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Violent protests by opposition parties have demanded premier’s resignation, transfer of power to caretaker government.

Bangladesh will hold parliamentary elections on January 7, its Election Commission has announced, as deadly protests by opposition parties demanding the prime minister’s resignation have rocked the country.

“The 12th parliamentary election will be held on January 7 in 300 seats,” Chief Election Commissioner Habibul Awal said on Wednesday in a live television broadcast, urging parties to hold talks to resolve the political crisis.

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose top leaders are either jailed or in exile, has already said it will boycott the polls if Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina does not resign and transfer power to a non-partisan caretaker government to oversee the general election.

Hasina has led Bangladesh for the past 15 years and has been accused of ruling with an iron fist. She is seen as almost certain to return to power for a fourth time if the opposition boycott goes ahead.

Hasina’s main rival and two-time premier, BNP leader Khaleda Zia, is effectively under house arrest for what her party calls trumped-up corruption charges.

The BNP boycotted the 2014 elections, but participated in 2018. Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party in the Muslim-majority country, and the Islami Andolon Bangladesh (IAB) party also said they would spurn the polls.

Thousands of IAB supporters marched to the Election Commission’s offices to protest the announcement on Wednesday, the Agence France-Presse news agency reported.

Mass antigovernment demonstrations and a widening crackdown on the opposition have been simmering for months and intensified over recent weeks.

“We sincerely wish the government would shun this path of violence and coercion of the opposition, so that an appropriate congenial environment is created, … ensuring peaceful coexistence where people can freely exercise their democratic rights,” Abdul Moyeen Khan, a former minister and member of the BNP’s highest policy-making body, told the Reuters news agency.

Hasina has been accused of authoritarianism, human rights violations, a crackdown on free speech and suppression of dissent while jailing her critics.

The government is under pressure from Western countries to hold “free and fair” elections.

The United States, the top buyer of Bangladeshi garments, said in May it was implementing a policy allowing for the restriction of visas to Bangladeshis who undermine the democratic election process in the country of nearly 170 million people.

Low wages have helped Bangladesh build its garment industry. About 4,000 factories employ four million workers, supplying brands such as H&M, Zara, Levi’s and Gap. Ready-made garments are a mainstay of the economy, accounting for almost 16 percent of gross domestic product, or about 85 percent of its $55bn in annual exports.

Last week, up to 25,000 garment workers clashed with police as protests rejecting a government-offered pay rise forced the closure of at least 100 factories outside the capital, Dhaka.

A government-appointed panel raised garment factory workers’ wages by 56.25 percent to 12,500 taka ($114) a month from December 1. But conditions are dire for many of the workers, the vast majority of whom are women whose monthly pay starts at 8,300 taka ($75).

After unions rejected the government’s offer, Hasina rejected the demands of the protesting workers for a higher pay rise, insisting they accept what was on the table or “go back to their village”. Union leaders expressed concern that her words could provoke more violence from police and security forces.

Direct lines of communication between American and Chinese military forces are to be reopened for the first time in more than a year, Joe Biden has announced.

Speaking after a meeting with China’s premier Xi Jinping in California, the US president said the restoration of military-to-military communications would help to prevent accidents which could spiral into wider conflicts.

Beijing formally suspended direct military contact with the US in April 2022 in the wake of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island of Taiwan – which China views as a breakaway province.

The move to restart them was one of three agreements President Biden presented to the media following face-to-face conversations with President Xi on Wednesday – their first meeting in a year.

Mr Biden said the pair had agreed on a deal to curb the production of fentanyl – a drug which has led to a huge spike in deaths in US cities – and on the need to discuss the potential risks of artificial intelligence (AI).

He said they had also exchanged views on a number of world issues, including the Israel-Hamas conflict and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Biden said he had also raised American concerns about China’s ruling Communist Party, including allegations of human rights abuses and Beijing’s expansion of maritime operations in the South China Sea.

However, he said he remained committed to the US’s long-standing “One China” policy – the bedrock of Washington-Beijing relations – in which the US maintains formal ties with China and only informal ones with Taiwan.

The US president said both he and Mr Xi had agreed to open high-level communications following a period of increased tensions between the two countries.

“He and I agreed that each one of us can pick up the phone, call directly and we’ll be heard immediately,” he told
reporters after the meeting.

When asked by a reporter at the press conference about whether he “trusted” the Chinese president, Mr Biden replied: “Do I trust [him]?

“Trust but verify, as the saying goes.

“We are in a competitive relationship – China and the US – but my responsibility is to make this rational and manageable so it doesn’t result in conflict.

“To find a place where we come together and where we find mutual interest – and most importantly, from my perspective, for the American people.”

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He said he and and Chinese premier had “not always agreed” on issues, but that the Chinese president had been “straightforward” with him.

Mr Biden also ascribed the success of their meeting to “just talking, just being blunt with one another, so there’s no misunderstanding”.

The US president had earlier welcomed the Chinese leader at the Filoli estate, a country house and gardens about 30 miles (48 km) south of San Francisco, ahead of a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

The meeting came amid increasingly strained tensions between the two global powers.

