There are cops on every street corner this morning ahead of the LegCo rubber-stamp-debate on the National Anthem (Pretend to Respect) Bill. (What are they expecting office workers on Des Veoux Rd to start doing?) And we are learning more about Beijing’s national security law for Hong Kong.
To no-one’s surprise, it will target groups as well as individuals (not to mention thoughts as well as deeds). And a parallel court system – with only Chinese citizens as judges – will try people accused the various new offenses. This excludes any judges with foreign passports, which might reduce the choice a bit. Alvin YH Cheung noted two years ago that the pro-Beijing camp was starting to pick on non-Chinese judges and the whole common law system as alien.
According to that Asia Times story, a venomous pro-Beijing ‘heavyweight’ is demanding swift trials and ‘enhanced sentencing’ for the law’s targets.
A HK Free Press columnist asks what’s going on in Carrie Lam’s mind? We could ask this about all sorts of people. One is Grenville Cross, former Director of Public Prosecutions, now purveyor of histrionic far-blue commentary in state media. He pushes not just the standard pro-establishment line of businessmen/bureaucrats under duress, but a full-blown mouth-frothing diatribe worthy of a politburo member for CGTV. (That’s the global propaganda outfit that’s just been in trouble for bias in the UK.)
What is the story with these people? Many of Beijing’s co-opted loyalists in Hong Kong need to keep in the CCP’s good books to safeguard family or other business interests or wealth. For some, it is a career move. Some mediocrities crave social status or the sense of being an ‘insider’. Others became patriotic/xenophobic in response to colonial-era racism. Then there are victims of serious personal CCP pressure, including blackmaily type nastiness. In some sad and twisted cases (remember Elsie Tu?) turning pro-Beijing is a cheap if self-destructive form of revenge after being slighted – like an incensed lover having a one-nighter with some repulsively gruesome ogre after being dumped.
Anyway, Jerome Cohen puts Grenville in his place with a (quite witty) riposte.
On the subject of pressure, Mainland-linked companies are reportedly ordering staff to sign pro-national security law petitions. And it seems the CCP still hasn’t forgiven Cathay for its subversive-foreigner sins. For a sinister-hilarious glimpse of this future: how Hong Kong U managed to make Stanley Ho’s death all about Edward Leung of HK Indigenous and imprisonment fame.
There was an interesting article (in French) in Le Monde yesterday about the “France China Foundation” which sends young (male) members of parliament every year on a propaganda trip in a tier one city, with of course a alcool fueled party in a KTV.
I wouldn’t be surprised if our prime minister (or others) couldn’t resist the appeal of tasting the local food in a bedroom filled with cameras. That’s how many of those foreign officials with no business interests get trapped. But the CCP didn’t invent anything, it was classic in the business playbook in Korea and Japan as well.
For the middle-aged women a.k.a. “heavyweights” it’s much easier, life’s bitterness and hormonal change is usually enough to naturally transform them into hate-filled witches…
If Grenville Cross didn’t exist, I would have to invent one. The angst/irritation/anger he causes is fantastic.
Grenville Cross will be happy to note that some believe that poverty in Hong Kong is likely to soar under the benevolent boot of the CCP:
https://www.ucanews.com/news/poverty-in-hong-kong-likely-to-soar-under-chinas-grip/88167
“Stanley Ho choses [sic] good time to check out” is exactly what I thought when I read the news of the old smuggler’s demise. God only knows what secrets he took to the grave with him!
A touch of unintentional humour in Grovelling Cross’s diatribe:
“Since June, the police have cracked fifteen significant bomb cases, with approximately 2.6 tons of explosives and chemicals seized in early March alone, along with three homemade bombs.”
Over the last 20 years, my first reaction upon reading any Grenville Cross Op-Ed has been: “I’ll take you seriously when you, your wife, and any children you have renounced all foreign citizenship and right of abode, and hold only Chinese citizenship.”
Elsie Tu is an interesting case. A moderately intelligent, hardworking, sanctimonious hag who helped get some good things done by virtue of being a white lady who could embarrass hypocritical, corrupt whities. But when another whitey who also cared about the interests of local Chinese came along – i.e., Chris Patten – Tu clearly could not stomach being displaced from the role of The Only White Foreigner in Hong Kong Who Knows What’s Best for Locals. And then Situ Hua rubbed salt deep in the wound. Turned out Hong Kong’s favourite white lady couldn’t win a free and fair election for a Legco seat.
