Protesters took to the streets of San Francisco on Wednesday as a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping took place, obstructing some entrances to the APEC conference and blocking downtown streets.
Global leaders and CEOs of major U.S. corporations will all be at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in San Francisco, offering tempting targets to protest.
“We can say beyond a reasonable doubt that this will be the largest anti-Xi protest during the bilateral talks hosted here in the United States in the history of Xi Jinping’s time as a dictator of China,” Pema Doma, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said early in the day.
The group formed a human chain that prevented conference attendees from walking through the intersection, diverting some commuters and delegates onto nearby streets.
Police donned protective helmets and formed a line about 50 feet (15 meters) from a speaker and microphone for speeches, but there were no major clashes before the non-Chinese protests ended, around midday.
Thousands of police lined streets near the convention center, and protests in the days before Biden and Xi’s meeting had been relatively peaceful, with some crowds stretching for blocks, including a march uniting several interest groups on Sunday.
San Francisco has cleaned up downtown streets for the meeting, and it had prepared for potential confrontation with demonstrators: eight-foot-high (2.4-meter-high) metal mesh barriers have been erected to keep people on sidewalks from interfering with vehicle traffic near the convention center.
The original article contains 516 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 59%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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Global leaders and CEOs of major U.S. corporations will all be at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in San Francisco, offering tempting targets to protest.
“We can say beyond a reasonable doubt that this will be the largest anti-Xi protest during the bilateral talks hosted here in the United States in the history of Xi Jinping’s time as a dictator of China,” Pema Doma, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said early in the day.
The group formed a human chain that prevented conference attendees from walking through the intersection, diverting some commuters and delegates onto nearby streets.
Police donned protective helmets and formed a line about 50 feet (15 meters) from a speaker and microphone for speeches, but there were no major clashes before the non-Chinese protests ended, around midday.
Thousands of police lined streets near the convention center, and protests in the days before Biden and Xi’s meeting had been relatively peaceful, with some crowds stretching for blocks, including a march uniting several interest groups on Sunday.
San Francisco has cleaned up downtown streets for the meeting, and it had prepared for potential confrontation with demonstrators: eight-foot-high (2.4-meter-high) metal mesh barriers have been erected to keep people on sidewalks from interfering with vehicle traffic near the convention center.
The original article contains 516 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 59%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!