Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Recently saw the Japanese movie First Kiss (was almost the youngest person in the cinema). Then I start to watch the Fuji TV series Omameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands, starring the same actress, Takako Matsu. Mildly jarring to see her again in a different role. But – this being a genre that recycles an apparently limited number of actors – it gets much worse.

The guy playing the first of the three ex-husbands (the publicity photo helpfully numbers them) is also appearing in another series I’m watching, the 156-episode Ama Chan. He plays a talent scout for a Tokyo idols company who recruits a girl who dives for sea urchins in a small northern fishing village. The actor playing ex-husband number 2 also appeared as an alien passing as a hotel staffer in the series Hot Spot, which I recently finished. (More confusion: the multiple-divorcee’s best buddy is played by the actress who is the alien’s colleague at the hotel.) Ex-husband number 3, meanwhile, is played by the same guy who is a judge in the 130-episode drama Tiger With Wings, about Japan’s first female lawyer, which I am also about halfway through. And the actress who plays the lead role in that series does the voice-overs for Omameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands. 

Nothing like Japanese TV dramas to keep your brain alert.

(In case you’re wondering, the 150-episode epics are morning shows lasting 15-20 minutes. I’m not wasting that much time.)

CNN on the imminent disbandment of the HK Democratic Party…

“A dissolution of the party reflects official Hong Kong’s turn away from popular participation, locally accountable government, and increased transparency toward more authoritarian rule,” [academic John] Burns said.

Eric Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said the Democrats’ move “shows there are no more feasible ways for groups to exist as an opposition party.”

“It’s self-conflicting for the government to suggest that nothing has changed,” he said.

Includes a brief history of the party and a video interview with Emily Lau, who days…

“We’ve been around for over 30 years, and we’ve got the support of many Hong Kong people,” she told CNN outside court in February, before another former party lawmaker was jailed on charges of rioting during the 2019 protests.

“I don’t know what they are thinking in Beijing. We have demonstrated, not just words, but by action, that we are reasonable. We are willing to talk, to negotiate, to compromise, reach a deal and go forward.”

Which would be great if talking, negotiating and deal-making with political opponents was a CCP thing.

China Unofficial Archives celebrates a 10th anniversary…

Beneath the calm surface of Hong Kong in 2025 lies the weight of dramatic upheaval. After the 2019 anti-extradition protests, the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Security Law, the “patriots governing Hong Kong” policy, and the passage of the Article 23 National Security Ordinance, the open and free Hong Kong many remember seems to be fading from view. This year also marks the tenth anniversary of the independent film Ten Years, once dubbed a “prophecy” about Hong Kong’s future.

…Back in 2015, Ten Years may have seemed dystopian, even absurd. But in the wake of the 2020 National Security Law, it now appears almost restrained.

HKFP op-ed on Chow Hang-tung’s bid to allow female prisoners to wear shorts…

Ms Chow’s suggestion is nevertheless unwelcome, because it comes from her. 

…I would respectfully suggest that (government lawyer] Mr Lee drop the argument that uniform wearing is an essential part of maintaining “custodial discipline,” because this leaves him open to the question as to why custodial discipline in male prisons appears to be compatible with allowing shorts as an option.

What a wonderfully empty city we had over the holiday weekend…

Easter saw an “exodus” of residents, with approximately 2.22 million departures made over four days, an increase of 180,000 compared to the same period last year. In contrast, there were only about 400,000 mainland and foreign arrivals, resulting in a “travel deficit.”

Traffic peaked on the final day of the long break as northbound vehicles returned to the city. At 5.30pm yesterday, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge checkpoint reported a 500-meter vehicle backlog, with border-crossing wait times stretching up to 40 minutes.

According to Immigration Department data, as of 9pm yesterday, there were over 957,000 crossings recorded, with inbound travelers exceeding 631,000, some 86 percent of which are Hongkongers.

Economist Simon Lee Siu-po said the ongoing trade war has weakened the yuan, making products appear cheaper for Hongkongers to shop in the mainland.

