Rounding up teens – what next?

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The South China Morning Post doesn’t deem it worthy of mention at all, while the Standard carries it only in its print edition. So we are reduced Stan-TheTeenagerto the UK’s lower-bourgeois-white trash Mail for a link to the AFP story of the 14-year-old Hong Kong girl sent to a children’s home after being arrested (by a dozen fearless cops) for chalking a flower on the wall used for pro-democracy messages during the recent Occupy protests. In the past, we would assume there is a reason – the kid was found to be a drug addict, say. But then we recall the case of a teenage boy who could be taken from his parents after being picked up at the Mongkok protest site. Consider other instances of what Bloomberg terms ‘repercussions’ and you have a disturbing pattern: the authorities are abusing the law and the rights of children and parents in order to intimidate political opponents.

Some of the players have a (by Hong Kong standards) vaguely menacing, authoritarian air about them, like Police Commissioner Andy Tsang, not to mention icy near-Transylvanian Chief Executive CY Leung. But most of our officials, for all their arrogance, incompetence and other shortcomings, do by all accounts have some common human decency and respect for the institutions, constitutionality and values of their home city. So we can be certain that this repressive approach to pro-democracy activism is taking place on the direct orders of Beijing.

To put this in its depressing context, Reuters has reported that thousands of Hong Kong police have been on familiarization trips to the Mainland. If you were the Chinese Communist Party, you would want to de-program Hong Kong law enforcement, too. The disciplined services’ culture since the 1970s has become more impartial and rules-based to protect citizens’ rights, culminating in recent years in the HK Police winning opinion polls as the most respected arm of government. This is a hindrance to control and thus one-party rule/national security, and so it has to be replaced with a more Mainland approach where the outcome is all-important – and that outcome is a monopoly of power. No more of that helping-old-ladies-into-taxis nonsense.

Next on the list, if this carries on, must be the judiciary. Then, if they’re going to do the job properly, it would be the foreign media.

Reuters also describes the expansion of Mainland influence on the local business scene. This hints at the decline of Hong Kong’s native business ‘elite’. It is hard to imagine that we will miss the grasping, cartel-owning, rent-seeking, octogenarian billionaire toads, but then we don’t know what slick shysters and princeling playboys will take their place. Some see a dazzling, great new future. Landlord Allan Zeman likens tomorrow’s Hong FlyingCarKong to Manhattan and gushes that “People who can’t have a home here will live in Shenzhen and be able to come here in 10 minutes,” presumably in a personal flying car. Others might not be so enthusiastic: if you’re wondering who these mysterious ‘people who can’t have a home here’ are – well, it’s probably all of us. To the Reuters reporters’ apparent consternation, the Mainland tentacles are even breaching the sacred walls of the Ladies’ Recreation Club.

Although Hong Kong is an irritant to Beijing, it is far from the most pressing issue. What will best convince the paranoid Leninist-with-Chinese-characteristics leaders that crushing the city is more trouble than it is worth? Some say that a downscaling of opposition and civil disobedience would increase the Communist Party’s trust in the local community. Others, looking at the roundup of kids to spread fear, will conclude that greater civil disobedience is the only response that will make Beijing nervous enough to think again. Maybe we will find out in 2015.

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20 Responses to Rounding up teens – what next?

  1. NIMBY says:

    RTHK-3 is covering the story of the 14 year old girl, but relying on overseas press agencies….. So does this make us an international city?

    Morning Brew’s host and Steven Vines discussed it on their talk this am.

    Scolarism has put up a petition, in Chinese for those interested.

    https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1U9ul0NJC84uzSBRBf-v6cBvb5I9j-rBY2WglgtGoOJ0/viewform

  2. nulle says:

    well, we could effectively called those who worked at the HK Police Pigs, period.

    let those HK Pigs fry…

  3. Joe Blow says:

    It’s white terror, pure and simple.

    And it will get bigger, under the benevolent guidance of SS Andy and Beijing- puppet CY.

    In the good old days of the German Democratic Republic (DDR), taking children away from dissidents was a common trick of the authorities.

  4. Cassowary says:

    In Beijing’s eyes, Hong Kong is not, and will never be allowed to be, anyone’s home. It is merely a place they allow people to live while performing one of two functions: helping them launder money, or being cheap labour. If you’re not doing either of those things they have no use for you and you might as well shut the #%^* up or get the #^{^ out.

  5. PCC says:

    One might frame the exit question slightly differently, such as, “What will best convince the paranoid Leninist-with-Chinese-characteristics leaders that allowing the Hong Kong rabble to elect their own weak mayor is less trouble than crushing the city and thereby permanently crippling the CCP’s strategically important wholesale money laundering operation, er, sorry, ‘leading international financial centre'”?

  6. old git says:

    You can get 7 years for misconduct by taking a bribe or under a care and protection order; but 25 years for trafficking and here’s the latest from the Courts

    “For trafficking over 600 grammes of “ice”, according to Ching Kwok Hung the starting point should be over 18 years’ imprisonment. The new guideline in Tam Yi Chun, CACC 524/2011, is not applicable as the present case is before the new guideline.

