HONG KONG - Hardline Hong Kong protesters held their ground on Thursday in a university besieged for days by police as the US passed a Bill lauding the city's pro-democracy movement, setting up a likely clash between Washington and Beijing.
Hong Kong's benchmark stock index fell 1.56 per cent in morning trade and other Asian markets also slid over fears that Congress's move could throw a spanner into the delicate US-China effort to reach a trade deal between the world's two largest economies. They included two protesters held on Wednesday as they tried to emerge from a sewer around half a kilometre outside the campus.
'PULL BACK FROM THE CLIFF' Hong Kong's nearly six months of turmoil began with a now-shelved Bill to allow extraditions to China, which revived fears that Beijing was slicing into the city's freedoms. Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous Chinese region and US policy treats its economy as separate from the rest of China.
"If the Bill becomes law, investors will be hesitant to take on the risk," Mr Hao Hong, head of research at Bocom International, told Bloomberg News."There are too many moving parts, it's very tricky."