Some things you might have missed while contributing to that horrible ‘travel deficit’…

China Media Project looks at the gap between Chinese media claims about the country’s tech prowess and the reality…

The current AI landscape, [tech academic Zhu Songchun] said, is one in which media narratives, investment patterns, and government initiatives present a distorted picture of progress. “What’s truly blocking our progress is not foreign technology restrictions,” Zhu told the audience, “but our own limited understanding.”

The reasons for this problem? Zhu says both Chinese media and officials tasked with promoting AI have little understanding of how it works. For their part, the media have fed the public “exaggerated” stories about AI. While Zhu notes this as a key problem, he tactfully steps around an important impetus behind this coverage — the fact that the leadership’s appetite for promoting AI as the next driver of development is also exerting pressure on state media to signal positivity and success. 

…This disconnect was illustrated once again over the weekend, as Beijing hosted a half marathon where Chinese-built robots raced alongside human competitors. The CCP’s official People’s Daily described the event as a “fierce competition” that had pushed the robots to their limits. Xinhua sang about “infinite possibilities,” and proclaimed in its headline that the racing event had “closed the distance between us and the future.” The less stellar reality, alluded to in a report by Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily that noted the “many problems” holding the race down, was that the robots had suffered constant failures and necessitated nearly constant repairs by the exhausted human crews running alongside them. In the end, only six of the 21 robot entries completed the race, and one quite literally lost its head.

George Magnus interviewed by Swiss outlet The Market…

If China, with its 1.4 billion people, had an income and consumption structure like the US, the UK or Switzerland, then their economy wouldn’t be in the situation it’s in. But it doesn’t. Why? Because the CCP is wedded to mercantilism, industrial policy, and export promotion. They try to boost growth through exports. But who’s going to take China’s overproduction voluntarily? Many countries all over the world are raising trade barriers against China. They’ve reached the end of the road with their growth model.

…what is the purpose of having a trade surplus? This goes back to Adam Smith, who famously said that the purpose of exporting is to be able to import. To be able to consume other things. That’s the big thing that’s missing in China. They don’t import enough, they don’t consume enough. China’s exports last year grew four times as fast as world trade, and imports didn’t grow as fast as world trade. Something’s wrong there. The philosophy behind China’s economic model is pure mercantilism. 

…so far, there hasn’t been any strong expression [in Beijing] to embark on tax reform, income redistribution, an abolition of the hukou system, or privatization of state assets. Xi is very opposed to welfare payments, he sees them as a Western corrupted practice. There are a few brave Chinese economists at think tanks who have called for such measures. But so far the government hasn’t done it. I’m skeptical that they’re comfortable with the idea of what strengthening household incomes and consumption implies. Because if you really transfer economic power to the citizens, households, and small firms, you are transferring political power as well.

The White House deletes practical info from the US government’s Covid website and replaces it with ‘lab-leak’ stuff. (An investigative journalist’s pithy response.)

What is the conspiracy-theorist/MAGA obsession with the ‘lab leak’ thing? Past experience (SARS, etc) shows that viruses are especially prone to cross species in central/southern China for a combination of natural and man-made reasons. The real scandal, beyond animal-trafficking and mismanaged wet markets, is that local and later national authorities in China tried to cover up the initial outbreak. Next thing, it spread worldwide and cost millions of lives and hundreds of billions in economic damage. The lab-leak story, hinting at evil scientists engineering exotic bio-weapons with Dr Fauci something something, detracts from that.

Is this ‘soft confrontation’?

On Tuesday evening, China Daily, the ruling Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) English-language mouthpiece, published an editorial saying Donald Trump’s frequent claims of the US being “ripped off” were “hoodwinking the US public”.

“The US is not getting ripped off by anybody,” it said. “The problem is the US has been living beyond its means for decades. It consumes more than it produces. It has outsourced its manufacturing and borrowed money in order to have a higher standard of living than it’s entitled to based on its productivity. Rather than being ‘cheated’, the US has been taking a free ride on the globalisation train.”

It added: “The US should stop whining about itself being a victim in global trade and put an end to its capricious and destructive behaviour.”

What are things coming to when we find ourselves nodding furiously in agreement with that first sentence of the second para in China Daily?

Or how about this?

The Chinese Consulate in Osaka is openly providing anti-Japanese propaganda films to Chinese students in Japan, with a note encouraging students to watch them at home. China is brazenly fanning anti-Japanese sentiment *in Japan*.

