is send a message but trying to make sure this thing doesn t get out of control. i think part of the issue here is that if you compare it certainly to the sanctions the administration imposed after the russians annexed crimea, we are talking about economic sanctions, things that were meant to hurt the russian economy and hurt the russian people so they could feel what russia s foreign policy was doing to them. i think that s the comparison here. this is a lot more symbolic and i think that s one of the things the administration was trying to do, make sure this was limited and if the russians wanted to do tit for tat this would pretty much call it quits. exactly. evan, thank you for that. jessica, donald trump s response is that he s going to meet with intel leaders next week to get the facts of this situation, is essentially what he said. do we know yet from the transition who he will be meeting with and if it is different than the intel
reporter: well, it does seem different, but you know, i don t think anyone s under any illusions at how difficult this process is going to be. everybody has said even before the cease-fire began that this was going to be very fragile and very difficult to monitor. there are so many different groups on the ground. you have groups that are designated as terrorist groups by the u.n., then other sort of quote, moderate rebel groups. then you have weird alliances between all of them. it s very difficult to determine who might break the cease-fire, whether the assad regime might break the cease-fire. the good news so far is that it appears as though despite some skirmishes in some parts of the country, the cease-fire is largely holding. the question is how long will it hold. that s something only time will tell. we are not even 24 hours into this thing yet and of course, sometimes the first 24 or 48 hours are critical to see which groups sign on to the cease-fire and which groups back down
forward with these sanctions and really push this hacking issue. that s a large part of it. errol, i m very interested, the transition said on the conference call this morning there will be more details, kind of a time and place and who will be briefing the president-elect, on this issue because it was basically a two-line statement. that s one of the lines. clearly this is an important thing in response to this. from what we see in the from the campaign to now, do you see a scenario where donald trump sits down with briefers next week, hears the facts, if he hears the facts of this case and dramatically changes his opinion of russia s role here? no, no. i see no scenario for that at all. just the casual nature of it. he will be busy meetings with the likes of don king and partying on new year s eve, i suppose, and when he gets around to it he will reluctantly accept a national security briefing about one of the most important issues we have ever faced as a nation. that doesn t s
popular, will get into trouble in this digital media age where everything is reported live, where people around the world are watching in realtime what is happening when they try and send riot police to disperse unarmed protesters in the main squares. no, it didn t have a tahrir dimension. yesterday or a couple days ago, i would never have said it was even in the same category. richard, what are we hearing behind you? reporter: the prime minister needs to be careful this doesn t get out of control. richard, what are we hearing behind you? reporter: what we re hearing is fireworks. we re hearing ajf little bit of fireworks. it sounds more dramatic than it is. you can see a lot of the fireworks. that is being struck by some of the fireworks, is one of the police water cannons. all day we ve been seeing this where the protesters will take roman candles or other kinds of fireworks and shoot them horizontally at the police.
himself. michael? just a quick one, in terms of this dance between the united states and china going down the road, i mean, everyone s kind of dancing around the fact that the economic synergy right now is in asia. it s largely in china, look at what they re doing in africa, for example, the united states is not at play economically in africa as i think they should be. how does that balance out to the point you re making about australia and other countries in that region? but even more globally, looking at china and going, hmm, they could be a better business partner longer term than the united states. well, two things. one is the united states has to push back against china in a way that doesn t get out of control. we do not want a cold war. we ve got to make integration and a decent relationship with china still the priority. second of all, the u.s./china economic relationship is growing. u.s. trade i(q fastest growing part of u.s. exports. we re dependent on chinese for