Big Lychee, Various Sectors

We need something relaxing and wholesome. Just a quick link to a Zolina City Mag guide to all the places in Tai O where you can see whale bones. That village is just packed with them.

If you insist on serious nastiness… I am distressed to hear that people clicking on the recent link to see the Lego (or whatever) models of a doctor lancing a boil on Regina Ip’s inner thigh (never thought I’d string those four words together), only to find the post removed or on a site they can’t see. And they are sorely vexed. The content is still sitting in my cache. So do I upload it, or let the whole thing pass? The answer is here. As a public service, in the interests of art. (Warning: this is nightmarishly repulsive and hard to forget. It is to scenes using dolls what the late David Lynch’s Eraserhead is to Disney.) 

Hong Kong officials respond to former US VP Mike Pence’s comments about Jimmy Lai at a business summit in the city…

A government spokesperson said Pence’s comments were intended “to influence the fairness of the trial with malicious intent”.

This was “a shameless interference with the course of justice and on Hong Kong’s righteous efforts in safeguarding national security”.

US politicians should not “make use of business activities for political manipulation in a vain attempt to challenge the rule of law in Hong Kong”, the spokesperson said.

The government wants Hong Kong to be a ‘hub’ for conferences and other events – until a participant says something disagreeable.

Is malicious intent in the eye of the beholder?

A little flurry of pre-Chinese New Year NatSec activity…

A man is arrested on suspicion of posting ‘seditious’ items on social media – ‘knowingly publishing publications that had a seditious intention’…

According to a legal document, the defendant is a bus technician named Li Chun-kit. The defence did not apply for bail. He will be detained in custody until his case is next scheduled to be mentioned in court on March 3.

Li was accused of “publishing statements, photos, and/or pictures on Facebook with an intent to bring people into hatred, contempt or disaffection against” Hong Kong, and inciting violence or unlawful acts between March 29 last year and January 21.

Two brothers and a sister of wanted former pollster Chung Kim-wah are taken in for questioning…

Tuesday morning’s questioning comes after Chung’s wife and son were last Tuesday taken to police stations. The previous day, PORI CEO Robert Chung was questioned and the pollster’s office was searched.

And Lam Cheuk-ting’s lawyer pleads for a shorter prison term after being found guilty of trying to help victims of a mob attack – aka ‘riot’…

At the District Court on Wednesday, defence counsel Catherine Wong asked district judge Stanley Chan to consider that Lam believed he had a duty to de-escalate tensions at the Yuen Long MTR station on July 21, 2019, when more than a hundred men dressed in white stormed the station.

The attack left 45 people injured, including journalists, protesters, and commuters, as well as Lam, who was last month found guilty of rioting alongside six others after Chan ruled that he had tried to take advantage of the attack to benefit politically.

…At Wednesday’s mitigation hearing, Wong said the fact that Lam was a known public figure did not have anything to do with the rioting case and should not have any bearing on his sentence.

Lam had ‘tried to take advantage of the attack politically’. What exactly does that mean?

Government inspectors testing foodstuffs imported from Japan find no evidence of dangerous levels of radiation – for the 18th month running. They have processed over 111,000 samples, the majority seafood, since August 2023, and found that every single one was ‘satisfactory’. (Not to say delicious. Some inspectors were caught eating the samples rather than throwing them away.) The Geiger counter does report high levels of anti-Japanese political charade.

Analysts are already expecting US President Trump to shy off from imposing high tariffs on Chinese exports. From a Bloomberg story…

Some people familiar with the decision cautioned that Trump often quickly changes his mind on strategy and could decide again to push forward with his original plans to target China. Still, Monday’s actions suggest a more deliberate approach than the fiery rhetoric about tariffs Trump offered during his campaign last year.

One bright side to Trump’s backtracking on campaign promises: he presumably won’t order the Treasury to buy Bitcoin, $Melania and other cryptocurrency for the US reserves. The Russians and Chinese would be wetting themselves laughing if the world’s number-one economy started buying worthless digital fake money.

