President Xi Jinping hailed China and Russia’s “unyielding” ties in talks with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, as the pair met to underscore their alliance days after Donald Trump’s own visit to Beijing.

The two countries’ ties have deepened since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as Russia has become increasingly dependent on China, its main oil customer.

Putin was received by Xi outside Beijing’s opulent Great Hall of the People in much the same fashion as Trump last week, complete with chanting children and military fanfare.

But the language was much warmer, with Xi telling the Russian leader Beijing and Moscow have “continuously deepened our political mutual trust and strategic coordination with a resilience that remains unyielding”, according to Chinese state media.

Opening talks, both were quick to laud their countries’ special ties as they extended their treaty of “friendly cooperation”.

Putin, quoting a Chinese phrase, told Xi: “A day apart feels like three autumns”, adding that relations had reached an “unprecedentedly high level” despite “unfavourable external factors”, Russian media footage showed.

In an apparent swipe at the United States, Xi warned of “unilateral and hegemonic countercurrents running rampant” in the world.

In contrast to Trump’s visit last week, which yielded little in the way of immediate concrete announcements, Putin and Xi signed a slew of agreements on Wednesday on trade, media and energy.

The two leaders later had talks over tea, which the Kremlin had previously said would be reserved for “the most important issues” such as Ukraine, Iran and relations with the US.

That session lasted around 1.5 hours before Putin headed to the airport, according to Russian media.

Fossil fuel push

Beneath the camaraderie, Putin is now perceived by many to be the junior partner in the relationship.

The Russian leader has been weakened over four years of the Ukraine conflict, with his country’s economy shrinking in the first quarter of the year as factors such as wartime spending, labour shortages and sanctions take their toll.

Analysts believed Putin would use his visit to push for progress on the “Power of Siberia 2”, a major natural gas pipeline running from Russia to China through Mongolia.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media Wednesday that while the two sides had reached a “basic understanding” — including on “the route and how it will be built” — there was no “clear timeline”, and “there are still some details to be worked out”.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has hampered crude and gas flows from the Middle East, giving an opportunity for Putin to offer Russian energy sources as an alternative.

“Russia and China are actively cooperating in the energy sector… We are, of course, ready to continue reliably supplying all these types of fuel to the rapidly growing Chinese market,” Putin said Wednesday.

His priorities may differ from China’s, which wants the Middle East conflict concluded as soon as possible.

Underlining that, Xi told Putin on Wednesday that “a comprehensive ceasefire is of utmost urgency, resuming hostilities is even more inadvisable and maintaining negotiations is particularly important”.

‘Sovereign foreign policy’

Xi has played host to a series of world leaders as an increasingly unpredictable United States under Trump has pushed many to shore up alliances with Beijing.

Many have urged him to use his influence with Russia and Iran to help bring an end to the respective conflicts there.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had asked Trump to discuss ending the war during his meetings with Xi last week.

The pair did talk about the issue, but the US president left China without a breakthrough.

Beijing has regularly called for talks to end the war in Ukraine, but has never condemned Russia for sending in troops — presenting itself instead as a neutral party.

The two leaders talked about Ukraine, Chinese state media said after the visit had ended, without giving further details.

On Wednesday Putin said that Russia and China were “committed to an independent and sovereign foreign policy”.

In a joint statement released by the Kremlin, Russia said it “positively assesses the objective and unbiased position of the Chinese side regarding the situation in Ukraine and welcomes China’s aspiration to play a constructive role”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit North Korea next week, state media said Friday, his first trip abroad this year after hosting a series of leaders as Beijing asserts itself as a global diplomatic superpower.

State broadcaster CCTV said Xi would visit from June 8 to 9 at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, his first trip to Pyongyang in seven years.

Beijing is a vital source of political and economic support to North Korea, which is one of the most diplomatically isolated countries in the world and under heavy international sanctions.

The upcoming meeting will be Xi’s first official overseas trip this year, and comes after he hosted back-to-back summits with US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin last month.

“China is meeting leaders from around the world, coordinating positions and playing a mediating role,” Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea’s Kyungnam University, told AFP.

