Category: Security

A legislative proposal to cut in half a Pentagon-funded medical research account, subtracting hundreds of millions of dollars in this fiscal year alone, would jeopardize the fight against deadly diseases, experts said this week.

The six-month continuing resolution for fiscal 2025, which the House has passed and the Senate is expected to take up soon, would cut the Defense Health Program’s research and development account by $1.2 billion — from $2.9 billion in fiscal 2024 to $1.7 billion, or 41%. The biggest subset of that cut is an $859 million, or 57%, reduction to the so-called Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program: from $1.5 billion to $650 million.

That program, created and sustained by Congress, competitively awards funds to hundreds of projects each year at both Defense Department labs and outside research institutions, including at many American universities, to study everything from cancer to battlefield wounds to suicide prevention.

Democrats in Congress, in particular, have been criticizing the proposed cut in speeches and statements. But, as Washington is awash in wave after wave of news of Trump administration actions and as a government shutdown looms, the debate over the Pentagon research program has been largely obscured.

But not for Fran Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, an advocacy group.

Visco is herself a survivor of breast cancer, which is the second-leading cause of death in women. In a March 11 statement to lawmakers, she said the Defense-funded medical research program “has saved many lives, and we can continue that progress if Congress passes a defense appropriations bill. We will ruin it if Congress passes this CR.”

Power of the purse

The CR, unlike a regular Defense appropriations bill, “gives no direction” about how the money should be spent, except for enumerating allocations in broad categories, Visco noted, and so it cedes more of Congress’ so-called power of the purse — its primary source of clout — to the executive branch. As such, the work of both the House and Senate Defense appropriations bills for fiscal 2025 will be largely for naught when a CR is enacted.

For congressionally directed medical research, each of those Defense bills, which were passed in committee on a bipartisan basis, proposed funding for dozens of projects totaling nearly $1 billion in the Senate’s measure and $1.27 billion in the House’s. For example, the House bill directed that $5 million go to a project to “improve care during the ‘golden hour’ for servicemembers with life-threatening injuries” and to advance “treatments for warfighters deployed around the world.”

Typically, such House and Senate funding proposals would be combined and reconciled to stipulate how the Pentagon should spend the funds. But not under a CR.

Other medical research groups are also lobbying Congress this week to do something about the proposed cuts.

The Defense Health Research Consortium of more than 60 research organizations, including the American Psychological Association and ZERO Prostate Cancer, is calling on the Senate to undo the $859 million cut to the Pentagon’s congressionally directed medical research prior to voting on a CR.

“Cutting these vital research funds does a great disservice to our warfighters and veterans, and creates a vacuum in global leadership on medical research that China would be more than happy to fulfill,” said Mark Vieth, the coordinator of the consortium, in an email.

‘Devastating’ cutbacks

The Trump administration has also proposed limiting support for medical research funded at the National Institutes of Health, which bankrolls some $37 billion in studies and experiments each year, many times more than the Pentagon’s effort.

At the same time, the CR would create “an utterly massive hole in the NIH budget” of more than a quarter of a billion dollars, Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Such funding reductions at both the Pentagon and NIH “would be devastating to our medical research infrastructure throughout the United States,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who is the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee and a senior member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

“We would quickly go from the leading medical research nation in the world to much less,” he said. “And then it would cause incredible impact locally, and these impacts would be spread throughout the country.”

Millions of people affected

The Pentagon medical research money is in some cases focused on disorders and diseases that are particular challenges for servicemembers, including wound and burn care, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide ideation and prosthetics. The funding also serves the fight against scourges that directly or indirectly affect everyone, such as multiple types of cancer as well as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Visco, who was diagnosed just last year with a metastatic form of breast cancer 37 years after her initial diagnosis, successfully underwent a treatment that grew out of Pentagon-funded medical research, she said in her statement to Congress. There are others, she said, including the anti-cancer drug Herceptin and CDK inhibitor therapies.

Likewise, the congressionally directed medical research program at the Pentagon posted news on its website just last month that it had contributed to the development of a treatment for neurofibromastosis, a set of tumor-causing disorders.

