Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Millions of yacht owners dance in the streets upon hearing that they can now sail their boats between Hong Kong and half a dozen Pearl River Delta cities with less paperwork. Is weaving in and out of container ships the ideal way to go to Zhuhai or Dongguan? Though Zhongshan is worth a visit.

The Hong Kong government said on Saturday that it welcomed the new policy.

“Under the new policy, the exemption [from] the requirement for a guarantee will significantly reduce the financial burden” on yacht owners, it said in a statement.

It also praised the simplified registration scheme, which allows Hong Kong and Macau yachts to obtain temporary national ship registration from mainland China “without affecting their original ship registration.”

Owners of Hong Kong and Macau yachts previously had to pay hefty customs guarantees and undergo complex registration procedures before entering mainland ports.

This is all part of a push to develop the ‘yacht economy’. Presumably, a group of civil servants were locked into a room and told they would not be let out until they had identified a new economic activity for which Hong Kong could conceivably become a hub-zone. They eventually came up with yachting. Perhaps more a hobby than a sector. As with, say, stamp-collecting, the pastime surely accounts for a microscopic percentage of Hong Kong’s GDP, so it certainly has room to grow. ‘Room’, of course, is not the same as ‘potential’.

Speaking of ‘tremendous opportunities’, the CE and some old, long-forgotten faces like Jeffrey Lam and Fred Ma are on a delegation to Kazakhstan. (Did they go by yacht?)

The UK’s most prestigious paper picks up the story the Hong Kong Justice Dept wants the press to ignore. (Paywalled, ironically.)  

Chau led the prosecution team at Lai’s trial last year, telling the court that the state did not need to provide specific details around the publisher’s alleged “conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign forces” to prove that he was the “mastermind” behind a plot against the government. 

Instead, the prosecutor highlighted Lai’s trips to the US at the time of democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, which included a meeting with the then vice-president, Mike Pence.

AFP report via HKFP on the plight of Hong Kong people living in subdivided apartments following the government’s recent attempt to enforce minimum standards on landlords…

Subdivided flats like Lau’s three-square-metre (32-square-feet) home — made by splitting up an apartment into smaller units — are being phased out after a law to regulate them came into effect in March.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered the wealthy finance hub to resolve housing woes that are the result of decades of pervasive inequality, an acute housing shortage and eye-watering rents.

The Hong Kong government has given owners who register under the new system until 2030 to renovate their subdivided flats, but some landlords have already issued eviction notices to their tenants.

More probably, the housing woes are the cause of pervasive inequality. But Xi Jinping is surely right in seeing housing as the number-one reason for the longstanding widespread discontent that came to a head in 2019. 

His predecessors must share some of the blame. In the 1960s-1990s, colonial Hong Kong governments built at least one New Town a decade to (barely) keep up with a fast-growing population. But after the Joint Declaration was signed in the 1980s, Beijing insisted on tight limits on land sales (for reasons that were never clear, though officially Chinese officials said the Brits might ‘run away’ with the money in 1997). Cue a massive housing bubble, and vast profit margins for the big developers.

After the bubble burst soon after the handover courtesy of the Asian financial crisis, Hong Kong’s leaders could have set about adjusting to a more normal system of land use and housing. Beijing mildly urged them to tackle ‘deep-rooted’ problems. Instead, they essentially engineered another artificial shortage of housing supply. At the same time, the number of Mainland immigrants coming into Hong Kong – many of them low-skilled – increased.

Since the ‘second handover’ of 2019-20, previously ‘unusable’ space in the New Territories has mysteriously been identified as suitable for residential use. But bureaucrats still seem to try hard to keep housing scarce. They allocate land for superfluous office blocks, malls, highways and arts centres. They rule out using thousands of mini-homes built as Covid isolation facilities. They rule out using the to-be-demolished Wang Fuk Court site for housing. They insist that the additional apartments in the New Territories must be small, so as not to upset existing property owners. And measures to improve conditions in shoe-box homes lead to tenants being evicted. 

If the authorities had treated housing in the past as seriously as they treat ‘national security’ today, there would have been far less reason/pretext to introduce the post-2019 new order.

