Just before the Hong Kong government launched a public consultation on political reform in 2014, Beijing issued a de facto edict stating that there could be no meaningful political reform. In the following months, Hong Kong officials had to go through a drawn-out pretense of deliberations before finalizing a preordained proposal for an election system that was basically a scaled-up version of the existing rigged joke-poll that rubber-stamps Beijing’s choice of Chief Executive.
Now, on the eve of Carrie Lam’s Meet-the-Peasants Dialogue Platform, a member of China’s local Foreign Ministry office meets with the press to declare that there will be no more concessions to the city’s protest movement. He also says the 2014 joke-election package is all Beijing will ever allow, and whines like crazy about the US. (Full transcript of his remarks here.)
While one of the protesters’ demands (democracy) might come under Beijing’s jurisdiction, others (like an independent inquiry into the police) should in theory be up to the local administration to decide – but ‘One Country, Two Systems’ obviously means something different these days.
Carrie has in any case pulled the rug from under herself in a NY Times op-ed aimed at convincing a US audience that She Is Right and You Are Wrong (I haven’t wasted a free view on it, but link here).
Furthermore, she is including the hapless Lau Kong-wah in the Dialogue Platform line-up of scintillating and hip personalities with whom the natives will be allowed to share their views. Maybe this is an attempt to introduce a few laughs into an otherwise pointless exercise, or perhaps she is trying to additionally sabotage the events as a silent protest.
The police are preparing for clashes outside the venues. Hopefully, protesters will sense that the farce will undermine itself superbly, uninterrupted.
Another day of history in the making. What we are getting here is a close-up lesson in how the CCP’s only conceivable response to opposition is to bludgeon it – even where that further strengthens the resistance, and further corners Beijing in a more intractable mess.
In entertainment news: a Hong Kong property developer ‘donates’ farmland to be used for affordable housing. This is a classic semi-pre-emptive shoe-shine – a shameless and obsequious gesture aimed at appeasing a wrathful CCP hunting for scapegoats, while getting a head start on rival tycoon families who must now emulate the nauseating kowtow.
The Standard calls it ‘social conscience’. They mean ‘cowardly self-preservation’.
“The company, whose property portfolio includes the Rosewood luxury hotel and shopping centres, will donate three pieces of land totalling 28,000 sq ft next to the Tin Shui Wai subway station…”
28,000 square feet is about a quarter of a regulation football pitch. Pfffffft!
So if Beijing thinks the main problem with the tycoons is that they haven’t been loyal enough, what’s it going to do? Have them bought out and replaced by SOEs? We’ll just be ripped off by another cartel of robber-barons, only these ones will have embedded political commissars to keep them in line. Lovely.
@Cassowary If you thought building quality was bad before, just wait until the tycoons are replaced by the SOEs!
I must confess I am on tenterhooks wondering exactly how this dialogue facade is going to end up the ignominious fiasco it is destined to become:
Will it be hand picked government supporters stage managed to within an inch of their lives like I expect it will be?
Will they all show up with umbrellas, helmets and masks and get disqualified from entering, leaving the muppet regime on their own in an empty stadium?
Will no one at all show up?
Will it just be 20 minutes of 150 people shouting in unison: “Five demands: not one less” before our glorious muppet regime calls it a night?
Or will it be two hours of awkward and embarrassing silence as the audience turn their backs on the muppet regime?
I’m hoping for something truly and delightfully subversive that will fill me with joy for months to come.
I went out and bought several paper copies of the New York Times, so that I could spread my gas masks and empty vodka bottles on the ground outside of the Carrie Lam dialogue venue, while I wait for everyone to walk out mumbling and gearing up for another night of riots.
New World is sitting on 16 million + sq. ft. of undeveloped NT farm land. And the other property mafiosi own many tens of millions more. Don’t expect to see calm returning to the land anytime soon.
Donate a strategically placed parcel of land to the government, watch them bring roads, electricity, water and drains to it, then build your own properties next door, secure in the knowledge that the foundations of the area’s infrastructure are already in place. Or am I being unduly cynical here?
Oh, oh. The shouties are now massing around the QE Stadium in Causeway Bay – their railing-ripping activities demonstrate how amazingly persuasive they are. I am much reminded of Mr D.P. Gumby and his brethren.
It’s an absolute disgrace that the bastards up in Beijing are denying these people their right to full-fat democracy.
Shame.
Shame.
Shame.
Private Beach,
No, you aren’t. That’s exactly what Uncle Four offered last year.
Light Be is associated with both Bauhinia and Our Hong Kong Foundations. It has its own website https://www.lightbe.hk/en/ and is also listed under the umbrella Social Ventures Hong Kong https://sv-hk.org/portfolio-item/light-be/
In other words the charitable works are the feel good front for both tycoon controlled organizations.
Its like the New Home Association, board a mixture of local and mainland property developers,
These’ NGOs’ keep grass roots groups out of the lucrative government/Jockey Club handout schemes and ensure that the pro-establishment is in control of local community facilities. Needless to say they are very active when it comes to drumming up support at the polls for certain political parties.
New World has strong connections with DAB. In other words, Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts.