Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Lingua Sinica report on Chinese diplomats in France complaining about a Taiwanese-German play showing at a Strasbourg theatre…

When theater director Barbara Engelhardt did not respond, the deputy consul general wrote directly to the City of Strasbourg, the theater’s principal funder, demanding the show be cancelled on the grounds that it would harm Sino-French diplomatic relations.

…It employs documentary theater to simulate the opening of a Taiwanese embassy — describing Taiwan as a country whose international recognition is inversely proportional to its economic importance. 

I’m sure the production is grateful for the publicity – it doesn’t exactly sound like King Lear, The Importance of Being Earnest or Death of a Salesman. 

Mayor Jeanne Barseghian said she responded by reaffirming France’s protections for artistic freedom…

The BBC on China’s new ethnic unity law…

The Chinese government … defends it as crucial for promoting “modernisation through greater unity” and calls it the law for “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress”.

It lowers the status of other languages at the expense of Mandarin; encourages intermarriage between the dominant Han Chinese and other ethnicities by prohibiting moves to restrict this; requires parents to “educate and guide minors to love the Chinese Communist Party”; and, in a sweeping generalisation, prohibits any acts seen as damaging to “ethnic unity”.

…In its analysis of the new law, the China Power Project quoted Communist China’s founder Mao as saying: “We say China is a country vast in territory, rich in resources and large in population; as a matter of fact, it is the Han nationality whose population is large and the minority nationalities whose territory is vast and whose resources are rich”.

It’s true that although some minority ethnic groups, like the Uyghurs, number in millions, they are still dwarfed by the number of people recorded in the census as being Han, who make up more than 90% of Chinese citizens.

But when you look at the homelands of Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongolians, these massive areas are rich in mineral resources and important for agriculture and they count for a significant proportion of the country’s entire land mass.

Throughout history these groups have had periods of independence from China. They live in vast border regions with exposure to foreign countries. They not only speak their own languages but have their own distinct scripts for writing.

Indeed. And, at times in history, China has had periods of independence from Mongolia and Manchuria.

More from NPC Observer…

The Law’s political salience is also evident in two atypical features. First, it begins with a rare narrative preamble of over 800 characters. Only three statutes now include a preamble: the closely related Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law [民族区域自治法] and the Basic Laws of Hong Kong and Macao. Second, the Law uses Party-speak drawn from the “Twelve Musts” as the headings of three core chapters (II–IV): “Building a Shared Spiritual Home,” “Facilitating Interactions, Interchanges, and Intermingling,” and “Promoting Common Prosperity and Development.” Far from being descriptive and dry, as headings typically are, they incorporate key prongs of Xi’s doctrine and organize the Law around them.

For your viewing pleasure… Shaw Brothers’ YouTube channel – lots of free, gloriously trashy movies from the golden era of Hong Kong cinema. I remember an interviewer asking Sir Run Run which – of many hundreds – of his movies was his favourite. He instantly replied, ‘the one that made the most money’.

Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung continue to argue for acquittal in their subversion trial…

Defence counsel Erik Shum, representing Lee, told the court on Wednesday that the prosecution must establish that calling for an end to one-party rule is tantamount to toppling or undermining the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) leadership.

For 30 years, the Alliance’s call for ending one-party rule was intertwined with its advocacy for democratisation in China, Shum said, adding that China could become a democracy in the future through further constitutional amendment.

“Even if the prosecution can prove that ending one-party rule means ending the CCP’s leadership, it does not automatically become overthrowing or undermining its leadership,” he said. “This is a quantum leap.”

He also argued that China’s top state organs, including the National People’s Congress, could still operate without the CCP’s leadership.

…Chow, a barrister representing herself in the trial, argued that the court must consider human rights protections when reviewing whether the Alliance had incited others to commit subversion.

The Alliance’s slogans fell within a Chinese citizen’s legitimate demand for choosing the country’s leadership, she told the court.

“This is a goal which every Chinese national has the right to pursue,” she said. “The prosecution is trying to make this goal an unspeakable, unthinkable, and forbidden one, but they cannot provide any legal basis.”