Bit of an uphill struggle, perhaps. Chinese students who go to Japan must find the place attractive, even if only because of sushi, manga or space-age toilets, and they surely can’t help noticing over time that their host country has a high quality of life as well as being free and democratic.

Via Forbes on YouTube, a former Meta employee tells a US Senate committee that China-adoring Mark Zuckerburg’s company passed details of Hong Kong and Taiwan users to Beijing authorities. ‘Virality counters’ triggered reviews of any posts getting more than 10,000 views.

(I feel sorry for anyone forced to read posts that go viral on Facebook).

Plenty of quotable quotes arise from the recent 10th National Security Education Day forum.

Although we still haven’t found out what ‘soft resistance’ is. Education Secretary Christine Choi tells us that it has (or is) a “dangerous aspect” and can ‘easily penetrate the heart and mind’.

But now we also have ‘soft confrontation’…

Speaking at the forum, Huang Dahui, a School of International Studies professor at Renmin University of China, noted that soft confrontation has emerged as a new battlefield and strategy among major powers and warned that Hong Kong is susceptible to such ideological warfare.

“We all know that Hong Kong is a diverse, open and highly interconnected society,” he told forum participants.

“And therefore Hong Kong’s interests, social composition and ideologies are also very diverse.

“With such features, Hong Kong is more susceptible to this kind of soft confrontation cognitive warfare.

“And soft confrontations are more likely to work here,” he said.

The professor, also the chief expert in the National Security Interdisciplinary Platform, further elaborated that such soft confrontations often come in the form of “spreading fake information” to confuse the public and represent a cognitive theory of western nations.

Is he referring to a theory about Western nations, or an undesirable cognitive framework – ideas, in plain English – pushed by them? A quick Google search suggests that ‘cognitive theory’ is an actual thing, to do with studying mental processes involved in learning and understanding. Perhaps cognitive theory could help us find out why we can’t understand what the guy means by ‘cognitive theory’. 

Maybe he is referring to ‘soft power’? Of course, we can’t rule out the possibility that Mainland ideologues/academics pushing the party line at conferences lapse into jargon just like anyone else. 

Does Amnesty International count as ‘soft confrontation’? It is re-opening its Hong Kong office, albeit overseas.

Why did the US impose sanctions on a number of Hong Kong officials two weeks ago? CFHK thread on Paul Lam.

HK and Macau Affairs Office Director Xia Baolong slams…

…the United States for its tyrannical and bullying imposition of tariffs and sanctions, which aim to “strangle the lifeblood of Hong Kong.”

…Xia criticized Washington’s suppression of Hong Kong, including imposing sanctions on its officials and the “preposterous” accumulated tariffs as high as 145 percent on the city – a tariff-free port.

“[Such an act] is brutal and shameless, enabling the world to see the US’s hostility toward Hong Kong’s success,” said Xia, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office. “They are not trying to collect taxes, they want to claim our lives.”

…”Those who believe that groveling before the US – currying favor, kneeling in submission, or begging for mercy – will bring peace, respect or development are profoundly naive,” Xia said.

“We must abandon such illusions.

“The United State’s repeated attempts to suppress Hong Kong will ultimately backfire.

“Let America’s bumpkins wail before China’s 5,000-year civilization. Victory will belong to the great Chinese people.”

Not all ideologues/American bumpkins are so sure of themselves these days. An NYT column sees radical-right theoreticians starting to have second thoughts…

Nathan Cofnas, a right-wing philosophy professor and self-described “race realist” fixated on group differences in I.Q., wrote on X, “All over the world, almost everyone with more than half a brain is looking at the disaster of Trump (along with Putin, Yoon Suk Yeol, et al.) and drawing the very reasonable conclusion that right-wing, anti-woke parties are incapable of effective governance.”

(That Twitter post has lots more.)