Further to the leaked memo on leaks to Frances Hui about new DPP Anthony Chau and his junior Crystal Chan…

…Deputy Secretary for Justice Horace Cheung confirmed on Wednesday the existence of the internal memo sent by Secretary for Justice Paul Lam on Tuesday. 

Cheung also warned the media against asking about unsubstantiated claims, lest such questions fuel those accusations. Continuing to ask about the “unsubstantiated allegations… would only fuel those accusations,” he said, Ming Pao reported. 

Shut up about the whole thing?

…Neither Lam nor Cheung said whether the department would look into the misconduct allegations against Chau.

Cheung also told journalists on Wednesday that he would not comment further on the incident to avoid “encouraging unhealthy trends.”

The Justice Dept is implicitly confirming that its own staff passed (highly detailed) allegations against Chau to Frances Hui, and actually begging not to be asked questions about the issue. If the government wants to convince the public that the claims are ‘completely without factual basis and entirely fabricated’, it might be better not to fall into the infamous Streisand effect. 

Some weekend reading and viewing…

Historian Miles Yu on the Thucydides Trap…

…one of the most overhyped and intellectually lazy clichés in modern geopolitics. Recycled endlessly after every U.S.–China summit, it claims that war between the United States and China is inevitable because a “rising China” is displacing a “declining America.” The theory flatters Beijing, excites conference panels, and gives foreign-policy pundits the illusion of historical sophistication. In reality, it is little more than fatalistic pseudo-history wrapped in academic jargon. Worse, it reinforces one of the CCP’s most dangerous delusions: that communist China is historically destined to replace the United States as the dominant global power. That fantasy says far more about Marxist-Leninist ideology than it does about strategic reality.

Ed Elson on the SpaceX IPO…

To be blunt: It’s a trainwreck. Unserious, empty, hallucinatory, and borderline dishonest…

After eighteen images of rockets in space, we learn that the company’s mission is “to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.” To accomplish this, the company plans to advance humanity “to Kardashev Type II status,” which is defined in the document as “a civilization that harnesses the full energy output of its local star.” Only a few pages in and it’s already starting to feel like an ayahuasca trip.

…AI gets a mind-boggling 1,251 mentions — more features than the word “Jesus” gets in the Bible.

Once you arrive at the financials you start to realize what the language is overcompensating for: awful numbers…

…I’d have no problem with SpaceX’s sh*tty financials if they were reflected in the valuation — but they’re not. The stock is set to be priced at 107 times sales, which would make it one of the most expensive stocks in history. (The most expensive stock in the S&P 500 is Palantir, which trades at 64 times sales). It will be twice as valuable than Walmart while generating less revenue than Macy’s.

A video on the same subject from analyst/satirist Patrick Boyle.

Aside from index-trackers (who get no choice), what kind of idiot is going to buy an AI/Mars-colonization stock valued at US$2 trillion?

From the CFHK…

Last weekend, #HongKong was rocked by the kind of scandal the city’s once-free tabloid press — namely the now-defunct Apple Daily — would’ve aggressively exposed: the misuse of public funds by one of Hong Kong’s top public prosecutors.

From Washington, D.C., our policy and advocacy manager @frances_hui publicly lodged serious allegations against Hong Kong’s newly appointed Director of Public Prosecutions Anthony Chau, a lead prosecutor in the Hong Kong 47 and #FreeJimmyLai national security cases.

Drawing on insider information, Hui alleged that Chau misused public funds to book luxury hotel stays with a female subordinate prosecutor under the guise of “national security casework” while granting her professional privileges — conduct raising serious conflict-of-interest concerns.

Chau’s predecessor, Maggie Yang, is also widely believed to have covered up the misconduct.

The government responded by claiming the matter had already been investigated, accusing Frances of “malicious smearing,” and reportedly attempting to identify whistleblowers.

Hong Kong’s national security system is increasingly structured to shield those in power from scrutiny. 

…It ultimately took a wanted activist — carrying a HK$1 million bounty and speaking from exile — to bring the allegations into public view. 