“As China’s international standing rises, Beijing is likely seeking to draw Pyongyang more actively into its diplomatic orbit as a partner in advancing a more multilateral order.”

The two leaders will “exchange views on bilateral relations and issues of common concern”, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a press briefing on Friday.

The visit was “an opportunity to promote the development” of bilateral relations and “make greater contributions to regional and even world peace”, Mao said.

Pyongyang depends on China for up to 95 percent of total trade and 85 percent of its exports, according to 2022 statistics from the National Committee on North Korea, a Washington-based think tank.

But North Korea has drawn closer to Russia since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Pyongyang sending thousands of troops and weapons to support the war effort.

In return, analysts say North Korea is receiving financial aid, military technology, food and energy, helping it circumvent sanctions over its banned nuclear programmes.

Xi’s choice of Pyongyang for his first overseas trip of 2026 is “a deliberate visual rebuttal to the prevailing read in Western capitals that Pyongyang had quietly migrated into Moscow’s orbit”, said Seong-Hyon Lee from the George H. W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations.

Managing the relationship

Xi last met Kim in September, when he invited the North Korean leader and Putin as guests of honour to a military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the victory over imperial Japan in World War II.

In 2019, Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan were welcomed to North Korea with great pomp and fanfare to celebrate the two countries’ “unbreakable friendship”.

Beijing’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a visit to Pyongyang in April that China and South Korea should “enhance coordination” on international and regional issues.

China’s interests include keeping an eye on North Korea’s nuclear programme, the advancement of which is “extremely rapid”, Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) told AFP.

“This aspect needs to be managed. If North Korea acts in a provocative and belligerent manner, it could trigger regional conflict, which could run counter to China’s interests,” Hong said.

Kim vowed an “exponential” increase in nuclear military capabilities on Wednesday as he visited a new atomic facility, Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.

South Korea’s foreign ministry has said it hopes exchanges between North Korea and China contribute to peace and stability, and that China can play a constructive role.

Pyongyang has repeatedly shunned efforts by the South Korean government to improve relations, calling Seoul its most “hostile” adversary.

Analysts have viewed Xi’s recent diplomatic flurry as part of attempts to position China as a stable, strategic alternative to an unpredictable United States.

Traditional US allies, including Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron, have also come to Beijing.

However, Hong, of KINU, judged the chances that Xi might help broker a meeting between Trump and Kim as “very low”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Tuesday against any “destabilizing” actions on Taiwan before a trip to China by President Donald Trump and called on Beijing also to raise pressure on Iran.

Trump is scheduled to pay the first visit of his second term to China next week, a trip he delayed after he led the United States in a joint attack alongside Israel against Iran.

Rubio, addressing reporters at the White House, said he was sure that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping would discuss Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island claimed by Beijing.

“I think both countries understand that it is in neither one of our interests to see anything destabiliz(ing) happen in that part of the world,” Rubio told reporters.

“We don’t need any destabilizing events to occur with regards to Taiwan or anywhere in the Indo-Pacific, and I think that’s to the mutual benefit of both the United States and the Chinese,” Rubio said.

China has ramped up its military presence around Taiwan in recent years and staged large-scale military drills.

While the United States has an ambiguous policy on whether it would defend Taiwan, its military looks increasingly stretched as resources shift from Asia to the Iran war.

Rubio, who has never visited China, was an outspoken critic of Beijing’s human rights record while a senator, championing legislation that brought sanctions over Beijing’s alleged use of forced labor from the Uyghur minority.

The Trump administration has largely downplayed human rights, preferring to focus on promoting what it sees as core US interests such as trade.

Asked if Trump would raise human rights, Rubio said, “I think we’ve proven in some cases it’s most effective to raise them in the appropriate setting. But we always raise those issues.”

Call to pressure Iran

Rubio also called for China to put pressure on Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who was leaving Tuesday for Beijing.

Iran has exerted control over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil once transited, in retaliation for being attacked by the United States and Israel.

China has been by far the largest buyer of Iranian oil, defying sanctions unilaterally imposed by Trump since his first term against any country that is Tehran’s customer.

“I hope the Chinese tell him (Araghchi) what he needs to be told, and that is that what you were doing in the straits is causing you to be globally isolated,” Rubio said.