In response, prosecutor Ned Lai argued that even a future constitutional amendment cannot change China’s fundamental socialist system under the CCP’s leadership.

How can an abstract idea be – as Chow puts it – ‘unspeakable, unthinkable, and forbidden’? How can merely calling for a change in the constitution be illegal?

Valiant Immigration Dept sleuths arrest 20 people in a crackdown on (presumably Filipino or Indonesian) foreign domestic helpers. Among them are…

…two domestic workers and one visitor … in Central during [a] sweep of footbridges and tunnels on Sunday, a day when most domestic workers are on their weekly day off.

Fu Chit-ho, a senior immigration officer, said that the three were suspected of setting up cardboard stalls or tents to provide massages and manicure services to other domestic workers, Ming Pao reported.

Sweep of footbridges and tunnels keeps city safe from cardboard stall menace! They were charging HK$50, and the customers would be other helpers – a sight familiar to anyone who lives in Hong Kong. Now the taxpayer pays for their incarceration, their employers are massively inconvenienced – and the women themselves subject to a harrowing experience presumably culminating in deportation. Meanwhile, feel free to park your SUV on a pedestrian crossing anytime you want. 

In a similar absurd vein, police arrest a man for using an electric bike – perfectly normal and legal in most cities in the world…

Officers on patrol spotted the man riding an electric mobile tool on a road and stopped him for inspection. Following a preliminary investigation, the man was arrested on four charges: “driving an unregistered vehicle,” “driving without a valid driving license,” “using a vehicle without third-party insurance,” and “riding without an approved protective helmet.”

…Police reiterated that electric mobile tools are not suitable for use on roads, pavements, or cycle tracks alongside regular vehicles…

Cheung Chau has no cars or trucks.

Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung seek early acquittals on subversion charges relating to their role in the HK Alliance. From HKFP…

Barrister Erik Shum, representing Lee Cheuk-yan, argued on Monday that prosecutors erred in saying that there are no “lawful means” to call for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule.

…“If there exists a lawful method to end CCP’s leadership, then the prosecution will lose its entire basis,” Shum told the court in Cantonese.

He cited Articles 62 and 64 of the Chinese constitution, which stipulate the mechanism by which the top decision-making body, the National People’s Congress, can amend the constitution.

While the Alliance had never explicitly called for an amendment, Shum said the group also did not outline an action plan for ending one-party rule. “It was merely a slogan and never a call for action,” he said.

In today’s Hong Kong you can, of course, be sent to prison for a slogan. But this raises a broader question: at what point do NatSec laws end and freedom of expression begins? Are people allowed to discuss the possibility of CCP rule coming to an end?

Chow Hang-tung – a barrister in her own right – argued that China’s constitution does not have direct effect in Hong Kong, and that prosecutors and judges lack a full understanding of the logic of the Mainland legal system (hence her request to call an expert witness)…

…She said the prosecution had adopted a broad reading of the constitution and had erred in alleging that she had directly breached it.

The constitution “certainly is applicable to Hong Kong, but that does not mean it can be directly implemented as law,” she said in Cantonese. She called it a matter of “direct effect,” referring to a legal principle allowing a law to be directly enforced in a local jurisdiction.

…Chow said that expert testimony was needed as the prosecution had not called an expert to interpret the Chinese constitution. All issues concerning the interpretation of the constitution “remain in a state where no evidence has been given,” she said.

The Jamestown Foundation looks at Beijing’s white paper Realizing National Security Under ‘One Country, Two Systems in Hong Kong, released the day after Jimmy Lai’s sentencing a month ago…

The 2026 white paper endorses the narrative that Hong Kong posed a national security threat to the PRC well before the 2019 anti-extradition movement. …the document asserts that the origins of this threat can be traced to resistance against the proposed Article 23 national security legislation in 2003… From the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) perspective, the failure to enact that legislation created structural vulnerabilities that enabled subsequent waves of mass mobilization.

The white paper links the 2003 setback to later protest movements, including the 2012 campaign against national education, the 2014 Umbrella Movement, the 2016 “Fish Ball” unrest, and the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests.