    There being no other mitigating factor, I take 25 years’ imprisonment as the starting point. I add two years for taking a dangerous drug to Hong Kong, which is an aggravating factor. The final starting point is 27 years’ imprisonment. I deduct 9 years for his plea.

    I sentence the defendant to 18 years’ imprisonment.”

  7. Joe Blow says:

    I wonder how Christine Loh is feeling today ?

  8. Jason says:

    Someone came to his senses: Right now the 14 years old girl is going to leave Tuen Mun hospital.

  9. Joe Blow says:

    To all of you who think that the CCP is all powerful and cannot be touched by anything: one single directive by the US Customs to embargo anything made in China, entering the USA, will set things straight in an extremely short moment of time.

  10. Cassowary says:

    Because an embargo worked so well on Cuba. What are you smoking, man?

  11. Chinese Netizen says:

    Embargo goods from China and you’re denying the dwindling middle and current lower middle to lower classes in the U.S. ALL they NEED from places like Wal-Mart and the such. Never happen.
    On another note, will this mean in the near future that accredited foreign media in HK will have to jump through the hoops for annual visa renewals???

  12. nulle says:

    Embargo goods from China hurts China more than the US…true, embargo will raise prices for “dwindling middle and current lower middle to lower class” by about 10%…but replacements from US and elsewhere can be found…

    However, the cost to Chinese growth might casue GDP to shrink by 5% (instead of the golden 7% increase.) plus umemployment in China will go to about 10 pct. Given the amount of migrant workers in Tier 1 Cities, I bet CCP will have problems with domestic issues…

    So China will retailiate on US goods as well as foreign investment as well, but the percentages of US investment in China is higher than Chinese investment in the US AND US exports to China is much less than Chinese imports in the US…

    Currently foreign media in HK and China already jumping thru hoops for annual visa renewals, so what’s new…this crummy PRC policy plus all the pollution is a liability to anyone working in China, greatly increasing hazard pay to anyone working in China.

    now HK immigration will bar HK entry to people which China doesn’t like (ie British MPs recent attempted entry)

  13. NIMBY says:

    Time Magazine is now reporting on how our “World City” moves.
    http://time.com/3650889/hong-kong-teen-protesters-chalk-girl-chalktivist/

    Rule of Law? Kekekekeke.

  14. Joe Blow says:

    Actually, I wasn’t talking about a permanent full-scale Cuban style embargo.

    I was thinking of a temporary lock-down in response to a major, perhaps bloody, crackdown in China, including Hong Kong. It isn’t even necessary to have an actual embargo: simply the veiled threat of such an embargo would put great stress on the prevailing faction of the CCP that is the government-du-jour. And if you think that even limited sanctions don’t work: did you recently check your ruble portfolio ?

  15. Monkey Reborn says:

    @Joe,

    Dude I believe that is very dangerous thinking. best way is for political change to come as a result of internal transformations. I would not want to be in Hong Kong in a China that is on a military footing, which is a potential outcome of escalating trade embargos (and with other disputes including Diaoyu, SE Asia already ongoing and liable to reignite)… it would be in your face patriotism and all of those rather disturbing habits picked up in the first 30 years of Maoism would definitely be back on display – and mark my words Hong Kong will be one of the first places political control CCP style is enforced, there are fellows over the border in Beijing who are positively salivating for an opportunity to do so.

    in addition, the world economy is symbiotic in nature. China can crash the US treasuries market any day it wants too, and thereby bankrupt the US … there simply isn’t enough liquidity in the US treasuries market to absorb the debt that China owns … but that would bankrupt the state in their biggest market, a big no-no, and also damage the financial system which services needs of the Chinese mercantile global network.

  16. Qian Jin says:

    @”Allan Zeman gushes “People who can’t have a home here will live in Shenzhen and be able to come here in 10 minutes,” presumably in a personal flying car. ”

    Actually he’s not that far off the mark. Kowloon terminus will take about 15 minutes from Shenzhen Futian station via the high speed rail link, which for some odd reason you decry and include inappropriately on the list of useless white elephant inrastrucure projects.

  17. nulle says:

    @monkeyreborn,

    too late, China is already a country on military footing and has been for ages…while do you think every premier and ‘president’ for CCP have military wing backing and soon consolidate in order to maintain power…

    true, China may bankrupt the US with the treasuries…however, US can simply default…China loses trillions in the process….

    plus US is China’s largest customer…will lead to mass umemployment and massive economic problems…China will be in civil war.

    remember, no country whose citizesn uses their brain cells likes China anyway…China becoming a global pariah already…CCP military takeover of HK would cost China dearly…

    at the end of the day, China dies first before the US does in any scenario…

  18. NIMBY says:

    The judge for the case should be Justice Louis TONG Po-sun. It would be interesting to get the rulings history and family background of this putz. One good guess is he frequents brothels on the other side of the boarder and the United Front has pictures of him with his panties down, probably with another 14 year old.

  19. NIMBY says:

    RTHK-3 reported on Monday, January 19, 2015, 5:21 pm:

    “Winnie Lau, said that after considering the case and input from the Social Welfare Department, there was no need to make such an order for the moment.

    and there it is, the implicit threat.

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