The CR “could be responsible for ending critically important research that has already benefited millions of people with many different types of cancer,” Visco wrote. “Today’s researchers could hold the key to preventing cancer altogether. You cannot stop them in their tracks.”

More than 30 years of research

The congressionally directed medical research program, which is managed by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Maryland, was launched with a $210 million appropriation in 1992. In recent years, its annual funding allotment has been in the neighborhood of $1 billion.

The Pentagon does not request this money, and it has instead been added each year by Congress. To some, this is considered pork-barrel spending.

The late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., used to crusade against the Pentagon medical research spending as a diversion of defense funds that he argued should instead be used to make the military more lethal. The program also used to come in for criticism for not adequately coordinating its spending with NIH and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

But the Government Accountability Office, in a 2022 report directed by Congress, gave the program’s management a positive assessment, including on its coordination with other departments and agencies.

The Pentagon’s congressionally directed medical research initiative has been in a state of suspended animation in recent weeks, due not only to the proposed cuts but also to the uncertainty about future appropriations.

Atop the program’s website is this announcement: “The FY25 Defense Appropriations Bill has not been signed into law. CDMRP is unable to release new funding opportunities under the current Continuing Resolution. Pre-application and application deadlines will be available when opportunities are released, contingent upon future funding.”

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For nearly five years, two blocks leading up to the White House were the home of a mural that had become one of the most recognizable symbols nationally of the Black Lives Matter movement that swept the nation in the summer of 2020.

And that was far too long for Georgia U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, who filed legislation about a week ago threatening to withhold federal funds from Washington if the bold yellow letters weren’t removed from the two blocks renamed Liberty Plaza. Clyde, R-Athens, said renaming Black Lives Matter Plaza was a crucial component of President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“The Left has allowed this deeply divisive slogan to shamefully stain the streets of America’s capital city for nearly five years,” he wrote in a press release announcing the March 3 bill. “It’s past time for Congress to exercise its constitutional authority over Washington’s affairs to remove BLM Plaza and rename the street to Liberty Plaza. Our capital city must serve as a beacon of freedom, patriotism, and safety — not wokeness, divisiveness, and lawlessness.”

Last week, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the mural would be removed just as Clyde wanted. She said the city had bigger battles to fight than one over a streetscape, pointing to the mass layoffs affecting federal workers in the nation’s capital and other GOP-led threats to its home rule.

“The mural inspired millions of people and helped our city through a very painful period, but now we can’t afford to be distracted by meaningless congressional interference,” she wrote in a statement. “The devastating impacts of the federal job cuts must be our number one concern. Our focus is on economic growth, public safety, and supporting our residents affected by these cuts.”

Bowser has also been working on her relationship with Trump, meeting with him privately amid the cost-cutting efforts his administration has exerted and the outsize impact they could have on Washington residents. Her Black Lives Matter Plaza olive branch — workers began digging up the mural embedded into the asphalt on Monday — comes at the same time as a much bigger threat.

The U.S. House will vote Tuesday on government funding legislation that, if approved, would require Bowser to immediately reduce the city’s budget by roughly $1 billion. The across-the-board spending cuts could lead to layoffs of teachers and police officers and library closings — services funded by local taxpayers and not the federal government.

Bowser and other local officials have lobbied to have the city exempted from the cuts required by the continuing resolution, but so far Republicans have not agreed to amendments. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress final authority over all matters related to the capital city.

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Republican Rep. Tom Massie is daring allies of President Donald Trump to primary him as he refuses to support a GOP-backed stopgap spending plan.

The right-wing fiscal hawk insisted he won’t back down to pressure from the White House to get on board with a short-term spending bill that would avert a government shutdown as soon as Friday.

“Someone thinks they can control (me) by threatening my re-election. Guess what? Doesn’t work on me,” Massie posted on X. “My constituents prefer transparency and principles over blind allegiance.”

The Kentucky conservative insists he won’t drop his opposition to spending bills that he says simply raise the national debt, whether they are put forward by Democrats or Republicans.

Massie already voted against Trump’s bigger budget plan to lay the groundwork for big tax cuts, saying that plan too would just kick the nation’s debt problem down the road.

Trump himself slammed Massie, calling him “an automatic ‘NO’ vote on just about everything.”

