A retired cop quotes one of the historic figures commemorated in Escalator-Land and asks why the Hong Kong Police are further damaging their standing in the community by pulling such stunts as a late-night arrest of a pro-democrat politician. (Aside from archaic sedition laws, the cops are also using new anti-crowding rules against protesters and to harass restaurants linked to pro-dems.)
Simple answer: the HKPF is not concerned with its ‘standing in the community’ – it is very obviously not even under the control of the civilian government of Hong Kong. It is answerable only to Beijing’s officials. Which is why, as the rest of the city fights a disease outbreak, the cops are continuing their relentless campaign to suppress the CCP’s perceived enemies. From the ground in Hong Kong, it looks absurd, incongruous and plain witless. To the knuckle-draggers up in the hierarchy of the HK and Macau Affairs Office, there’s a vulnerable one-party state to protect.
If pepper-spraying reporters at Prince Edward Station doesn’t work, here’s an even more eye-watering method to encourage social-distancing: a ‘Yikes!’-inducing diagram showing how far back they put those enormous Q-tips to take a swab.
It always boggles my pea-sized brain that every example of over-governance driven by the CCP is seen, clearly, as the work of a vulnerable and paranoid entity, yet, people continue to believe, en masse that the CCP is powerful. They are not. How could they be? How could an establishment be all-powerful that struggles so hard and tries so hard to put itself in every aspect of politics? If you were really that strong, you would be able to withstand other points of view and other leaders. The fact that they cannot is such a pure example of how little they grasp real politics.
@donkeynuts
Despite layers of sugarcoating of nationalistic fervour and claims of technocratic competence, all authoritarian regimes rule by fear. The regime’s ubiquity in daily life serves as an ever-present reminder to the populace of that fact. Monopolising political viewpoints is seen as essential to strangling courage in the crib. Invariably, when the people lose their fear, the regime collapses. That is at the heart of the present struggle in Hong Kong.
@donkeynuts: Dey gots da guns. When you’re paranoid and vulnerable, that’s what sets you apart from decent people.
Now that the HKPF no longer acts like the police of Hong Kong but like an armed occupying force in the service of a foreign master, maybe the time has come for the people of Hong Kong to treat them as such.
@Joe Blow
To be fair, the HKPF were always an armed occupying force in the service of a foreign master, given the extra task of being the police.
Those machine gun posts on the walls of older police stations didn’t appear suddenly post ’97. They’ve been there quite a while longer.
https://www.google.com/maps/@22.2877592,114.1399331,3a,75y,146.35h,99.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1svb_QNQCNGkMXFv_KVIjP3Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en-GB
@donkeynuts the CCP numbers 90.5 million members, according to Wiki, and underlined by a Ru Yan writing in the China Daily this week. In Shanghai, for instance, I heard 13,000 of them are working for HSBC and in countless other companies they have the grip of HK depts and corporate affairs’ roles.
Membership used to be a “nice-to-have” but let’s-keep-it-quiet thing (like a friendly Mason would) but now their work secretary and other cadre descriptions are to the fore.
I thought it used to be cute how leaders like Zhu Ronghi and, indeed, much of those in the Soviet era, were engineering graduates. Today it’s party school alumni.
Little wonder that there’s a hard core of expat businessmen crawling to them and urging harsher clampdowns on Hong Kong.
HR depts, that should read, but of course they had HK too