks in an international setting.
"We want to send the Nationalists a warning," said Lin Wen-chih, a 48-year-old film producer who voted for the winning independent Taipei mayoral candidate, Ko Wen-je. "Taiwan is an independent country. We don't want the Nationalists to take measures that would have it eaten up (by China)."
A weakened Nationalist Party, also known as the Kuomintang, or KMT, may erode Ma's mandate before 2016 to sign a pact with China to cut import tariffs, set up official representative offices on both sides and push for a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. If the opposition party wins the presidency, Beijing is likely to suspend deals with Taiwan.
In March, Ma's government faced thousands of student-led protesters who occupied parliament and nearby streets in Taipei to stop ratification of a service trade liberalization agreement with China.
AP
Saturday 22 November 2014
Putin's Tiger Gains Weight after Living in China
Vladimir Putin's tiger Kuzya has reportedly gained some weight after being spotted inside Chinese territory, having probably feasted on wild boars and roe deer.
The Russian president set free three rare Siberian tigers over a month ago.
Kuzya, first of three Siberian tigers released by Putin, was detected earlier this month several hundred meters away from the Sino-Russian border river in the Taipinggou nature reserve, in northeast China's Heilongjiang province.
Reports say Kuzya may spend the winter here.
CRIENGLISH
Baidu introduces smart bike
chinadaily
Thursday 6 November 2014
OnePlus has sold 500,000 phones so far, half of them in China
Pei explained to Tech in Asia via email that half of those phones sold are in China.
OnePlus makes only one gadget at the moment, the Android-based OnePlus One, which has received largely positive reviews from around the world for being a solid yet powerful phone for just US$300.
While one million would be a solid tally for OnePlus’ first eight months in business, it seems clear that the new brand, which is a spin-off from Oppo, is not seeing the same traction as Xiaomi. The disruptive Xiaomi, which first started making affordable smartphones in late 2011, sold 7.2 million phones in 2012, its first full year in business. Xiaomi plans to sell 60 million this year.
Pei also explained to Forbes that – following the lead of Xiaomi again – OnePlus is looking into making a variety of gadget accessories in order to boost its revenues. “We’ve made a really social brand that people are fans of. If we make lifestyle products or specialized accessories, I think those will do really well,” he added.
The need to make money from other channels is imperative because, as Pei reveals, OnePlus makes a mere “single-figure dollar amount on each phone” that it sells. It’s already running a trimmed-down business that only sells online and has minimal inventory. But that makes it tough to ramp up production. Pei replied to our question about manufacturing constraints by explaining: “Manufacturing capacity has never been the issue, but rather planning. A key component [of the phone] has a three-month order lead time, and due to us not having large margins, we can’t afford to manufacture more than we’re sure to sell.”
TechInAsia
Sunday 19 October 2014
China’s Hasee uses iPhone 6 launch to promote itself by breaking iPhones
The iPhone 6 launched in China today, and as usual there were crowds at Apple Stores across the Middle Kingdom. In fact, these launch events have become big enough that apparently other tech companies are now using them for viral marketing.
Chinese tech company Hasee, which makes PCs and smartphones, dispatched people wearing yellow “Hasee” shirts and carrying big yellow signs to Apple stores in Beijing, Kunming, Chengdu, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Shijiazhuang, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Nanning, Xi’an, Shanghai, Nanchang, Shenzhen, Hefei, Zhengzhou, and Guiyang. The signs read “straight men don’t bend” – a reference to the reports of the new iPhones bending in people’s pockets – and at at least some of the stores, an additional Hasee rep appeared to bend and then snap an iPhone 6 in half. For example, the video below was taken in Shenzhen:
Chinese tech company Hasee, which makes PCs and smartphones, dispatched people wearing yellow “Hasee” shirts and carrying big yellow signs to Apple stores in Beijing, Kunming, Chengdu, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Shijiazhuang, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Nanning, Xi’an, Shanghai, Nanchang, Shenzhen, Hefei, Zhengzhou, and Guiyang. The signs read “straight men don’t bend” – a reference to the reports of the new iPhones bending in people’s pockets – and at at least some of the stores, an additional Hasee rep appeared to bend and then snap an iPhone 6 in half. For example, the video below was taken in Shenzhen:
The silence of a bomb: China's first nuclear test
(Xinhua) -- Fifty years on, Du Xueyou still hears the deafening sound of China's first nuclear bomb in a remote northwestern desert on Oct 16, 1964. He was there. He helped create it.
GO TO THE FRONT
The story begins with the film "Gold-Silver Sands," or "Jinyintan" in Chinese. The film depicted the lives of herdsmen living on the grasslands of the same name in a Tibetan autonomous prefecture in northwest China's Qinghai Province. It became a hit when it was released in 1954.
Despite obvious critical and market success, it was withdrawn from theaters soon after a short public appearance, with no specific reasons given.
Du didn't get to see the film, but a mysterious trip four years later would connect him to its disappearance from cinemas.
Early in the winter of 1958, Du, 23, then a hoist technician with a mining machinery factory in Luoyang in central China's Henan Province, left his pregnant wife for a mission unknown. He was on a train heading west with several dozens of his colleagues. None of them knew what the exact destination was.
"All I knew was to go to the front," Du told Xinhua.
After almost a whole day on the train, they were transferred to trucks, which carried them to a barren grassland over another two days. The place, which is known by locals as Jinyintan, covers an area of more than 1,100 sq km and features plains surrounded by mountains on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.
In the summer of that year, Jinyintan was selected as the location of China's first nuclear testing base, a Chinese counterpart to Oak Ridge, the U.S. "Atomic City" established in 1942.
Du was told they would build a factory there, and he knew its name later -- Factory 221. But again, he didn't know what the factory would produce.
"We were told not to pry, but we guessed it must be something big, and it had something to do with national defense because '221' is more like a military code name. We were all excited," Du recalled.
However, the "big project" had to start from zero. Du recalled he spent the first night on Jinyintan in a self-made tent and it was snowing all night.
"We put on all the clothes we had, but found we all became Santa Clauses the next morning as our faces were all frosty," Du said.
That's all it took to disillusion him.