“He should be primaried, and I will lead the charge against him.” Trump tweeted. “He’s just another grandstander, who’s too much trouble, and not worth the fight.”

“The people of Kentucky won’t stand for it, just watch,” Trump added. “Do I have any takers?”

Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita picked up the fight, tweeting that Massie “never faced me.”

“Stand by,” LaCivita warned.

Republicans hold just a four-vote majority in the House of Representatives, meaning the GOP can afford to lose no more than one GOP vote if Democrats vote in lockstep against the spending bill.

That means if Massie sticks to his guns, every other Republican would need to support the bill to allow it to pass.

Massie, who represents a deep-red western Kentucky district, is a staunch fiscal conservative who objects on principle to stopgap spending bills and other bills that he derides as fiscal gimmicks.

A handful of other Republicans usually join him in opposing the bills, even those fronted by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. But nearly all of the others have caved to MAGA pressure and say they will vote for Trump’s plan this time.

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Last weekend, Rodrigo Duterte rallied thousands of cheering Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong on his first overseas trip in years. Upon his return to Manila on Tuesday, he joined a rare club of ex-leaders arrested for breaching international law.

Police greeted the former Philippine president at the airport to execute a warrant from Interpol after the International Criminal Court ordered his arrest following a probe into the deadly drug war that defined his rule. Video showed officers escorting the 79-year-old politician as he walked with a cane through the terminal.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said a plane carrying Duterte has left the country for The Hague, where the ex-leader will face charges of crimes against humanity. He defended the government’s action, saying it was in compliance with Manila’s commitments to Interpol.

“We followed all the legal procedures that are necessary so I am confident that if in further examination you will find that it is proper and correct,” Marcos told a briefing late Tuesday. He denied that the move was a case of “political persecution” amid an ongoing feud with the Duterte family.

The dramatic scenes, which sent stocks tumbling, marked the end of a yearslong quest by human rights campaigners to hold Duterte to account for an anti-narcotics campaign during his presidency from 2016 to 2022 that killed more than 6,000 people.

The ICC said in a statement that one of its pretrial chambers issued an arrest warrant for Duterte “for charges of the crime of murder as a crime against humanity allegedly committed in the Philippines” between Nov. 1, 2011, and March 16, 2019, which covers parts of his presidency and his time as mayor and vice mayor of Davao.

The court added that an initial appearance hearing will be scheduled once he’s in custody, without providing further information.

The timing of his arrest coincides with increased political tensions with Marcos and comes shortly before legislative elections in May.

Last month, his daughter Sara Duterte was impeached as vice president by Marcos allies in the House of Representatives on charges she plotted to kill the president and misused public funds — accusations she has denied. A Senate trial, which would determine if she will be removed from office, is scheduled to begin in July.

“Since ICC has no enforcement power and would rely on the cooperation of the member state, if the two clans were in good terms, the administration would never allow the enforcement of the arrest warrant within Philippine soil,” said Leo Camacho, a constitutional expert and lecturer at the Ateneo School of Law in Manila. “Things changed when the alliance broke apart.”

It’s a stunning blow to Duterte, once frequently referred to as the Donald Trump of Asia for his radical leadership style. He is now the first former Asian leader to be served an arrest warrant over charges filed at the ICC.

The Philippines’ benchmark stock index fell more than 2% on Tuesday, the most among Asian equity gauges and its biggest drop since Jan. 31. The peso was up 0.3% against the dollar.

Duterte petitioned the Supreme Court on Tuesday to halt enforcement of the ICC arrest order, saying it has no automatic legal effect in the country.

The Philippines under Duterte withdrew from the ICC in 2019. The decision was affirmed by Marcos shortly after he assumed office in 2022, saying the nation had no intention of rejoining The Hague-based court.

Yet in a change of tone last year as the Marcos-Duterte feud deepened, the government said it would cooperate if the ICC refers the process to Interpol and seeks the Philippines’ help.

Duterte questioned the legal basis of his arrest. “I was brought here not of my own volition,” he said in a video posted on daughter Veronica Duterte’s Facebook page. “It’s somebody else’s. What is the law and what is the crime that I committed?”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also weighed in on the arrest, with a spokesman telling reporters Tuesday that the ICC should follow the law and “avoid politicization and double standards.”