“You’re the bad guy in this,” he said. “You guys should not be blowing up ships.”

The United States has also been blowing up ships. The US military said Monday it had destroyed six small Iranian boats, accusing them of threatening shipping.

During the war, a US submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate off Sri Lanka, killing 104 sailors, with US forces leaving them to drown.

Exclusive: poll across 15 countries finds ‘deep mistrust’, with majority doubting US would come to their aid in an attack

European confidence in an American “security guarantee” has hit a historic low, a survey suggests, with only one in 10 people across 15 countries seeing the US as an ally and majorities in all doubting it would come to their aid if they were attacked.

The survey, published on Wednesday by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank before critical G7 and Nato summits in France and Turkey over the coming weeks, revealed “deep European distrust in the US”, the authors said.

The leaders of North Korea and China adopted a “far-reaching blueprint” for bilateral ties during Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Pyongyang, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Wednesday.

China’s president made a rare visit to diplomatically isolated North Korea on Monday after hosting a series of world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in Beijing.

The trip also came at a time of unusually warm relations between North Korea and Russia, where Pyongyang has sent soldiers and munitions to assist Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Kim and Xi “expressed satisfaction and deep emotion over the fact that they provided a far-reaching blueprint for the development of the relations”, KCNA reported.

During the two-day trip, “the countries further deepened the revolutionary friendship and close comradely relationship and affirmed their steadfast will to develop the traditional DPRK-China friendly ties into a model of the most powerful and strategic relations”, it added.

Xi and Kim toured the Central Cadres Training School of the Workers’ Party, where they discussed the training of party officials and planted a commemorative tree, before visiting the Friendship Tower memorial honouring Chinese soldiers who fought in the Korean War.

Xi was afforded a lavish welcome on the trip, which he took with his wife and other senior officials.

Afterwards, he thanked Kim in a letter, saying the leaders had “made an in-depth exchange of views on the issues of mutual interest and achieved a series of important common understanding”, according to KCNA.

The talks “showed the firm determination of both sides to add lustre to the traditional friendship, promote development and prosperity together and defend peace and stability in the region and the rest of the world”, Xi reportedly wrote.

On Tuesday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported Xi as saying he had reached “an important consensus with Kim on developing China-DPRK relations in the new era”, using North Korea’s official acronym.

Xi pushed to strengthen diplomatic, law enforcement and military ties, according to Beijing’s state media.

By sharing information in the military sector, China appears to want to “directly assess technological changes within the North Korean military and the status of Russian technology transfer”, said Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

China may also hope to “collect intelligence for the purpose of monitoring trends in pro-Russian and pro-Chinese human networks within the North Korean military”, he added.

Nuclear silence

Xi’s trip came after last month’s talks with Trump, during which the White House said the leaders “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearise North Korea”.

But official media reports from both China and North Korea made no mention of denuclearisation in their coverage of the Xi-Kim summit.

Analysts said that suggested Beijing was tacitly accepting Pyongyang’s status as a nuclear-armed state.

Kim has repeatedly vowed never to give up his nuclear arsenal, and his powerful sister said before Xi’s visit that the programme was Pyongyang’s “line of no retreat”.

Despite being historically highly reliant on political and economic support from China, Kim has drawn North Korea closer to Russia in recent years.

He has boosted an alliance with Putin by sending troops to fight alongside Russian forces against Ukraine.

Still, Beijing remains an economic anchor for North Korea, whose economy has been hobbled for years by international sanctions over its nuclear programme.

China accounted for US$2.6 billion of North Korea’s foreign trade — nearly 98 percent of the total — in 2024, according to South Korea’s Ministry of Economy and Finance.

By Ben Strang

Beijing said Thursday it barred a group of New Zealand lawmakers from entering China after they visited officials in Taiwan in May, accusing them of interfering in Chinese domestic affairs.

New Zealand voiced concern over the barring of the four MPs, who visited as part of a cross-party delegation, noting its lawmakers have paid visits to Taiwan for decades.

But Beijing’s embassy in Wellington said the delegation had defied repeated warnings in travelling to the self-ruled island, where they met with Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim.