The inclusion of this narrative signals that mainland authorities now retrospectively characterize the 2003 mass mobilization—when more than 500,000 people protested the proposed Article 23 legislation—as a threat to national security. This reinterpretation stands in tension with the fact that the protests were widely regarded at the time as a lawful exercise of freedoms of expression and political participation protected under the Basic Law.

By framing the 2003 protests as security risks, the white paper recasts Hong Kong’s long-standing democratization efforts and defense of civil liberties as destabilizing forces. Through this revisionist account of post-handover social movements, the document provides ideological justification for Beijing’s hardline turn…

The report also mentions the timing of the white paper’s release and its concerns about critics and activists among the Hong Kong diaspora overseas.

Today’s guest star: Country Joe McDonald, who died a couple of days ago. Obits aren’t mentioning it much, but in later years he was a noted authority on Florence Nightingale.

There’s nothing we like more than seeing a property speculator having to cut his asking price, preferably by a lot…

Known colloquially as the “Ten Billion Shop King” for compiling one of the city’s largest caches of street shop and retail properties over the last three decades, Lai Wing-to has agreed to sell 9-11 Staunton Street for HK$105 million ($13.4 million), according to records filed with the city’s Land Registry last month.

…Lai, who had listed the property at HK$200 million in a sale effort in January 2024, is offloading the asset at a 47.5 percent markdown.

It’s a crumbling six-floor walk-up. OK – so he still made a profit…

…Lai bought the property in 2009 for HK$71.8 million, according to Land Registry records.

But that isn’t always the case…

…Lai sold [a] six-storey 1967-vintage property at 132 Sai Yeung Choi Street South [Mongkok] for HK$62 million ($8 million), parting with the asset for nearly 40 percent less than what he paid in 2009.

(Back in the old days, before there was a Mid-Levels Escalator or a ‘Soho’, I was once strolling to the office in Central past that Staunton St building one morning when a black kite swooped down onto a window ledge and instantly soared away with a pigeon, leaving only an explosion of feathers. The adjoining building has a nunnery – half a dozen shaven-headed devotees apparently oblivious to their area’s 30-year cycle from inner-city semi-slum to mega-gentrification to an overpriced, hollowed-out mass of ‘For Rent’ signage. I pretty much ignored it myself, though I do miss the annual Worst Restaurant in Soho Awards.)

Jimmy Lai’s former right-hand man Mark Simon has some advice for the US President (or for that matter any world leader, CEO, university head or Pope who thinks China will answer all their economic or corporate problems)…

We need someone in the Trump administration to walk into the Oval Office and give it to the President straight: China doesn’t have what the U.S. needs.

Yes, the Chinese economy “pitch deck” makes mouths water. The sales narrative jumps of the page; “Global manufacturing hub,” — “1.4 billion customers,” are what the Chinese government wants President Trump to focus on. But if you actually looked at the books—the real ones, —you’d see a series of dark alleys, that while not transparent to the outside world, look suspiciously like a tailspin. Beijing just set its 2026 growth target at a humble 4.5%–5%. 

…the country is filled with “ghost cities” and millions of middle-class families paying mortgages on unfinished “apartments.” When your primary asset is a hole in the ground that won’t be finished until 2029, you aren’t exactly in the mood to go out and buy U.S. beef. 

…If we are waiting for a Chinese middle-class spending spree to save American agriculture, manufacturing, or even services, we are waiting for a ship that has already hit the reef.

In Japan Times, an International Women’s Day op-ed from activist Frances Hui…

Denied bail, [Chow Hang-tung] continues to challenge Hong Kong’s authorities even from prison, most recently by bringing a judicial review against a dress code that forces female inmates to wear long trousers even in brutal summer heat, while men can wear shorts. In January 2026, a male judge dismissed her legal challenge as baseless and ordered Chow to pay all costs.

The symbolism is hard to miss: Hong Kong, under Beijing’s tightening grip, insists on regulating women’s bodies, even behind bars, in ways it does not impose on men. 