The ICC holds accountable those who commit acts of mass inhumanity. It can pursue cases when a country asks for an investigation within its territory or of its citizens, when the UN Security Council requests a probe, or when an ICC panel of judges authorizes an inquiry initiated by the court’s prosecutor.

The ICC issued a warrant of arrest for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November for what it called “crimes against humanity and war crimes” in Israel’s military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

While the arrest warrant is likely to limit the countries to which Netanyahu can travel without fear of arrest, it’s unlikely he’ll ever face trial. Israel has said it will appeal the ICC ruling. U.S. President Donald Trump called the warrant “baseless” and authorized sanctions on ICC officials who investigate the United States and its allies.

More than a dozen Rodrigo Duterte supporters were at the airbase’s gate on Tuesday, some livestreaming the event, while political allies including two senatorial candidates arrived to show support. At least four truckloads of anti-riot police guarded a gate of the airbase.

Duterte had planned to run again for mayor of his hometown Davao City in the May midterm election. Duterte said this week he’s ready to go to jail if the ICC orders his arrest. He has also defended his legacy-defining drug war, telling supporters at a Hong Kong stadium that he did it for them and their children.

“If that’s my fate, that’s fine I will accept it,” Duterte told supporters on Sunday in Hong Kong, according to a video posted on Facebook by broadcaster Bombo Radyo. “We can’t do anything if I’m arrested or imprisoned.”

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Seven more women filed sexual assault claims against the U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday, according to an attorney representing the women, as fallout from the assault scandal at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London continues to widen. A total of 29 such claims have been filed since September.

The claims, filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, allege that Coast Guard Academy officials did not take reasonable steps to protect cadets and prospective cadets from sexual assault, and that they knew about and concealed a pattern of sexual assault and harassment at the academy for decades.

“Many of them have been emotionally devastated,” said Christine Dunn, a partner at the law firm Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight who is representing the complainants. “To this day, they’re devastated. They’re in therapy and they suffer from PTSD. It’s something that they carry with them every day.”

Many of the claims stemmed from a policy that barred cadets at the academy from locking their room doors, Dunn told CT Insider. In several instances documented in the claims, women say they woke up to find male classmates on top of them.

“I told him I would scream if he did not get out of my room,” one former cadet said in her complaint. “He threatened me, ‘If you yell, we’ll both get in

trouble.’ I knew he was right. I had been drinking alcohol that night and knew the Academy had a strict zero-tolerance policy for underage drinking. I knew I would get in trouble for drinking, even though I had been assaulted, and likely nothing would happen to my assailant. The Academy created an environment that protected young men like him at the expense of young women like me.”

The complaints identify the women as Jane Does one through 29, rather than by name. Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight shared redacted copies of the complaints with CT Insider.

A total of 29 women have filed claims against the Coast Guard since September, all represented by Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. The women say they were assaulted while they were cadets or prospective cadets at the academy between the mid-1980s and 2017 — decades of alleged abuse they say Coast Guard officials failed to take seriously or address in a meaningful way.

The Coast Guard operates under auspices of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It and its former parent agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation, are also named in the complaints.

In a statement Thursday evening, the Coast Guard Academy said it had not yet received the additional claims but cannot discuss individual cases.

“Sexual assault and sexual harassment have no place in our Service,” the statement read. “The Coast Guard is committed to protecting our workforce and ensuring a safe environment that eliminates sexual assault and sexual harassment, and has devoted significant resources to improving prevention, victim support and accountability.”

Allegations of widespread sexual assault and harassment at the Coast Guard Academy first came to light in June 2023, when CNN revealed a Coast Guard report, dubbed Operation Fouled Anchor, that found decades of sexual assault and harassment at the academy dating back to the 1980s, along with a culture of inaction and impunity by Coast Guard officials.

“This investigation made clear that the leadership was more concerned at that time about … reputation than about the victims of crimes who were members of our service,” a draft of the final report said, according to CNN.

The U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — then chaired by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut — held hearings on the scandal in December 2023 and June 2024.