Mr Biden had earlier billed the meeting as a chance for Washington and Beijing to get back “on a normal course” again, and that the two countries had to make sure that rivalry between them did “not veer into conflict”.

Since they last met in November 2022, fraught relations have been further strained by the US downing of a Chinese ‘spy’ balloon that flew over America and by differences on the self-ruled island of Taiwan, as well as China’s hacking of a Biden official’s emails.

Mr Xi said a lot had happened since their last meeting, telling the media: “The world has emerged from the COVID pandemic, but is still under its tremendous impacts. The global economy is recovering, but its momentum remains sluggish.”

He said prior to the meeting that he wanted assurances from Mr Biden that the US would not support Taiwan independence, start a new Cold War, or suppress China’s economic growth.

Mr Xi said he was also keen to show America that China is still a good place to invest.

After the meeting, Mr Biden wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “I value the conversation I had today with President Xi because I think it’s paramount that we understand each other clearly, leader to leader.

“There are critical global challenges that demand our joint leadership. And today, we made real progress.”

The White House later said in a readout of their conversation that the talks had been “candid and constructive” and that they had “made progress on a number of key issues”.

“The two leaders welcomed the resumption of high-level military-to-military communication, as well as the US-China Defence Policy Coordination Talks and the US-China Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings,” the White House said.

“Both sides are also resuming telephone conversations between theatre commanders.”

United States President Joe Biden is facing his biggest international crisis yet.

Israel’s war on Gaza is showing no signs of stopping.

Hospitals, schools, refugee camps – nowhere is safe for Palestinians, with the war now in its sixth week.

All eyes are on Biden to stop the carnage.

But he seems to be struggling to assert any influence on Israel.

Will the Biden administration yield to growing global pressure and help bring about a ceasefire in Gaza?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Nihad Awad – National executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations

Julie Norman – Associate professor in politics and international relations at University College London

Hassan Mneimneh – Scholar and political analyst at the Middle East Institute

As the war enters its 631st day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Thursday, November 16, 2023.

Fighting

• Russia acknowledged that Ukrainian troops had crossed the Dnipro River to Russian-occupied parts of southern Kherson. Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor, said Ukrainian forces were operating in small groups spread over an area from the region’s railway bridge to the village of Krynky, a distance of about 20km (12 miles), and that Russia had deployed more assets to the area. Ukraine said earlier this week that it had secured a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro “against all odds“.
• Two people were killed and at least three others injured after four Russian missiles hit the town of Selydove, northwest of the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian officials said the missiles hit six apartment buildings as well as a number of private homes.
• Two rescue workers were killed and seven people injured amid Russian shelling in the Zaporizhia region. Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said the two members of the State Emergency Service were killed after Russia launched a second attack while they were responding to the first. It was not clear where the incident took place. Earlier, the region’s governor Yuriy Malashko said at least one person had been killed and seven injured after Russia fired three rockets.
• A Ukrainian civic group said it had confirmed the deaths of nearly 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022 invasion by using open sources. Writing in the Ukrainian journal Tyzhden, historian Yaroslav Tynchenko and volunteer Herman Shapovalenko said Shapovalenko’s Book of Memory project had confirmed 24,500 combat and non-combat deaths using open sources. Kyiv treats its losses as a state secret and officials say disclosing the figure could harm its war effort.

Politics and diplomacy

• European Union diplomats said the European Commission proposed a ban on imports of diamonds and liquid petroleum gas from Russia, and also to tighten implementation of a price cap on Russian oil as part of its 12th package of sanctions against Moscow. The proposal will be discussed on Wednesday. The agreement needs the unanimous backing of all 27 EU states.
• Russia’s foreign ministry said the sanctions package against Russia was part of a “hybrid war” being waged against it by Western countries led by the United States. Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, said the EU had “become Washington’s ‘useful idiot’”.
• Hungary’s European affairs minister, Janos Boka said a “period of reflection and a strategic discussion on the policy of the European Union towards Ukraine” was needed, and that Budapest would not support any EU decisions to advance Ukraine’s accession process or further aid for Kyiv until that happened. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is close to Moscow, claimed previously that the bloc’s strategy of sending money and military aid to Ukraine had failed.
• Darya Trepova, a 26-year-old Russian woman accused of killing military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, went on trial for “terrorism” at a military court in St Petersburg. Prosecutors allege Trepova assassinated the blogger under orders from Ukraine and was working with anti-Kremlin activists. Tatarsky, a fervent supporter of the Russian invasion, was killed in a cafe in April after Trepova presented him with a bust of himself that then exploded. More than 50 other people were injured.
• The wife of prominent Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was jailed for 25 years in April for treason and spreading “false information” about Russia’s war in Ukraine, said she feared for his life in the Siberian penal colony where he is being held. Kara-Murza has a nerve disorder after surviving two poison attacks and needs regular exercise and medicine to control the condition. His wife, Evgenia Kara-Murza, said exercise was now impossible for him in a cell measuring just 3 x 1.5 metres (9.8 x 4.9 feet). “His medical condition will of course deteriorate in the present situation … They’re using these punishment cells as a method of torture,” she said during a ceremony at Britain’s House of Lords, where she accepted a freedom award on his behalf.