…When women rise to visibility, the CCP sexualizes us to undermine our competence. In 2023, the Hong Kong government put a 1 million Hong Kong dollar ($128,000) bounty on my head, along with other overseas pro-democracy activists. The Beijing-controlled authorities accused us of “inciting secession” and “collusion with foreign forces” under Hong Kong’s draconian National Security Law, a crime that can carry a sentence of life in prison.

…But there is also a deep misogyny in this assault on my liberty. As a woman activist now living abroad and targeted by the Hong Kong government, I have lost count of the comments attacking my appearance, calling me derogatory names and reducing me to sexual insinuation. The implication is clear: A woman who rises to relevance must have slept her way there and is little more than a sexual object.

An interesting account, translated from a Mainland blog, entitled ‘My Spring Festival trip back home hit differently this year’. As the intro puts it, the author….

…describes a local economy where casual work has dried up, wages feel under pressure, and many low-skilled workers face increasingly precarious ways of getting by.

She also notes the impact of the surplus of men to women… 

…Last year, I didn’t hear of any weddings in the village at all—except for one cousin of mine, who married a Vietnamese wife. The bride price was something like 200,000 to 300,000 RMB [$28,996-43,494]. She is now pregnant and due soon.

…there have been cases where the [Vietnamese] woman took the bride price and disappeared. Some stayed long enough to have a child, and then still ran off. Parents grind for years, saving every last bit, and in the end, it all goes down the drain on their son. 

…Even so, plenty of people are so desperate to get married that they’ll take the risk and pay anyway. Standards have dropped too: fine, if she runs, she runs—just leave a baby first to carry on the family line, and then at least the bride price won’t have been “for nothing”.

Of course, most single men who don’t have money have largely stopped expecting they’ll ever marry. The older generation has also given up hoping. Anyway, when bachelors are everywhere, it doesn’t feel shameful anymore.

That was Hunan. My Spring Festival visit was to Foshan, which was largely devoid of women, men and children, apart from delivery drivers zipping around the empty streets on mopeds. The most puzzling thing was the bathroom in the fairly decent middle-class apartment block I stayed in: toilet on left and shower on right. So far, so normal…

But – inside the shower, another toilet…

Both have this label…

The national security trial of Bill Yuen and Peter Wai in the UK gets underway…

The two men, who hold dual British and Chinese nationality, are accused of agreeing to undertake information gathering, surveillance and acts of deception likely to materially assist a foreign intelligence service between December 2023 and May 2024. 

…Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC said the defendants received requests from people connected to the Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong authorities to gather intelligence about overseas Hongkongers for whom the territory’s government had issued bounties.

Messages between the defendants show one of the surveillance targets was prominent pro-democracy activist Nathan Law, the court heard.

…The Old Bailey case concerned the defendants and their associates “taking the law into their own hands and acting as if the UK law was of no relevance”, Atkinson added.

…Atkinson said Wai and Trickett were paid for their activity directly by the Hong Kong economic and trade office.

…He told the court that the gathering of such intelligence appeared to have coincided with measures by Hong Kong police to extend their reach beyond the jurisdiction of the territory.

From HKFP…

“The defendants engaged in shadow policing operations on behalf of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and thereby the People’s Republic of China,” prosecutor Duncan Atkinson told the jury.

They gathered information about “persons of interest” to Hong Kong and undertook surveillance, as if they were entitled to “when no such entitlement existed”, he added.

Some comments from the HK Democracy Council…

Wai also posted information about HK protestors in a WhatsApp group called Eagle Point Human Resources Company. He discussed w/ former HK cop Eddie Ma “infiltrating” a group called “Hongkongers in the UK.” Ma referred to HKers in the UK as “cockroaches.”

…In all, evidence was presented that Yuen & Wai were tasked w/ surveilling at least 4 HKers for whom the HK natsec police issued natsec arrest warrants & bounties: Nathan Law, Christopher Mung, Finn Lau & Tony Choi. [Also mentioned: Frankie Leung, Lee Wing-tat and YouTuber Tony Choi.]

…A big question: who were the 2 former HK cops working for? [Former HK cop] George Lee was for an unspecified period “seconded to the Security Bureau of HKSAR as Government Security Officer.” Was the HK Security Bureau behind this espionage operation?

