Big Lychee, Various Sectors

From Flying Chopstick on Substack, a long, academic-type piece, partly critiquing a starry-eyed guy called Perez who thinks China has invented a space-age new form of governance, but mainly examining how Hong Kong fits into China’s system of government, with reference to last year’s Tai Po fire….

…After the Wang Fuk Court fire, a student who organized a petition for an independent inquiry was detained by national security police and later expelled from university. Other people were charged over comments about the fire, the inquiry committee declined to seek statutory powers, and the national-security office reportedly summoned foreign outlets and accused their coverage of distortion.

Hong Kong still formally protects speech, publication, assembly, and demonstration under Article 27 of the Basic Law, the constitutional document that came into force at the 1997 handover. In practice, the limits are learned through examples: an arrest, an expulsion, a prosecution, a lost job, a frightened institution. A writer learns the boundary by watching someone else cross it.

That is a poor environment for the criticism a government needs after a disaster. It is also an unusually clear environment for understanding a political system’s priorities. The central question here is whether China’s governing model stays responsive to reality when reality contradicts the Party’s preferred account of itself. Wang Fuk Court offers a grim answer.

What follows is a detailed explanation of…

…what the city lost when it dismantled the institutions that made official negligence expensive.

And the dismantling could not be selective. A councillor making a fuss about fire nets was not threatening Party rule, and neither was a toothless opposition that could not choose the Chief Executive or govern the city. The problem was precisely that it kept raising a fuss. It talked back. It made ministers answer questions they did not want asked, put evasions into the public record, and declined the performance of deference Beijing expects before official authority. The councillor making a fuss about fire nets was attached to the layer Beijing feared, and both came out together. What replaced the ecosystem was not silence in an empty space. It was a positive prohibition. Under the National Security Law and the sedition provisions, public criticism of the government and the police now carries legal risk, civil servants and district councillors swear loyalty oaths, and the student who asked for [an empowered] inquiry was expelled…

…Wang Fuk Court shows the limit of a system that constrained the public mechanisms most able to expose an institutional failure, then channeled public horror toward a safer story about [bamboo] scaffolding. 

(Perez’s piece is here, should you want it.)

HKFP reports criticism of the Hong Kong government’s clampdown on bookstores from a slightly unexpected source: a small conservative Christian group known mainly for its anti-gay views…

The Society for Truth and Light’s secretary general Choi Chi-sum said in a Friday statement that the bottom line of Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” constitutional framework “is the freedom of speech.” 

“Citizens should not have to live in fear simply for expressing personal opinions or possessing publications that haven’t been ruled illegal by the courts,” he wrote in Chinese. 

…With most of the city’s outspoken civil society groups having disbanded in the wake of the Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020, the Christian group’s statement is a rare public rebuke of the government’s crackdown on independent bookstores. 

While authorities say police discovered books at the stores that contained content that could provoke hatred against the government, no official list of banned books has been made public. Secretary for Security Chris Tang has said authorities would not release such a list.

Choi said not publishing such a list is an “abuse of power and an act that undermines the spirit of the rule of law.”

Businesses should have legal frameworks to rely on, he added, “rather than having the legality of actions and speech decided solely by the subjective views of individual officials or law enforcement officers.”

Just visited a bookstore that the NatSec police haven’t raided yet – the Japanese books and magazines section at Sogo. Among possible seditious threats on the shelves: a lavishly illustrated tome on ideas for presenting toast; ditto for hotdogs; and Detective Bottom…

A new outlet for those with patriotic urges: CY Leung complains about property developers naming their residential projects in English only…

…the former chief executive argued that such a trend attempts to appear as high-end, criticizing that developments targeting Chinese buyers but lack a Chinese name are unacceptable. 

Surely, the names are so stupid they can’t even be translated. Or, they’re in French or Italian. Recent examples include La Mirabelle, Twin Victoria, Cloudview, Le Mont, The Pavilla Forest, Fleur Pavilia, Park Silicon, Grandview Oceania, Lime Spark, Mount Broadcast and the irresistible-sounding Nob Hill. And let’s not forget The Belchers.