The hardship was far beyond his imagination. The height of construction from 1959 to 1961 coincided with a nationwide famine caused by natural disasters. Du found himself in survival mode as the food supply quota per person was only 10 kg per month.
"We were so starving that our legs were swollen, a typical sign of malnutrition. We had to look for mushrooms and hunt in the mountains for food," recalled Du.
Despite the hardships, the base was built in 1963. Du took his first bath in five years that summer. He was given an even bigger bonus -- a vacation back to Henan to visit his family, including his five-year-old son he had never seen in person.
While Du was back for a long-awaited family reunion, Liu Zhaoming, an explosives engineer, left a Beijing-based institute for an unknown destination.
"I was only told to go to the front," Liu told Xinhua.
He also arrived at Factory 221 and worked in an explosives lab.
"You could never imagine how simple the lab's facilities were. We used bronze saws to cut the explosives with no insulation protection at all. It was really dangerous. After all, an explosion could happen any time," said Liu.
Liu had no idea that he was one of more than 10,000 scientists and engineers working for the country's first atomic bomb. They worked in more than 400 factories and scientific research organizations, which were scattered among 20 provincial regions. They were preparing different parts of the bomb and most of them didn't know the final product was a nuclear weapon.
On 6 June 1963, China successfully detonated a quasi-atomic bomb, which contained no nuclear material, at the Jinyintan base, paving the way for its first formal nuclear test.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
Du was once again on a train westward to a "mysterious front" at the end of 1963. The destination was Lop Nur in the desert of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, more than 1,600 km northwest of Jinyintan.
He and his colleagues worked on the construction of a new nuclear test base. It seemed overwhelming to start. However, a 102 meter-tall tower to carry China's first atomic bomb was raised in the Gobi within several months.
"People often ask me how you can keep on working under such extreme difficult conditions. I tell them I didn't know the feeling of not being hungry before I was 15, when the New China (People's Republic of China) was founded in 1949 and changed my life," he said.
"Most of my colleagues had gone through the same dark days as I did. So, we were clear about what people's lives were like when their home country was weak and bullied. I believed if I worked hard enough, my child would not have to live a childhood of suffering as I did," said Du.
"That's why the bomb was later called the bomb of courage," he said.
A declassified official record said that a total of 5,058 people, including Du, participated in the final preparation for the bomb's detonation in Lop Nur.
The last group of workers evacuated from the bomb site to an observation spot 60 km away after the detonators were connected to the atomic bomb at 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 16, 1964.
"I was one of the last group of people leaving the site. I didn't know the bomb actually exploded before my eyes. I didn't think of the dangers at all, just feeling time going too slowly," said Du.
At around 3.p.m., a concussive detonation rumbled through the desert, and Du saw a mushroom cloud rising from the Gobi. On that day, China successfully conducted its first nuclear test, making it the fifth nuclear-armed state after the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France.
"I was so happy that I took off the goggles and my hat, cheering with the crowd. A solider nearby reminded me to put on protection. I owe him a lot. Without him, my eyes would have been damaged," said Du.
The night after the explosion, the Chinese government published a declaration, announcing that the bomb was made for defense use and to break the "nuclear monopoly." It also promised that "at no time and under no circumstances will China be the first to use nuclear weapons."
Liu Zhaoming heard the news through radio that night, and one month later, he saw the mushroom cloud of the nuclear test in a documentary only shown at Factory 211.
"Finally, I could confirm that my work over the past 18 months had actually been for making an atomic bomb," said Liu.
"I felt proud and relieved. The 'Cold War' tension was high at that time. Those who opposed atomic bombs must have the bomb first. It was an inevitable choice for China to develop its own nuclear weapons at that time," he said.
UNDYING RELICS
Later at the Jinyintan base, China successfully developed its first hydrogen bomb and conducted nuclear tests 16 times.
The Chinese government suspended its nuclear weapons program on July 30, 1996. Prior to that, it gradually converted the once secret nuclear testing bases and sites into civilian areas.
The Jinyintan Base was abandoned in 1987. It was handed over to the Qinghai Provincial Government in 1993 when tests showed that environmental factors in the locality met international standards.
Many places in the region had no names, just code numbers. The former atomic city was given the name Xihai Town, the regional capital of the Haibei Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
Du and Liu, both retired from Factory 221, moved to live in a special compound built in downtown Xining, the provincial capital of Qinghai, for some 600 former atomic city workers in 1990.
"I sort of put the bomb behind me, but I can never forget it. For me, it was the most profound experience of our lives," Du said.
Many of his former colleagues and neighbors have passed away over the past 24 years. Now, only about 300 remain alive. Their stories are known to few people, even to their own families.
Tao Wenzhao, a professor of international politics and relations at Beijing-based Renmin University of China, called for public awareness of the secretive past.
"To remember the past is to commit oneself to the future. The spirit of sacrifice, cooperation and perseverance of the older generation is a treasure for all time," said Tao.
"Though the world is no longer in the restless fears of nuclear war or threats since the Cold War ended in the 1990s, nuclear weapons remain a symbol of power for big countries. They will still be there and the whole world needs to work together for peace," he said.
Jinyintan underwent a similar journey of alienation and re-engagement. An atomic energy museum, built on the former military zone, opened to the public in 2009. It has since become a major tourist attraction.
Du returned to Jinyintan in 2010 for the first time in two decades as a visitor to the museum. All his memories were reawakened. After a long silence, he said, "I hope I will never hear the same sound again."
Saturday 18 October 2014
Fire exposes illegal Chinese factories in Italy
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Business
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(AP) — The first thing the firefighters saw was the arm sticking out of the barred window on the second floor of the factory. Flames reached through the partially collapsed roof and a high column of smoke darkened the winter sky. This fire had been burning for some time.
The fire station is two minutes from the Teresa Moda garment factory, on the edge of the main industrial zone of Prato, a town outside Florence. The zone was developed for Italian textile manufacturers in the 1980s but now is predominantly Chinese.
The first squad arrived around 7 a.m. Priority No. 1 was the arm in the window. A firefighter raced up a ladder, cut through the bars and pulled out the slight, smoke-black body of a man. The operation took less than five minutes.
Each second mattered.
It was near dawn on a Sunday morning, but firefighters knew they would find more people inside. There were always people inside the Chinese factories.
