Back at the Table

China and the U.S. are talking trade again. Negotiators have resumed face-to-face discussions in Washington, while the Trump administration says a Chinese delegation will visit American farmlands next week. The talks are expected to lay the ground-work for top-level negotiations between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Vice Premier Liu He in October. The past two months have seen a ratcheting up of the trade war, after the last set of talks in late July. Since then, China’s trade performance is showing signs of a bad situation becoming worse, U.S. growth has decelerated and the OECD has forecast the slowest global expansion in a decade.

‘Excessive Force’

Hong Kong police beat pro-democracy protesters in custody and committed acts that amount to “torture,” Amnesty International alleged in a new report. Police used “unnecessary and excessive force” in making arrests, beat a protester for declining to answer a question and threatened to electrocute a man’s genitals after he refused to unlock his phone, the human rights group said. The Hong Kong Police said it would not comment on individual cases and that police officers would give warning of their intention to use force when circumstances allowed. Officers are required to use a “high level of restraint at all times,” it said. As the protests have rolled on, one humble accessory has emerged as a demonstrator’s most valuable, and versatile, tool.

Market Open

Asia stocks looked set for muted gains after U.S. equities ended the day near where they started. The dollar sank and Treasuries rose amid a slew of fresh monetary-policy decisions. After getting a boost from positive comments on trade by White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow early in the day, equities took a leg down after a report about a U.S. official threatening steeper tariffs against China. In China, all eyes will be on the Loan Prime Rate — a new gauge of borrowing costs. In India, central bank chief Shaktikanta Das said there’s room for interest-rate cuts.

Two Japans

Japan has a population problem, and it’s a cautionary tale for wealthy countries around the globe. The Japanese economy is essentially split in two. Cutting-edge businesses and world-class wealth fill the urban-industrial corridor stretching about 300 miles from Tokyo through Osaka; just about everywhere else, small cities and towns are dying as people relocate in search of opportunity. The rural population is expected to plunge another 17% by 2030 — an extreme example of a trend hitting countries from the U.S. to Italy. The big question is how policy makers respond to a trend that, so far, seems impossible to reverse.

Here’s Looking at You

India is planning to set up one of the world’s largest facial recognition systems. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will open bids next month to build a system to centralize facial recognition data captured through surveillance cameras across India. It would link up with databases containing records for everything from passports to fingerprints to help India’s depleted police force identify criminals, missing persons and dead bodies. The plan promises to be a lucrative opportunity for surveillance companies. But in a nation with no data privacy laws and a government that just shut down the internet for the last seven weeks in the key state of Kashmir to prevent unrest, it’s also ringing alarm bells.

What We’ve Been Reading

This is what’s caught our eye over the past 24 hours.

• One of the world’s top investors just rang the alarm, again.
• Hong Kong gets real on home prices, with a nudge from Beijing.
• China’s growing clout looms over Trump’s dinner with Australia’s Scott Morrison.
• The Fed is under pressure to find a permanent fix for U.S. funding market stress.
• Europe’s most dynamic property market is getting too tough for some.
• Wildfires and drought are inflicting a double whammy on Indonesia’s crops.
• That expensive Japanese whisky may be mostly Scotch.