never a country to permit public protest itself, beijing has instead given ample news coverage to scenes of chaos in the us, drawing attention to what it portrays as the hypocrisy of a government that encourages protest in hong kong while suppressing it at home. clearly the untimely death of george floyd is being used for different messages in different places. my guests.. on socially distanced screens, henry chu of the los angeles times and isabel hilton of the website china dialogue. and here in the studio, observing the two metre rule, the bbc‘s clive myrie. welcome to you all. now henry, i want to start with you this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk because you are from la, which is a and around the world. people are being urged to stay town only too familiar with police away from mass protests against racism this weekend, brutality and the riots that over fears they could increase the spread of coronavirus. triggers so for you, this must look like a return to a familiar narrative. well, it is a grim one

a u—turn from the bosses u nfortu nately. narrative. well, it is a grim one of american football — unfortunately. in la, we had the admitting they were wrong to ban players from protesting riots over the officers who beat against police brutality. rodney king in 1992 and we have to chanting: i can't breathe! black lives matter protesters in the remember that with george floyd, australian state of new south wales thatis remember that with george floyd, that is only the latest example of win an 11th—hour appeal to rally. police brutality against black people and the violent deaths that many black people experience because the world health organization now of racism and just in a couple of says face masks should months before that, there was a be worn in public — black man in georgia who was killed as nhs trusts in england say they weren't consulted on a decision by two white men as he ran through to make all hospital staff wear them the neighbourhood and a young woman there are fears that thousands of uk in kentucky who was killed in her small businesses could miss out own home when detectives broke down the door and came in on a drug raid in which they found nothing, but she died of gunfire, and i think this is a confluence of all the events that have been happening recently. but even though it is the start of a very grim story, i have even though it is the start of a very grim story, i have hopes even though it is the start of a very grim story, i have hopes that this narrative actually will then go ona this narrative actually will then go on a different trajectory. the protests that we have seen have been nothing like what i have seen in the

last few decades, including the rodney king riots, in terms of how sustained they have been, how they have been nationwide, almost no corner of the us has been untouched, it is also gone around the world and i think this kind of outpouring has 110w i think this kind of outpouring has now made a difference. there is a feeling that now white americans are starting to understand more, that there is a systemic racism in law enforcement, a number of police departments have said that they are going to end the practice of chokehold. so, ithink going to end the practice of chokehold. so, i think there is more hope time for a better outcome than there has been. we will come back to that hopeful thought in a moment. clive, you have reported on and off from the united states for a quarter ofa from the united states for a quarter of a century. i noticed that smith says that racism is not getting worse, it is getting filmed. in your experience, do you believe the availability of mobile phone cameras to bear witness is making a

difference? i think it is critical. it has been said that steve jobs has done more for the americanjustice syste m done more for the americanjustice system than any attorney general has in the past ten or 15 years. we have a classic example of that yesterday. a white, 75—year—old man, approached a wall of riot police in buffalo, upstate new york. he wasn't armed, he wasn't threatening. he was pushed over by two of these riot officers. he fell on the ground, hit his head, blood pouring from his ear and no one attended to him. now, the police suggested that he tripped. it wasn't until that mobile phone footage came out that showed that he was pushed, that two officers were sanctioned, they have now been taken off the job and in fact, 57 officers have now joined in protest these two officers in claiming, in solidarity. what is at about? it shows the disconnect

that you have between what the police think they are doing in society and what ordinary people think they are doing. the research ce ntre think they are doing. the research centre did a poll three or four years ago that looked at the question of whether it is just a few rotte n question of whether it is just a few rotten apples and police forces that are causing these problems. the overwhelming majority of police office rs overwhelming majority of police officers said, it isjust a few rotte n officers said, it isjust a few rotten apples, there is no problem. the overwhelming majority of the public believe it is completely different. i believe there is systemic racism in systemic racehorses —— police forces. the tragedy of what happened to george floyd is that if there had not been a camera they're filming that white police officer with his knee on his neck, that man could simply have gone down as another statistic in history rather than the man we know to be george floyd, with a family and children and a back story and a life, because that camera was there to capture that moment. that that