The prosecution’s case sounds… quite spicy.

Nikkei Asia (paywalled) takes a stroll around the HK Museum of History. Sounds like a must-see attraction for tourists…

A tour of it now begins in what is known as the National Security Exhibition Gallery, where groups of schoolchildren on field trips are taken through its halls. The exhibit was created to commemorate, explain and — crucially — celebrate the NSL on the fifth anniversary of its imposition. Beijing’s goal in imposing the NSL was to ensure that the 2019 protest wave would be the last of its kind. The move was, therefore, in some senses a final conquest of Hong Kong, and the exhibit is evidence of the completion of this process.

…The exhibit dominates a museum that, before 2020, celebrated Hong Kong’s distinctive past and vibrant civil life. It even had the People’s Republic of China’s only museum allusion to the 1989 Tiananmen protests, through reference to local support for that struggle. In the current main exhibit, though, the focus is on a unified national history. The halls are full of artifacts — from national flags to objects from the past — presented as proving that Hong Kong was always meant to be and is now firmly integrated into China. The allusion to Tiananmen is gone, and the 2019 protests are denigrated, their suppression extolled as restoring order to a city that an allegedly foreign-backed “color revolution” had nearly destroyed.

The exhibit features film footage of street clashes, selectively showing crowd violence, never the police violence that was much more extensive. It goes into painstaking detail regarding the supposed necessity of the legislation and the new structures created to enforce it. There are instructions on plaques advising visitors to be vigilant and report suspicious activity to appropriate bodies — a bald self-advertisement of a surveillance state.

The UK trial of the HKETO staffer begins…

Chung Biu “Bill” Yuen, 65, and Chi Leung “Peter” Wai, 38, are alleged to have carried out surveillance on Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners claiming asylum in the UK.

They are charged with offences under the National Security Act.

Yuen is a former Hong Kong police officer who was working for the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, while Wai was working for the UK Border Force, was a volunteer Special Constable with the City of London Police and used to work for the Metropolitan Police.

…Opening the case for the prosecution, Duncan Atkinson KC said that Wai had misused Home Office and police computer systems to conduct searches for personal gain.

This included gathering information about people from Hong Kong claiming asylum in the UK and at one point he was being paid £2,000 a month, according to the prosecution.

…Among those the pair allegedly targeted was Monica Kwong, who has been accused of fraud by her employer Tina Zou. She says the accusation is false and she had been “set up”.

According to the prosecution, Yuen and Wai “undertook surveillance on her address, as if they were a legitimate UK police operation”.

Atkinson told the jury the men decided “to force their way into Monica Kwong’s home as if they were a legitimate police operation”, at which point the UK police, who were watching, intervened.

The jury heard that Yuen holds British and Hong Kong passports. He is employed by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in London as an office manager and is the third most senior person there.

I don’t suppose the Hong Kong authorities will rush to comment.

It’s not unusual to read about NatSec cases for two days in a row – except that these are both from the UK. In the next one, British police arrest three men on suspicion of spying for China. Two are partners of current or former Members of Parliament…

In a Commons statement, Dan Jarvis, the security minister, confirmed that the arrests related to China and said he could give no further details so as not to risk the police investigation.

“I can also confirm this relates to foreign interference targeting UK democracy,” Jarvis said. “If there is proven evidence of attempts by China to interfere with UK sovereign affairs, we will impose severe consequences and hold all actors involved to account.”

…he hinted that those arrested were connected to MPs by saying that people should realise that foreign powers would not just target politicians but those close to them.

In a BBC report…

Scottish Labour MP Joani Reid has said “I am not part of my husband’s business activities” after three men were was arrested on suspicion of spying for China.

Reid said she has “never seen anything” to make her suspect her spouse, David Taylor, has broken any law.

…”I am not part of my husband’s business activities and neither I nor my children are part of this investigation, and we should not be treated by media organisations as though we are.

“Above all I expect media organisations to respect my children’s privacy.”

Reid added that she had never been to China nor had she ever spoken on any China-related matters in the House of Commons.