The Hong Kong Department of Justice’s immediate response was not to announce a transparent investigation into the allegations but to threaten Hui with criminal prosecution, vowing to “severely punish lawbreakers in accordance with the law.” 

Official propaganda about “foreign forces” and “soft resistance” serves to distract from the steady replacement of transparency with unaccountable power. 

The government can point to proof that it does ‘punish lawbreakers’ in its own ranks. From the last three days…

An off-duty police officer and his wife have been charged with two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm after their Filipino domestic helper reported being attacked, police said.

The 39-year-old helper reported to police around noon on Monday that she had been assaulted by her employers. She sustained injuries to her hand and head and was taken conscious to United Christian Hospital.

…Police said the force places great importance on officers’ conduct and will not tolerate or condone any illegal behavior.

And…

A police officer has been charged with eight counts of accessing a computer with criminal or dishonest intent and one count of criminal damage, following an investigation into a complaint, authorities said.

Investigations revealed the officer repeatedly accessed police system data without authorisation between April and May 2024. He also allegedly splashed red paint on a residential unit in Wong Tai Sin on May 4, 2024.

…Police said the force places great importance on officers’ conduct and will not tolerate or condone any illegal behaviour.

And…

A former senior police inspector has been jailed for 30 months over misconduct in public office and accepting HK$1.4 million in bribes in exchange for leaking case details and dropping an investigation into a suspect.

…In mitigation, the defence said that Ho faced mental and financial pressure from family issues and “fell into the abyss of selling his soul.” Considering Ho’s guilty plea and mitigation, Judge Wai handed down a 30-month prison sentence, down from a starting point of four years. 

An LGBTQ radio show previously scrapped by government-run RTHK is cancelled by another station…

Hong Kong’s Metro Radio has abruptly halted plans to relaunch radio programme We Are Family, an LGBTQ show axed by government-funded broadcaster RTHK three years ago, its host has said.

Brian Leung, the host of We Are Family, said on the show’s Facebook page on Wednesday that Metro Radio invited him in April to relaunch We Are Family on Metro Info Live, one of the radio’s channels. 

The invitation was made by Steven Ma, who was the CEO of Metro Radio at the time. It was decided that the show would start on May 29, Leung said. 

After Ma announced he was leaving Metro Radio in May, Leung said he sought clarification from the head of Metro Info Live about whether the show would go on. He was told it would launch as scheduled and that an advertisement for it had already aired on Monday.

However, Leung said he received a call from the head of Metro Info Live on Wednesday afternoon, saying Metro Radio’s new management had decided to halt the relaunch.

This is just after gay carnival Pink Dot gets cancelled for the second year in a row after failing to get official permits. And seven months after Hong Kong Pride’s Rainbow Festival was postponed after the government decided the venue area needed urgent construction work.

There are puritan nationalistic and fundamentalist Christian elements with longstanding hang-ups about gay rights, and they are no doubt happy to see these sorts of events being cancelled. But they are not the ones making the decisions. The intolerance is not simply for gay-themed events but for a whole range of civil society activity – independent unions, political parties, bookstore classes, protests about the Wang Fuk Court tragedy, Tiananmen vigils, etc. Such activities are not illegal, but so many bureaucratic or other hurdles mysteriously arise that they can’t happen. 

What they have in common is: they involve actual or possible gatherings of people; they have some sort of potential political angle; and they are not under any form of government/United Front oversight.

So – it’s nothing personal!

Via Samuel Bickett, the Justice Dept issues a memo to all staff threatening to discipline anyone found leaking information about the new Director of Public Prosecutions. A leaked memo.

From the SCMP…

Hong Kong’s justice department has rejected online accusations about the newly promoted public prosecutions director [Anthony Chau Tin-hang] and a colleague, labelling the allegations “despicable behaviour” and an attempt to “defame public officers”.

In a statement on Saturday, the department said it had referred the case to law enforcement agencies for further investigation, vowing to “severely punish lawbreakers in accordance with the law”.

US-based Hong Kong fugitive activist Frances Hui Wing-ting has accused the two prosecutors – both of whom have handled national security cases – of abusing their positions for private ends.

Hui also accused their former boss of siding with them.