police department would have said it was a struggle, in the minds of some. cameras have shone a light on this and going back to henry's point, we are in the middle of lockdown across the world. people are focused. they are not out there working, they are not out there attending to other things, they are attending to other things, they are at home watching the television with time to think. isabel, you are a lwa ys time to think. isabel, you are always thinking. the reverend al sharpton at one of the memorials we have seen first george floyd said, get your knee off our necks. now, does george floyd's death, does the policing of the protest over his death, does it tell you, given all the thinking that you have done about these issues, does it tell you anything about american policing that you didn't already know? or i think technically no. i think technically no but i think that the act of filming the stuff is critical

and in fact going back to rodney king, what made rodney king a celebrated case was that this was pre—mobile phone for younger viewers, this was 1991, but there was a man, a residents nearby with a video camera and he filmed the beating of rodney king by 14 police officers, a savage beating that put him in hospital. he sent it to a local news station and it was those images, as it is, with the current case, that really makes people understand what is happening here. now, we kind of know it intellectually, but knowing it emotionally is a whole different ball game and i think accounts for... it is quite a different cloud at this time, it is not, if you like, and angry black cloud, it is a

crowd of all races. what we also know is that there is a tendency of police forces to defend each other and that is a strong ethos in the police force as we seen from the resignations. but, in terms of how the police perceive it, it is a dangerousjob the police perceive it, it is a dangerous job and policemen the police perceive it, it is a dangerousjob and policemen do get killed and no doubt they feel that they go out every day and face the unknown, but the sheer scale of deaths in the united states is pretty staggering. there is an organisation that tracks police violence which reports that last year, there were 1000 deaths at the hands of police. now that is an average of three per day. some of them may be justified, some of them may have been bad people about to do bad things, but you know, when you see bad things, but you know, when you see these videos, you have to say that a lot of them simply were not and that police forces have to examine themselves in the way that

they deal with this. the other rather staggering statistic is that in six years, up to last year, of the hundreds of policemen involved in civilian deaths, only four were prosecuted and only one was convicted. going back to rodney king again, what made people particularly angry was the impunity, the fact that for men, four police officers we re that for men, four police officers were charged and they were not, in the first round of trials, convicted. so, ithink the first round of trials, convicted. so, i think we are at a moment here when this has gone on long enough and people will demand more systemic change. henry, coming back to you, you have reported on policing in the us over the years, what do you think is best practice? it isa what do you think is best practice? it is a very fragmented country when it comes to policing, is there a police force that are shown the way how to do it better? well, police forces are made up of humans and humans are flawed and i don't think there's any police force in the us that can be held up as the unsullied

ideal at the moment. what we saw in minneapolis is a reflection of the structural racism that is in the rest of society. it is notjust police forces that have these kinds of unconscious biases or conscious biases for that matter, in minneapolis, the population of the city is about 20% black but up to about a few years ago, less than 10% of the police force was black and so when you have these structural inequalities and disparities, you are going to see that reflected in practices and so i think some of that grassroots rectification needs to happen in order to police forces to happen in order to police forces to change their tactics, but again what is encouraging about this round is that after the video came out and the protests began, the number of law enforcement agencies around the country that actually joined in was quite high and if even look back to

after the rodney king riots, there was a commission that came up with a report of how to change practices within the lapd some of which included community policing so that police officers are much closer to the people on their beat and develop much better relationships with those people. some of those were implemented and even the critics of the lapd would say that there have been changes and so my hope is that out of this, we will see more recommendations along that line, best practices that can be held up and shared around the country among these disparate police forces and law enforcement agencies and some good can come of it. clive, let's talk about the reporting of it. you have been involved over the bbc reporting over the past few days of these events. i am struck by the tendency for when some of the protesting then turns to rioting and then we get a kind of cycle of police repression of that writing andindeed