Why no mention of Alex Lo and his absolutely horrid appeasement, as he begins dreaming of a “return” to Hong Kong from Vancouver? If Mr. Lo is to be believed, what’s happening now is an epochal battle between the US and China. Everything that happened in Hong Kong is the result of foreigners, especially Westerners, injecting bias into the discussion. I guess some PolyU kids got their hands on a few copies of USA Today and that “enflamed” their anti-China feelings. It always causes a chuckle that China thinks so poorly of the intelligence of its people that they actually believe that senators like Ted Cruz or Trump himself are even convincing in their rhetoric. What does that say about what they believe about their own rhetoric? Must think it easy to pull one over on their own people, eh? I will never understand how utterly myopic the CCP is. They seem destined for forever fumbling and fudging it up. They must know this, thus the pivot to full on antagonistic takeover of the city. Rubes!
I almost laughed out loud at Grenville’s parting thought: “As all right-thinking people now recognize…”
Self-parody?
“If Grenville Cross didn’t exist, I would have to invent one. The angst/irritation/anger he causes is fantastic.”
We already know you’re a troll, so who are you trying to impress?
The Chinese Communist Party will fall one day. My hope is Grenville Cross (and his ilk) is alive and cogent to see it. There is no fool like an old fool.
From Wikipedia – “Cross is married to Elaine Y.L. Tsui, PMSM, MCIL, an artist and a former Superintendent of the Hong Kong Police Force.”
Wasn’t he also heavily involved in trying to ram through Article 23 in 2003?
You can file perpetual irritant Nury Vittachi under the ‘career move’ category. Hong Kong’s very own Lord Haw Haw.
As I write, several tens of kids have been rounded up by the cops down in Central and are now awaiting “processing”. Many of them don’t look old enough to own pubic hair, never mind vote or think fully about the consequences of their actions. However, it must be comforting to them and their parents that there are 1-2 dozen keyboard warriors out there, mostly of the pinkish-hue variety, tapping away showing their support for them and The Cause.
@donkeynuts: I know an Australian-Chinese lady who in one breath lectures people on the importance of critical thinking and media literacy so that people won’t fall for sensationalist trash peddle by Rupert Murdoch and his ilk, and in the next muses that it would be better for the West to have censorship like in Mainland China so that people only receive reliable information.
I can’t argue with her, I just don’t even know where to begin. They do think that a) people are that stupid and easy for foreign powers to manipulate, but b) they are the intelligent ones for seeing the “truth”. The censorship isn’t for them, you see, they believe state media because they have excellent critical thinking skills. It’s for all those other idiots out there.
I had to smile at CENO’s comment that many other countries have similar laws to the proposed National Insecurity law and their economies haven’t been damaged by them. Maybe she is too eager to pander to notice that no other country has had such laws imposed by an alien totalitarian legal system on top of the local system.
PS I wonder how many times Cheung, Chan et al will pop up to sign the support petitions – or will they be using false names?
” don’t look old enough to own pubic hair…” Don’t even know where to begin with that one.
So you are of the mindset that one cruises for pubic hair and then purchases it, to hold long term, like a bond of some sort?
@Casira – a bit of a sexist comment there. Most women – even those who’ve tasted bitter disappointments in life – aren’t transformed by the menopause into hate-filled witches – only those who carried the seeds of hate in them already. (Would you blame Reactionary #4 on the male menopause?)
Elsie Tu’s case is sad, because she did a lot of good crusading against corruption in her earlier years. I suspect her early religious indoctrination warped her character.
Reactor4 has gone beyond trolling with his comment about the young protestors and pubic hair.
He is a sick bastard.
On Grenville Cross, I think Jim Brockmire put it best when he said:
“Never trust a man who sucks Satan’s dick for a living.”
Grenville Cross is also a Brexiteer: “Brexit is Brexit”. One of the arguments he used for the support of Brexit was that the Queen of England (Annabelle?) was the head of state of 14 countries, including the Turks and Caikos Islands (population: 12 Turks and 36 Cocos). Urr…right. And that means what?
Poor Nury. Where did it all go wrong? Once upon a time (30 years ago) he was the funniest man in English newspapers. Didn’t we all laugh at the menu misspellings? Until it got old. Ironically, little Nury’s father was a journalist who escaped from his native Sri Lanka, running away from a dictatorial regime. I kid you not.
Joe Blow
Your first paragraph is riddled with inaccuracies, so only 4/10.
Your second hits the bull’s eye, so 10/10.
I am loath to correct the errors in paragraph 1 for fear of being labelled a pedant.
Time Pervert#4 was outed.
Fat Simon ? of Sai Kung?
@RedDragon @JoeBlow
Ah yes, those years before the handover when Nury actually was kind of funny, titter titter, kind of, but not really.
Since then Nury has become an embarrassment, to be fair.
Having met Nury endless times I must add, Nury is a sanctimonious little cock, that our Hong Kong world would be better if he just faded away and drilled himself down the nearest drain.