Scott Siskind, who blogs under the pseudonym Scott Alexander, has been an influential figure in Silicon Valley’s revolt against social justice ideology, though he’s never been a Trump supporter. Last week, he asked whether “edgy heterodox centrists” like himself paved the way for Trump by opening the door to once-verboten arguments. In an imaginary Socratic dialogue, he wrote, “We wanted a swift, lean government that stopped strangling innovation and infrastructure. Instead we got chain-saw-style firings, total devastation of state capacity in exactly the way most likely to strangle innovation more than ever, and the worst and dumbest people in the world gloating about how they solved the ‘grift’ of sending lifesaving medications to dying babies.”

Activist Chow Hang-tung goes to court to challenge prison rules requiring female inmates to wear long trousers during summer, while male inmates can wear shorts…

Chow, who has been detained since September 2021, and her lawyers had earlier argued in a writ that the “deprivation of opportunity” to wear shorts for daytime activities “would have the effect of rendering the whole policy discriminatory.”

The female inmates are deprived of an effective way to cool themselves, as they could potentially face a disciplinary offence for pulling up their trousers, Tam added.

Failure to comply with an instruction to wear their trousers properly can result in an offence, according to prison rules.

…However, Tam pointed out that the CSD had not explained how wearing trousers – as opposed to shorts – served the aim of custodial discipline.

Tam said that thermal comfort was only part of the “basket of considerations” that the CSD had taken into consideration when formulating its clothing policies, adding that Chow and her team could not “single out” an individual aspect in their submission.

Citing evidence from CSD clinical psychologist Elise Hung, Lui said that the existing policy was the product of “decades of CSD management” that had identified female inmates’ preference for trousers over shorts.

…Their preference was based on “actual concerns,” including their working needs, the need to cover up scars and wounds, as well as leg hair and mosquito bites, he said.

Citing Hung, Lui said their preference for trousers was largely due to most female inmates’ concerns over “privacy and decency” that could be traced back to “inherent” historical, biological, and psychological differences between men and women.

It surely wouldn’t take the wisdom of Solomon to suggest simply that women prisoners be allowed the choice to wear shorts if they prefer. At least on a trial basis to see whether such a reform would result in a breakdown of custodial discipline.

(I recall seeing male inmates at Victoria Prison emerging every day in brown shorts and bare feet to carry the garbage out of the prison staff quarters on the other side of Old Bailey Street. One guard would stand a few yards up the road and one a few yards down in case a prisoner tried to make a run for it, which they never did. Can’t remember how their legs looked. It later became an Immigration Dept detention facility. I went in a few months after it finally closed, and you could still smell the sweat in the cell blocks.) 

The government’s arguments for requiring long trousers are at least clear. Contrast with the oblique statement on its refusal to allow UK MP Wera Hobhouse to enter the city…

A HKSAR Government spokesman said that it is the Government’s standing policy not to comment on individual cases. The Immigration Department will deal with each case in accordance with the relevant law and immigration policy. It is the duty of immigration officer to ask questions to ascertain that there is no doubt about the purpose of any visit. The person concerned knows best what he or she has done. It will be unhelpful to the person’s case if the person refuses to answer questions put to him or her for that purpose.

The Hong Kong Democratic Party announces that it is starting the process to shut itself down. For a party founded to fight for democracy, it is a depressing end – pressured to disband by figures working for a government that rules out political pluralism. The Reuters story makes clear that Beijing is telling the party to do it…

Five senior members of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, the city’s biggest and last remaining major opposition party, say that Chinese officials or middlemen have warned the party to disband or face serious consequences, including possible arrests.

Amid a years-long national security crackdown by China after pro-democracy protests in 2019, the Democratic Party will hold an extraordinary general meeting on April 13 to seek members’ views and possibly pave the way for the group’s dissolution.

The group’s chairman, Lo Kin-hei, has not given a concrete reason for the likely disbandment, but five senior Democratic Party members told Reuters they had been told in meetings with Chinese officials or individuals linked to Beijing in recent months that the party should close.

Fred Li, a veteran Democratic Party member and former lawmaker, said a Chinese official had told him this should be done before this December’s legislative elections.

Four other senior Democratic Party members also said they had been warned in recent months by middlemen linked to Beijing, some of whom said the party would face “serious consequences” if it did not disband. Three declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

…”For a long time it seemed like Beijing could live with the situation of having the party around as a figment of opposition,” said one Western envoy.