police repression of that writing and indeed of peaceful protest, that the underlying issues, the issues we have been talking about, get buried, the underlying question of police brutality against black citizens gets buried. it is difficult to keep the focus on the original problem, isn't it? it's true, it's that classic dead cat bounce. drop a dead cat onto the table and everyone is looking at the cat and nothing going on around. when martin luther king was marching and being arrested and beaten by police, he was seen as the most hated man in america at the time, even though it was pretty obvious, to most people, you would have thought, what he was trying to do. but, he was described as a communist sympathiser, an agitator, the fbi,j edgar hoover were on his tail throughout much of his working life towards the end of his life. the emphasis was on him being something that america should not cleave to. you focus on that, not

the actual issues that he is talking about, and we are seeing that throughout what is happening now. the focus amongst some, particularly on the right, republicans and of course president trump, is to focus on the few, and it has been established that they are few, and some of them are right—wing agitators as well, as well as left—wing agitators, focus on the looting, focus on the $70 trainers that are being taken out of macy's, as opposed to a black man having the life strangled out of him by a white officers knee, it is the classic way you do not change anything because you do not change anything because you are not focusing on what is important, and that primarily has been what is happening, certainly from the perspective of the white house and some in the republican party. isabel, another issue here i suppose that we haven't touched on is that all of this is just at the moment when we have a pandemic which is disproportionately affecting black people in health terms and

where the lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus is also disproportionately affecting many ethnic minority communities including bat black communities. do you think those issues play into what we are saying? i am sure they do playing in a sense that one crisis opens up the possibility for further crises, in stable societies where people are feeling safe and busy and life goes on, there isjust less space for protest and anger, there is less need for it. but we are ata there is less need for it. but we are at a really strange moment, not just a pandemic but before the pandemic, the way politics have gone really since 2016 and perhaps in the lead up to 2016, since the financial crisis, we have seen this fragmentation of narratives and it is quite true that there is a lot of

playing of the man going on in this crisis, but if you go onto social media, especially certain right—wing, american social media threads, what you see is the victim being demonised. all kinds of slanderous stuff about his life, was he on drugs, all these kind of things which are ways of casting doubt on whether or not he deserved to die with a policeman is knee on his neck. so, we have a confusion of narratives, we have people who are feeling deeply insecure, with a pandemic ina feeling deeply insecure, with a pandemic in a society which doesn't have a global health system, so gross health inequalities as gross economic inequalities and inequalities of opportunity and i think that this goes beyond the black and minority communities as well, there are a lot of very uneasy

people in american society, as there are in other societies, but american society is in this rather acute crisis and i that that has made it a cause that people have rallied to because there is a huge amount of angerand because there is a huge amount of anger and frustration that have nowhere to go. and henry, on top of that i suppose, we have a president who behaves slightly differently any circumstances, instead of seeking and healing, disbursing contention and healing, disbursing contention and confrontation, he is doing something different. that's right, even his two predecessors, barack 0bama and george w bush had crises, during which they addressed the nation and tried to act as the healer, the one who did indeed rally eve ryo ne healer, the one who did indeed rally everyone around as the american people as one and we're not seeing that from this president but i don't think we should be surprised, in that have him going on conservative

radio and talking about protesters isa radio and talking about protesters is a very bad group of people and get on the other hand this is the same president who, a few years ago, talked about white supremacists as a group of very fine people and his base does consist of a large number of white nationalists and he is busy consolidating that base ahead of the election in november. he is also fortifying himself in the white housein fortifying himself in the white house in a way that we have never seen house in a way that we have never seen before by a president and even the perceptions of that speak to the polarisation of society. there are those who would be more on the left in the liberal side to see that this is classic tactics and the retreat ofa is classic tactics and the retreat of a strong men, one word, strong men. and those who are supporting him see this as the fortification of a strong man, somebody who is trying to impose law and order and showing the strength he has at his fingertips, which he does as the leader of america and its military. so, what we're seeing is further division and further manifestation of the polarisation which has been

