The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that, in its efforts to push Belt and Road projects, the Chinese government will assist a corrupt regime by agreeing to tap and monitor Hong Kong-based journalists investigating the crooked officials concerned.
Hong Kong lawmakers demand an explanation from the local authorities, who inevitably reveal themselves to be clueless, in both the ‘ignorant of the facts’ and ‘out to lunch’ meanings of the word. ‘We will not comment on individual press reports’, says the government that issues whiny, long-winded responses to individual press reports every week. Chief Executive Carrie Lam ends another of her tireless 10-hour days by writing in her diary: ‘Sorely vexed as General Secretary Xi shoves another bowl of cold vomit into our laps, yet again!’
Not to be outdone by the WSJ, Reuters deliver an investigative piece of their own: Huawei’s front companies in Iran and Syria – or Don’t forget your toothbrush, Ms Meng.
Some mid-week links for the underworked leisure class…
A transcript of Occupy co-founder Chan Kin-man’s (by all accounts moving) final university lecture – a blend of nostalgia, philosophizing and modern history. He faces a prison sentence because the Chinese Communist Party is petrified of harmless idealistic sociology professors.
A Bloomberg radio interview with not-so-idealistic Anne Stevenson-Yang, touching on China’s history of opening and closing cycles – opening when it needs money, closing when the cost of opening gets too high – and a forecast that the big event of 2019 will be the crash of the Chinese economy. A comparison of Xi Jinping and Stalin as counter-reformists determined to create a more state-controlled economy. And to make the ‘China closing trend’ selection fully multi-media, a YouTube video in which a couple of guys biking through (free) Taiwan discuss foreigners leaving the Mainland.
It’s funny isn’t it.
Journalists from the obnoxious Western corporate media only do exclusives and exposés about things prejudiced Sinophobes and the like want to read.
Let’s hope the Chinese security men get a good bonus and overtime for following these smelly wretches around.
Ça pue alors!
President Xi orders the PLA to be ready for war. This is coming from the leader of a country that is facing a demographic crisis and spending hugely on military equipment and installations for a war-threat that doesn’t exist. In other words, President Xi is prepared to see some of the finest young PRC men to die in a pointless battle.
I am the first of four generations not to go to someone’s war (I missed Vietnam by 2 weeks, thank goodness). President Xi has neither any sense of history nor any sense of the future.
Old git: Xi’tler would just send the grannies and grandpa’s to war to lessen the demographic bomb, then the Uighur concentration inmates to speed up the cultural extermination of Muslims, then the indigenous Tibetans and then the Christians and Fanlun Gong practitioners. The CCP and PLA would cower behind their beds pretending to be ill.
@old git: Megalomania tends to do that to certain types.
@mjrelje: As PLA/CCP “leadership” retreat to their Kiwi/Oz/Canuck/Yank/Brit penthouses in posh neighborhoods where their mistresses and piles of cash are already ensconced. Socialism with Chinese characteristics truly is the best…
“the big event of 2019 will be the crash of the Chinese economy”
Be still, my beating heart!