The Wall Street Journal - 21.10.2019

A6| Monday, October 21, 2019 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

tor who gave his name as Chris

said on Sunday. “The police had

fired live rounds. The protest-

ers had smashed many shops.

The violence on each side is

stimulating the other side.”

Recent protests in the semi-

autonomous Chinese city have

appeared to be smaller than the

peaceful mass rallies this year,

but they have also turned vio-

lent. Some protesters have

hurled Molotov cocktails and

bricks toward police, smashed

stores viewed as pro-Beijing

and vandalized subway stations.

Sunday’s march started

peacefully. But a police station

was soon vandalized and fires

were seen at the entrance. Po-

lice, who were on the station’s

roof, responded by firing tear

gas. Later, a police truck fired

a water cannon on a major

road and police in riot gear

deployed to the streets. A

mosque in Kowloon was hit

with blue-dyed water from the

cannon, which police said was

an accident.

PoliceonSundaysaidpro-

testers also threw Molotov

cocktails into multiple subway

stations and broke into banks.

Shops and public utilities were

also damaged, police said.

Around 5:40 p.m., police

said officers found a paper box

with electrical cables in a

street. Police then used a ro-

bot to detonate the object.

Last week, police refused to

approve Sunday’s march.

“To Hong Kong people, this

dent Ashraf Ghani and U.S.

military officials, but it

couldn’t immediately be deter-

mined whether they would

meet each other during their

visits to Kabul. Both arrived

here amid doubts about the

Trump administration’s com-

mitments to allies after the

withdrawal of U.S. troops from

northeastern Syria.

The visits follow Mr.

Trump’s declaration early in

September that yearlong U.S.

talks with the Taliban on a ne-

gotiated settlement of the 18-

year war were “dead.”

U.S. and Afghan officials

have feared that Mr. Trump’s

aversion to foreign entangle-

ments would lead him to order

a withdrawal of all 14,

American military personnel

from the country, especially as

next year’s U.S. presidential

election draws near.

In comments to reporters,

Mr. Esper appeared to suggest

that a drawdown in the con-

text of a negotiated settlement

was preferable to a unilateral

troop withdrawal, which for-

mer national security adviser

John Bolton had urged.

—Ehsanullah Amiri

contributed to this article.

from the war-torn country.

A U.S. convoy entered Syria

from northern Iraq earlier

Sunday to help evacuate per-

sonnel and equipment. After

coordinating with other play-

ers in the region to make sure

U.S. forces wouldn’t be at-

tacked, they left Kobane and

began moving east toward

Iraq. The convoy stopped in

Hasakah, not far from the

Syria-Iraq border.

Col. Myles Higgins III,

spokesman for the U.S.-led

military coalition battling Is-

lamic State, said the U.S. coali-

tion remained in Kobane,

which has a large airstrip that

can be used to remove more

equipment and personnel from

Syria. He said the coalition

was keeping watch on the con-

voy from the air to make sure

there were no problems.

“Protection of U.S. forces is

our top priority and coalition

forces have an inherent right of

self-defense,” Col. Higgins said.

The withdrawing U.S. forces

benefited from a lull in fight-

ing as a result of the truce.

But Turkish President Recep

Tayyip Erdogan has said he

would restart operations once

the truce expires if the Kurds

don’t fully withdraw from the

entire safe zone and disarm.

The Trump administration

announced a full withdrawal of

the roughly 1,000 U.S. troops

from northeastern Syria days

after the Oct. 9 start of an in-

cursion by Turkey along its

southern border with Syria.

Defense Secretary Mark Es-

per, speaking to reporters en

route to the Middle East late

Saturday, said the U.S. troops

will move to western Iraq and

conduct U.S. operations against

Islamic State from there.

American troops are leaving

Syria via helicopters, planes

and ground convoys, a process

that would be completed

within weeks, Mr. Esper said.

He didn’t say where precisely

those troops would be based.

The U.S. withdrawal has left

a vacuum for the Syrian gov-

ernment of President Bashar

al-Assad and its Russian and

Iranian backers to fill.

As U.S. forces vacated posi-

tions in several areas, includ-

ing Manbij, Raqqa, Tabqa and

Kobane, Syrian regime forces

moved in alongside Kurdish

fighters that until recently

fought alongside American

troops, local activists said.