Yippee, can’t wait: The Chief Executive forecasts 1.4 million Mainland arrivals over Lunar New Year. The Guardian looks at the impact of tourism on housing, retail and quality of life in Spain…

Cities across Spain tell a similar story of slow transformation at the hands of property speculation and a boom in tourist flats – of high rents driving out residents and traditional businesses, and of neighbourhood stalwarts ceding to global chains, souvenir shops, burger joints and nail bars.

The statistics that explain Spain’s housing crisis are equally jarring. Rents rose by 80% over the past decade, outpacing wage increases, and a recent Bank of Spain report estimated that almost half of the Spain’s tenants spend 40% of their income on rent and utility bills, compared with an EU average of 27%.

The crisis – aggravated by the rising cost of living caused by property speculation and the boom in tourist flats – has become Spaniards’ biggest worry, and the focus of the latest policy duel between the governing socialists and their conservative opponents in the People’s party (PP).

You really, really do not want to see this: an AI/Lego/something portrayal of Regina Ip getting hospital treatment for her abscess. 

(I warned you.)

From HKFP – Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung uses the ceremonial opening of the legal year to state that courts are not designed to serve political ends…

The chief justice said on Monday that national security cases, despite attracting attention due to their “political sensitivity,” were no different from other cases processed by the city’s courts.

“The same principles of law apply in national security cases as in others,” Cheung said. “Judges at all levels are expected to, and indeed do, adhere to them in the adjudication of cases.”

“Judges, far from being designed to serve political ends, are bound by legal principles. Courts are not arbiters of public opinion, nor are they an extension of the prosecution authority; they are, above all, guardians of the law,” he added.

Lots of things perform roles for which they were not designed. But why does he feel a need to say this? Is it because NatSec courts have specially chosen judges, do not have juries, and nearly always side with the prosecution – ie the government? Hence opposition politicians, wearers of T-shirts, posters on Facebook and others being convicted for things that were never considered crimes up until around five years ago.  

As if to pre-empt this point…

[The CJ] also warned against drawing “sweeping conclusions” about the rule of law or judicial independence based on a few high-profile national security cases.

Mark Clifford, former SCMP editor and Next board member, and author of a book on Jimmy Lai, does an interview with The Wire China. Includes some ‘sweeping conclusions’…

Jimmy Lai was put in jail four years ago. He and I had been doing a lot of weekly live stream events through the second half of 2020. I was angry and exasperated, but I was also in disbelief. I couldn’t understand how the [Hong Kong authorities] could throw this guy in jail for basically practicing journalism. 

…I don’t quite understand the charges honestly. They seem to be about collusion with foreign forces, because he had met people like John Lewis or former vice president Mike Pence, or former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, or national security advisor John Bolton or Nancy Pelosi when she was Speaker of the House … Tung Chee-hwa was in the White House a lot more than Jimmy Lai was. 

…But the narrative seems to be that somehow he was this evil mastermind who got a couple of million Hong Kong people out to protest in 2019 and was convincing Hong Kong people that they should have something that, as far as Chinese are concerned, they don’t deserve and aren’t ready for. And that’s freedom. The Chinese authorities are really mad because they expected that Hong Kong people would buckle, that they could be bought off, bribed, bullied, controlled, and beaten…

…I think he’ll be found guilty. It’s a sham trial because the judges clearly are out to convict him, as they have convicted most national security law defendants. For a while the current Secretary of Security, Chris Tang, was able to boast of a 100 percent conviction rate, which is not really the kind of thing you usually like to boast about, because it only happens in a totalitarian society.

…It’s a reflection of how far Hong Kong has fallen. Instead of celebrating somebody like Jimmy, or the 45 civic leaders … you take your best and your brightest, whether they’re lawyers, journalists, professors or business people, and lock them up and deny society everything that they could create… 

The former US VP speaks at the UBS Wealth Insights summit in Hong Kong and calls for the release of Jimmy Lai…

One of the charges against Mr. Lai is an allegation that he met with the then-VP in 2019 to lobby for U.S. sanctions. Mr. Pence denies it. “Jimmy Lai did not ask for U.S. sanctions or any action against Hong Kong or China,” he recently told us. If Mr. Lai is being prosecuted for proximity to Mr. Pence, are the business leaders at this week’s summit at risk?