“The actions of these MPs violate the one-China principle and constitute interference in China’s internal affairs,” an embassy spokesperson said, referring to Beijing’s position that it is the sole legitimate government of China.

“Whoever crosses the red line on the Taiwan question will face the consequences,” the spokesperson added.

China claims self-ruled Taiwan is part of its territory and opposes the democratic island’s participation in international organisations and exchanges with other countries.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office denied the visit violated his government’s position on the status of the island democracy.

He defended the MPs’ right to visit Taiwan and said he had instructed the nation’s diplomats “to express concern at this departure from past practice and to better understand it.”

“New Zealand Members of Parliament are free to make their own individual decisions, independent of the government, about how they respond to invitations to travel overseas,” his spokesperson said.

While Wellington does not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, “this does not preclude New Zealand from maintaining trade, economic, cultural and indigenous exchanges”, the foreign ministry said.

“We intend to continue these exchanges as they benefit the people of New Zealand and are entirely consistent with our One China policy.”

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong told a hearing of the country’s Senate that Canberra was “concerned” by the bans and diplomats would raise the issue with Chinese counterparts.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it “strongly condemns” the ban, insisting “China has no right to interfere” in its international interactions.

‘Disappointing’

New Zealand lawmakers Simon O’Connor and Ingrid Leary created the All Party Parliamentary Group on Taiwan in March 2023 with the goal of improving ties with the island and holding discussions about trade, healthcare and semiconductor technology.

The Chinese embassy in Wellington raised immediate concerns about their visits.

Taiwan’s foreign affairs ministry said last month the trip was the third by the group since the group’s founding.

One of the MPs hit with a ban, Laura McClure, told RNZ that China was trying to intimidate New Zealand lawmakers.

“New Zealand is sovereign, and members of parliament have the right to represent the communities and constituents that we do, and we have the right to travel freely around the globe,” she said. “That is part of living in a free democracy.”

RNZ reported that the Chinese Embassy in Wellington had said it would reverse the ban if the politicians apologised.

“It’s not exactly clear what we would be apologising for, and if it is just for travelling to Taiwan, I personally will not be apologising,” McClure said.

Labour MP Duncan Webb, who took part in the trip, told RNZ that the lawmakers had been warned by the Chinese embassy before travelling that they faced a ban if they went.

“With the increasing tensions I suppose a response wasn’t surprising, but I think it is disappointing,” he said.

Taiwan’s air force suspended training flights on T-34 planes after one aircraft crashed during a simulated engine failure exercise on Tuesday, killing the two pilots on board.

The single-engine propeller plane went down at 8:08 am (0008 GMT) at the northern end of the runway at Gangshan Air Base in the island’s southern port city of Kaohsiung, the air force said.

A task force has been set up to investigate the cause of the crash, which took place about 20 minutes after takeoff.

The pilots, both lieutenant colonels and aged 41 and 45, had not reported any problems with the aircraft in the moments leading up to the crash, said the air force’s inspector general, Major General Chiang Yi-cheng.

“Throughout the entire flight there were no abnormal radio communications before the accident occurred,” Chiang told a news conference.

President Lai Ching-te said he was “deeply saddened” at the loss of life, describing the pilots as “heroic” and thanking them for their “sacrifice and dedication” to Taiwan.

The Taiwanese air force uses Beechcraft single-engine propeller planes as the primary trainer aircraft for its pilots, according to the defence ministry’s website.

The planes were first delivered to Taiwan in 1984.

In January, an F-16 fighter jet crashed into the sea off eastern Taiwan during a routine training mission. The pilot is believed to have ejected from the aircraft but has not been found.

Netanyahu acknowledges pause in fighting in TV speech but vows forceful response to future attacks

Fears of a return to a full-scale regional war in the Middle East eased on Monday as Israel and Iran said they had halted attacks on each other after an appeal from Donald Trump to “immediately stop shooting”.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, acknowledged the halt in fighting with Iran in a televised speech, but vowed to respond “with force” to future attacks.

Taiwan’s coast guard said Sunday it has deployed vessels “to respond appropriately” to a Chinese operation in waters east of the island democracy, which it said “violates international law”.