“…As far as I am aware I have never met any Chinese businesses whilst I have been an MP, any Chinese diplomats or government employees, nor raised any concern with ministers or anyone else on behalf of, even coincidentally, Chinese interests.

“I am a social democrat who believes in freedom of expression, free trade unions and free elections. I am not any sort of admirer or apologist for the Chinese Communist party’s dictatorship.”

…The Met said the three arrests and subsequent search activity were supported by counter-terror police in Wales and in Scotland.

This could be interesting…

…Bill Yuen, a manager of Hong Kong’s trade office in London, and Peter Wai, a former UK border officer … have been accused of gathering intelligence and conducting surveillance against Hong Kong democracy activists in the UK and of allegedly breaking into a residence in London.

Background from December 2024. A third defendant was found dead in a park.

US-based activist Anna Kwok, whose father was recently imprisoned for the NatSec offence of helping an absconder, is pushing for the passage of a law in the US barring Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices from operating.

Would this count as collusion with a foreign power in Hong Kong? Surely it would…

The three men were charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service and engaging in foreign interference, in violation of the UK’s National Security Act…

Unlike in a Hong Kong NatSec case (eg Anna Kwok’s father), the pair have been out on bail, and will get a jury trial. They also get a normal, rather than specially designated, judge.

Curious/tenuous local angle: that judge, Bobbie Cheema-Grubb, attended what is now the Dickson Poon Law School at King’s College in London. She also has some experience of cases involving interference by foreign powers: a few months ago she gave a 10-year sentence to a British politician from a MAGA/populist grift party for taking bribes from Russia.

HKFP reports…

A Hong Kong court has sentenced a 68-year-old retiree to eight months in jail for sedition under the city’s homegrown security law, after the man published more than 100 Facebook posts criticising authorities and calling for a boycott of last year’s legislative polls.

Lam Chung-ming pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of “knowingly publishing publications that had a seditious intention” under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance – known locally as Article 23 – according to local media reports.

…Prosecutors accused Lam of inciting hatred against police, the judiciary and government officials, as well as inciting a boycott of the “patriots only” legislative elections in his Facebook posts. According to the prosecution, some of his posts contained references such as “black cops” and “black judges” – with “black” alluding to corruption.

…Lam’s Facebook account had only about a dozen friends and each post received little reaction, his lawyer added, reflecting the limited impact of Lam’s posts.

Is this an amazingly good use of taxpayer’s money or what? I wonder how the authorities can even find someone whose social media account has only a dozen followers – who aren’t responding to his posts. (They might not even be alive. Who – other than bots – is using Facebook anymore anyway?)

If you are a 61-year-old urging people not to vote, you might get a suspended sentence…

Bonney Ma, 61, was sentenced on Wednesday to two months in prison, suspended for 18 months, after she pleaded guilty to one count of inciting others not to vote in the run-up to the legislative race on December 7, according to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).

…During the hearing last week, Magistrate Peter Yu said the case was serious because it concerned the elections, adding that any illegal acts relating to the polls would negatively affect Hong Kong.

While Ma may have shared the post after only a brief glance, the court must take into consideration that the public could be exposed to its message, Yu said.

Exposed to what sort of message? As many have pointed out in bewilderment before: it is legal to not vote, yet it is illegal to urge others not to – even though it is legal to urge them to vote. Is it part of judges’ job to detect absurd or illogically worded laws, or do they just assume that any legislation must by definition be totally coherent? 

An academic paper titled The Economic Consequences of Protest Repression: The Case of Business Activism in Hong Kong. – essentially an analysis of the ‘yellow economic circle’. The link goes straight to the paper – no weird academic journal paywall stuff. From the abstract…

…the implications of repression on economic phenomena have received little attention. This study [examines] the impact of protest repression on business activism. Business activism refers to businesses taking a public stance on controversial social-political issues, a subject that has been understudied in academic research. We examine the effect of protest repression on business activism through the case of the “yellow economy circle” since the 2019 Anti-ELAB Movement in Hong Kong, in which some businesses publicly took a pro-movement stance by labeling themselves as “yellow businesses.” Utilizing a novel dataset containing geographical information about pro-movement “yellow restaurants,” we find that constituencies that experienced tear gas had a higher proportion of yellow restaurants. We provide two explanations for the causal effect, one from the financial-profit perspective and the other from the socio-psychological perspective…