WORLD NEWS

ERBIL, Iraq—The Kurdish-
led Syrian Democratic Forces
said its fighters withdrew
from a key border town in
northeastern Syria, fulfilling a
part of the cease-fire agree-
ment between Turkey and the
U.S., as a large convoy of
American troops also prepared
to pull out of the country and
its protracted conflict.
Ankara agreed with Wash-
ington on Thursday to a five-
day truce, during which the
Syrian Kurds are expected to
depart from an area Turkey has
defined as a safe zone along
the two nations’ borders.
Both sides have accused
each other of violating the
cease-fire, with the town of Ras
al-Ain at the center of the
fighting.
Critics have said the agree-
ment was a wholesale conces-
sion to Ankara, giving it control
of an area in Syria it has cov-
eted for years and freeing it
from U.S. sanctions in return
for pausing an offensive it had
no international backing for.
While President Trump hailed
the pact as a diplomatic victory,
U.S.-allied Kurds have likened it
to a surrender on their part.
Meanwhile, a large convoy
of U.S. military personnel be-
gan their move out of Syria on
Sunday, military officials said,
in compliance with Mr.
Trump’s decision to withdraw

BYSUNEENGELRASMUSSEN

Kurdish, U.S. Troops on the Move in Syria

SDF fighters withdraw

from key border town

as American convoy

prepares to leave area

A vehicle that was part of a convoy of U.S. troops headed toward the Iraqi border in northeast Syria on Sunday.

AHMED MARDNLI/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

KABUL—Weeks after Presi-

dent Trump threw out a deal

with Taliban insurgents to pull

American forces from Afghani-

stan, his top defense official

and his main political nemesis

made unannounced visits to

the Afghan capital to reassure

the government that the U.S.

wouldn’t abandon the country.

Defense Secretary Mark Es-

per told reporters traveling

with him that the U.S. could

nearly halve the 14,500 Ameri-

can personnel in the country

without weakening America’s

ability to carry out operations

alongside Afghan government

forces against Islamic State, al

Qaeda and other Islamist mili-

tant groups.

In a separate visit to the Af-

ghan capital following previ-

ously unannounced talks with

King Abdullah II in Jordan,

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

continued seeking to offer a

counterpoint to what the Dem-

ocrats and some Republicans

in the U.S. Congress view as

the Trump administration’s

chaotic and damaging conduct

of foreign policy.

Mrs. Pelosi, in comments to

Afghan reporters at the U.S.

Embassy, said America must

have a “strategic vision” for

Afghanistan, a commitment

that reflected the loss of

American lives since the

American-led invasion that

ousted the Taliban in 2001.

Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Esper

were set to meet with Presi-

BYCRAIGNELSON

ANDNANCYA.YOUSSEF

Esper and Pelosi

Make Trips to Kabul

already feels like a police

state,” said a 28-year-old dem-

onstrator who gave his name

as Ryan. “That’s dangerous. I

think the protest is going to

continue into 2020. If we fail,

there will be more bad regula-

tions getting passed.”

Although Mrs. Lam avoided

further concessions to protest-

ers in Wednesday’s policy ad-

dress, she signaled some flexi-

bility Sunday. On a local TV

talk show, she didn’t rule out

having an independent inquiry

into police conduct, one of the

protesters’ key demands. But

she said she would only pur-

sue that option if a report be-

ing prepared on the matter by

a pre-existing police watchdog

fails to quell public anger.

Protesters set fires and po-
lice deployed tear gas and a
water cannon as tens of thou-
sands of demonstrators took
part in an illegal march in
Hong Kong, showing that a
raft of recent government
measures hasn’t quelled
months of unrest in the city.

Hong Kong leader Carrie
Lam in her annual policy ad-
dress last Wednesday pledged
to boost the supply of low-cost
homes, offer mortgage assis-
tance for first-time buyers and
increase mass-transit fare sub-
sidies, in a bid to sap momen-
tum from the protest move-
ment by improving people’s
livelihoods. That followed
harsher measures such as in-
voking an emergency law to
ban masks at rallies and a deci-
sion by subway operator MTR
Corp. to end train service ear-
lier than usual in the evenings.
Demonstrators who at-
tended Sunday’s march said
they weren’t satisfied with
Mrs. Lam’s response to the
protests, which were sparked
by a proposed extradition law
that would have allowed peo-
ple in Hong Kong to be tried in
mainland China’s more opaque
legal system. Although the
government has pledged to
withdraw the law, the protests
have broadened into a call for
democratic overhauls, an inde-
pendent inquiry into police
conduct and amnesty for ar-
rested demonstrators.
Mrs. Lam’s speech “has not
really focused on the protest it-
self,” a 26-year-old demonstra-

By Mike Cherney ,

Wenxin Fan

and Rachel Yeo

Hong Kong Protests Defy Control

Antigovernment protesters on Sunday set a barricade on fire during a march in Hong Kong.

TYRONE SIU/REUTERS

Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

said in an interview with The

Wall Street Journal.