“It seems they are leaving nothing to chance. The message is it is time to close down once and for all,” said the diplomat, who was not authorised to speak publicly.

The story from AP covers some of the party’s history…

Former chairperson Yeung said in an interview with The Associated Press that Chinese officials told him the party needed to disband. He urged his members to support the motion to give the leadership mandate to handle the process.

“I’m not very happy about it,” said Yeung. “But I can see if we refuse the call to disband, we may pay a very huge price for it.”

…Looking back, former chairperson Emily Lau, who was involved in the talks with Beijing, insists many people supported the outcome because it was a step forward. She said they asked Beijing to continue to have dialogue with others to find a way for universal suffrage, but it never did.

“Maybe the only thing I would have done a bit differently is not to go into the (Beijing’s) liaison office (in Hong Kong). I guess we underestimated how many Hong Kong people hated them,” she said.

As new pro-democracy groups were on the rise, the party’s influence dwindled. That became more obvious after the emergence of younger politicians, including pro-Hong Kong independence activists, following the 2014 massive protests calling for universal suffrage. Still, five years later, when the 2019 protests swept Hong Kong, the party’s activism won widespread support once again.

It seems the authorities don’t want the party openly accused of NatSec, financial or other wrongdoing – though they could no doubt find some sort of ‘collaboration with foreign forces’ if they wanted to. They would rather the group just hurry up with its prevaricating and self-dissolve. As the unnamed diplomat suggests, even a harmless and largely inactive independent body worries the people at the top.

Is this a relatively recent response to continued deterioration of China’s relations with the US? Or is it simply unfinished post-2019 business? Either way, it seems likely other organizations – not necessarily just remaining political groups like the LSD – will be in for more attention.

Meanwhile, far from the world of patriots-only elections, Hongkonger Richard Choi wins a seat on Sutton Borough Council in London. (A landslide victory for the Liberal Democrats – 55% of votes despite fighting 6 other candidates. As it happens, a Lib Dem MP has just been refused entry to Hong Kong, presumably because of her association with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.)

After being acquitted of a ‘riot’ charge in 2020, social worker and activist Jackie Chen was re-tried. (Background here.) On the final day, assuming she would be found guilty, she prepared for prison. Translation of a Witness article from Brian Kern’s Substack. Also a link to a video.

National Review on Jimmy Lai’s Bradley Prize…

Xi Jinping has turned Lai into a living legend by subjecting the 77-year-old to a high-stakes national security trial, one likely to result in a life sentence. It now drags into its 17th month and may not conclude until fall. In the meantime, Lai is being held incommunicado in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison. He has been there since December 2021. He makes no secret that his Catholic faith gives him courage; the government’s arbitrary prohibition against Lai receiving Holy Communion makes his ordeal even harder.

Nathan Law looks at the prospects for NatSec prisoners coming up for release…

…as some of these campaigners prepare to leave prison, their futures remain uncertain. Nominal release does not guarantee true freedom. Under the National Security Law, the authorities have extended their reach beyond the prison walls. The NSL bureau and police have exercised their power through a climate of intimidation—cutting off imprisoned activists’ communication with the outside world, preventing political figures from leaving the city, and targeting the family and friends of exiled dissidents with raids and interrogations.

We still do not know what awaits these individuals once they step outside the prison gates. Will they be allowed to resume life in peace, even in silence? Or will they remain targets, shadows of their former selves, under constant watch? 

Via free-speech group Article 19, a statement on digital gallery Art Innovation’s censorship of four-second billboard clips by Baduciao during Hong Kong’s Art Basel week.

CFHK statement on the introduction of a US Senate bill that would classify Hong Kong as a money-laundering and sanctions-breaking hub.

Bad news for luxury designer labels, but otherwise almost amusing: Chinese factories are going onto TikTok to offer Americans identical products minus the brand logo for a fraction of the usual price, even after paying the latest 100%-plus or whatever tariffs. Behold the non-Hermes Birkin bag for US$1,000 rather than US$38,000.

NatSec police bring the parents of wanted activist Frances Hui into police stations for questioning. It is the mother’s second time…

National security police reportedly first took in the mother for questioning a week after they issued an arrest warrant and placed a HK$1 million bounty on her daughter’s head on December 14, 2023.

