In a reminder that normal life continues, Luckin Coffee – China’s always-unconvincing Starbucks wannabe – goes down the tubes. Hong Kong (ie Beijing) delays granting a visa to Australia’s new Consul-General owing to some Panda-tantrum or other. Hong Kong’s courts rule that, under some circumstances, police can access phones without a warrant.
In its latest make-it-up-as-we-go-along anti-virus measure, the Hong Kong government shuts all bars for two weeks. The city’s bartenders tell Carrie Lam what they think of her in a video – it’s not pretty…
The government also issues a CCP-tinged statement condemning RTHK for its WHO interview…
It is common knowledge that the WHO membership is based on sovereign states. RTHK, as a government department and a public service broadcaster, should have [a] proper understanding of the above without any deviation
The station – proudly intent on going to the chopping block with its head held high – responds with a polite ‘Rubbish’.
‘In a move likely to anger China’, I declare the weekend open with a round-up of the best examples (after weeding out dozens) of the Great 2020 WHO/CCP-Mutilation Frenzy…
Reuters wins Headline of the Week Award for: Non-Existent Country Run by Cat-Owning Spinster Gives WHO Massive Kicking (cont’d).
(A reminder that Taiwan’s success in keeping the Wuhan virus at bay is not due to Confucianism, not to democracy, but to… this. Also, perhaps more prosaically, while we’re at it, this.)
From French think-tank Institut Montaigne, a fairly even-handed but ultimately damning account of the WHO’s Panda-pandering, including a less-than-flattering assessment of Hong Kong’s Margaret Chan (if you’re in a hurry, summary here).
Less even-handed, perhaps: Sky News Oz lays into the WHO’s puke-inducing sycophancy and servitude.
Bloomberg on US intelligence’s report on China’s cover-up, quoting Senator Ben Sasse…
“…this much is painfully obvious: The Chinese Communist Party has lied, is lying, and will continue to lie about coronavirus to protect the regime.”
SCMP/Politico report that US Senator Martha ‘never trusted a Communist’ McSally calls for WHO boss Tedros to resign, and proposes that China write off all its loans to the US.
And (don’t say we don’t look far and wide) the Madras Courier (founded 1785, no less): How China and the WHO Orchestrated A Global Genocide.
Plus, Inappropriately Annoying Jaunty and Happy Audio Track of the Month Award goes to the Hong Kong Consumer Council.
On more general matters…
Reuters on the ‘new hawks’ taking over China’s foreign affairs. (Bill Bishop of Sinocism points out that mouth-frothing foreign affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian has support among the Mainland public and from Xi Jinping – and asks whether the younger generation of PLA officers are also anti-American hawks.)
It hardly needs to be said, but a reminder from HKFP that the virus isn’t doing much to boost China’s fantasy about annexing Taiwan. Reuters (again) looks at the country’s identity/branding challenge.
Clive Hamilton, author of Silent Invasion, sees CCP infiltration of the UK.
From SupChina, authorities in Qingdao demolish an illegal structure – not your everyday Hong Kong-style rooftop hut, but a whole development of tacky villas covering a small peninsula.
SupChina also offers a dummy’s guide to Lei Feng.
And something completely irrelevant, for those in quarantine. According to photographer Félix Nadar (it says here), the Paris Catacombs is “one of those places that everyone wants to see and no one wants to see again.” He never met my mother, who first visited the gruesome tunnels when a schoolgirl in the 1930s (on a trip to the French capital that also involved a chance meeting with King Zog), and insisted I took her back for her 75th birthday. For newbies. or people who can stomach it a second time, a vivid virtual tour.
Finally, thoughts involving retail-industry jargon on the sad demise of the 1881 Heritage branch of Tiffany’s, leaving Hong Kong with but 12 others…
People losing jobs, frightened, dying… But there is hope:
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/luxury
At least I now know how to be at my “fashion foward” best if I end up lying in a Tuen Mun Corona ward bed.
Ironically Sky News rips into the sycophantic relationship between WHO/Winnie but in the states the same owner of Fox “News” doesn’t rip into the Orange Lump and his dismissing of the inevitable for weeks and HIS continued ass licking of Winnie (in addition to other tin pots) – on the side whilst at the same time trying to look “tough on China” – to protect daughter Ivanka’s trademarks on the mainland.
