Claudia Rosett

Hong Kong and the Truth About China

The Wall Street Journal ‘Tell the truth about China!” has become a rallying cry for protesters in Hong Kong. It is exactly what demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square were saying 30 years ago, before many of today’s protesters were born. The truth is that for all China’s economic advances, it remains a brutal, dehumanizing tyranny in which the ruling Communist Party would rather destroy people than give them a genuine say in their government.

'Stand With Hong Kong!' Where Is the Free World's Reaganesque Response?

PJ Report HONG KONG -- "Fight for freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!" This was the chant echoing through the arrival hall of Hong Kong's international airport on Tuesday, as thousands of protesters beseeched arriving passengers -- and the world -- for help in their struggle against China's encroaching tyranny.

The Coming Hong Kong Crackdown

--The Wall Street Journal Protesters in Hong Kong have delivered the most stunning rebuke to Chinese tyranny since the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. The question now, after eight weeks of demonstrations, is whether China’s dictator, President Xi Jinping, will respond with the same brute military force used to crush that democracy movement 30 years ago. Serious observers worry the backlash is coming. For Mr. Xi, who took power in 2013, the situation in Hong Kong presents an immediate threat to his domestic political legitimacy. State repression, bolstered by staggering levels of high-tech surveillance, has increased under his rule. In China’s western province of Xinjiang, despite international protest, the regime has for two years been dishing out torture and forced political indoctrination to an estimated one million Uighur Muslims held in internment camps. Dealing harshly with Hong Kong’s protest movement would remind the city’s residents—and the rest of China—who’s boss.

Why Hong Kong hearts are burning

NY Post HONG KONG — Wrecking and defacing property isn’t a custom in this capitalist redoubt. But during seven weeks of protest, some Hong Kongers have appropriated police barricades as battering rams, bashed in doors, broken windows, hurled bricks and eggs, scrawled graffiti on government buildings and splattered paint on emblems of Chinese sovereignty and Hong Kong authority. China, and its anointed chief executive for Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, aren’t pleased. The Beijing regime has accused the protesters of having “blatantly challenged the ­national sovereignty” and called for Hong Kong authorities to use “all necessary measures.” Lam has warned that “violence will only breed more violence” and repeatedly stressed that “nothing is more important than the rule of law.”

The Sky-High Stakes in Hong Kong

PJMedia: The Rosett Report In Hong Kong's huge protest over a proposed law that would allow extradition from the territory to mainland China, there is far more at stake than "confidence" in the integrity of Hong Kong's legal system, or the health of Hong Kong's economy -- important though those both are. The real showdown going on in Hong Kong has long been between despotism and democracy, between tyranny and the Free World. And whether we, the free people of America, and our allies, choose to think of it this way or not, the reality is that the showdown now taking place in Hong Kong will shape our future as well.

30 years later, the Chinese people still yearn for the freedom that the Tiananmen protesters demanded

The Dallas Morning News China's Tiananmen uprising of 1989 is remembered today mainly for the brute force — the gunfire and tanks — with which China's ruling Communist Party, on June 4, snuffed out the peaceful protests centered in Beijing's vast Tiananmen Square. But it is vital to remember the uprising itself. It was a protracted act of incredible courage, in which for weeks millions of Chinese citizens defied their rulers to call for freedom, justice and democracy.

Huawei's An Asset All Right--But It's Not Our Asset

PJMedia: The Rosett Report Technology can be a beautiful thing. But in the matter of who wields it, it can be vital to distinguish friend from foe. The late historian Samuel Eliot Morison, in his classic 15-volume naval history of World War II, bequeathed us a "grimly humorous" anecdote from the aftermath of the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan -- in which, in order to surprise Japan with a retaliatory bombing less than five months after Pearl Harbor, two U.S. aircraft carriers, the Hornet and the Enterprise, sailed much closer to Japanese waters than Tokyo was expecting. After U.S. bombers took off from the deck of the Hornet, the carriers turned for home. They were sighted by a crew member of a Japanese patrol ship, who -- mistaking them for Japanese aircraft carriers -- went below deck to rouse his sleeping skipper, telling him to come look at "our beautiful carriers."

Trump Should Counter North Korea's $2 Million Bill for Otto Warmbier with an Invoice from the American People

Are there any limits to the greed, audacity and multivalent evils of North Korea's Kim regime? It now appears that having monstrously abused and mortally injured a visiting American college student, Otto Warmbier, Kim Jong-un's regime then handed the U.S. a bill for Otto's medical care -- as a condition of releasing him, in a vegetative state, to be flown home to die.