The fire that destroyed the Teresa Moda factory on Dec. 1, 2013, was the deadliest in living memory in Prato. It exposed the true cost of cheap clothes, laying bare the consequences of years of failed law enforcement and the pursuit of profit over safety.
Prato is the epicenter of a thriving, illicit Chinese economy that has grown in the wake of Chinese immigration. More than 40,000 Chinese live in the city — some 15,000 of them illegally. Many migrants have replicated the habits of home and created a kind of outsourcing. Merchandise isn't exported; China itself is.
Thousands of people have been smuggled into Italy, finding work at factories that ignore basic safety standards, while billions of euros are smuggled back to China, police investigations show. The savings on tax and labor costs have given businesses that don't follow the law a crushing competitive advantage.
Many say illegal factories such as Teresa Moda are part of larger criminal networks in China and Italy. Police and prosecutors said they lack the tools to fully tackle the flow of migrants and money that fuel Prato's black economy. The two countries do not cooperate closely in criminal investigations.
Fire chief Vincenzo Bennardo, a stocky, bald man whose phone ring mimics a siren, arrived after the body from the window was brought to the ground and was covered. He found two Chinese women outside the factory, crying, but untouched by smoke.
The younger one spoke some Italian and acted as translator. Prato has one of the highest concentrations of Chinese in Europe, but not a single Chinese firefighter.
The fire was eating through the building fast. Bennardo needed to know how many more people were inside and where to look for them.
"Are there other people?" he asked the women. "Do you know how many?"
They kept gesturing, agitated, at the factory, but said little. Bennardo tried a different tack. He asked if they knew the dead man. They said yes. Then they hedged. They told Bennardo they were neighbors and thought the man worked in the factory.
Maybe the women needed to see the dead man's face. A paramedic pulled back the sheet. The man looked like he had been cooked.
"Who is this? Do you know him or not?" Bennardo said.
The women cried harder now. They wrote down the dead man's name.
"Do you know exactly how many people were inside?" Bennardo pressed. How many people did his men need to find?
This time younger woman answered: "There's a little boy."
___
MADE IN ITALY
Bennardo got into the fire business because he wanted to connect with people, out on the streets. Two years ago, he signed up for a free Mandarin course offered by the local government. If you want to understand people, Bennardo figured, you have to grasp how they think. But he didn't get past six lessons. "'Ni hao,' I think that means, 'Ciao,'" Bennardo said.
He grew up in Turin, an integrated, multiethnic city, unlike Prato. On one side of Prato's old stone walls, people stroll through piazzas, past renowned frescoes and striated marble churches. On the other side, slot machines, massage parlors and Chinese graffiti offering jobs, shared rooms and paid female companionship punctuate the plain streets of Chinatown.
The Teresa Moda factory sat on a short street with scraggly trees, in a grid of blind corners and dead ends called Macrolotto 1.
Every Tuesday and Friday night, the dim streets of this industrial zone blaze with headlights as buyers load cheap, trendy clothes onto trucks. Many are headed for other towns in Italy, France or Germany, while 4 percent of Prato's clothing exports, which totaled 551 million euros ($696 million) last year, finds its way to the United States, according to Italy's National Institute for Statistics.
The factory churned out cheap "fast fashion" garments for sale across Europe. In an industry that thrives on speed, factories such as Teresa Moda have the advantage of being close to their main market. They also can trade on the cachet of the "Made in Italy" brand, though their clothes are made by Chinese workers in Chinese factories.
In the 1980s, Chinese immigrants began moving to Italy from the area around Wenzhou, a city famous for its entrepreneurs. Prato offered Chinese migrants ample subcontracting work, a steady stream of buyers and an existing industrial infrastructure. Many of those migrants have gone on to found businesses.
Despite the global financial crisis, the number of individually-owned Chinese businesses in Prato grew 35 percent from 2008 to 2013, while the number of European ones shrank, according to the Italian Chambers of Commerce.
Critics say that growth was possible because migrants brought a cultural disregard for regulations that do not maximize profit. Prato authorities have raided over 1,900 Chinese factories in the past 6 1/2 years, closing 909 for gross safety and labor violations, and seized 33,427 sewing machines that were not up to code.
Authorities spent months trying to prove that a woman named Lin You Lan was in charge of Teresa Moda and that the legal owner was a front. Chinese companies often open and close quickly to avoid tax and regulatory scrutiny, according to officials, and prosecutors said Teresa Moda was the fourth company that Lin and her sister had run out of the same building.
Lin's defense lawyer, Gabriele Zanobini, contests both points. He said she was an employee, responsible for supplier relationships and administration, and that neither Lin nor her sister ever owned a business at the address.
To the Italian brothers who owned the factory building, Lin You Lan was "Monica." To the workers, prosecutors said, she was "boss." To Bennardo, she was the face of a problem he had not been able to solve.
He kept a fire safety booklet, translated into Chinese, in his office, part of his community outreach tools. He realized a booklet wouldn't change a culture, but he wanted Prato's Chinese to know that fire extinguishers could be thought of as a good investment. At the least, maybe they'd learn what number to dial when there was a fire. Bennardo only got a call when things went really wrong.
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TEN MINUTES
Ten minutes before the fire station got the call about the Teresa Moda fire, Lin You Lan's cellphone rang. It was her sister, Lin Youli, who managed the daily operations of the factory with her husband, Hu Xiaoping. They lived at the factory with their 5-year-old son, Giorgio.
Bennardo could have used those 10 minutes.
The first call to the fire department came at 6:55 a.m. Over the next 22 minutes, the fire department would receive 27 more calls about the fire. Only one came from a Chinese person.
Teresa Moda's workers had been up until nearly 2 a.m. sewing. Like many Chinese workers in Prato, they slept at the factory, in violation of Italian law, in a two-story row of bedrooms adjacent to a makeshift kitchen.
Chen Changzhong had been working there for seven months. According to court documents, he put in 13 hours to 17 hours a day for 2 euros to 3 euros an hour. It was a fraction of Italy's legal minimum wage, but more than he was likely to earn back home. He and five co-workers were in Italy illegally. He said he paid for his 1,500-euro flight from Beijing himself.
It is not clear how poor Chinese migrants afford their plane tickets. Some pay smugglers thousands of euros to come to Italy, where they are exploited as low-cost labor to pay off their debt, according to Italy's National Antimafia Directorate.