The Economist tries to explain Hong Kong’s obsession with shutting down small bookstores…

Evidently the officers in charge of the raid had not expected such a big haul, or they would have brought more bins. The last of it had to be carried out in a suitcase. After the contraband came the suspect: a bespectacled woman, with a T-shirt printed “I am a bookstore employee”.

The raid on “Have a Nice Stay”, a bookstore in Hong Kong’s trendy Mong Kok district, on July 15th was part of the Hong Kong government’s campaign against retailers of the printed word. Since passing a draconian national-security law in 2020 authorities have gone after shops selling “seditious” texts. This was not even the day’s first operation. Outside the half-closed shutter of the nearby Greenfield bookstore, two plainclothes police officers brusquely told your correspondent to shove off. At least 11 booksellers have been arrested this year.

The government’s heavy-handed approach is puzzling. Any real danger from controversial texts is surely online, where they may be easily shared. And raiding bookshops looks patently repressive, especially to people in Taiwan who watch Hong Kong to see what Chinese rule might be like…

It is not to keep provocative titles out of eager readers’ hands. The government will not say what is forbidden, so booksellers cannot know what not to stock. The day before the raids “Have a Nice Stay” said it was closing, as it could not navigate the government’s “unclear red lines”. The police’s enormous haul suggests they might not know where the lines are either.

The article suggests three reasons for the crackdown: to eradicate spaces where a ‘collective memory’ of 2019 might survive; to display ‘hard power’ against resistance; and to please Beijing…

The police seem eager to justify the HK$18bn ($2.3bn) spent on national security since the law passed … Wang Zhenmin, the former legal chief of China’s Hong Kong liaison office and an influential voice, said on July 14th that national-security risks were “rising significantly” and urged stronger “enforcement mechanisms”.

The author also predicts more to come. After the bookshops, what next? Overseas scholarships, of course – but they’re hard to raid. Independent media, perhaps just a matter of time. Then… Hair salons? Pet shops? 7-Elevens?

For Hong Kong stats followers (or those who rely on stats followers) – Joel Chan has started a blog.

Yesterday’s on-line Standard carried an op-ed (or ‘news’ story) warning that overseas exchange and training opportunities, including the Fulbright and Chevening scholarships, are being used to groom agents for evil foreign forces…

…Some political figures have bluntly stated that such courses use all-inclusive flights and accommodation as a draw but are essentially carefully designed political schemes aimed at recruiting individuals from all walks of life to cultivate them into agents for external forces.

Looking comprehensively at the trajectories of numerous anti-China and Hong Kong-disrupting elements in recent years, it is not hard to discover that such courses are exactly the channels through which external forces identify and cultivate their agents.

From black-clad riot leaders Nathan Law and Joshua Wong, to Ronson Chan, former chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association—which has repeatedly been pointed out by the outside world as an anti-China and Hong Kong-disrupting organization—and Bao Choy, founder of an anti-government online media outlet, all have participated in similar programs.

Facing the deliberate infiltration of external forces, political figures remind all sectors of society not to let their guard down.

In particular, the vast number of youths and elites from all sectors must maintain a clear head at all times, reject these vain temptations that are actually sugar-coated traps, recognize the political schemes behind these so-called “exchanges” and “trainings,” and absolutely avoid being utilized by anti-China forces to become pawns or even betray their country.

…external forces will seize the opportunity to repeatedly instill hostile, anti-China, and Hong Kong-disrupting ideologies into the participants, distorting their perception of the country and the SAR government.

They imperceptibly implant stances and emotions of confronting the state, striving to completely transform the participants so that they willingly serve the external forces.

Haven’t checked, but (like most Standard content) it’s probably a translation from Sing Tao. Too repetitive and ideologically obsessive to be AI. Probably crafted by a full-time ranter at Beijing’s Ta Kung Wen Wei Po. A weird piece for something that’s not state media. But recall that Lingua Sinica story from Wednesday. Sing Tao group then: “We need a property-developer puff piece.” Sing Tao group now: “We need a NatSec scare piece.”

If you like AI-drafted editorials, enjoy today’s ‘Beyond headline rebound: converting Hong Kong’s macro momentum into enduring capital depth’.

Meanwhile, AP reports from Macau…

Au [Kam San] is the first publicly known arrest under Macao’s national security law since its 2009 enactment and critics say his case signals Beijing’s emphasis on security and intolerance of dissenting voices, even though Macao’s pro-democracy activism has never been as influential as the movement in neighboring Hong Kong.