Trump, Kim and the Death of Otto Warmbier

The Rosett Report Even some of President Trump's habitually vociferous critics are right now inclined to agree that he did the right thing in walking away from the Hanoi summit with North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un. In doing so, Trump defied not only Kim's duplicitous demands, but also the dire predictions from assorted American pundits and former policy makers that Trump would sell out his own country at this second meeting, whether by contenting himself with a nuclear-armed North Korea, endorsing a phony peace deal or generally giving away the store in self-interested pursuit of a Nobel Peace Price.

Timeline of the ISIS Bride

PJMedia: The Rosett Report What are we to make of the ISIS bride who now wants to return to America? Hoda Muthana left her home in Alabama in 2014 to join the terrorist "caliphate" of ISIS in Syria. Now, reportedly thrice-married to ISIS terrorists, twice-widowed, and recently arrived with her 18-month-old son at a Kurdish-run refugee camp in northern Syria, she says she "deeply regrets" joining ISIS, and wants to come back to the United States.

The United Nations is trying to grab control of worldwide immigration policies

While President Donald Trump seeks funding for a border wall, the United Nations is seeking control of migration policies worldwide, with a campaign configured to undermine America's sovereignty and control over its own borders. And, yes, if the U.N. has its way, America will help pay for it.

Mourn Kofi Annan, But Don’t Forget His Failings

In United Nations circles, Kofi Annan’s death last Saturday is being mourned in terms more befitting a saint than a former secretary general. Ted Turner’s U.N. Foundation eulogized him as “a fearless champion for the powerless.” Departing human rights commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein called him “humanity’s best example.” Current U.N. secretary general António Guterres tells us he was a “a guiding force for good” and a leader of “matchless dignity and determination.” He added, “In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations.”

One president is responsible for America's retreat from supporting democracy abroad--it isn't Trump

More than a generation has passed since America hailed the 1991 Soviet collapse as the dawn of a new world order, wide open to the spread of freedom and democracy. That euphoria is long gone, replaced these days by apprehension. For years now, authoritarian rulers have been on a roll, with such aggressive dictatorships as China, Russia and Iran gaining military muscle, influence and turf. Around the globe, freedom and democracy have been broadly in decline.

The Long Wait for China to Honor the Heroes of Tiananmen, 1989

Someday, China will build a monument in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to honor its citizens who took part in the 1989 uprising we remember under the name of Tiananmen. Perhaps that monument will look like the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, built by demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to hold high in both hands a torch of liberty -- facing off against the huge portrait of Mao.

Only Freedom Can Disarm Kim

The summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un seems to be on again, with a flurry of preparatory meetings. Mr. Trump tweeted Sunday: “I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day. Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this.” But even to have any chance of defanging the North Korean nuclear menace, there’s one huge concession Mr. Trump must demand from the regime: that Mr. Kim abandon his totalitarian control over North Korea.

The UN's colossal failure to stop Syria's chemical weapons

The showdown over chemical weapons in Syria has moved from the debating chambers of the United Nations to the realms of reality. President Trump is threatening missile strikes against Syria's Assad regime. Russia, entrenched in Syria in support of President Bashar Assad, is threatening to strike back.

Little Rocket Man's Great Big Summit Scam

When President Trump tipped reporters to expect a big announcement Thursday evening on North Korea, I joked to a friend that this could only amount to good news in the unlikely event that North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un had just sent Trump a note saying "Help! I want to defect!"

Kim Yo Jong is a Twisted Sister

Who is Kim Yo Jong? “Kim Jong Un’s sister is stealing the show at the Winter Olympics,” declared a CNN.com headline. This princess of Pyongyang received a royal welcome from South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in. He seated her in his VIP box, near Vice President Mike Pence, for the opening ceremony. He hosted her for lunch at the presidential Blue House, where she delivered him an invitation for a summit with Mr. Kim. The resulting Reuters headline: “North Korea heading for diplomacy gold medal at the Olympics.”

North Korea Games the Olympics

If the International Olympic Committee ever decides to add Totalitarian Cruelty and Nuclear Extortion to its roster of Olympic sports, it might make sense for the IOC to bend over backwards to include North Korea -- which would be a shoo-in for the gold.

Trump's Spectacular Speech From Seoul

Wow. President Trump wrapped up his visit to South Korea with a speech square in the tradition of President Ronald Reagan. It's not just that he talked about the long conflict on the Korean peninsula: the "dazzling light" of South Korea versus the "impenetrable darkness" of the North, the glories of freedom versus the toll of tyranny, the line that separates them just north of Seoul, and America's commitment to defending it.