At the December 2023 hearing, four former cadets told lawmakers that their own experiences of sexual assault at the academy reflected a broader culture of impunity.

“This is insidious, this is pervasive and this continues to this day,” retired Lt. Melissa McCafferty said at the time.

President Donald Trump removed Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan from her post shortly after he took office in January. Former President Joe Biden had named Fagan, the first woman to lead a military service branch, to the post in April 2022, before Fouled Anchor became public.

Trump reportedly fired Fagan in part due to what one official told Politico was an “excessive” focus on diversity, equity and inclusion — something Trump has worked to eliminate from the federal government since he took office.

Fagan came under blistering criticism from lawmakers during the hearing in June, with Blumenthal saying the Coast Guard had “a deep moral rot” that “prioritizes cronyism over accountability, silence over survivors.”

Admiral Kevin Lunday has been acting commandant since Fagan left.

“I am hopeful that this new commandant will approach this issue with greater transparency and that we will get some answers and some accountability,” Dunn said.

A new authorization bill for the Coast Guard passed the U.S. Senate in March that includes measures aimed at preventing sexual assault and improving reporting when it does happen. That bill is awaiting action in the house.

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Top U.S. and Ukrainian officials began talks in Saudi Arabia about the path to a possible peace deal with Moscow amid pressure from Washington on Kyiv to give ground.

“The meeting started very constructively,” the Ukrainian president’s top aide, Andriy Yermak, said Tuesday on the X platform. Walking into the talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah, he had told reporters that the Ukrainian side wants to achieve “a just and lasting peace in Ukraine” and “is ready to go for this goal.”

Ahead of the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was seeking to hear what concessions Ukraine was willing to make to secure a deal with Russia.

“The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things to end this conflict,” Rubio said before arriving in Saudi Arabia. The discussions with the Ukrainians aim to “establish clearly their intentions.”

U.S. President Donald Trump dispatched Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to meet Yermak and Ukraine’s defense and foreign ministers, Rustem Umerov and Andrii Sybiha, after his administration suspended military supplies and most intelligence assistance in a reversal of policy that shocked Kyiv and European allies.

When asked by reporters on the progress of talks during a break, Waltz said they were “getting there.”

The U.S. has tied restoring vital aid to Ukraine demonstrating a commitment to a diplomatic solution in the war that Russia began in February 2022. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose Oval Office bust-up with Trump on Feb. 28 provoked an unprecedented falling-out, has backed a plan for a temporary halt to air strikes and maritime attacks proposed by France and the U.K.

“Security guarantees are very important,” Yermak said ahead of the talks, adding Ukraine sought to ensure “that this aggression will never be repeated in the future.”

Russia is willing to accept a truce to stop all fighting in return for progress on the broad terms of an eventual peace settlement, including for a peacekeeping mission, Bloomberg reported on March 7. The Kremlin has rejected the presence of NATO troops after the U.K. and France offered to contribute forces to a “coalition of the willing.”

In a quickening of the bid to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine, Trump is sending envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow this week to meet with President Vladimir Putin, people familiar with the matter said. Although Witkoff’s title is Middle East envoy, this would be his second trip to Russia as Trump’s representative, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, cautioned against rushing to “put on rose-tinted glasses” over the U.S. about-turn in withholding aid to Ukraine, the state news service Tass reported.

Possible concessions

Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, Rubio said the U.S. sought to “just get a general sense of what concessions are in the realm of the possible for them and what they would need in return.” He said the U.S. would then find out the Russian position to understand “how far apart we truly are.”

The U.S. is likely to want Ukraine to put aside its bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, accept effective neutral status and some limits on its army and weapons, said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of New York-based consultancy Eurasia Group.

Russian control of about 20% of Ukrainian territory that it has occupied would also have to be part of any deal, though without any legal recognition, said Kupchan.

This would fuel concerns among traditional U.S. allies in Europe that Trump is willing to accept a deal on Russia’s terms as he pursues his goal of normalizing ties with the Kremlin.

“They want the Ukrainians on board with the ceasefire that Trump wants,” said Kupchan, a former senior State Department official under President Bill Clinton. “They’ll be doing some pressing toward the Putin position.”