…Anthony Chau Tin-hang was promoted as the director of public prosecutions earlier this week, succeeding Maggie Yang Mei-kei, who is retiring after 32 years of service with the department.

Joel Chan elaborates…

Online posts by [Hui] … claim [Chau] had an improper relationship with a subordinate DoJ prosecutor, using public funds to stay at The Murray for “national security case work” around holidays 

The posts claim Chau influenced senior public prosecutor Crystal Chan Wing-sum’s appraisal, court exposure and promotion prospects

Chau assigned Chan to work on the Sadler/Segantii insider trading case, now ongoing

Hui alleges former DPP Maggie Yang Mei-kei knew but covered it up

Samuel Bickett says…

For years, every lawyer and journalist in Hong Kong has known that new Director of Public Prosecutions Anthony Chau was in an inappropriate sexual relationship with his subordinate Crystal Chan, granting her special privileges and misusing public funds to conceal it. But it took an activist in exile, @frances_hui, to bring it into the open.

If you have wondered why Hong Kong officials are so determined to shut down independent media like Apple Daily, imprison journalists, and drive human rights lawyers out of town, now you understand. 

From Janus Tin – a translation of Frances Hui’s long and explicit post…

During the handling of the entire 47 pro-democracy figures case, the two of them more than once used the pretext of “dealing with national security cases” to demand that the police arrange stays at the five-star Murray Hotel with public funds, on dates including Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, and the like—using public resources for the two of them to shack up. On [Crystal Chan Wing-sum’s] birthday, the police were even asked to go to Lady M in Central to buy a pink birthday cake worth about HK$1,000 and bring it back to the West Kowloon office, with the excuse being “because the assistant likes pink.” It’s said that during the Jimmy Lai case, the police later realized this was improper and substantially cut back on the hotel services.

…Word is that [Anthony Chau Tin-hang’s] wife once stormed into Yeung Mei-ki’s office in a rage and lodged a complaint with her. 

Oh Lawdy!

(The Lady M site, since you’re interested. A highly tasteful Dubai mochi tiramisu boutique.)

The Dept of Justice issues a denial (which is also the focus of the SCMP story)…

The DoJ has noticed that serious allegations involving the newly appointed Director of Public Prosecutions and another DoJ officer have been widely circulating online. The DoJ had earlier conducted a rigorous investigation into an anonymous complaint containing relevant content in accordance with the established procedures, and is confident that the allegations are completely without factual basis, entirely fabricated, and constitute malicious smearing.

It is ill-intentioned for someone to maliciously spread rumours online following the appointment of the new Director of Public Prosecutions, and to deliberately smear dedicated prosecutors who perform duties in safeguarding national security. 

If the government is right in stating that the story is ‘entirely fabricated’ – and who am I to doubt it? – I look forward to Frances Hui’s first novel.

A 55-year-old construction worker throws pieces of paper out of his 12th floor apartment into a public area. A clear case of littering. In fact, he is arrested and charged with…

…two counts of “doing with a seditious intention an act or acts that had a seditious intention”…

Because of what was written on the paper.   

Officials discuss provision for public space at the Northern Metropolis in the Legislative Council…

The debate also centred on whether room existed for further increases in the minimum size requirement for private and public housing units in general.

[Secretary for Development Bernadette] Linn said officials needed to take into account a number of factors for consideration.

“We need to consider the cost and return for developers. We also need to consider that society has diverse needs, people from all walks of life have different requirements of flat size, as well as the affordability of potential buyers,” she said.

The development chief added there might be a knock-on effect on the property market whenever the administration decides to lay down new indicators on minimum size requirements for flats, noting such an impact must be gauged carefully. 

This could mean: we must ensure property tycoons make lots of money; we will make sure the housing is so expensive most people can afford only a shoe-box; and we can’t have bigger affordable apartments because it might hurt the value of larger units that our friends have already bought.

Or it might mean something else. Not sure.

Some weekend reading: how Uyghur culture becomes ‘extremism’, from Bitter Winter.

The SCMP reports…

Hong Kong’s top court has been asked to abolish an “extraordinary” and “inexplicable” law prohibiting calls to boycott the city’s “patriots-only” elections on the grounds that it violates residents’ rights to express disapproval of the political system and to make informed decisions before voting.