It comes after Chinese state media reported Saturday that the “law enforcement operation” was in response to talks between Japan and the Philippines to draw a boundary in the affected waters.

China, which asserts Taiwan is part of its territory, called the talks “illegal” and has claimed exclusive control over the waters.

The Chinese ships have been monitored “throughout the entire process” and Taiwan “has deployed the necessary vessels to respond appropriately,” the Taiwanese coast guard said in a statement.

Taiwan said it had detected four Chinese government vessels departing from Xiamen port which had sailed outside Taiwanese restricted waters southwest of the island.

Taiwan’s coast guard dispatched more than five vessels “to assist with surveillance”.

The Chinese vessels were expected to arrive “in the relevant waters” on Sunday, the statement said, adding that “China does not enjoy any sovereign rights in the waters east of Taiwan”.

Tokyo and Manila said last month they would start formal talks “to delimit the maritime boundary” of an economic zone and continental shelf between them, angering Beijing.

On Saturday, Beijing’s transport ministry organised maritime police from coastal provinces Fujian and Guangdong to “conduct a special maritime traffic law enforcement operation in waters east of Taiwan Island”, state news agency Xinhua said.

The report did not give details on the operation, including how long it lasted or whether it was still ongoing, and it did not say whether maritime police dispatched ships to the area.

The operation was “a necessary action taken against Japan and the Philippines’ unilateral announcement they would start ‘negotiations on delimiting a maritime boundary'” near Taiwan, Xinhua added.

Taiwan said Wednesday it should be consulted on the Japan-Philippines talks.

Manila and Tokyo’s shared grievances over Chinese maritime territorial claims have seen them draw increasingly close in recent years.

Japan and China are in territorial and economic disputes in the East China Sea, where coast guard ships from both sides routinely stage tense standoffs.

Beijing has meanwhile deployed navy and coast guard vessels in the South China Sea, in a bid to bar the Philippines from strategically important reefs and islands, leading to a string of confrontations.

Taiwan’s coast guard said Saturday that a Chinese survey vessel had joined a coast guard ship in waters around Pratas Island in the northern part of the South China Sea.

The Taiwanese coast guard said it was “the first observed instance of Chinese coast guard and survey vessels acting in coordination to provoke Taiwan”.

Taiwan controls Pratas but Beijing also claims the island, along with most of the strategic waterway.

This blog has now closed – our coverage of this crisis in the Middle East continues here

If the US genuinely wants a deal it will have to engage with Iranian demands on sanctions relief, says Danny Citrinowicz, the former head of the Iran branch of Israeli military intelligence.

Today’s exchange of strikes shows how easily both Iran and the US can slide towards another round of escalation, says Citrinowicz, who is now a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

If Washington is unwilling to accept that reality, it should recognize the likely alternative: continued confrontations with Iran that could eventually spiral beyond anyone’s control and lead to military conflict under less favorable conditions.

Even a limited military campaign designed to weaken Iran would not fundamentally alter Tehran’s negotiating position. It has not happened in the past, and there is little reason to believe it would happen now. Iran emerges from the latest exchange of blows convinced that it can absorb pressure and respond to attacks.”

Legal and moral responsibility of all countries in the region (especially those located along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf) to prevent the US military and Israel from using their territory or facilities to plan, organise, execute, or support hostile actions against Iran.

By AFP teams in Tehran, Dubai, Beijing and Mecca

US forces launched overnight strikes on missile sites in southern Iran and boats they said were trying to lay mines in Gulf waters, sending oil prices higher Tuesday and fuelling tension as diplomats sought a deal to end the war.

The international benchmark Brent crude jumped up by almost three percent after the US Central Command announced the new wave of bombings, and China urged both sides to respect their truce and resolve their dispute peacefully.

Iran did not immediately confirm the reported strikes, but state media reported blasts in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, and the Revolutionary Guards Corps said its forces had downed a US drone entering its airspace and fired at an F-35 fighter jet.

In a statement marking the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday, Tehran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei declared that Washington was losing its influence in the Middle East and warned Middle East countries to ensure that they no longer host bases from which the US could launch attacks.