There was no fire alarm at the Teresa Moda factory. The heat finally startled Chen awake.
His room wasn't far from the bathroom. He thought he could douse himself before running through the flames, but he never made it to the shower. He couldn't breathe.
There are trade-offs in making shirts that wholesale for less than 5 euros. In Teresa Moda's case, this meant forgoing not just a fire alarm, but also adequate fire extinguishers and emergency sprinklers, investigations would show. No one had bothered to bring the heavy front door up to code, either. Prosecutors said it was too hard to slide open.
There were no emergency lights to guide Chen out of his dark, 9-foot-wide room. There were no back or side exits because the factory abutted warehouses on three sides. An emergency exit in the rear led to the roof, but on the day of the fire more than 5.5 tons (5,000 kilos) of flammable fabric was stacked there, high as the mezzanine level bedrooms, according to prosecutors. Firefighters said the exit was blocked. A defense attorney would later say it wasn't.
Chen figured he had one way out: The huge sliding door at the front. Between him and the door lay rolls of burning fabric, clothing racks, buttons, belts, cardboard boxes, and sewing machines.
His hand was on fire. He ran with all his might.
___
A BITTER SMELL
Bennardo needed a number. His crews still had no idea how many people to look for. The two Chinese women outside called around on their mobile phones to see if anyone had escaped. But they weren't saying much to Bennardo.
The chief, his deputy, and a variety of police officers took turns asking them: Who was in the factory? Who was missing? Who escaped?
Bennardo figured the women wanted to help, but didn't want to identify workers living in Italy illegally unless they were dead.
Inside, four firefighters worked the floor, spraying the flames as they pressed forward. The masked firefighters could barely see. To their right was an 8.5-meter (28-foot) concrete wall. Adjacent to the wall and above it, bedrooms had been slapped up with wood and drywall for the factory workers. Two firefighters busted through with pickaxes and looked for survivors. They found beds, but no people.
The fabric burning around them released a toxic gas, chloric acid, which sears mucous membranes and attacks the lungs. They found the remains of a tricycle. Where was that little boy? One young firefighter thought he heard a child's voice circling in the flames. He had never seen a dead kid before and didn't want to now.
They found the second body on the factory floor, in a pile of ashes.
One or two factories catch fire every month in Prato; some are Chinese, some Italian. But in 20 years on the force, Giuseppe Scannadinari could not recall a fire that consumed so many, so completely.
Only the trunk, head and leg remained of the second man.
"We got very little of this one," he said. "Not pretty."
The two Chinese women watched the second body come out.
It was a tacit negotiation. With each body recovered, the hope of survival gave way to the certainty of death and the women surrendered more information.
After the third body emerged, Bennardo sensed a shift. The women, more cooperative now, drew a rectangle on a piece of paper to represent the factory and started writing down who slept where.
By midday, five hours after they began questioning the two Chinese women, firefighters finally had a map of the factory and a list of 11 people to look for.
At the back of the factory, not far from the emergency exit, firefighters found a black mass, carbonized but recognizably human. Whoever was there had been packed in burning material, from above and below, like an oven. It was impossible to tell how many people had been huddled together.
A forensics expert went in to search through the bones while the fire still was smoking. Counting pelvises, he concluded there were parts of three people. Two had probably been petite women. It would take more than 24 hours to determine whether the third was male or female.
Nearly four dozen people worked until noon the next day to put the fire out. Soft plumes of smoke rose from the ashes and bent metal of the factory. There was a bitter smell, like ammonia.
The little boy, Giorgio, survived. He and his parents, who managed the factory, had scrambled the short distance from their concrete-walled bedroom to the front door. Chen was the sole worker to escape.
Seven people had died.
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THE CAUSE OF DEATH
Prosecutors said the deaths were preventable.
Authorities have tried for years to wipe out Prato's shadow economy, but their efforts have been thwarted by unscrupulous entrepreneurs and formidable cultural barriers.
Gino Reolon, the provincial commander of Italy's financial police, said Prato is like a laboratory for tracking Chinese organized crime.
"It's like a virus, a new disease and we are now trying to figure out what it does," he said.
Prato's police have raided and closed hundreds of illegal Chinese factories. But factory owners rarely bother to fix safety and labor violations, said Flora Leoni, a municipal police captain. Instead, many open a new business, often in a relative's name, she said.
Police have marched scores of immigrants with no papers back to headquarters, where they are photographed, fingerprinted and ordered to leave Italy within five days. Then they are free to go.
It's been even easier for migrants to slip away since a 2011 directive that barred jailing people during deportation proceedings, Leoni said. Judicial officials now complain about a new law that makes it difficult to try people in absentia, slowing trials of hard-to-find Chinese defendants.
"There is not a lot of fear," Leoni said. "They know quite well that our weapons are blunted."
In the past, grave fire safety violations, long hours and illegal labor had meant good business. This time, though, they added up to homicide.
On March 20, nearly four months after the fire, prosecutors charged five people with homicide: the "boss" Lin You Lan, the managers Lin Youli and Hu Xiaoping, and the Italian brothers who owned the factory building, Giacomo and Massimo Pellegrini.
The Lin family sent 900,000 yuan ($147,000) to each dead worker's family in China. Defense lawyer Zanobini said the payments were made out of a sense of moral responsibility, not an attempt to derail the trial. He argued that Lin and her family were not guilty because the workplace violations did not cause the fire and the Italian building owners bore responsibility for the worst safety lapses.
The lawyer for the Pellegrini brothers, Alberto Rocca, said he is convinced of their innocence. He declined further comment because the trial is ongoing.
Prosecutors took the unusual step of holding Italians accountable, a significant move given that many have profited from Chinese abuses.
"If the responsibility also lies with the Italian citizen who knowingly permits these situations of illegality, then the next time the Italian citizen probably won't let it happen," said Tiziano Veltri, a lawyer for some of the victims' families.
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THE LANGUAGE OF LOSS
The funeral for the victims of the Teresa Moda fire took place on the third Saturday of June, after months of contention about how to cover the cost.