Trump said last week that negotiations with Russia were “easier” than with Ukraine. His administration is sketching out how it might ease sanctions imposed on Russia because of the war, including a cap imposed on prices for its oil sales, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A possible natural-resources deal with Ukraine — which Trump has portrayed as a prerequisite to mend ties with Kyiv — won’t be the main topic of discussion during Tuesday’s meeting, Rubio told reporters on the way to Jeddah on Monday.

Zelenskyy met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Kingdom’s de facto ruler, on Monday, but departed before talks with the U.S. began.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan was also at the table with the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations on Tuesday.

Ahead of the Jeddah talks, Russia fought off the largest drone attack on its territory in the three-year war.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it downed 343 unmanned aerial vehicles overnight, including 91 over the capital region. Three people were killed in the Moscow region, the Interfax news agency reported. Ukraine’s General Staff later confirmed it was behind the attack on Russian territory in a statement on Telegram.

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This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

Taiwan’s defense ministry is proposing a law that could bring a lengthy prison term for anyone deemed disloyal to its military, it said on Monday, adding the Chinese Communist Party tried to lure officers while its spying was becoming “rampant.”

“Any active military personnel who express loyalty to the enemy through words, actions, texts, pictures, electromagnetic records, scientific and technological methods, etc., which is sufficient to cause military disadvantages, will be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than 1 year and not more than 7 years,” the ministry said.

In recent years, the Taiwanese military, in cooperation with national security units, has cracked many espionage cases, it said in a statement.

“The Chinese Communist Party’s intelligence gathering and espionage activities are becoming increasingly rampant,” it said.

The Chinese side “uses money, investment, gambling and other methods to lure and recruit active-duty military personnel to sign written documents, shoot videos and other methods to swear allegiance to the enemy, which has seriously damaged national security,” the ministry said.

A small number of officers and soldiers had “committed treason and crimes” and should be strictly punished, it said.

The ministry was working on a draft amendment to Article 24 of the Criminal Law of the Army, Navy and Air Force that would help “strengthen countermeasures against the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration and sabotage activities against the national military.”

The amendment will be submitted to the island’s government for review after completing the notice and legal procedures.

The National Security Bureau said in a recent report that the number of Taiwanese citizens charged with attempted espionage for China rose “significantly” to 64 last year from 10 in 2022 and 48 in 2022.

Seven retired military officials were prosecuted last year for activities such as giving China the coordinates and details of military bases and the de facto U.S. embassy in Taipei.

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

The tariff wars between the United States and China could further hit Hong Kong’s status as a major international container port, where fewer ships are docking and many workers are on reduced pay, according to an investigation by RFA’s Cantonese Service.

While the effects of the Trump administration’s latest tariffs may not yet have been fully felt, people working in the industry said business has been plummeting for some time, citing the increasing shift of international container traffic to ports in mainland China.

Recently increased U.S. tariffs now target goods made in China and Hong Kong equally, further reducing the city’s usefulness as a transshipment hub for Chinese manufacturers looking to evade tariffs by using a “made in Hong Kong” label.

The volume of shipped cargo arriving at Hong Kong’s container ports fell by 0.5% year-on-year to 111.1 million tonnes, according to figures released last week by Hong Kong’s Census and Statistics Department.

The city’s container terminals handled 13.69 million twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, a year-on-year decrease of 5% from the year before.

Meanwhile, the number of vessels arriving under the Hong Kong flag has declined from a peak of around 3,000 before the pandemic to just 1,875 in 2024, a fall of more than 30%.

Staff on the ground said they have far less to do than just a couple of years ago, citing the shift of container traffic to ports in mainland China.

‘Very little to do’

A container truck owner-driver at Hong Kong’s Kwai Chung Container Terminal who gave only the surname Chan for fear of reprisals told RFA Cantonese that he has “very little to do” these days.

“I wouldn’t say it has fallen by 30% — to me it seems as if it has fallen by 60 or 70%,” Chan said, interviewed from a parking lot at the container terminal on March 7.

He said part of the issue is that countries including the United States now no longer treat Hong Kong separately when it comes to tariffs, so Chinese manufacturers can no longer evade tariffs by shipping goods to Hong Kong and repackgaging them with a “made in Hong Kong” label.