Marco Rubio, nominated to be the next Secretary of State, said in his confirmation hearings that Beijing has broken all the guarantees it made to Hong Kong. The big question for the city is how it can claim to be a global financial and trade center when it holds political prisoners and can confiscate a newspaper from its owner without so much as a court order.

The authorities encourage conferences to send a message of business as usual. They are helped by prominent speakers who show up, offer platitudes, and collect fat speaking fees. Mr. Pence opted instead to speak a hard truth on Hong Kong soil. The Chinese and Hong Kong governments would do well to put aside their irritation that he did so.

Pence follows with a stopover on the way home…

The news outlet cited a source familiar with the matter as saying that Pence decided to add the stop in Taipei to “see for himself.”

Pence also wants to remind Taiwanese that the US is an ally that “won’t allow what’s happened to Hong Kong to happen to Taiwan,” it added.

The Human Rights Watch 2025 report section on China contains quite a bit about Hong Kong…

After the SNSO came into effect, police arrested six people in May, including prominent activist Chow Hang-tung who is already imprisoned, for allegedly publishing “seditious” posts online to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. Three people were sentenced to between 10 and 14 months in prison for “sedition” for wearing a T-shirt, making online posts, and drawing pro-democracy graffiti on buses. The Hong Kong government used the new powers under the SNSO to revoke the Hong Kong passports of six exiled activists and to deny political prisoners early release for good behavior.

In May, three judges handpicked for national security cases convicted 14 activists and ex-Hong Kong lawmakers of “conspiracy to commit subversion” in the city’s largest national security trial to date, with 31 other defendants having earlier pleaded guilty. In November, the court sentenced all 45 to prison terms ranging from 4 years and 2 months to 10 years.

At least 304 people have been arrested for allegedly violating the National Security Law, the SNSO, and the now-revoked “sedition” law since 2020. Among the 176 individuals charged, 161 have been convicted. According to police figures, 10,279 people have been arrested in connection with the 2019 pro-democracy protests, among whom 2,328 “faced legal consequences” including conviction, many for non-violent crimes like “unlawful assembly.”

Press freedom declined further. Media tycoon Jimmy Lai’s national security trial, which began in December 2023, is ongoing. The 76-year-old Lai has been held in solitary confinement since December 2020. In September, two journalists of the now-defunct Stand News were sentenced to 21 and 11 months respectively for “sedition.” That month, the government denied work visa and entry into the city to an Associated Press photojournalist who took photos of Jimmy Lai in prison.

From HKFP, a good backgrounder on PORI – the polling group led by Robert Chung and recently raided by NatSec Police…

With dozens of civil society groups disbanded and large-scale protests [and, you could add, democratically elected lawmakers] disappearing since Beijing imposed a national security law, PORI’s polls are among the few remaining indicators of the public’s views on societal issues.

For example, a survey in October showed that those who did not want children cited the city’s education system, political environment and living space as the main reasons for remaining childless.

…State-backed media have long portrayed POP and PORI as an “anti-China” organisation that fabricates survey results to rally the opposition. One of the earliest criticisms of POP was that Robert Chung in 2004 received funding from the National Democratic Institute, an American NGO, to conduct a survey relating to the Legislative Council elections that year.

In 2015, an op-ed in Wen Wei Po suggested that POP’s survey outcome indicating that the majority of people supported the 2014 Occupy Central movement and wanted universal suffrage was false, and sought to doubt on how the research was carried out.

…Beijing-backed media have also been critical of the long-running PORI polls asking respondents about their sense of identity… In a Dot Dot News op-ed last year, the writer said PORI had used the question of asking people if they identified as Hongkonger and Chinese to promote Hong Kong independence.

“Naturally… people respond that they are a Hongkonger… PORI’s conclusion is that most people do not think they are Chinese, thereby openly supporting Hong Kong independence and localism,” the op-ed read.

Paul Krugman is pessimistic about China…

…China isn’t really retrogressing technologically; in fact, it has shown an impressive ability to compete on fairly advanced technologies. What these [total factor productivity] numbers probably reflect is a combination of massive amounts of wasted investment, especially in real estate, slowing progress in the economy outside sectors the government favors, and a general crackdown on the private sector.