Volunteers handed out water to the crowd in the heat. The Italians, mostly, stayed to the left. Chen Changzhong listened from a shaded spot of grass to the right, with the rest of the town's Chinese. A shiny scar snaked around his thumb and up his left arm, the burn a mark of survival.
Outrage at the deaths had reached Parliament, where politicians spoke of "slavery in the heart of Italy." Prato's mayor lobbied the prime minister for help. The region of Tuscany launched inspections of all 7,700 factories in Prato, and offered each victim's family 20,000 euros to 25,000 euros.
The Chinese consulate in Florence rallied more than 400 local Chinese businesses to sign a voluntary pledge banning illegal bedrooms and makeshift kitchens. Two carabinieri carried in a heavy wreath from the Italian president. The mayor spoke. The Chinese consul general urged factory owners to make their workplaces safer. "All of us should reflect profoundly, learn this lesson of blood," she said.
One woman followed her mother's coffin toward the hearse, but her knees kept giving out. People tried to hold her up, but she shook her head back and forth, before sinking to the ground. Italian first-aid workers circled her to help.
Grief was something everyone could understand.
Bennardo missed the funeral. He had to go to Turin to see his ailing mother. From that distance, Prato seemed still and small, a town waiting for change that would take a generation to come. Monday morning, Prato's schools swelled with Chinese, one foreigner for every three Italians. Bennardo went back to work, to wait for the next fire.
Hong Kong activists regroup; police chief warns safety at risk
Asia
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China
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Democracy
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Hong Kong
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Human rights
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Politics
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(Reuters) - Hong Kong pro-democracy activists recaptured parts of a core protest zone from police early on Saturday after hours of turmoil that the city's police chief warned undermined order and jeopardised public safety.
Dozens of people were injured in the skirmishes, including 18 police, which raged through the night as several thousand protesters squared off again police in the densely populated Mong Kok district.
At least 33 people were arrested, Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK reported.
Police used batons and pepper spray, and scuffled violently with activists, but they were eventually forced to pull back less than 24 hours after they re-opened most of the area to traffic.
The protests have been going on for three weeks and pose one of the biggest political challenges for China since the crushing of pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing in 1989.
Hong Kong Police Commissioner Andy Tsang broke three weeks of public silence to say his force had been "extremely tolerant" but had failed to stop protesters becoming more "radical or violent".
"To these protesters, you may think that your illegal acts have prevented the police in going about our duties, disrupted our deployments and even forced us to retreat," Tsang told a news conference.
"Superficially, that may be the case. But let me tell you this: these illegal acts are undermining the rule of law, undermining (what) Hong Kong has been relying on to succeed."
After police retreated, demonstrators swiftly stacked up barricades made out of packing crates and fences. Tsang said the reoccupation of the area "seriously undermined public order and seriously jeopardized public safety".
The protesters, led by a restive generation of students, have been demanding China's Communist Party rulers live up to constitutional promises to grant full democracy to the former British colony which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Hong Kong is ruled under a "one country, two systems" formula that allows the thriving capitalist hub wide-ranging autonomy and freedoms and specifies universal suffrage for Hong Kong as an eventual goal.
But Beijing ruled on Aug. 31 it would screen candidates who want to run for the city's chief executive in 2017, which democracy activists said rendered the universal suffrage concept meaningless. The protesters are demanding free elections for their leader.
'WE WILL STAY'
The clashes came just hours after Hong Kong's pro-Beijing leader Leung Chun-ying offered talks to student leaders next week in an attempt to defuse the protests that have grabbed global headlines with scenes of clashes and tear gas rising between some of the world's most valuable office buildings.
Leung's chief secretary, Carrie Lam, announced on Saturday that between student leaders and the city government would take place for two hours on Tuesday.
The Mong Kok area was calm later on Saturday with the number of protesters much smaller as activists rested. Police stood in formation away from the barricades.
Posters declaring "Reclaim Mong Kok!" had been plastered on shop fronts. The protesters who remained were bracing for another bruising night.
Student Angel So, 20, said she was determined to stop police clearing the area again. "We'll keep coming back," she said, as a friend, Terry Leung, nursed grazes on his arms and legs from scuffles with police.
Joshua Wong, a bookish 18-year-old whose fiery speeches have helped drive the protests, was defiant.
"We will stay and fight till the end," he told Reuters as he surveyed the crowd during the night, from on top of a subway station exit.
The escalation in the confrontation illustrates the dilemma faced by police in trying to strike a balance between law enforcement and not inciting the protesters who have been out since late last month in three core shopping and government districts.
Besides Mong Kok, about 1,000 protesters remained camped out on Hong Kong Island in a sea of tents on an eight-lane highway beneath skyscrapers close to government headquarters.
Despite Leung's offer of talks next week, few expect any resolution without more concrete concessions from authorities.
French Dragons in Beijing
Mechanical installations named "Long Ma" (R) and "The Spider" are operated at a rehearsal of the Long Ma performance in front of the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest
Tuesday 14 October 2014
Hong Kong police chip away at protest zones
(AP) — Hong Kong police cleared more barricades Tuesday from pro-democracy protest zones that have choked off traffic in key business districts for more than two weeks, signaling authorities' growing impatience with the student-led activists.
Appearing to use a strategy of gradually chipping away at the three main protest zones, hundreds of police fanned out in the early hours to take down barriers that the protesters had erected overnight. Officers used electric saws and bolt cutters to take down bamboo scaffolding built in the Admiralty area after a mob of masked men stormed some of the barricades the day before.
A few dozen protesters who sat guarding one entrance to the main occupied zone after the police came were exhausted but defiant.
"I'm feeling a bit lost. There is no dialogue with the government, and the truth is we are affecting people's lives. But we can't bear to leave without getting any results," said Mark Li, a 21-year-old college student who sat at the front facing a line of policemen.
Li and his friends said they were not afraid of a crackdown but were weary of police tactics to weaken their movement.
"I just hope we can keep fighting in the long term. It won't end so quickly — it's just a stalemate at the moment," said Jason Wong, 19.
Police used sledgehammers to smash concrete used by protesters to try to secure the barriers to the road. They dismantled barriers of plywood, trash cans, wooden pallets and other objects blocking the road, which runs parallel to a major highway that has become the protesters' main camp.