Au is accused of providing false information to anti-China organizations overseas to incite hatred against Beijing and the government in Macao, which has become a Chinese casino hub.

He has faced several restrictions since his arrest including the choice of a lawyer, raising concerns over the fairness of a future trial.

…When he was arrested, police alleged Au had colluded with an unspecified anti-China group outside the city and provided false and seditious materials for public display online or abroad. He also was accused of maintaining long-term contact with multiple entities beyond Macao that oppose China and repeatedly providing false information to them or their media outlets.

A court upheld the indictment on July 2, ruling Au was the “perpetrator” in multiple offenses including subverting state power, breach of confidentiality and establishing contact with organizations, groups or people outside Macao to commit acts endangering national security.

Some weekend reading…

Animation Obsessive Substack piece on Studio Ghibli’s Michiyo Yasuda …

As Ghibli got established, its colors stood apart. They were more nuanced, more subdued, richer than the norm. That was Yasuda’s area. “The reason animation films suffer creatively has to do with the fact that they all use the same colors,” Miyazaki argued in the ‘80s. “It’s like, ‘Oh, the color of animation.’ … I believe that Ghibli is the only studio that has really managed to develop such unique colors.”

Yasuda didn’t brag about what she did. Her work was, she emphasized, just a step in the process. “I create colors to add life to the drawings and to communicate the director’s intentions as much as possible,” she once said.

…color puts across the tactile textures of the world, and the color of a single pond might change dramatically based on angle and time of day. Yasuda and Miyazaki invented whole new terms. “ ‘Underwater color’ is when an object submerged in water is seen from the outside. … ‘Glass-transparency color’ is when an object is seen through glass,” Miyazaki explained. 

For archaeology fans – Phys Org on an ancient Amazonian civilization.

Stephen Roach, former boss of Morgan Stanley Asia, writes a piece updating and defending his belief that ‘Hong Kong is over’…

This dramatic transformation into Xianggang is the real story. Hong Kong’s defenders are in denial about this new chameleon-like identity, instead viewing it as another example of the city’s inherent resilience. Nice try.

…Hong Kong is less a thriving global IPO market than a major platform for Chinese issuers.

The rule of law, long regarded as one of Hong Kong’s greatest institutional advantages, has been severely compromised. In 2020, China bypassed the Hong Kong legislature and imposed a sweeping national security law… These changes have stifled open debate, resulted in new arrests and harsh sentences for previously imprisoned activists, led to closures of independent bookstores, and destroyed any semblance of a free press.

…Jonathan Sumption, one of England’s most brilliant jurists … warned in the Financial Times that a Mainland strain of “judicial ‘patriotism'” was poisoning the city’s legal system.

…The Hong Kong government seems to think that Chinese-style central planning offers new hope for its economy and recently launched its first five-year plan. But, as China is painfully learning, such plans can often over-promise and under-deliver.

Nothing very new. The Acting Financial Secretary delivers a fairly mild rebuttal. He could have issued a witty parody: Yes – Stephen Roach, one-time superstar of the fund management gurus, is now an 80-year-old has-been. But no. 

Nor does the Acting Financial Secretary mention bookstores. HKFP reports that 50-year-old Greenfield Books is closing, after NatSec police arrested staff for allegedly selling volumes with ‘seditious intentions’…

Greenfield is the third bookstore this month to announce its closure. The raids came a day after Have a Nice Stay said it would shut down the following month, citing financial difficulties and “unclear red lines.”

Another independent bookstore, Elmbook, also announced a week before the raids that it will close its physical store. The announcement came after it and Luck Win Bookshop were reportedly banned from taking part in the annual Hong Kong Book Fair.

Closures of Hong Kong bookstores have received wide coverage in international media, such as the latest from the Japan Times…. 

Authorities have cracked down on bookshops over alleged “seditious” material under Hong Kong’s homegrown national security law passed in 2024, in addition to broader legislation imposed by Beijing after democracy protests seized the financial hub in 2019.

After this month’s raids, security chief Chris Tang said booksellers must ensure the items they sell “do not endanger national security.”