On a brighter note and under the law of unintended consequences of imprisoning quarantine flouters, last month the longest term was handed to a homeless man after he admitted to evading mandatory quarantine by falsifying a home address.
The question asked by RTHK reporter was “dangerous” according to Junius Ho
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1518485-20200402.htm
More dangerous than the HK governments responses to the Covid-19 crisis, perhaps?
Carrie Lam is not the person highest on my list for people to acquire Corona virus. Unfortunately it confers immunity, at least for some time, if said person survives the infection.
@Chinese Netizen: Intellectually weak attempt to change the subject! Any effort by another nation to deal with this Chinese Virus is besides the point. The point being? How almost the entire globe has no trust in what the communists say or report. China is not unlike a toxic cloud over the planet. Junius Ho too, though he is a but small puff of toxin, mostly hot air.
THAT DISTRUST in the Jinping Junta is what has served Taiwan (Free China) so well. See here if you have the time: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/show/taiwans-aggressive-efforts-are-paying-off-in-fight-against-covid-19?__twitter_impres=true
While “no one expects that China will fulfill its obligations, or take steps required by the law of state responsibility”, my fervent hope and wish is for the international community to claim damages against that paranoid regime, and to cancel any debts that may be owed. A professor of International Law has other ideas: https://warontherocks.com/2020/03/china-is-legally-responsible-for-covid-19-damage-and-claims-could-be-in-the-trillions/
Time to open a book on our next CE.
Tsang Yok-sin evens
Junious Ho 3-1
Christine 5-1
ex-Mayor of Wuhan 7-1
Regina 10-1
Teresa Cheng SC non-runner, disappeared
Claudia Mo 1,000-1
[other odds on request]
WHO should now be formally classified as a branch of the CCP
That restaurant worker video is sick and disturbing. Do these people not understand what has to be done to curb the virus? Social distancing is crucial, and a crappy surgical mask in a crowded bar isn’t going to do the trick, especially when you’re pulling it off every 30 seconds to take a drink.
In the US, where the response to Covid has been as fcked up as anywhere in the world, almost every governor has shut down the restaurant industry. BECAUSE IT’S NECESSARY. This has created massive unemployment and, thanks to the US’s idiotic private, employer based health care system, a major uptick in uninsured citizens. More enlightened national entities such as Denmark and the UK (!) have both a national health care system and governments that preserve the emloyee/employer connection (important to a smooth restart) during the crisis by subsidizing salaries.
The HK government could do this. If now isn’t the time to raid those My Precious reserves, WTF is?
Pie Chucker
Several years ago (pre CY) I said to Audrey Eu that two things would make me leave HK (I have no idea for where).
One, English ceases to be an official language.
Two, Regina became CE.
She laughed and said “well she is an ambitious lady”.
However Regina would be preferable (if detestable) to Junius Ho, a truly odious bully. If he was appointed and then sought to bring in article 23, as he would, the petrol bombing and tear gas of last year would be as naught.
Not even in jest, please.
@pie-chucker
Ronny Tong? He’s been running his campaign for a while now.
What did happen to Ronny Tong to turn him into a CCP shill?
Well in yet another HK governmentt policy screw up missing the point, by closing bars at 6pm last night. I was in my usual after work quiet place and it was packed the gunwales. More customers than have been seen for a couple of months. So much for social distancing.
Ronny Tong works at a very large law firm that earns hundreds of millions of dollars from China related business. That is what happened to Ronny Tong.
Serious CE candidates: Bernie (did you see the ‘clap’ video on YouTube?) and Paul Chan who is already distancing himself from Bloody Carrie. John Tsang probably doesn’t want the job anymore because it’s so tainted by Liaison Office poison. Mother Teresa is obviously out after she tried to jump ship while in the UK.
Christine Who? / Regina/ Anus Ho: not a snowball’s chance in a hotpot joint in Shenzhen.
Penny
Alleged antics on the mainland, that were incautious.
My informant, husband of somebody well connected in local blue society.
Plus probably a simple morphing with age and what he perceives as his self interest.
@ penny
I think he’s set on replacing Carrie hence the turning of the coat.