Another driver who gave only the surname Leung for fear of reprisals said he once owned nearly 20 containers, but now only holds 6 or 7, due to the fall in the volume of traffic.

He said he only works around 20 days a month now, compared with working nearly every day before the pandemic.

“There are fewer ships docking in Hong Kong now,” Leung said. “You can see where the crane arms are sticking up like trees — that means there are no ships in dock. The arms are lowered when there are ships in dock.”

“We used to have transshipment business, where containers were shipped to mainland China after arriving here, but now they go direct to mainland China, so there’s nothing for us to do,” he said.

Hong Kong’s flag is the eighth most-flown by ships worldwide, according to VesselsValue, a subsidiary of maritime data group Veson Nautical.

‘Everything has been cut in half’

But in January, the number of newly registered ships described as ocean-going vessels fell by around 6.5%, compared with 2,173 in January 2022, suggesting a shift in emphasis to coastal and river cargo traffic.

Another driver, who gave only the surname Lui, said freight volumes, wages and the number of days he gets work are around half what they were four years ago.

“Everything has been cut in half, including wages,” Lui said. “At one point we were only shipping one container every couple of days … Before, we used to have to work every day.”

Leung also estimated that business has fallen by 60-70%.

“There are fewer containers arriving in Hong Kong … at least 70% less,” he said. “Back then, there weren’t so many ports in mainland China, so they came through Hong Kong, and we transported them [to China]. Now, they’re unloaded at mainland Chinese ports.”

The drivers’ stories were backed up by Yu Kam-keung, consultant to Hong Kong Shipping Employees’ Union.

“Put simply, if you want to know about container traffic in Hong Kong, it has been decreasing,” Yu told RFA Cantonese. “The shipping ecosystem has changed in a lot of ways, but I can’t comment much more than that right now, sorry.”

Some shipping companies are discreetly moving operations out of Hong Kong and taking vessels off its flag registry, Reuters reported on March 6, adding, “others are making contingency plans to do so.”

Hong Kong’s role in serving Chinese security interests and growing U.S. scrutiny of the importance of China’s commercial fleet in a future military conflict, possibly over Taiwan, are causing unease across the industry, the report said.

US faults China for restricting business

In a separate report, the agency cited a White House document as saying that the United States plans to levy fees on imports arriving on Chinese-made ships and boost its own shipbuilding industry in a bid to reduce China’s grip on the US$150 billion global ocean shipping industry.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, or USTR, last month proposed imposing heavy port fees on China-owned shipping, which it said “burdens or restricts U.S. commerce by undercutting business opportunities for and investments in the U.S. maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sectors.”

It said China’s share of the global shipbuilding industry has exploded. China accounted for about 5% of the total tonnage of ships manufactured in 1999. By 2023, that had surpassed 50%.

The investigation, conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, found that Beijing has pursued a policy of subsidizing its domestic shipbuilding industry to dominate the global market.

Rocket Companies said Monday it is buying the real estate listing platform Redfin in a deal valued at $1.75 billion.

The all-stock deal, expected to close in within about six months, would incorporate one of the country’s largest mortgage lenders in Rocket with one of the top home search platforms in Redfin.

Seattle-based Redfin, founded in 2004, has more than 1 million for-sale and rental listings that garner almost 50 million monthly visitors, as well as a brokerage of more than 2,200 agents.

“Rocket and Redfin have a unified vision of a better way to buy and sell homes,” Varun Krishna, CEO of Rocket Companies, said in a statement. He added that this would involve linking up “traditionally disparate steps of the search and financing process” using technology.

Rocket said in the announcement that it envisions an all-in-one home buying experience, “from search to close, to servicing and future transactions.”

That might look like a customer checking her phone to see what she can afford, booking a tour with a Redfin agent, and getting pre-qualified for a loan, “all in a matter of minutes,” said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s CEO.

The joint announcement said artificial intelligence was also part of the reason for the deal. Through Redfin’s existing platform, Rocket would gain data about homebuyers, sellers and agents — data that can boost the company’s AI models that it claims will lead to more “personalized and automated” homebuying experiences.