Weapons

• Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said it had seen a “serious increase in interest” overseas in its Lancet drone, but would not be exporting the weapon because Russian armed forces’ “need for it is high”.  “[The munition] has proven itself excellent in real combat operations,” Rosoboronexport chief Alexander Mikheyev told state news agency TASS. Russia has been deploying the drones on the battlefield in Ukraine.

As the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit begins in San Francisco, all eyes will be on the meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden as China and the United States try to stabilise relations damaged by trade and security concerns.

The leaders of the two world powers will meet on Wednesday for a more than four-hour meeting on the sidelines of the summit and will have dinner with Silicon Valley chief executives.

Rising tensions between the two countries – including on tariffs, semiconductor chips, surveillance and China’s increasing militarisation in the South China Sea – have meant that US companies have looked to expand or move their China-based businesses to Mexico, Southeast Asia, India and even back in the United States over the past few years.

Biden and Xi have not met since the G20 summit in Bali in November 2022. The APEC summit provides an opportunity for them to meet “and neither side have to worry about the optics of overly accommodating the other in the initiation of the meeting and the meeting venue,” said Chong Ja Ian, associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore.

China and the US have worked to find agreement in two areas, drugs and climate change. Media reports said that at the summit, China is expected to announce a crackdown on fentanyl sales to the US and both countries plan to increase renewable energy.

The goal on the US side will be to “keep temperatures in the Asia-Pacific as low as possible”, said Rana Mitter, ST Lee professor of US-China relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. With wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the United States “has no desire for a third war front”, Mitter said.

For China, which is hoping to stimulate a sluggish economy, the goal is to “relieve technology restrictions”, Mitter said.

This month, China reported outflows of foreign direct investment exceeded inflows for the July-September quarter, a first since 1998. This reversal comes on the back of US restrictions on the Chinese semiconductor industry as Washington is concerned its chips could be used for military purposes. Chip companies have shifted those investments to the US, India, Malaysia and Singapore, Nikkei Asia reported.

Other companies such as Apple have looked to expand in India. Mexico has received investments in manufacturing and Vietnam and Cambodia in cellphone and textile manufacturing.

“It will be hard to find a comfortable resting place between the two right now,” Mitter said.

‘Pitch to attract investment’

Silicon Valley CEOs have been major investors in China. Apple partner Foxconn makes most of its cellphones in southern China, and Tesla became the first foreign company to have a wholly owned business in China to make cars.

However, the Chinese government’s crackdown on its own tech CEOs and foreign executives has led to concerns among US companies.

“When foreign executives see other executives being called up by the government, they are concerned. For business, it is all about transparency,” said Sean Randolph, senior director at the Economic Institute of the Bay Area Council, a San Francisco based think tank.

With the Chinese economy slowing, Xi will look to allay such concerns at his dinner with Silicon Valley executives and attract new investments. While his meeting with Biden is likely to remain largely behind closed doors, he is expected to make a speech at the business dinner.

“Xi will make a pitch to attract investment in the PRC [People’s Republic of China],” Chong said. “But CEOs may be less interested in pitches and more interested in whether their employees get detained, their offices get raided and books get additional scrutiny, they have to surrender proprietary information, there is adequate intellectual property protection and they can move their capital out of the PRC when necessary.”

In the past, as the Chinese economy quickly grew, the San Francisco Bay Area was a recipient of Chinese investment in real estate and tech startups, Randolph said.

Those investments have fallen since 2017, the year Xi last visited the US, as the Chinese government imposed capital controls and more recently the US government launched several investigations into Chinese investments in the country.

“Our investments in China are now flat and venture capital investment is down,” Randolph said.

Xi did not leave China during the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two years and has travelled sparingly since then, including skipping this year’s G20 summit in New Delhi. For his trip, both China and the US prepared extensively for the Xi-Biden meeting even though the visit seemed uncertain until recently.

Cleaning up San Francisco

The summit will be a showcase for the city of San Francisco, often a subject of media coverage for its growing homeless population and drug abuse. City authorities have conducted sweeps of unhoused people for weeks ahead of the summit. UN Plaza, home to many homeless people and substance users, has been cleaned up ahead of the summit.

In the past few days, bands played there, and there were a dance competition and laser light show.

“We hope to continue this in the months to come,” said Fernando Pujals of the Mid-Market Business Association, which helped organize the events.

Close by, on Market Street, there was an archival photo installation that celebrated the area’s history, including the earliest Pride parades to women’s rights marches.

This tradition of protests carried on for the APEC summit despite the tight security for the event.

Nik Evasco joined thousands of protesters on Sunday protesting a range of issues that will come up at the summit, including the presence of oil company CEOs at talks on climate change; the attendance of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, whom the demonstrators accused of human rights abuses; and Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Among them were also Free Tibet protesters, whose demonstrations could dampen Xi’s visit.

Evasco said protesters planned to “shut down” the summit on Wednesday.