The United States, he said in a written statement, “in addition to no longer having any safe haven in the region for aggression and the establishment of military bases, is moving further and further away from its former position with each passing day”.

Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for US Central Command, said: “US forces conducted self-defence strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”

‘We’ll see’

He gave few details of the attacks and said only that the targets included missile launch sites and boats trying to “emplace mines.”

Despite the strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that a deal remained within reach.

But he remained firm on the fate of the Strait of Hormuz, the key oil and gas shipping route out of the Gulf, which Iran is seeking to control by charging fees to approve the passage of vessels.

“There were some talks going on in Qatar today, so we’ll see if we can make progress. I think it’s a lot of talking back and forth going on about specific language in the initial document, so it’ll take a few days,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to India.

He said the strait was “going to be open one way or the other,” adding: “What’s happening there is unlawful, it’s illegal, it’s unsustainable for the world, it’s unacceptable.”

The strikes threatened a ceasefire that began on April 8 as the United States and Iran struggle to reach an accord to end a war that has rattled the global economy with a severe disruption of energy flows.

China, Washington’s great power rival and a major energy importer, expressed concern after the US strikes.

“We urge the parties concerned to fulfil their ceasefire commitments, resolve disputes through peaceful means… and promote the early restoration of peace,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters.

Hopes of an accord took another blow when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “crush” Hezbollah in Lebanon on Monday evening. Iran has demanded that any peace accord apply to the fighting in Lebanon as well.

On Tuesday, Israel warned Lebanese civilians to evacuate the southern city of Nabatieh ahead of more planned strikes.

Nuclear fuel disposal

US President Donald Trump said in a social media post that he expected Iran to hand over its enriched uranium to the United States to be destroyed, or have it destroyed in Iran with an international witness.

The nuclear fuel “will either be immediately turned over to the United States to be brought home and destroyed or, preferably, in conjunction and coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran, destroyed in place or, at another acceptable location”.

The US consulate in Hong Kong displayed commemorative candles in its windows on the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown on Thursday, while other diplomatic missions paid tribute with social media posts.

The annual move is often blasted by local and Chinese authorities, and has been cited by Beijing as “evidence” of foreign interference in a 6,300-word “fact sheet.”

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Hong Kong used to be one of the few places on Chinese soil where annual vigils were held to commemorate the people who died in the 1989 crackdown.

But police banned the gathering at Victoria Park for the first time in 2020, citing Covid-19 restrictions, and imposed the same ban the following year.

No official commemoration has been held since the vigil organiser, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, disbanded in September 2021. Its leaders were arrested and are currently on trial.

Currently occupying Victoria Park – historically the site of Hong Kong’s vigils – is a five-day patriotic carnival organised by pro-Beijing groups.

Diplomatic commemorations

Earlier on Thursday, Britain’s embassy in China shared a social media post featuring an animation with scenes from the bloody crackdown. It was shared without commentary.

The British consulate in Hong Kong posted a reel of a mobile phone held aloft with its torch on, apparently referencing the candlelit vigils.

Washington’s mission in Beijing shared a quote from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stating: “Those who sacrificed to uphold their unalienable rights of free expression and peaceful assembly will be vindicated someday.”

In response, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing had “long since reached a clear conclusion regarding that political turmoil that occurred in the late 1980s.”

The Canadian consulate in Hong Kong shared a Facebook post, which read: “Today, Canadians honour the memory of all who lost their lives, were injured or went missing during the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 4, 1989. Canada stands with the survivors and the families and loved ones who continue to demand accountability.”

Meanwhile, the Australian consulate in Hong Kong shared on Facebook a photo of candles and a statement reading: “Today, we stand with communities worldwide in remembering those who lost their lives at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989. Australia remains steadfast in its commitment to upholding human rights, including freedom of association, of expression, and of political participation.”

In June 2019, then-leader Carrie Lam said that the city’s annual vigils were “proof that Hong Kong is a free place.”

A Hong Kong court is now hearing a landmark trial of the Alliance and two vigil leaders, Chow Hang-tung and  Lee Cheuk-yan. They are accused of “inciting subversion” under the national security law, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars. 

Another vigil leader – Albert Ho – pleaded guilty when the trial opened in January.