Dan Gilbert’s Rocket also said the deal could generate about $140 million in cost savings, including from duplicative operations. Other revenue advantages for Rocket would come from pairing its financing clients with Redfin real estate agents, and vice versa, as Redfin clients would be driven to Rocket’s mortgage, title and servicing offerings.

A joint announcement said the deal has been approved by the boards of both companies and would close in the second or third quarter. The deal is subject to approval by Redfin shareholders.

Rocket’s $12.50 per-share offer is about a 115% premium over Redfin’s closing price on Friday. In early trading Monday, Redfin’s shares were surging by more than 60%, while Rocket was down more than 13%.

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This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

Authorities in a single district of the southwestern megacity of Chongqing have installed 27,900 surveillance cameras and 245 sensors as part of a comprehensive “grid” surveillance plan to keep tabs on residents, officials from the district said Monday.

The move offers a rare glimpse into the running of China’s “grid” system — the close-up monitoring of every aspect of its citizens’ lives to mediate disputes, influence public opinion and minimize protests and dissent.

“We in Beibei district have fully pressed the fast-forward button to promote the construction of … a digital Chongqing [and] deepened networked governance … to build a smart grassroots governance system,” Lin Xuyang, delegate to the National People’s Congress and secretary of Chongqing’s Beibei District Committee, told delegates in Beijing on March 10.

The annual gathering of delegates from across the country ends Tuesday.

“There is certainly no single way to govern, but precision is definitely one of them,” Lin said, likening the local grid monitoring and surveillance systems to “fine needlework.”

“The key to governance lies in people,” he said, adding that interconnected grids have now been extended from district to residential compound level, employing a “grid leader,” full- and part-time grid members to coordinate “more than 10,000 party member volunteers” and other volunteers.

Monitors report on residents’ activities

In July 2021, China empowered local officials at township, village and neighborhood level to enforce the law, as well as operating a vastly extended “grid management” system of social control in rural and urban areas alike.

According to directives sent out in 2018, the grid system carves up neighborhoods into a grid pattern with 15-20 households per square. Each grid has a monitor who reports back on residents’ affairs to local committees.

China’s “red armband” brigade of state-sanctioned busybodies have been dubbed the biggest intelligence network on the planet by social media users, and have supplied information that has also led police to crack major organized crime, according to state media.

Neighborhood committees in China have long been tasked with monitoring the activities of ordinary people in urban areas, while its grid management system turbo-charges the capacity of officials even in rural areas to monitor what local people are doing, saying and thinking.

These local forms of surveillance and social control are known in Chinese political jargon as the “Fengqiao Experience.”

They have also been used to target potential trouble before it emerges, with officials told to use big data to pinpoint people with marital difficulties or other grievances in the wake of the Zhuhai car killings.

A former employee of a residential compound in Chongqing who gave only the surname Yang for fear of reprisals said the cameras are mostly used to monitor the activities of local residents.

“This kind of surveillance has existed for a long time — its official name is SkyNet,” Yang said. “In rural areas, it’s known as Project Xueliang.”

“Its purpose is to monitor what’s going on in every corner of a district,” Yang said. “People’s every move takes place under their watchful gaze.”

Aim of reducing costs

A resident of the central province of Henan who gave only the nickname Lao Wan said local governments are struggling to afford the staffing costs of the “grid” surveillance system, so are installing automated, digital equipment to monitor people instead.

“There are two main reasons for [these cameras],” Lao Wan said. “One is they can’t afford to pay their grid workers, and on the other, they want to reduce administrative costs.”

“That’s why they have mobilized civilians and volunteers to do this work, such as older men and women who have nothing else to do,” he said. “They seem to be just being friendly towards their neighbors, but in fact, they’re monitoring your every word and deed.”

The revelations about Beibei district come after the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, reported that authorities in the southeastern port city of Xiamen have set up “neighborhood supervision” stations in 11 streets and 144 residential communities in Tong’an district, in a bid to improve “grassroots governance.”

Legal affairs commentator Lu Chenyuan said local governments are struggling to pay wages, so are coordinating older people as volunteers to implement the government’s “stability maintenance” system.

“It’s a way to reduce administrative expenditures and maintain stability amid a sharp fall in tax revenues,” Lu said.