Before dawn, when protesters' numbers are lowest, police also removed metal barricades from another protest camp on a road in the nearby Causeway Bay shopping area to free up a lane for traffic.
By gradually reducing the protest areas from the edges and acting during the quiet morning hours, the police appear to want to avoid the sort of combative confrontation — using tear gas and pepper spray — that backfired two weeks ago, when the street protests started.
Police will continue to take down barriers set up by protesters, spokesman Steve Hui said. He said officers arrested 23 men in Monday's violent clashes, when masked men and taxi drivers led a crowd of several hundred who tried to charge the protest zone.
The protesters want the government to drop plans for a pro-Beijing committee to screen candidates in the territory's first direct elections, promised for 2017. They also demand that Hong Kong's deeply unpopular Beijing-backed leader, Leung Chun-ying, resign.
State media in mainland China downplayed the crisis. In its noon report, state broadcaster CCTV carried images of barricades being dismantled and street interviews with residents cheering the reopening of roads, complaining about the loss of business, and chiding the students for being naive and lacking life experience.
At the main protest zone outside Hong Kong's government headquarters, a tent city has sprung up as dozens of demonstrators camp out to defend the highway they have taken over. Many said they will not budge.
"No one knows how long this will last. I'm not afraid of the police and I will fight to the end," said Alan Yip, 24, who quit his job to join the movement. "If they come in here I will sit down and let them take me away."
Sunday 12 October 2014
Federer downs injured Simon to win Shanghai Masters
(Reuters) - Roger Federer claimed one of the few titles to have previously eluded him after he overcame a sluggish start to beat injured Frenchman Gilles Simon in the Shanghai Masters final on Sunday.
The Swiss 17-times grand slam singles champion triumphed 7-6(6) 7-6(2) to register his 23rd Masters Series title and first in China, where strong winds caused the roof on the Stadium Court to be closed.
The 33-year-old Federer let off a huge roar and threw both fists into the air after a battling Simon netted a return to hand the Swiss his fourth title of the year and the 81st of his career.
"Well, it just makes me very happy winning here because this tournament means a lot to me," Federer told reporters.
"I've always enjoyed coming here. I've come close a couple of times, but I've always wanted to win it as a Masters 1000.
"I feel unbelievable prestige to win this event. Especially putting my hands on the trophy for the first time is a good feeling, I must say. I'm very happy with the way I'm playing."
It had all begun so well for the unseeded Simon, who broke a sloppy, error-strewn Federer in the opening game and comfortably held firm until he felt the pressure of serving for the set at 5-4 and began to creak.
With his first serve and accurate groundstrokes deserting him, Federer had two break points but wasted the first with an alarmingly high 14th unforced error only for Simon to hand him the game on the next point after netting a backhand.
A wobbling Simon fought off two set points on his next service game after finding his range with his first serve again to force a tiebreak with a booming ace as he refused to buckle in search of his first Masters Series title.
The world number 29 then had a set point of his own in the tiebreak but Federer came up with an unreturnable first serve to snuff out the danger before producing a near-perfect backhand winner down the line to take the breaker 8-6.
GROIN PROBLEM
Simon, who had knocked out Australian Open winner Stan Wawrinka and sixth seed Tomas Berdych en route to the final, took a medical time out for treatment on a suspected groin problem at the end of the set and looked uncomfortable upon his return.
However, the Frenchman fought on admirably, digging himself out of some early holes to hold his six service games before threatening an unlikely break in the 11th game of the set.
Having struggled to make an impact on the Federer serve throughout the set he fashioned two set points out of nowhere, only to waste both with groundstroke errors as Federer held on.
The Swiss then stepped it up in the breaker, firing some big serves and stunning winners to fashion four championship points with Simon folding on the first.
"He was just more opportunistic," Simon said. "We had a close match. I had a set point in the first, two in the second.
"It's just a few points deciding it, and he was always really good on these points. He played some great shots.
"He's putting a lot of pressure. He's always showing you that he is ready to be really aggressive on every shot. So he keeps you under pressure."
Federer, who will move above Rafa Nadal into second spot in the world rankings when they are updated on Monday, has now won seven of the nine different Masters Series events with only the clay court Monte Carlo and Rome tournaments eluding him.
China detains scholar on charge of troublemaking
(AP) — A Chinese scholar and rights advocate who founded an influential non-governmental think tank has been detained on the criminal charge of provoking troubles, his lawyer said Sunday.
Guo Yushan is the latest of dozens of people who have been detained at a time when Hong Kong protesters are demanding universal suffrage in elections for the top official of the semiautonomous territory.
Earlier this month, Beijing detained the dissident poet Wang Zang and seven others ahead of a poetry reading planned in Beijing to support the Hong Kong protesters.
At least 40 people in Beijing and another dozen elsewhere in mainland China have been held for supporting the protesters, including posting pictures and messages online showing solidarity and planning to travel to Hong Kong to join them, according to human rights group Amnesty International.
Many have been detained on the suspicion of provoking troubles — a vague charge that critics say has been increasingly used to suppress dissidents, activists and outspoken critics of the government as Beijing tries to avoid speech or state subversion charges that are more likely to draw international condemnation.
It is unclear if Guo's detention is directly related to the Hong Kong protests, as Guo was not known to have made any public comments in support of the pro-democracy movement.
His lawyer Li Jin said she was yet to meet with Guo at a Beijing detention center and that it wasn't immediately clear on what basis police charged Guo.
Guo co-founded the Transition Institute to research China's social and economic issues, but Beijing's authorities, citing lack of proper registration, shut down the think tank last year.
In 2012, Guo was instrumental in helping the blind activist Chen Guangcheng travel to Beijing after Chen escaped from house arrest in an eastern Chinese village.
While in Beijing, Chen sought shelter in the U.S. Embassy, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the U.S. secretary of state, managed to negotiate for him to go to the United States to study law.
Saturday 11 October 2014
Chinese newspaper blames US for Hong Kong protests
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(AP) — A Chinese state-run newspaper has blamed the United States for being behind the pro-democracy protests that have rattled Hong Kong — a claim the U.S. State Department strongly rejected.
Thousands of people, meanwhile, returned for sit-ins in Hong Kong's main protest zone Saturday, responding to organizers' calls to boost a civil disobedience campaign that has paralyzed key roads and streets in the city center for two weeks.
