the people's liberation army is an incomparably strong and powerful force for safeguarding the security of every inch of the sacred territory of the motherland. >> reporter: last week, the p.l.a.'s hong kong garrison released this video, showing its troops training to confront protestors. asked today if he could rule out inteention, yang guang said china would never allow any turbulence that would threaten national uni. hong kong law provides for the p.l.a to deploy if the territory's semi-autonomous govern nt hits the panic button. yesterday's disturbances alone resulted in 148 arrests,olice firing 800 tear gas cannisterser and 140 rubbullets. rubber bullets were not used by the p.l.a. at tiananmen square 30 years ago when the army killed thousands ofcr pro-demoy demonstrators. today, three masked hong kongto protes held a press briefing to decry what they called "the y lack of self-discipline"e police. they apologiond for the "inience" yestereay's day-long strike had caused. >> the pursuit of democracy, liberty and equality is the inalienable rights of every citizen. we, therefore, call on the government to refrain from terminating our right to pursue these universal values. >

argue that hong kong s,ready has the social ill the great wealth gap that has led to these protests. there's lots of speculation, could the pla come in, the people's liberation armya? analysts say it is unlikely, but the hard-core here want to keep this unrest going through much of today in this general strike. francine: thousands of black protesters rallying their ended locations across the city, chanting, "strike, strike," and blocking roads. that is stephen engle in hong kong. let's get straight to the bloomberg first word news. viviana: china signaling it is ready to play hardball on trade with the u.s. for the first time since 2008, beijing allowed the yuan to fall below seven per dollar. state owned companies are being asked to suspend imports of american agricultural goods. all of that coming after president trump's latest threat to impose tariffs on more chinese made products. hate has trump saying no place in the u.s., and he will be "taking care of it." the president speaking after two mass shootings in the u.s. democrats highlighting the texas shooter's anti-emigrant views, calling on the president to do immigrant -- immigrant anti- views, calling on t