going on, even before he became president, he is again in many ways the symptom not the cause. live, what about the rest of the american political establishment, now have a confirmed democratic challenger in joe biden, how is he facing up to this challenge? maybe mat it is a good question. i think the leadership —— good question. i think the leadership -- it is interesting, i think they believe it is better to allow donald trump to lay his own land mines and walk into them. in some land mines and walk into them. in some polls, joe biden is ten points ahead particularly in some of those key battle ground states. he has said a few things, some of them very good when he talked about the possibility of that if you are black and you voted republican, you are not really black. that was a gaffe. but, that the democratic party, i suspect, going into the election in november, has a lock on the african—american vote which could be very, very important in the final

analysis. it was the fact that a lot of african americans didn't feel that they wanted to come out in 2016 that they wanted to come out in 2016 that helps to donald trump get over the line. republicans for their part, certainly in congress, in the senate and the house, while they may have reservations about donald trump is not handling not only the pandemic but also of the george floyd incident, while they may have reservations about the way that he has dealt with it, they are still not willing to come out publicly and attack and they do fear, a lot of those who are facing real action themselves in november, that turning against donald trump could mean that they get booted out themselves. but there is a lot of disquiet within there is a lot of disquiet within the american political establishment about the handling of this and it could hit donald trump hard come november. i want now to move on to the ways in which the story has resonated around the world. we don't have much time left, so i want to

talk about china as it resonates so differently in china than elsewhere. isabel, you followed the so—called wolf warrior diplomats and chinese state media. they haven't been so much occupied by what has happened in the us as deploying it to make their own argument. well, it certainly made their day. for those who don't know the emergence of wolf warriors, the expression is taken from a rambo style chinese movie in which some chinese heroes staged a daring rescue in africa and pretty much since the beginning of the pandemic, china is normally —— china's diplomats... but not only, the ambassador in paris managed to offe nd the ambassador in paris managed to offend the whole of france in one of his verbal assaults and the question is, why are they doing this? and it is, why are they doing this? and it is partly to push back for any blame for this, for the worst global

pandemic ina for this, for the worst global pandemic in a century and it is a way of continuing a fight with the us so of course, riots in the united states and demonstrations and disorder and chaos in the united states are absolutely great to the chinese mill and the third leg of the stool, as you say, is hong kong. so one of the leading proponents of wolf warrior style of diplomacy is a man called zhao lijian who is the foreign ministry spokesman. he had suggested that the virus had been brought to wuhan by the us military, so brought to wuhan by the us military, so he is very much in that camp and he was absolutely a happy man this week because he could very solemnly, and managing to keep a straight face, lecture the united states about to china's grave concern about the situation. he had a slightly unfortunate phrasing which was lives of black people are also human lives, slightly unfortunate version of black lives matter, but then

talks about the long—running problems of racial discrimination against minorities in the united states and how much china hope to the united states would attend to its domestic difficulties and uphold the rights of minorities according to the un convention on the rights of minorities and this from a country which has a million of its own minorities locked up in camps in which there have been unpleasant racial incidents with african students in the last couple of weeks and in which, you know, serious violence has been used against these protesters in hong kong. but of course, protesters in hong kong. but of course , now protesters in hong kong. but of course, now that it is happening in the united states, it becomes very very easy for china to say, look, you know, it is hypocrisy to comment on our internal affairs, slightly glossing over the fact that china is commenting on us internal affairs, so commenting on us internal affairs, sol commenting on us internal affairs, so i think we are invited to conclude by chinese media that there is an equivalence here and that there is nothing to see in china.

and i suppose, henry, obviously you are based in beijing for many years and you cover the hong kong handover, you watch that from beijing. this is, it has been the first week ofjune, which is an incredibly important week in the chinese political calendar, the anniversary of the june chinese political calendar, the anniversary of thejune the 4th massacre of the tiananmen square protests a nd massacre of the tiananmen square protests and of course the only place that can still mark that publicly is hong kong and now we have this national security legislation coming from hong kong and the criminalisation of any criticism of the national anthem. that's right. and that is open during the pandemic that this has happened which is given china some cover while other countries are dealing with the infection on their home shores. i think when we were watching handover happened back in 1997, there were some optimistic talk then that this one country, two systems, would actually have a benign and beneficial effect on mainland china and that somehow hong kong would be the example that the