Hui was the first high-profile Hong Kong activist to be granted political asylum in the US. Now a policy and advocacy coordinator at The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, she is accused of colluding with foreign forces. 

She responds…

My parents and I have had no contact since I left Hong Kong in 2020. I’ve been financially independent ever since. The police arranged a crowd of media to photograph their exit—to humiliate them. This is a deliberate attempt to intimidate & silence me.

These mini-detentions of relatives and friends give the ‘absconders’ additional opportunities to amplify and justify their opposition to Hong Kong’s government. What else do they accomplish?

A top government official latches on to ever more obscure – some might say desperate – micro-measures to rejuvenate the economy…

Authorities have said they will make it easier for people to cook freshly caught fish on boats, as part of a push to promote island hopping tourism.

Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law said in an interview with Wen Wei Po published on Thursday that the easing of fishing regulations is part of the administration’s medium-term plan in boosting tourism.

China File asks various think-tank/academic types to explain what Trump’s China policy really is. As one says…

Looking for a consistent “China strategy” under Trump 2.0 may well be what a Chinese idiom calls, climbing a tree to look for a fish: It assumes a level of coherence and institutional continuity that simply doesn’t apply.

And another…

The most benign possible interpretation of Trump’s all-fronts power play is that he simply wants to display dominance and extract statements of submission. Once the needed kowtows have been made, business can proceed more or less as before. This was roughly how Trump operated in his first term. And it might explain the extraordinary reversal of April 9, when Trump abruptly paused virtually all his “reciprocal” tariffs except those on China, on the grounds that China had disrespected him by retaliating, whereas other countries had not.

The better explanation of that move, however, is that Trump and his advisors realized that his April 2 tariff barrage would soon lead to economic catastrophe. China’s retaliation provided the pretext for a face-saving retreat on most fronts, while leaving the trade war on China in place. Administration apologists jumped to claim that targeting China was the master plan all along, but this is certainly false.

The world’s (not just the US’s) great trade problem can be summed up in a few (approximate, previously mentioned) stats: China, with 20% of the world’s economy and population, accounts for 36% of global manufacturing, but only 13% of global consumption. The suppression of consumption enables the expansion and subsidy of the manufacturing. It’s a valid way for countries emerging from poverty to develop (Germany and Japan both did it). But in China’s case, the policy has gone to extremes and significantly reduces the size of the overall global market. This is what the US (and other deficit countries like the UK) could and should be focussing on. The rest is just Trump’s bizarre obsession with medieval mercantilist voodoo.

From China Media Project, Chinese TV in crisis as viewers and advertisers flee channels full of propaganda, censorship and politicized product placements…

The gradual “salesification” (銷售化) of reporters has become a trend for television station workers in China, including at major state-run outfits like China Central Television (CCTV). To alleviate financial pressure, many television stations assign business tasks to their staff, meaning that directors, editors, and reporters must actively solicit advertisements. This, in fact, has become the primary standard for assessment when it comes to key performance indicators, or KPIs. 

“This is why many local television stations occupy large amounts of airtime repeatedly broadcasting advertisements for liquor, fake medicines, and health supplements,” Li Ming says. “These are among their few remaining ways to make money.”

The granddaughter of the author of the book Howl’s Moving Castle has a go at AI-generated fake Ghibli pictures.

…because of course/why not? 

The BBC reports US bonds being dumped, pushing up interest rates (Trump’s other obsession). Then CNN…

President Donald Trump announced a complete three-month pause on all the “reciprocal” tariffs that went into effect at midnight, with the exception of China, a stunning reversal from a president who had insisted historically high tariffs were here to stay.

But enormous tariffs will remain on China, the world’s second-largest economy. In fact, Trump said they will be increased to 125% from 104% after China announced additional retaliatory tariffs against the United States earlier Wednesday. All other countries that were subjected to reciprocal tariff rates Wednesday will see rates go back down to the universal 10% rate, he said.

This would all be quite funny except there are shippers offloading containers mid-voyage to stop them reaching the US. Insiders must be making a killing shorting then buying the stock market.

