The South China Morning Post has a good info-graphic thing illustrating the development of Shenzhen alongside Hong Kong since the late 1970s. But sadly, they don’t seem to able to wedge it onto their website. So instead, here’s a video about Sunshine Island, over by Peng Chau.
Asia Sentinel on Hong Kong’s declining rule of law:
…at some point someone is going to bring a case involving business interests that forces in Beijing will want adjudicated for reasons that have nothing to do with justice.
(See also the once-impartial civil service’s attempts to keep Eddie Chu Hoi-dick off a village-election ballot.)
Lowy Institute discussing Leta Hong Fincher’s book and her argument that…
China’s all-male rulers have decided that the systematic subjugation of women is essential to maintaining Communist Party survival.
China Digital Times on the CCP’s similarly benighted policies in Xinjiang:
Uyghurs are a stateless people who have been colonized by an authoritarian state that is attempting to exert totalitarian control over their society.
Australian Financial Review interviews a China business veteran with interesting comments on the impossibility of doing things ethically or legally on the Mainland, and how the Chinese economy is now running on empty.
Foreign Affairs on how China lost America. This is in some ways another article reflecting the now one- or two-year-old great realization among the world’s chattering classes that China is not the warm and cuddly ‘win-win’ internationally responsible ‘economic miracle’ and blessing to humanity they once thought. It is also part of a newer trend to point the finger at Xi Jinping for blowing it and revealing China to be essentially a new USSR, with far more wealth but no friends and no subtlety. (A criticism echoed in some quarters on the Mainland as well.)
On other matters altogether… The confessions of someone who was into the JFK conspiracy theories, and came out of it sane. And for fans of hilarious, bizarre, disturbing music/video, Laibach’s Sound of Music, Lonely Goatherd and My Favourite Things (with a PG trigger warning for the hyper-sensitive, and a not-especially-suitable-for-work alert for anyone in, say, a convent school).
I’m organising a Hong Kong liberal pro-dem expat FCC wail-in….a ten-hour moan sent into the ether, led by bloggers and foreign correspondents, accompanied by Elgar music and readings from the work of Steve Vines.
Tickets only. Free Guardian subscriptions to the first ten moaners.
Foreign Affairs Article:
“Over the course of his first five-year term, Xi passed up repeated opportunities to avert rivalry with Washington. ”
Translation: Xi has not sold out his country to American interests despite being given repeated opportunities to do so, and America is increasingly pissed.
“On most issues of consequence, there is simply no overlap between Xi’s vision for China’s rise and what the United States considers an acceptable future for Asia and the world beyond.”
Translation: Any future in which the United States does not rule over Asia and the world beyond is considered unacceptable.
@Ook – China’s territorial ambitions are not only unacceptable to the USA – I guess the Asian countries whose coastal waters China is trying to grab are not too keen on them either. Sure, we have two imperial powers vying for world dominance here, but there are other stakeholders in the dispute.
To understand US foreign policy, one needs to understand what lead to the US in the first place. Constitutionally, the US refuses to be subject to anyone else. That’s different to wanting to rule the world. So paying homage to the PRC ain’t gonna happen.
One can also see that, in any trade or other policy agreement, the US will eventually demand the the PRC puts its money where its mouth is. The PRC might very well find that if it persists, that Treasury Bill stash is applied to securing compliance……
1 bullet 7 wounds in 2 people sitting almost a metre from each other.
3 shots fired within 5 to 7 secs with a single bolt action non-repeating rifle.
Vietnam War, one of the stupidest, most pointless, brutal and most profitable business enterprises of the 20th century (JFK had ordered withdrawal, according to McNamara, in October 63 – http://bostonreview.net/us/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam); continues unabated in the aftermath of JFK killing *for another decade*.
Clowns In America, after Bay of Pigs fiasco and institutional retrenchment, stops being reined in by executive, is let off the leash, and promptly becomes a major player in the global drugs trade – mobile.wnd.com/2013/09/did-jfk-sign-his-death-warrant-by-firing-cia-chief/ (c.f. air America, contras, history of los zetas).
American postwar politics has been a strange intersection of southern oil money, Mafioso Americana, cubana (historical), colombiana (recent), and mexicana (current), unaccountable intelligence agencies, wall street
deep finance, and fascist and authoritarian foreign bad guy allies (Saddam, Osama, Pinochet, Suharto, the Shah, etc etc), and a bicameral legislature so easily capturable by donor funds they make a crack whore on the streets of Philadelphia look respectable and dignified.
And yes, it’s the same crew responsible for the above hit that are still bleating about Cuba, North Korea, and Iran … because it was grandpappy (poppi bushies dad) and friends who ‘lost’ them…
Pic of Poppi Bushie at Deeley Plaza. https://goo.gl/images/isv6N5.
Circumstantial evidence he was already working with the Clowns In America at that time http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tisbM834rzc/TvRPokbOPNI/AAAAAAAAA28/42Hn9lMQwRg/s1600/bush_ghw_fbi_hoover_doc.gif)
Now Hemlock, i rarely feel the need to admonish you. I very much appreciate your “Emperor has no Clothes” writing, with its wit, and insight into the Yes Minister land of Hong Kong affairs at the executive bureaucrat level.
However, when you gloss over stupidly, obviously false lies in the Anglo American historical firmament (lies that suggest the laws of physics and reason are transcendable, or at least subject to political convenience) at best it leaves you open to a charge of hypocrisy. At worst, it suggests the framework of your critical thinking is deeply flawed by your identification with or attachment to the political ideology of a ‘side’.
For example, actors within the American elite squirt in their murderous panties when they look at the social credit system in China. Do you think it is an accident there is almost total invisibility of nazi-stylee plays in sinkiang or tibt from western media? Or that over 80,000 children have been murdered in yemen in the last 5 years, and yet… *crickets*.
A deconstruction of this phenomenon is beyond the scope of this feedback. However an assumption that political leaders throughout the multi polar world order are venal, mendacious, willing to murder or abduct for political gain, and see their fellow human beings as resources to be controlled, is a good place to start.
Please keep pointing out the absurd lies and developments in Hong Kong. But do note your arguments become less compelling when you ignore or passively accept lies that should be insulting to a man of your intelligence, merely because “western conspiracy theory”.
Apart from that, still love the blog.
P.s. some good satire, from what must be covert Russkies, fifth columnists, who are taking over the London theatre screenwriting scene. Enjoy! http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-23/cj-hopkins-assassination-donald-trump
3 shots in 5 – 7 seconds with a bolt action?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4Cerq1Q_vE
No problem.