rest of china could emulate and that u nfortu nately, we rest of china could emulate and that unfortunately, we are seeing that it is going on precisely the opposite direction. what we have to remember is that when the handover happened it was a political and economic event. it ended what they felt was the humiliation of the hands of the british during the wars and hong kong being seeded over to britain as a colony, that was coming finally to an end and also, this economicjewel in the crown which was a thriving financial centre, a huge economic hub, was coming back into their fold. that is no longer quite the case as it was then. i think at the time of the handover, hong kong, even though it was less than 1% of the population, accounted for about 16% of the entire chinese economy. now, we say it is only about 3% stop back then, hong kong was the busiest port in the world and now shanghai has about double the volume. its

importance as an economic centre was far less than before and what has happened instead is that the political question of hong kong has com pletely political question of hong kong has completely ta ken over and political question of hong kong has completely taken over and that is where china now is exerting its authority from beijing and wants to make hong kong like the rest of china rather than the other way round. we are running out of time but clive, a couple of comments from you about what is going on in london, china has slapped down boris johnson for saying in the past week... this makes it difficult to preserve anything of that golden era that the government wanted in a post brexit britain. it does. as the uk loosens those very close ties that it had with the european union over the past 40 years, it is looking for markets outside. brexiteers made it clear that those markets are the big markets that are developing over the next ten or 15 years, it is not the

european union, so you're looking to brazil, india, china, increasingly to the united states. the problem is that in this moment in history, those countries are run by strong men and that leaves a conundrum for the british state. how close can it get to those countries to secure trade, at the same time, lecture them or tell them that there are issues when it comes to human rights that they have to look out for. we could do at least another half hour on this but we are out of time. thank you all three so much. that is it for dateline london this week. we are back the same time same place next week, goodbye.

when this weekend is quite different from previous weekends, we are still stuck in this cool air stream where we have some unusually windy weather for earlyjune, particularly we have some unusually windy weather for early june, particularly today, there will be some rain around as well and things will improve as we head into tomorrow. this was the picture though earlier on across more southern parts of england, the promise perhaps of a decent day ahead. the weather is changing and we have this cloud curling around an area of low pressure in the north sea. that is sinking its way southwards and taking that second cloud southwards as well, bringing a speu cloud southwards as well, bringing a spell of rain, that will move down into southern parts of england and behind it, many areas will get some sunshine over eastern england there will be heavy showers as well. the rain in the afternoon not amounting to too much by this stage across the south but it will be windy, it will be some blustery showers burning across the eastern side of england, with some thunder. some sunshine perhaps, although quite cloudy, damp and windy across northern ireland as it will be in the north west of scotla nd it will be in the north west of scotland where it has been really quite wet so far today. across the

south and east of scotland, the win should ease with sunshine coming out, this is the place to be. temperatures could make 19 or 20 degrees, nearer 14 or 15 when we get the sunshine and heavy showers. though showers fade away later on tonight, at the same time, the rain that was in the north of scotland move southwards into northern england and down towards the wash by the end of the night and we will see temperatures slipping away to eight or9 temperatures slipping away to eight or 9 degrees. the weather should improve for the second half of the weekend, an area of high pressure in the west, tantalisingly close but i think that is where it is going to stay for the time being. still some rain around with a northerly wind but it won't be as windy on sunday. the rain moving down across northern england into the middle and should become lighter and patchy through the afternoon, any showers fading away from scotland and many places brightening up a touch. more in the way of sunshine across southern england and wales, temperatures making 19 or 20 degrees here. now, this ridge of high pressure that is

moving a bit closer is going to be the more dominant feature i think during monday and tuesday, eventually there is where the front will bring some rain into the north—west later on tuesday, but elsewhere i think it will be dry, they will be a fair bit of cloud some sunshine at times, temperatures near normalfor some sunshine at times, temperatures near normal for the some sunshine at times, temperatures near normalfor the time some sunshine at times, temperatures 00:28:16,216 --> 4294966103:13:29,430 near normal for the time of year.