The Hong Kong Accountability Archive has been launched – a searchable archive of videos on police actions during the 2019 protests.

William Pesek in Asia Times notes that both China and the US (not to mention dozens of other countries) are heading for bigger problems if the trade war continues…

Xi’s China is calling Trump’s bluff in ways Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Green clearly didn’t expect. And upping the odds that a clash of the titans in Washington and Beijing might lay waste to the global financial system.

Here, the US should be careful about what it wishes for. Neither nation is as ready for this economic brawl as their respective policymakers seem to project.

A Fitch Ratings downgrade last week reminded investors that China isn’t in a state-of-the-art financial position. Fitch downgraded China’s sovereign rating to ‘A’ from ‘A+’ amid concerns about shaky public finances.

“The downgrade reflects our expectations of a continued weakening of China’s public finances and a rapidly rising public debt trajectory during the country’s economic transition,” says Fitch analyst Jeremy Zook.

Zook adds that “in our view, sustained fiscal stimulus will be deployed to support growth, amid subdued domestic demand, rising tariffs and deflationary pressures. This support, along with a structural erosion in the revenue base, will likely keep fiscal deficits high.”

At the same time, Zook notes, “we expect the government debt/GDP to continue its sharp upward trend over the next few years, driven by these high deficits, ongoing crystallization of contingent liabilities and subdued nominal GDP growth.”

In other words, China has fiscal space to protect its 5% growth. But it’s not unlimited and deploying the stimulus “bazooka” yet again could come at a high cost in the long run.

The US, meanwhile, is carrying a US$36 trillion-plus national debt into this fight as recession talk heats up. Even worse is the self-inflicted nature of the US reckoning to come, one punctuated by a $10 trillion stock market loss so far.

As Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, notes, it “feels like we’re being pushed into recession – it’s recession by design.”

Dexter Roberts quoting Ryan Hass…

If Trump really believes China is panicking rather than instead showing their readiness to wage trade war, he is in for a rude surprise. Beijing has been preparing for this day for a long time, including by strengthening legislation to punish foreign firms and diversifying its reliance on agricultural goods and other essential products.

“Anyone expecting President Xi to come calling and seek a call with President Trump following [the] April 2 tariff announcement is being dangerously naive. Anyone advising Trump that Xi will beg for forgiveness is committing malpractice. That is not the mood or the plan in Beijing now,” writes Brookings scholar Ryan Hass.

Don’t miss the cum Police exhibition…

The SCMP reports…

Lawmakers have questioned the need to create three more positions in the office of Hong Kong’s leader amid the budget deficit, but an official has stressed the roles will support a “new culture” of better informing the public about policies.

The planned recruitment involved two information officers and a driver, who will cost taxpayers HK$2.66 million (US$342,000) annually in total.

…Kevin Choi, permanent secretary from the Chief Executive’s Office, sought to justify the new positions…

“The work [to be performed by the new hires] could support the chief executive under the new culture and try to make the public and citizens directly informed of the policy,” he said.

…Choi added the term length of the two information officer positions was limited to three years, with plans to review their duration and explore opportunities for reduction.

Lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun told the Post that some people perceived current government communication as one-sided, reflecting only the viewpoint of authorities.

“Unless hired employees are able to facilitate two-way communication, they should not be employed,” he said.

The government could tell patriotic-but-mildly-curious lawmakers that their questions indicate ignorance of policy and therefore confirm the need for the new high-paid PR bims.

Helpfully, the SCMP photo shows the three hirees (possibly) plodding unenthusiastically towards their new jobs at Tamar. But there the keen journalism ends. The reporters appear not to have asked the government what the two new ‘information officers’ will do all day, how they can possibly need their own driver, and what sort of salaries the three will be getting.

We can sort of guess that their salaries will be around a million bucks each for the IOs, plus half a million for the driver – since the other overheads must be minimal. At HK$83,000 a month, this would be barely 2.8 times the mean household income for Hong Kong, which is an insulting pittance by civil service standards.

More important – what exactly is this ‘new culture’? If it’s not new, it’s just another in a long line of attempts (dating back to Tung Chee-hwa’s time) to convince the public that the government is right and everyone else is wrong. If it is genuinely different, that’s perhaps even worse.