Students and activists leading the protests remain locked in a stalemate with the government, which has called off scheduled negotiations and instead urged protesters to retreat from the streets. Protest leaders have vowed to keep up the demonstrations until the government responds to demands for voters to have a greater say in choosing Hong Kong's leader.
In a commentary published on the front page of the Communist Party-run People's Daily's overseas edition Friday, the newspaper said the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, became involved in the Hong Kong protests as part of a U.S. strategy to undermine foreign governments in the name of promoting democracy.
Citing unidentified media reports, the commentary claimed that Louisa Greve, a director at NED, met with Hong Kong protest leaders months ago to discuss the movement.
The group did not immediately reply to an email requesting comment Saturday. According to its website, the organization is devoted to "the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world," and is funded largely by the U.S. Congress.
When asked about the U.S. State Department's role in the Hong Kong protests, department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Friday that U.S. officials "categorically reject accusations that we are manipulating the activities of any person, group or political party in Hong Kong."
"What is happening there is about the people of Hong Kong, and any assertion otherwise is an attempt to distract from the issue at hand, which is the people expressing their desire for universal suffrage in an election that provides a meaningful choice of candidates representative of their own voters' will," Harf said.
Monday 6 October 2014
Hong Kong officials resume work as protests thin
(AP) — Hong Kong's civil servants returned to work and schools were reopening Monday as a massive pro-democracy protest that has occupied much of the city center for the week dwindled.
Student demonstrators say they have taken early steps to begin talks with the government on their demands for wider political reforms, but actual negotiations have not started and many disagreements remain.
At the government headquarters, where some protesters agreed to remove barriers blocking roads Sunday ahead of the government's deadline to scale back their protests, the scene was orderly as government officials arrived for work. About 25 or so remaining protesters, mostly young students, looked on as a dozen police stood guard nearby.
The crowds had thinned markedly after a week that saw tens of thousands of people fill the streets in peaceful protest. In Mong Kok, another protest site across the harbor where protesters had clashed violently with their opponents, a few hundred activists were staying put at the sit-in site.
Some activists disagree with the partial withdrawal at government headquarters, and an alliance of students say they will keep up their protests until details of the talks are worked out. They say they will walk away from the talks as soon as the government uses force to clear away the remaining protesters.
Alex Chow, a student leader, said he was not worried about the crowd dwindling.
"Because people need rest, but they will come out again. It doesn't mean the movement is diminishing. Many people still support it," Chow said.
But Louis Chan, who still plans to stay at the government headquarters for "as long as he can," is not sure achieving universal suffrage — the students' original goal — is now likely.
"I think it was possible, but now I don't think so because they (the Hong Kong government) don't give any response and China is also very much against this," he said.
Students occupying an area just outside city government headquarters agreed to remove some barricades that were blocking the building's entrance, after the government said it would do whatever was necessary to ensure 3,000 civil servants would have full access to their offices on Monday.
The partial withdrawal appeared to be part of a strategy to regroup in another part of town, as protesters were urged to shift from other areas to Hong Kong's Admiralty shopping and business district, a central location near the government's main offices that has served as an informal headquarters for the protests.
Protesters had feared that officials may clear the streets by force, but by Monday it's clear the government was settling for a partial victory in clearing some roads. A main road on the Hong Kong Island remains partly closed, and the government indicated some disruptions were likely to continue.
"To restore order, we are determined, and we are confident we have the capability to take any necessary action," police spokesman Steve Hui said. "There should not be any unreasonable, unnecessary obstruction by any members of the public."
Television footage showed a man shaking hands with a police officer outside government headquarters and the two sides removing some barricades together. About 300 demonstrators stood by outside the government building's main entrance, but then many sat back down and refused to leave.
"I'm against any kind of withdrawal or tendency to surrender," said Do Chan, a protester in his 30s. "I think withdrawing, I mean shaking hands with the police, is a very ugly gesture of surrender."
Tens of thousands of people, many of them students, have poured into the streets of the semi-autonomous city since Sept. 28 to peacefully protest China's restrictions on the first-ever direct election for Hong Kong's leader, promised by Beijing for 2017. The protests are the strongest challenge to authorities in Hong Kong — and in Beijing — since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
China has promised that Hong Kong can have universal suffrage by 2017, but it says a committee of mostly pro-Beijing figures must screen candidates for the top job. The protesters also are demanding the resignation of Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, the city's current leader. He has refused to step down.
Police said they had arrested 30 people since the start of the protests. Protesters, meanwhile, complained the police were failing to protect them from attacks by mobs intent on driving them away.
___
Hong Kong protests subside after tumultuous week
(AP) — Passionate student-led protests for democratic reforms in Hong Kong subsided Monday but a few hundred demonstrators remained camped out, vowing to keep up the pressure on the government until officials show they are sincere in responding to their demands.
Schools reopened and civil servants returned to work Monday morning after protesters cleared the area outside the city's government headquarters, where they had gathered for more than a week.
About 25 protesters, mostly students, refused to budge from the site, and some say they plan to stay for as long as they can. Another couple hundred protesters remained in the Mong Kok area where some scuffles broke out over the weekend.
Parts of a main thoroughfare through the heart of the business district remained closed.
Student demonstrators say they have taken early steps to begin talks with the government on their demands for wider political reforms, but actual negotiations have not started and many disagreements remain.
Tens of thousands of people, many of them students, have poured into the streets of the semi-autonomous city since Sept. 28 to peacefully protest China's restrictions on the first direct election for Hong Kong's leader, promised by Beijing for 2017. The protests are the strongest challenge to authorities in Beijing since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
China has promised that Hong Kong can have universal suffrage by 2017, but it says a committee of mostly pro-Beijing figures must screen candidates for the top job. The protesters also are demanding the resignation of Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, the city's current leader, but he has refused to step down.
Some activists disagree with the partial withdrawal at government headquarters, and an alliance of students say they will keep up their protests until details of the talks are worked out. They say they will walk away from the talks as soon as the government uses force to clear away the remaining protesters.
Alex Chow, a student leader, said he was not worried about the crowd dwindling.
"Because people need rest, but they will come out again. It doesn't mean the movement is diminishing. Many people still support it," Chow said.