Ms. Sitharaman has slashed

corporate tax rates to as low

as 15% for companies that in-

vest in the coming years. Her

hope is that offering one low

rate—instead of negotiating

one-off deals with foreign in-

vestors that are sometimes

disputed by tax authorities—

will clear up the confusion for-

eign companies face when

wading into India.

One industry Indian policy

makers are targeting is cell-

phone manufacturing. The

government is crafting a new

set of rules to encourage the

creation of clusters of inter-

national phone brands and

parts makers that would make

phones exclusively for export,

people familiar with the plans

said.

Companies in the clusters

would have lower import tar-

iffs for components and

would be first set up in states

that guarantee rents and elec-

tricity bills won’t be raised

for 10 years, the people said.

Minister of Electronics and

Information Technology Ravi

Shankar Prasad met with the

leaders of more than 50 phone

and electronics companies last

month to discuss their needs,

they said. He told them Apple

was hoping to make India a

new major source of exports, a

government official said.

“Apple is looking for alter-

native countries to shift some

of its manufacturing out of

China amid the trade war with

the U.S.,” he said. “We are one

of the big countries which can

provide an alternative.”

Samsung Electronics Inc. is

already building one of its big-

gest facilities in the world

near New Delhi, and existing

factories that manufacture for

Apple are retooling their oper-

ations to make some of the

company’s most sophisticated

phones for the first time in In-

dia. Both have been asking for

concessions to make India a

more competitive place to in-

vest.

Whether India can success-

fully position itself as a win-

ner in the trade brawl between

the U.S. and China could be

decisive is whether the world

moves from its dependence on

China’s massive manufacturing

capacity.

Close to $72 billion in im-

ports to the U.S. from low-cost

countries in Asia has shifted

away from China in recent

years, according to a report

from consulting firm A.T.

Kearney. After Vietnam, which

has captured the lion’s share

of the shift, India is the sec-

ond-largest destination.

Foreign executives and

economists say India has been

too slow to compete with the

nimble Asian countries that

don’t have to deal with the

legislative delays common in a

diverse democracy. The gov-

ernment, they say, needs to do

more to attract investment

and develop a bigger export

industry if it wants to become

the next China.

With economic growth in

India at a six-year low, New

Delhi could benefit from a big-

ger inflow of overseas invest-

ment. The government has

eased restrictions on some for-

eign retailers and opened a few

industries, such as contract

manufacturing, to more foreign

control in recent months. But it

has yet to take steps that

would make it significantly

easier to do business.

—Corinne Abrams

contributed to this article.

India is making a push to

get Apple Inc. and other big

brands to switch production

there as the risks of manufac-

turing in China rise along with

trade tensions.

Prime Minister Narendra

Modi’s government has been

trying to transform the coun-

try’s image as a difficult place

to do business, promising a

more predictable and open

regulatory regime, a simpler

corporate tax structure and in-

centives for targeted indus-

tries.

The government’s effort has

become more pressing as the

country struggles with an eco-

nomic slowdown.

“India will be more attrac-

tive, particularly in the light of

what is developing between

the U.S. and China,” Finance

BYERICBELLMAN

ANDRAJESHROY

India Sees Opportunity to Lure Big Companies From China

Q4 2013 Q1 2019

From

China

69% 60%

Lost to▶

22%

Restof

LCCs

12%

Taiwan

15%

India

50%

Vietnam

Shifting Gears

VietnamandIndiaare
benefitingthemostinAsiaas
manufacturingleavesChina.

Share of imports to the U.S.
from 14 Asian low-cost
countries (LCCs)†

†LCCs are a group of 14 Asian countries
with cheaper labor and production costs
Note: China numbers include Hong Kong
Source: ATKearney

Trump Weighs Plan

ToKeepaForce

Near Oil Fields

President Trump is con-

sidering whether to keep a

few hundred U.S. troops in

northeast Syria after the

bulk of the American force

there leaves, a move that

would be another twist in

years of policy gyrations

over the country, U.S. offi-

cials said Sunday.

A principal mission of the

residual force would be to

prevent President Bashar al-

Assad’s troops or Russian

forces from taking control of

Syria’s oil fields, which are

mainly in Kurdish-held terri-

tory in the northeast part of

the country. It would also en-

able the military to retain a

foothold in the fight against

Islamic State militants.

The idea was presented

to Mr. Trump last week by

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R.,

S.C.), who has vigorously op-

posed the president’s initial

decision to remove all of the

1,000 troops the U.S. has in

northeast Syria.

Military officials said that

the Pentagon supports a plan

to leave as many as 300 spe-

cial operations forces to carry

out that mission. The idea

also has support in the State

Department, according to

people familiar with the issue.

The White House declined

to comment.

—Michael R. Gordon

and Gordon Lubold

The Pentagon chief

and House speaker

said the U.S. will

keep commitments.