Xi Visits Vietnam

A rundown of the news making headlines in and around China:

Tariff bullying: Senior Communist Party official Xia Baolong got fired up during a national security speech in Hong Kong on Tuesday, condemning the U.S.’ 145% tariff on imports from the free port city as “outrageous bullying and utterly shameless.” Xia, the director of the Communist Party Central Committee’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, said Washington “doesn’t want our ‘taxes,’ it wants our ‘life.’” And in an apparent response to U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance’s reference to Chinese as “peasants,” Xia added: “Let those American ‘peasants’ wail before the 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization!” Distinct from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong maintained a “zero tariff” policy on all goods, including American products. The U.S. has a trade surplus of $271.5 billion with Hong Kong in the last decade, making the city America’s largest trade surplus region.