But Louis Chan, who still plans to stay at the government headquarters for "as long as he can," is not sure achieving universal suffrage — the students' original goal — is now likely.
"I think it was possible, but now I don't think so because they (the Hong Kong government) don't give any response and China is also very much against this," he said.
Police said they had arrested 30 people since the start of the protests. Protesters, meanwhile, complained the police were failing to protect them from attacks by mobs intent on driving them away.
Sunday 5 October 2014
Sharapova beats Kvitova to win China Open
(Reuters) - Russian Maria Sharapova overcame Czech Petra Kvitova 6-4 2-6 6-3 in the final of the China Open to claim the title and move up to number two in the world rankings on Sunday.
Wimbledon Open champion Kvitova broke her opponent in the very first game but Sharapova showed greater intensity towards the end to prevail in a contest that lasted two hours and 28 minutes.
French Open champion Sharapova broke her opponent twice to claim the first set but Kvitova unleashed 15 winners in the second to force a decider.
Sharapova raised her game in the third set to lead 5-3 before serving out the match and raising her hands in celebration after Kvitova buried a return into the net.
World number one Novak Djokovic takes on Tomas Berdych in the men's final later on Sunday.
Saturday 4 October 2014
Djokovic downs Murray in Beijing
(Reuters) - World number one Novak Djokovic maintained his perfect tournament record and advanced to his fifth China Open final with a 6-3 6-4 victory against Andy Murray on Saturday.
The 27-year-old top seeded Serb took an hour and 37 minutes to down Murray and improve to a 23-0 record in Beijing.
Murray, fresh from his first victory in more than a year at last week's Shenzhen Open, put up more resistance in the second set but could not crack Djokovic's solid defense and smashed his racquet in frustration after being broken in the ninth game.
Djokovic, who meets either Tomas Berdych or Martin Klizan, who stunned world number two Rafa Nadal on Friday, restricted the Scot to only seven winners and denied him four of his five break point chances.
Sixth-seeded Murray has moved up to the ninth place in the race to season-ending ATP Finals in London, which will feature the top eight.
Friday 3 October 2014
Hong Kong protesters face backlash, threaten to abandon talks
(Reuters) - Pro-democracy protesters faced off against supporters of Chinese rule in Hong Kong's teeming Mong Kok district early on Saturday, in a tense confrontation that has undermined hopes for talks aimed at ending a week of turmoil.
Scuffles broke out late on Friday between people demanding full democracy in the former British colony, including a free voting system when they come to choose a new leader in 2017, and residents who want the demonstrations to end.
Protesters said they believed criminal gangs, or Triads, whose base is in the densely populated Mong Kok, were involved.
Police intervened to prevent an escalation in the violence, but a rowdy crowd of around two thousand filled a major intersection in the small hours of Saturday and the atmosphere remained highly charged as police officers in riot gear tried to keep them under control.
Demonstrations across Hong Kong have ebbed and flowed since Sunday, when police used pepper spray, tear gas and batons to break them up in the worst unrest in Hong Kong since the former British colony was handed back to Chinese rule in 1997.
At times, tens of thousands of people gathered to block roads and buildings in central areas, bringing them to a virtual standstill.
Student activists, established protest groups and ordinary Hong Kongers have joined forces to present Beijing with one of its biggest political challenges since it violently crushed pro-democracy protests in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.
One of the main student groups behind the "Occupy Central" protest movement said it would pull out of planned talks with the Hong Kong government, because it believed authorities had colluded in the attacks on demonstrators in Mong Kok.
"The government and police today connived in the attack by Triads ... on peaceful occupiers, so they have shut the way to dialogue and must bear the consequences," the Hong Kong Federation of Students said in a strongly worded statement.
The notorious Triads operate bars, nightclubs and massage parlors across Mong Kok, an area of high-rise apartment blocks some distance from the main protest areas.
Witnesses said anti-Triad police wearing trademark black vests were active in the area on Friday.
Police have defended their handling of fighting in the area, saying they had exercised "dignity and restraint and tried our best to keep the situation under control".
But Amnesty International issued a statement criticizing them for "(failing) in their duty to protect hundreds of peaceful pro-democracy protesters from attacks by counter demonstrators."
"NO PAIN, NO GAIN"
Earlier this week, Hong Kong's leader Leung Chun-ying rejected protesters' demands to resign, and he and his Chinese government allies made clear they would not back down.
He did, however, offer talks with leaders of a movement that has shaken Hong Kong's image as a stable financial hub.
Kit Lui, a 32-year-old restaurant owner sitting under a tent in the middle of the Mong Kok crowd, said she understood why people blamed protesters for harming the economy, but that it was a price worth paying.
"No pain, no gain," she said. "Yes, maybe these few days the economy will be hurt, but if we don't speak up this time the situation will get worse and worse. It's not the future that we want to see. We are worried about our future.
"Frankly speaking, I don't know where this revolution will go," she added, reflecting growing uncertainty among the pro-democracy movement, as numbers at some protest sites dwindle and public displeasure with the demonstrations mounts.
Teacher Victor Ma, 42, summed up the mood of many residents: "We are all fed up and our lives are affected. You don't hold Hong Kong citizens hostage because it's not going to work. That's why the crowd is very angry here."
China rules Hong Kong through a "one country, two systems" formula underpinned by the Basic Law, which accords Hong Kong some autonomy and freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland and has universal suffrage as an eventual goal.
But Beijing decreed on Aug. 31 it would vet candidates who want to run for chief executive at an election in 2017, angering democracy activists, who took to the streets.
While Leung made an apparent concession by offering talks, Beijing restated its resolute opposition to the protests and a completely free vote in Hong Kong.
Facing separatist unrest in far-flung and resource-rich Tibet and Xinjiang, Beijing is unlikely to give way in Hong Kong, fearful that calls for democracy there could spread to the mainland, especially if successful.
The economic impact of the unrest has begun to be felt.
Hong Kong's benchmark share index, the Hang Seng, plunged 7.3 percent in September, in part because of the uncertainty surrounding the protests, and was down 2.6 percent on the week on Friday.
Luxury goods companies have taken a substantial hit, analysts say, with wealthy Chinese avoiding Hong Kong and going to other cities to shop instead.
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