…What’s remarkable is that China’s leadership seems completely unwilling to adjust to this changing reality.

As you can see from the chart above on investment shares, China hasn’t moved at all toward the kind of lower investment, higher consumption economy it needs to become. Instead, investment as a share of GDP has gone even higher, thanks to government policies that both fueled a monstrous real estate bubble and pushed investment in government-favored industries even when they already had excess capacity.

A recent report in the Wall Street Journal laid this failure to adjust squarely at the feet of Xi Jinping. Xi clearly distrusts the private sector and wants to strengthen central control; he also has views about consumption — which ultimately has to become the economy’s main support — that sound like a cross between German ordoliberalism and Tea Party conservatism:

…China may be only middling in terms of per capita income, but it has so many people that it’s an economic superpower — and by all accounts Xi is obsessed with expanding China’s power, economic and otherwise, in ways that would never occur to the leader of a smaller nation.

Former Jimmy Lai deputy Mark Simon thinks Trump will make life much harder for Beijing…

Maybe the CCP will continue on the same path they’re on now; belligerence, and a complete disregard for the interest of other nations.  I think Xi would like to continue on their destructive walkabout throughout the world.

But I don’t think that’s gonna be the case with Trump and a team of China Hawks now in the White House.

I fully expect Trump to drive the CCP crazy with his offers of great deals while at the same time smacking them around like a redheaded stepchild. I am convinced, after talking to many people over the past four years that Xi and his top folks loath Trump. That dislike of Trump is also probably what drove them in large part to their wishful thinking about a Harris victory.

There’s a lot of people making predictions about what China is gonna be doing in the next year. We are a few days away from a new president. My suggestion would be if you were making a prediction about what was gonna happen based on pre-election metrics, the Chinese thinking they would be opposite Harris, you might want to reconsider your conclusions.

We’ll see. I suspect the Chinese leadership will find it pretty easy to get Trump to give in on export controls, tariffs, TikTok, Taiwan, etc.

(Must say, I’m impressed by Trump’s pre-inauguration issuance of a cryptocurrency. Perhaps the most breathtakingly cynical of his scams yet. Are there people dumb enough to buy it and let the insiders cash out in a big way?)

What do the heavily manned and funded NatSec police do all day? We don’t know. What state of mind do you end up in if you have to spend weeks trawling through Facebook or surreptitiously inspecting people’s T-shirts in an unceasing hunt for seditious incitement? We don’t know that, either. Meanwhile…

An off-duty Hong Kong national security police officer attempted to seize a gun from a colleague inside a station on Wednesday after he was arrested for allegedly taking upskirt photos of a woman, with the suspect and two others injured during the struggle.

The constable, a member of the force’s National Security Department, grappled with two other officers inside Tsim Sha Tsui Police Station as he tried to snatch the gun, the Post learned.

No shots were fired.

(HKFP story here.)

Hong Kong’s political, legal, media and other institutions have become heavily patriotic and opposition-free in recent years. But the authorities and media are still pretty open about law enforcement personnel involved in such diverse wrongdoings as: money laundering (seven, yesterday), knocking someone off a speeding motorbike (fatally, last week), driving while drunk (two months ago), taking HK$1 million in bribes (recently in court), and beating and framing homeless men (ditto). Contrast with the flat-out rejection of documented allegations of excessive use of force during the 2019 protests. At least, it seems, no-one has the means or the willingness (or awareness?) to censor other sorts of disciplined services’ ill-discipline. If they would whitewash anything, surely it would be an alleged case of creepy and pitiful ‘upskirt’ photos.

PR companies salivate at the news that a tycoon is pledging a decent sum of money to ‘boost Hong Kong’s image’. The SCMP reports…

Tycoon Michael Kadoorie is spearheading a drive to raise US$50 million to promote Hong Kong through a worldwide PR campaign, the Post has learned, two months after a Beijing official told local business leaders to take “concrete actions” to support the city.