Never noticed it before – but ‘buycott’ is a word…

…business owners had three options regarding their attitudes towards the movement, namely taking a pro-movement stance, taking a pro-government stance, or remaining neutral to the movement. If businesses joined the yellow economy, they could expect the pro-movement residents would buycott their businesses … but they risked losing pro-government consumers. Empirical research on political consumerism in Hong Kong suggests some additional financial benefits for being buycotted as a yellow restaurant: consumers supporting yellow shops were often willing to pay a higher price and be more tolerant of the quality of goods… In some cases, consumers furthermore deliberatively overpaid to support the movement… In contrast, if businesses publicly took a pro-government stance, pro-movement residents would boycott their businesses, but pro-government residents would support their businesses. Alternatively, a business could choose to be neutral to avoid either boycotting or buycotting. The optimal decision for a specific restaurant to reveal a political leaning or remain neutral depended on its customer base.

…owners of restaurants located in areas that were tear gassed were likely to experience anger and disruptions of their daily operations. Consequently, the use of tear gas could strengthen in-group identity and trigger emotional response among pro-movement business owners, which would make them more likely to take a public stance by joining the yellow economy.

The research confirms what many of us perceived at the time: the extreme levels of tear-gassing alienated significant numbers of moderate or neutral people – culminating in the resounding turnout and pan-dem victory in the November 2019 District Council election. They expressed their anger through consumer choices, and some previously neutral businesses joined the trend by embracing the ‘yellow’ cause as a marketing strategy.

The ‘yellow economic circle’ still exists, though websites that list pro-movement businesses are less used, and many of the restaurants and other outlets have discreetly removed more obvious signs of their stance. Several have gone out of business, either because of problems with officialdom or simply emigration. If you patronize only overtly yellow businesses, you will find yourself with a more limited range of options.

Instead, many people deliberately try to avoid businesses whose owners are known to be actively pro-government. One person I know still refuses to travel on the (government-run) MTR – which is rather extreme, not to say onerous. Is it realistic to insist that a large public company with responsibilities to shareholders, employees and customers (think HSBC) should have attracted certain retribution and ruin from the authorities by openly siding with ‘CIA-backed black-clad rioters’? Even in the US, where rule of law is supposed to still exist, big media, tech and other companies appease Donald Trump out of fear. What is less understandable, or excusable, is the massive pre-emptive cringe. Especially when the organization concerned is not even a profit-making company. Which brings us to…

An HKFP op-ed on Chinese University’s decision to expel undergraduate Miles Kwan after he was arrested for ‘seditious intention’ – launching a petition…

…this gradual change of focus [since Baptist U became more research-focused] pales into insignificance compared with the state of near-open warfare that local universities now wage against some of their students. No university now tolerates a student union. Many student publications have closed.

And now we have the case of Miles Kwan, a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

After the Wang Fuk Court fire, Mr Kwan organised an online petition calling for an investigation of the fire, accountability for those responsible, resettlement for the residents, and a review of construction supervision.

You would think this was harmless enough. All the things Mr Kwan had suggested were promised by Chief Executive John Lee a day or two later. Can it be an offence to agree with the CE too early?

…[Kwan’s arrest] does not look much like the majestic machinery of the law rolling on its impervious and impersonal way; it looks more like a deliberate act of intimidation by a regime which cannot tolerate any spontaneous expression of opinion not controlled by itself.

You might also think that all this had nothing to do with CUHK, where Mr Kwan was a student. What students get up to in their off-duty hours is generally nothing to do with their university authorities…

In any case, if a student is arrested, prudent universities stand back to await the result of the proper prosecution. The police case should go first. This sensible policy is, in fact, enshrined in the CUHK’s published procedures for handling student discipline cases.

How will the university respond to the petition calling on it to reinstate Kwan?