And when the NatSec police have eradicated the bookstore threat – what comes next? It doesn’t exactly help officials who want to push Hong Kong as a ‘free, open, efficient, secure  international financial center’. 

Lingua Sinica on how Hong Kong is emulating Mainland-style merging of NatSec police and media…

Episodes two and three [of NS Files: Decoded] touch on the publication and distribution of the allegedly seditious children’s book Sheep Village, and the prosecution of Hong Kong radio producer Tam Tak-Chi (譚得志), arrested in 2020 for a public protest during which he shouted the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong! Revolution of our times,” which has been banned in the city.  

…As media in Hong Kong draw closer to powers they are meant to scrutinize independently, this show trial approach turns journalism into little more than a plot device. 

The Wire China interviews Geremie Barmé… 

In early ’75 the Central Committee launched yet another political movement, one that has been nearly completely forgotten, although for me it remains one of the most revealing moments of that tumultuous era. It was called ‘The Movement to Study the 33 Quotations from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Chairman Mao Concerning Bourgeois Rights’. The concept of ‘bourgeois rights’ [资产阶级法权] was at the core of the Cultural Revolution, the core of the Great Leap Forward, and the core idea that really continues to obsess Xi Jinping and colleagues today. This politburo are all ex-Red Guard generation people. The present Chinese government is the last gasp of the Cultural Revolution era.

Basically, this movement maintained that the only way that the revolution could continue without sliding into revisionism was to continue to attack those ideas, behaviors and structures in society that bred concepts of ownership and individualism. Material benefits like wage differentials for workers, the unequal point system for farm labourers, the privilege system of the Party nomenclature and so on constantly generated bourgeois ideas and behaviours that by their very nature made a more egalitarian, pre-communist society impossible. It was argued that if the Party did not reduce, and ultimately eliminate, these ‘rights’ and rid society of both the material base as well as the ideological support for private property, then the revolution would inevitably be overturned and there would be a return to some form of capitalist consumerist paradigm. Guess what? They were right!

After his fifth case of plagiarism – and several reprimands – High Court Judge William Chan ‘takes early retirement’. HKFP reports…

In the latest instance of plagiarism, Chan was found to have copied large parts of the defence’s opening and closing arguments in a HK$40 million shares dispute between Koo Ming-kown, the founder of digital products company Nam Tai Electronics, and Koo’s former brother-in-law. 

…The Court of Appeal found Chan had plagiarised during two separate cases in 2025, according to local media outlet The Witness.

In 2023, he was also found to have copied the majority of the plaintiff’s written submission in his judgement after the defendant lodged an appeal in a trademark dispute case involving two pharmaceutical brands.

That same year, Chan was also found to have plagiarised in a case concerning real estate giant Great Eagle Holdings. The defendant, who lost the case, filed an appeal accusing Chan of lifting large parts of the plaintiff’s submissions.

He also handled the early stages of the HK47 pan-democrat politicians’ NatSec trial.

Desmond Shum post on China’s new ‘deliberately broad and highly discretionary’ tax rules on offshore trusts…

For China’s wealthy, the implications extend well beyond paying more tax. Offshore trusts lose much of their value as asset-protection vehicles. Many families will now be looking to diversify not only their assets, but also their residency, citizenship and long-term wealth structures further away from China before additional restrictions emerge.

…Capital markets are also likely to feel the effects. Hong Kong’s, and to an extent Singapore’s, offshore wealth-management industry has been built in large part around mainland Chinese clients. The immediate impact from forced asset sales to meet tax liabilities may be manageable. The more important question is where Chinese wealth goes next. 

HK Labour Rights Monitor looks at how former members of the Hong Kong Police are moving into senior positions elsewhere in the public sector…

Since taking office, [ex-cop CE John] Lee has appointed at least seven former senior police officers to senior government positions.

Some now oversee public communications, food and environmental hygiene, cybersecurity and the Civil Service College, despite having spent most of their careers in policing rather than in those specialist fields.

The pattern extends beyond government.

Former police officers have also been appointed to senior positions at the Consumer Council, Competition Commission and the Academy for Performing Arts—institutions responsible for consumer rights, market competition and arts education rather than law enforcement.