Sources said on Thursday that Kadoorie, chairman of CLP Group, the city’s largest electricity supplier, met several property tycoons including Peter Lee Ka-kit, co-chairman and managing director of Henderson Land Development, and Sun Hung Kai Properties’ Raymond Kwok Ping-luen, as well as representatives from Nan Fung Group and Alibaba Group Holding three weeks ago to share his grand plan. Alibaba is the owner of the Post.

“Kadoorie pointed out that Hong Kong has a bad name outside with its political problems and felt that there is a need to launch a campaign to turn the tide, telling the world that Hong Kong is safe and a good place to do business,” a source told the Post.

Looking forward to another Consulum saga!

The number of Hongkongers visiting Japan reaches all-time highs: 2.7 million in 2024, up 17% from 2019, and 285,000 in December 2024, up 14% from December 2023. 

Could it be that inbound tourism encourages the outbound variety? The more Mainlanders, Saudis, Eskimos and whatever the government attracts to Hong Kong (44 million last year), the more local people rush off somewhere else to escape hordes of selfie-taking cake-buyers clogging up their neighbourhoods. To make the circle complete, millions of Japanese must now head off to sunny Riyadh. 

The latest on desperate official attempts to boost visitor numbers…

Hong Kong may need to import halal food for all the Muslim tourists it aims to entice to the city, a minister said on Wednesday.

…Deputy Chief Secretary Warner Cheuk said as Hong Kong develops into a Muslim-friendly tourist destination, halal food could be brought in from abroad.

“Hong Kong may not have many Muslims, but we need to make a lot of halal food. There are many Muslim countries in Asean, and we can attract restaurants and import food from these nations,” he said.

So… Hong Kong has quite a few Muslims; there’s no problem in ‘making’ halal food – no special ingredients are required; there are two and a bit majority-Muslim countries in Asean (Indonesia and Malaysia, plus plucky little Brunei); and there is no need to import restaurants or specific foodstuffs from them (there are quite a few halal restaurants around). 

Strictly halal (ritually slaughtered) meat is sold in Hong Kong – there’s a butcher in Wanchai that’s been offering it for decades – but most Muslims aren’t too fussed, providing it’s not pork. 

Other government moves aimed at attracting more visitors from Muslim nations include encouraging hotels to set up worship facilities, and persuading taxi drivers to provide information in Arabic (why not Urdu, Turkish and Persian while they’re at it?).

What about providing worship facilities in taxis?

On the subject of Asean – Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth answers questions about it at his confirmation hearing. (This guy is not the stupidest nominee: the one for public health is an anti-vax whacko, and the one for intelligence is pro-Russia.)

Throwing caution to the winds, Reg comes up with some hard-headed suggestions on how to curb the government’s budget deficit by freezing civil service recruitment and pay. No-one likes you anyway, you’ve nothing left to lose – go for it.

NatSec police put pressure on family members of PORI deputy director and academic Chung Kim-wah…

The wife and son of wanted former pollster Chung Kim-wah have been questioned by national security police, local media has reported, a day after Chung’s ex-colleague was also questioned and his office was searched as part of a national security investigation.

It’s not the first time the authorities have brought in exiled dissidents’ family members for questioning. Since the chances of arresting the fugitives are zero (unless they surrender themselves by returning to Hong Kong), there seems to be little law-enforcement value in approaching relatives, friends or colleagues for ‘assistance’. Then again, there is no obvious purpose in putting ‘wanted’ posters of the 19 ‘absconders’ in the airport, housing estates and elsewhere. Even if members of the public hoped to turn one in for a million bucks, how would they go about it? It’s all a performance – and not a very attractive one.

Robert Chung of PORI opinion polls is questioned by NatSec Police for ‘assisting an absconder’ – his former deputy Chung Kim-wah, who is in the UK and is one of the latest batch of people to be declared wanted for ‘inciting secession and colluding with foreign forces’, with HK$1 million rewards…

Chung Kim-wah said on Facebook on Monday that he had not spoken to Robert Chung since leaving Hong Kong in April 2022, except for season’s greetings and during a PORI press conference at the end of that month, which he attended online as a commentator, and to exchange seasonal greetings.

The Security Chief goes to some lengths to stress that the authorities are not persecuting PORI for its polls, which do not always reflect well on the government. It is probably worth assuming that any communication with a wanted dissident in exile could invite trouble.

