The Hong Kong government decides its number-one harmony-promoting priority following the virus pandemic is… pushing through the National Anthem (Compulsory Adoration) Bill.
And former Chief Executives Tung Chee-hwa and CY Leung launch a ‘Hong Kong Coalition’ to counter the city’s anti-government movement.
The new grouping is almost a parody of a Liaison Office-driven United Front operation. Its other faded and unpopular leading members are ‘heavyweights’ Tam Yiu-chung and Maria Tam. As if that’s insufficiently unappealing to public opinion, it drafts in every property tycoon and his son(s). Its first Big Original Initiative to grab hearts and minds: to distribute face masks to the peasantry.
Like that lame idea, the website suggests that the supposed alliance has been hastily put together – though someone must have worked overtime arm-twisting 1,500 other shoe-shiners, especially from business and universities, into signing up.
Maybe a few less-discerning blue-ribbon types will get a kick from this stale concept and its stale cheerleaders. Its main purpose is the classic United Front tactic of ‘unifying’ loyalist elements – forcing fence-sitters to publicly align themselves with the Party. Maybe this worked under Lenin in 1920s Russia or Mao in 1950s China. But in Hong Kong in 2020, the masses will find it amusing at best, otherwise just pitiful, and certainly alienating.
Some mid-week links…
From HK Free Press, a handy explainer on the Expat Cops Illicit Property Scandal Uproar. And a great thread on the subject, complete with delightfully unflattering commentary on the officers involved.
If the Shoe-shining Alliance of Shoe-shiners want some ideas on how to design a website with cool graphics, some HKU people have released an Anti-Extradition Bill research database, including a timeline, stats and a glossary of phrases. Also, an amazing and addictive poster search engine.
Asia Sentinel proposes a fascinating theory about how Beijing’s paranoiacs see the unrest in Hong Kong. It’s not the CIA that’s behind it – it’s Xi Jinping’s enemies in the Bo Xilai faction.
Also perhaps to be taken with a pinch of salt, the latest leak received by Reuters suggests that Beijing fears the virus pandemic could boost global anti-China sentiment (hey, d’ya think so????) A ‘pinch of salt’ because of course the leak could itself be a deliberate message to the US to not mess with us when we’re in extra-fragile hyper-panicky freak-out mode.
And in the spirit of Positive Energy – not only the people but maybe even the government of Hong Kong (or at least some departments) deserve a pat on the back for beating back COVID-19.
“Asia Sentinel proposes a fascinating theory about how Beijing’s paranoiacs see the unrest in Hong Kong. It’s not the CIA that’s behind it – it’s Xi Jinping’s enemies in the Bo Xilai faction.”
Tantalizing, but what took them so long to postulate this? Weren’t we saying this in September?
I’m still waiting for a leaked document revealing the Liaison Office contingency plans for Religious Suppression and Oppression here in HK.
BTW, the ‘Founding Declaration’ on the ‘Hong Kong Coalition’ site seems to have been written by a functionally illiterate clown*, or just passed through Google Translate. Painful reading!
ANTIELAB’s Poster Search Engine is great!
*DAB constituency
Finally ! Bunny Chan is back.
What is with that HK Coalition logo? Is that the sharp end of the spear they plan to stick up our arses? Seems it’s not only the government that could use a PR firm…
I must admit that I find the lyrics of the Chinese national anthem pretty funny/ironic in terms of Hong Kongers actually subscribing to a lot of it:-
Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves! (Yes, well, who’d refuse to be a slave?)
With our flesh and blood, let us build a new Great Wall! (Some Hong Kongers do want a new Great Wall… at the Hong Kong-Mainland China border!)
As China faces its greatest peril (Pretty please…)
From each one the urgent call to action comes forth.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Millions of but one heart
Braving the enemies’ fire! March on!
Braving the enemies’ fire! March on!
March on! March, march on! (Indeed, let’s unite and not give up in our fight to bring democracy to Hong Kong… and (the rest of) China! Re that last bit: that’s what those who honor the fallen of June 4th really want!)
Voluminous creativity on display via the poster search engine. Respect.
This Alliance doesn’t seem to be registered at the Companies Registry or under the Societies Ordinance.
Great way to build goodwill…involve CY. *smh*
Is Odious Whore also one of the “heavyweights”??
This won’t work and even the CCP / United Front know it. Nor will Paul doling out the cash on the eve of the election. So the status quo remains in the legislature and no article 23. So what next? I foresee an incident(s) and in the interests of “safety” the elections are postponed and under the Emergency Regulations ordinance …
In the last link about HK being congratulated by the WHO: a wonderful irony that a government that went to court to prevent people wearing face masks now insists that masks ‘must be worn if people want to get out and about as usual’ and ‘promises to come down hard on those who flout the mask rule’. Happy days.
Lest we forget, and before this becomes officially banned in HK:
The fabulously awkward Venezuelan version of soon to be compulsory March of the Volunteers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m556StrkwQ
That website, who in the hell of bad design was made to inflict that on the world?
@Fish
I think the Logo is spot on: it looks likes pants with bollocks coming out of it. As does the coalition of the shining.
I think that logo is an ode to Mrs Ip, also known as …..
What is this Alliance of Plutocrats supposed to do to combat the protests, exactly? Did anyone think this through? For lack of better ideas, my imagination has a line-up of septuagenarian tycoons dressing up in bat costumes by night to punch protesters in the face and tie them up for the cops to find.
Apologies for being OT but is there anyone in this administration with a shred of intelligence? And, in context, anyone in the organisation that invented the single-cup bra being toted as Carrie’s gift to HKers.
The instructions state:
“There is a minute quantity of metal in the outer and filtration layers. Persons allergic to metal should avoid direct contact with these two layers.”
Now, approximately three quarters of the known elements are metals – arsenic, for example, is a metal which is a universal terminal allergen – and, yes, some people are allergic to some metals.
OK, further reading suggest the metal involved is copper so why not say so instead of potentially creating a scare?
If you are accepting Carrie’s Bounty, do enjoy looking like a tit in your single-cup bra.
Coronavirus: 1.5 million apply for Hong Kong’s free mask scheme in first 11 hours after website goes live.
Does rather raise the question as to why it is going to take almost as many months to disburse the $10,000……………
Stephen said: “This won’t work and even the CCP / United Front know it. Nor will Paul doling out the cash on the eve of the election. So the status quo remains in the legislature and no article 23. So what next? I foresee an incident(s) and in the interests of “safety” the elections are postponed and under the Emergency Regulations ordinance …”
And hence the ramping up of amazingly accurate and timely “discoveries” by po po of bomb making kit and stores of guns/ammunition.
@asiaseen i believe the copper ingredients were mentioned at the press conference and it was in the press. and so they appear to have “said so.”
I think they’re just not sure it only contains copper.
@ coppernuts
Yes, coppernuts but they are ephemeral mentions whereas the website is the definitive permanent reference.
I note the English version of the Founding Declaration of the Hong Kong Coalition website did not use the “firmly and resolutely” and “unswervingly” like we now see in the HK Gov press releases when referencing 1C2S.