The latest appointment came this week, when a former assistant police commissioner became Deputy Chief Executive of the Consumer Council, Hong Kong’s statutory consumer watchdog.

The article hints that this trend is a move away from Hong Kong’s public-service traditions of open competition, merit-based appointments and professional expertise. It doesn’t speculate why this is happening, although it points out that…

…Some of those now entering senior civilian or corporate positions were also prominent figures during the 2019 protests.

Among them are officers who publicly defended the police’s use of force throughout the unrest, criticised the then Vice-Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Rocky Tuan, over his response to campus clashes, or acted aggressively during the confrontations between police and protesters.

Their re-emergence in influential civilian roles has added to concerns among critics that political loyalty and service during the 2019 unrest may now be viewed as assets rather than liabilities in public appointments.

Co-opting members of the old power structure is a standard practice by incoming regimes throughout history. Hong Kong’s new rulers would, since the 1980s or earlier, have made a point of identifying and forming relationships with potentially useful local elites and officials. Tycoons, for example, visibly shifted to a ‘patriotic’ stance in the lead-up to the handover. Aiming at longer-term integration, Beijing would have continued and developed this process since 1997. 

Why focus on the police? Let’s guess that Beijing did not entirely trust the international-minded, anglophile, AO class of civil servants who traditionally ran Hong Kong and bleated about local values, a free press, judicial independence and civil-service neutrality. When identifying future possible loyalist talent, Mainland officials would probably find more amenable prospects among the less worldly, naturally authoritarian and obedient ranks of the disciplined services.

We will see over time what happens when officials from one relatively small and specialized function fill a broader range of top positions in the wider bureaucracy. As the article suggests, ex-cops are mostly being assigned to publicly visible roles – perhaps with some conceivable ‘national security’ concerns – not to behind-the-scenes technical departments.

Which leads us to a Diplomat piece on the recent clampdown on Hong Kong’s independent bookstores…

…one might argue that even the national security police themselves do not know what or where the red lines are. Communities, civic spaces, and speech in Hong Kong will come under increasing examination as the government uses an ever-finer comb to find supposed threats. With the obvious targets out of the way, the range of what will be allowed seems set to shrink still further. Meanwhile, the police, whose budget has ballooned in the past years, need to justify their existence even as there is less and less to scrutinize. The attention being paid to bookstores therefore shows a new development in the approach of the national security police toward perceived threats. 

…In the book “China’s Hong Kong,” Jiang Shigong, a well known legal scholar who worked for the Hong Kong Liaison office, the representative office of the PRC  in Hong Kong, wrote that the British colonial period had altered the “deep consciousness and the psychological structure of the Hong Kong people, leading to their extreme fear of ‘the leftist,’ ‘the Communist Party,’ ‘the Mainland’ and ‘socialism.’” He argued that it is the task of the post-handover government to rectify these mistakes and make the Hong Kong people remember their “Chinese hearts and souls.”  The censure of independent bookstores – together with the assemblage of other measures taken to advance one sense of Hong Kong society, identity, history, and culture – are part of a larger campaign to re-align Hong Kong’s “hearts and souls.”  

The SCMP reports on the HK Tourism Bored Board’s new exciting promotional campaign. Because apparently we don’t have enough tourists yet…

Hong Kong is seeking to promote itself as a city that visitors “feel” rather than merely see under a new global tourism campaign highlighting experiences ranging from mahjong games and tram rides to hidden beaches and Kai Tak Stadium.

…The campaign presents Hong Kong through contrasts, pairing its dense urban landscape with secluded natural escapes…

…The board said the campaign deliberately drew on real street scenes and everyday encounters rather than relying solely on polished destination imagery.

Not that we have room for any more visitors, but there are worse ways of promoting Hong Kong as a destination. At least they’re not pushing lame stereotypes like Cantonese opera and junks. (Well – they are, but not too much.) 

I can’t help wondering: how real are the street scenes and everyday encounters? A tram trundling along a street with no other traffic to be seen? A pristine turquoise sea at a deserted beach with no Mainland tourists plundering the shellfish? Someone riding a bicycle without fear of being rammed by a truck or pulled over by the cops? Where are the illegally parked cars, and the overcrowded sidewalks? One pic shows a dai pai dong – even though the government’s policy seems to be to eradicate them.