A post by another of the ‘absconders’, Carmen Lau…

Feeling weird when someone sent me these – A total of 19 wanted notice are now posted at ALL borders of Hong Kong, government buildings & almost every lobbies of public estates. Even a murderer or sexual perpetrator doesn’t receive such treatment. What have I actually done? Urgh.

The government hits back at negative overseas press coverage – not about NatSec or human-rights issues, but its housing policy…

The Housing Bureau on Monday clarified the varying quality of subdivided flats and announced significant plans to boost public housing and address the city’s housing challenges.

Their comments came after the Australian Broadcasting Company and The Guardian recently highlighted issues surrounding Hong Kong’s housing situation, specifically pointing out the 110,000 subdivided flats on the market and inaccurately categorizing them as “low-quality.”

In response, the bureau emphasized that the quality of these subdivided flats varies significantly. Some are of good quality and meet the needs of working-class individuals, small families, and students who prioritize convenience for work and school. However, they acknowledged that there are also smaller units of poorer quality.

Authorities also noted that economically developed cities worldwide face similar challenges in accommodating diverse living needs through various types of housing units.

Does anyone live in a subdivided apartment because of the convenience? (Actually, I know of two people who lived in such places some years ago and could in theory have afforded something slightly less horrible further away from Hong Kong Island. But to say 100-sq-ft hovels are ‘good quality’ is a joke. And this is a government-created problem, arising from a deliberate shortage of affordable housing, with a dash of increased Mainland immigration post-1997.)

The report goes on to describe the government’s plans to increase public housing supply. (Can’t see a press release at either the government’s central or Housing Bureau site.) 

Hong Kong launches a breast milk bank. Lactating mothers donate milk, which ends up at a central facility at HK Children’s Hospital and is distributed to other hospitals to feed premature and other newborn babies who would otherwise be given less-healthy formula. Site here.

This is no mega-event or vast infrastructure project. Nor is it groundbreaking: Singapore started such a service several years ago, and most developed countries have similar systems. But you would think that the Hong Kong government, if it is concerned about its popularity at home (or its reputation overseas), might have indulged in a little more self-congratulatory fanfare – for example by having the CE show up. This relatively small measure will provide more public benefit than ‘wanted’ notices for activists overseas, millions of panda bear stickers or desperate attempts to justify a half-trillion-dollar land reclamation.

This is pretty much a restaurant-review-free-zone (apart from once, maybe), but a few comments on Tanya Chan’s Taipei private kitchen Red Cotton…

As a pro-democracy politician, the former Civic Party lawmaker was last heard of in Hong Kong being hounded by the newly patriotism-minded Bar Association over her activity during the 2014 Umbrella Protests. By that time two years ago, following health problems and a suspended prison sentence, she had relocated to Taiwan and started culinary training. Like more than a few Hongkongers who have moved overseas, she now celebrates her home town through food.

Red Cotton, where she is head chef, produces Cantonese cuisine served banquet-style, as many of us have had at weddings or corporate dinners. Gastronomic-level Cantonese fare, with its light seasonings (or ‘emphasis on freshness’) might not always appeal to fans of more dazzling Sichuan, Thai, Vietnamese and other cuisines. And not everyone likes the multi-course format, with its endless procession of face-giving, even pretentious, dishes. But for such people, Red Cotton will be something of a revelation.

Tanya uses the best local ingredients, and has obviously worked hard honing her cooking skills. The result is rich and addictive braised beef and roast chicken, one of the best steamed fish dishes I’ve ever had, and often-iffy delicacies like abalone and goose foot done so well that you want more of them. (Portions are more than adequate: a Hong Kong emigre family in our party went away with boxes of leftovers.) Even the red bean soup – so often drab sugary goo – was more-ish, presumably because of superior cane sugar and the inclusion of orange peel.

In short, Red Cotton has achieved something that’s more in the Fook Lam Moon class (I’d guess – never been) than the predictable verging-on-dismal Cantonese onslaught we get at tiresome functions. The surroundings have some suitable Hong Kong nostalgia, and the music includes Anita Mui.

You can’t just walk in. Booking is via this site.