A government senior counsel opposed the challenge by former Chinese University of Hong Kong student union president Jacky So Tsun-fung, arguing the law fell outside the scope of constitutional review. He cited Beijing’s decision to address “clear loopholes and deficiencies” in the electoral system after the city’s 2019 anti-government protests.

…So received a suspended jail sentence in December 2022 for reposting a social media message urging Hongkongers to cast blank votes in the Legislative Council election the previous year…

…The Court of First Instance dismissed an appeal stemming from that constitutional challenge last year.

The argument is that the law infringes freedom of speech rights in the Basic Law. So if the Court of Final Appeal wants a ‘loophole’ to avoid addressing this issue, it can maintain that the law ‘falls outside the scope of constitutional review’. It can also accept the government’s invitation to say that the law resulted from NPC decisions and therefore is untouchable.

But by any standards, it is an absurd and illogical piece of legislation. It is legal to abstain from voting; but illegal to ‘incite’ (recommend/urge) others to abstain from doing so. Officials have declared that such recommendation/urging counts as ‘interfering’ in the election. Yet it is legal to recommend/urge that others vote – as the government itself does.

To add to the weirdness, the law is enforced by the ICAC – an agency that is meant to be independent and focused on corruption.

Another twist: by reminding the public of this law whenever elections are underway, officials themselves actually remind everyone that boycotting the ‘patriots-only’ polls is an option (and quite a popular one, judging by the feeble turnout).

Ideally, the CFA would answer the basic question: How can it be a crime to urge people to do something that is not illegal? I am guessing it won’t.

…Chow Hang-tung in the HK Alliance ‘inciting subversion’ trial. A translation of part of her closing statement is here.

From HKFP…

A Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil activist standing in a national security trial has urged the court to safeguard the “dignity and bottom line of the law,” as she warned judges not to become “accomplices” in an alleged government crackdown on free speech. 

Chow Hang-tung, a former leader of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, said that authorities have been “reshaping” the city’s long-held values by prosecuting activists who advocate for democracy in China. 

…Delivering closing arguments on Tuesday, Chow said the crux of the case was whether the law protects the “perpetual rule” of the CCP or the rights of people to advocate democracy.

“Ending one-party rule means putting an end to the status quo, in which those in power are not bound by the law,” she said in Cantonese.

…She argued it was “unheard of” that a government would accuse its citizen of breaching the constitution.

“Any document that can be called a constitution in the world is to restrict the operation of power, not ordinary people,” she said.

The Standard…

Chow argued that the key question for the court was what the law prohibits and protects, what conditions the defendants sought to end, and what system the Constitution establishes. She questioned whether the law guarantees the permanent rule of the Chinese Communist Party and prohibits citizens from advocating political transition.

She said the defendants had merely advocated ending unrestricted power, and argued that the court could not criminalize the slogan “end one-party dictatorship” while claiming to uphold the rule of law.

Chow also argued that “subversion” should be interpreted as using external forces to rapidly, drastically and abnormally change an existing order, and that this was not limited to physical force. She said “destruction” carried an additional element of malice, involving unfair, unreasonable or unauthorized conduct, while justified criticism without malice did not amount to destruction.

She said the prosecution should directly prove what unlawful means the defendants had allegedly incited others to use, describing the prosecution’s argument that they had failed to call for constitutional amendment through lawful means as groundless.

Chow further argued that the prosecution must prove not only that the defendants broke the law, but also that they acted unconstitutionally, which she said required a much stricter standard.

AP reports…

In previous hearings, the prosecution has focused on “ending one-party rule,” one of the alliance’s core demands, arguing that the group’s advocacy was about inciting others to use unlawful means to overthrow the leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party.

Chow, a barrister who defended herself, said Tuesday that her trial was a “very strange case,” because the defendants neither denied anything they had done nor argued that what they said didn’t reflect their thoughts.

Chow said that “ending one-party rule” means ending a state where power is unrestricted, and that a key question in the case is whether the law is really safeguarding the Chinese Communist Party to rule forever and banning the people from pushing forward democratization.