The different colours used in the promos are deep and meaningful…

These include “Dukling Red”, referencing traditional junk boats, “Ding Ding Green”, representing the city’s more than 120 years of tram history, and “Kai Tak Stadium Lavender”. Black and white were chosen to celebrate Hong Kong’s locally born giant panda twins. 

Or do black and white represent the bookstore-employee T-shirt?

Some weekend reading for history fans…

The (probably paywalled) Economist on the CCP’s Qing problem…

Dredging up all this history is uncomfortable for the party. The territorial boundaries claimed by modern China—including Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Taiwan—were brought into the Chinese empire by the Qing, not the Ming. Grievances about the Manchus also cut against the ideal of ethnic harmony advanced by the party.  

…Sensitivity over how to interpret all this illustrates how hard it is for the party to examine its own history. Never mind serious debates about Mao’s rule; even century-old dynasties are too hot to touch. The party commissioned an official history of the Qing and was close to completing it as a mammoth 106-volume project. But now it seems to have been scuppered by leaders because of disagreements about “new Qing” contamination. “It is very clear that the state was ruled by people who were not identical to the bulk of the population, so it’s hard to fit it into the kind of Chinese nationalism that the party wants,” says David Porter, a scholar of imperial China at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s easier to criticise Western historians for going the wrong way.” 

I love that ‘people who were not identical to the bulk of the population’. You mean ‘foreigners’.

Domino Theory on the apparent cancellation of a new Chinese film, The Belief, about the Qing invasion of Taiwan…

The film was approved for production in 2021 and shot in 2024. It dramatizes the 1683 campaign in which Shi Lang (施琅), an admiral in the Qing dynasty, led a naval assault on Penghu that ended the Kingdom of Tungning. This polity was established by Koxinga in Taiwan after he defeated the Dutch in 1662. 

The film’s use of a historical military campaign to comment on China’s contemporary approach to Taiwan may have triggered censorship concerns. Liu Hsing-jen (劉性仁), an associate professor at Chinese Culture University’s Institute for National Development and Cross-Strait Studies in Taiwan, pointed out that because the trailer depicts cross-strait relations as a life-or-death struggle, it may actually run counter to Beijing’s current strategy, which combines a push for peaceful reunification with escalating grey zone pressure. 

Some critics argue that the film puts forward an anti Han message, with the depiction of a Manchurian-led Qing force attacking a Han Chinese regime. They also say that it would be better framed as a story about Koxinga restoring Taiwan by defeating the Dutch, who colonized Taiwan at the time.

Police staked out a bathroom in order to catch an autistic 18/19-year-old for scrawling ‘seditious words’ on the wall. The guy worked part-time as a clerk for the Vanuatu consulate…

Magistrate Victor So handed down judgement on Wednesday morning at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court, Sing Tao Daily reported.

The magistrate did not accept a psychiatric report submitted earlier by the defence, which stated that the defendant showed symptoms of autism and that stress caused by poor examination results triggered his dissociative disorder.

Leung [Kai-lok] was arrested in July last year by national security police. He was accused of leaving seditious messages on the wall of a male bathroom inside China Hong Kong City in Tsim Sha Tsui on three occasions between July 17 and 21 when he worked as a part-time clerk at the Consulate of Vanuatu.

The seditious messages included “Bomb Li Ka-chiu to death” in Chinese, in an apparent reference to the city’s leader John Lee. He also scrawled the Chinese characters for “Gwong Si” – an abbreviated version of the 2019 protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of Our Times.” Courts have ruled the phrase carries seditious intent.

SCMP reports…

A 19-year-old in Hong Kong has been convicted of sedition for writing anti-government graffiti in a commercial building toilet, violating the city’s domestic national security law.

West Kowloon Court on Wednesday rejected a defence psychiatrist’s opinion that a congenital mental disorder prevented Leung Kai-lok from understanding the offensive words he used against the government and police.

Leung stood trial earlier this year before a magistrate hand-picked by the city leader to oversee national security proceedings.

How many man-hours did the police spend valiantly ‘staking out’ the bathroom? Do cops feel they have done a good job after catching an autistic teenager this way? Is graffiti just vandalism or does it threaten the national security of the PRC? And who’d have thought Vanuatu had a consulate here?