Phew! Relieved! Like most of us, I have spent months lying awake at night worrying about relations between China’s Central People’s Government and the enigmatic and unpredictable leadership of the plucky little Czech Republic. What a joy it is to see the South China Morning Post devoting well over a foot of its front page to Xi Jinping’s assurance that ties between Beijing and Prague are entering a new era of co-operation and partnership and win-win Belt-and-Road mutual gobble-gobble gimme-gimme.
In fact, the SCMP reports, the gobble-gobble has already begun, with oil company CEFC Energy having recently paid 20 billion koruna for stakes in an eclectic range of Czech companies (koruna is a type of beer used as currency in remote regions of Eastern Europe). They include a charter airline, a brewery, a couple of lucky media groups and the inevitable top football team. Wikipedia suggests the Mainland conglomerate has, with dazzling originality, also invested in real estate. And it has bought into a Czech travel firm ‘probably with a view to capitalizing on the rapidly increasing numbers of Chinese tourists visiting Prague’.
Some of the above booze/tourism/property imagery may subliminally prompt thoughts of Lan Kwai Fong. And what do we find but that Xi’s host, the Czech President, is a groveling shoe-shiner called Zeman. If that makes you shudder, I apologize – I am simply passing the fact on.
More on this to come…
Prague is Kafka’s city. Perhaps Xi will have time to reflect on Kafka’s Little Fable in connection with Hong Kong, or just generally:
“Alas,” said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.”
“You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.
How embarrasing for the SCMP. Just repeating crappy China Daily articles. There is nothing newsworthy in this visit and agreement. Just a waste of space.
The semen is dead, long live the semen!
Oh how the mighty have fallen: I remember when the Czechs were pretty cool and Vaclav Havel appointed Frank Zappa as Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism.
Now sadly it’s run by a relative of nosferatu and finds itself in the same position: head squarely up the Lord high kidnapper’s arse, as they run a cheesy, fading empire of plastic mediocrity. *sigh*
Never let semen near your Czechs: It makes them stick together and affects their validity!
Harking back to yesterday’s blather about what the word ‘national’ means and those who want HK to be a nation, I see that Victoria Park is hosting the Prudential Hong Kong National Tennis Championships.
“My good friend, I’ve come to check:
I wonder if there’s anything we can buy,
Anything authentically Czech?”
“I’m very glad you’ve come by.
There’s a wide choice, for cash or cheque.”
“True co-operation and partnership! Goodbye.”
The Czech Republic produces some of the world’s finest beers. Unfortunately they tend to decline in quality when acquired by overseas investors, as Pilsner Urquell did when SAB Miller got hold of it. At least the Chinese haven’t bought up Budvar yet.