Chow argued that the standard for determining right and wrong has been turned upside down in this case.

“Speaking the truth has become inciting hatred, seeking justice has become exploiting suffering, limiting power has become violating the constitution, and returning power to the people has become subverting the state,” she said.

She said that if the court fails to gatekeep over the reasonable effects of their statements, it could easily become an accomplice by tolerating the crimes committed by those in power.

Ouch. How will the NatSec judges address these points when they deliver their verdict in around a couple of months? Perhaps just with a simple: “No, you’re wrong.” It’s hard to imagine a response as convincing as Chow’s own argument.

Most people appearing in court under Hong Kong’s national security laws (incitement, subversion, sedition, collusion, etc) seem to be there for words rather than actions. But defendants or their lawyers rarely ask the judges to step back and view the alleged crimes as no more than expressions of opinion. Perhaps, given these courts’ near-100% conviction rate, it would be too provocative? We will now see. From HKFP…

Barrister Erik Shum, representing Lee Cheuk-yan, spoke before a three-judge panel on Monday as closing arguments began in the national security trial of Lee and Chow Hang-tung. Both are former leaders of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. 

…The calls to end one-party rule – one of the group’s five tenets that also included the democratisation of China since its founding in 1989 – were demanding a change in the country’s political system rather than targeting any specific political party, Shum said.

Shum told the court on Monday that prosecutors had failed to present evidence that the Alliance sought to incite the public to revolt against the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

…Prosecutors have argued that there are no “lawful means” to end CCP rule after a 2018 constitutional amendment stipulates that the party’s leadership is the “defining feature” of China’s socialist system.

Shum argued on Monday that prosecutors presented a “tautological theory.”

“We ask: How exactly did the Alliance incite others to overthrow the CCP? And my submission is that the prosecution has always reverted to the claim that ending CCP rule is illegal,” Shum said.

Shum urged the court to draw a boundary for what is considered an acceptable political expression and what is not.

“The court must not pay lip service to human rights protections,” he said.

…The Alliance … was not exercising any power, and its calls should be considered civilian political criticism, Shum said.

In the decades since the HK Alliance was formed, did anyone in Hong Kong (or anywhere) try to end one-party rule?

Meanwhile, the government allocates another HK$5 billion to its National Security budget…

Classified as non-recurrent expenditure, the payment brings the total amount dedicated to national security spending to date to HK$18 billion.

According to official records, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po previously allocated HK$8 billion in December 2020 and a further HK$5 billion in March 2023.

Assuming the HK$13 billion committed so far has been spent in the last 65 months, they’ve burnt through HK$50 million a week.

You don’t recall any actual threat to the national security of the PRC coming out of Hong Kong during that time? Maybe that shows how effective that 50 million a week has been! 

Following Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, the NYT looks at (VPN-equipped) Chinese netizens’ comments on overseas social media platforms…

Mr. Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, is on the front page of the official People’s Daily nearly every day. He dominates the prime-time television news. And yet he remains a mysterious figure even to his own people. Unlike Mr. Trump, who posts constantly on social media and regularly takes questions and even unscheduled phone calls from the press, Mr. Xi is always choreographed. He reads from a script and strikes the same pose in every photograph with world leaders. 

During the summit, some social media users mocked this predictability, commenting that Mr. Xi appeared to be exactly the same height as Mr. Trump — and nearly every visiting world leader he has appeared with in photos. As a 32-year-old tutor in southern Fujian Province put it on Threads, “I’d be much more interested in seeing Yao Ming meet Xi Jinping,” referring to the former N.B.A. player who is 7 foot 6 inches tall, “just because they’d be the same height, too.”  

…Some people joked that, having listened to Mr. Xi’s speech, Mr. Trump could now appreciate what it was like to sit through Xi Jinping Thought classes in college. 

…“Is China moving backward?” [one poster] asked. “A society that is truly confident doesn’t need children chanting slogans to prove its enthusiasm. A country that is genuinely open doesn’t need to repackage diplomatic events as collective performances.” 

One astute commenter noted that the children wore ‘staged-event’ clothing from a bygone era…