After proclaiming its pro-dem leanings, kids’ clothing chain Chickeeduck gains more customers and a touchy letter from landlord New World. Interesting titbit: New World scion Adrian Cheng, who is sort-of into culture, is possibly trying to take a stake in (or drive a stake through?) Art Basel.
Watch what happens to Chickeeduck. Possible repercussions include: attacks on stores, smearing of the owner, termination of leases, calls for boycotts by Mainland tourists, maybe tax audits or customs hassles. If they ever had plans to expand over the border, they can forget it. (Looks like nasty stuff to me – but what do I know?)
Meanwhile, get used to the vomit-inducing sight of more companies pre-emptively cringing and kowtowing to the CCP Emperor. Bloomberg interviews business people on United Front ideological pressure on Hong Kong firms…
The demand for political correctness has never been as prominent as it is today, and it’s likely to change the feel of Hong Kong as a free and open business center.”
…In the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, if you don’t make these comments, it means you are not supporting them, and they will mark your name and come back on you later [but] You can never fill the CCP’s stomach … The more you back down, the more you will lose.
I declare the weekend open with a selection of quality links…
Atlantic looks at the personality/psychology/‘valueless mindset’ of Carrie Lam…
The extradition bill, legislation pushed by Lam herself, catastrophically backfired, to the extent that she and her staff now appear entirely cut out of the loop by mainland officials who have taken the reins of Hong Kong’s most important policy-making decisions.
…she signed the national anthem bill into law this month, and her government has signaled school curriculums will need to be more Beijing-friendly. Both are efforts to instill what the government views as the appropriate type of patriotism, and force love of a motherland that many see as an oppressor.
The author advises readers to…
…stick around until the end for a cameo by Matthew Cheung telling diplomats Hong Kong’s mask ban came about because of a lack of property insurance.
In Apple Daily, Steven Vines on Beijing’s crackdown…
…the Chinese Communist Party has reverted to the only method that it really understands when it comes to suppressing opposition … The reliance on brute force to ensure compliance is an act of weakness, not strength.
In the introduction to the latest China Heritage piece Geremie Barme calls Education Secretary Kevin Yeung an ‘ideological ephebe’ (because to call him an adolescent would be an insult to Hong Kong’s teenagers). Yu Chun Him has seven questions for the minister about what will or will not be allowed in local schools.
East Asia Forum on the world’s pushback against Beijing’s moves to put Hong Kong in a chokehold.
For fans of CCP factions, an analysis of Politburo membership shows big increase in Xi-loyalists.
And, not coincidentally, China Media Project interprets the lavish praise of Xi Jinping Thought as Marxism for the 21st Century.
A couple of videos. The HK Ballet, very nice. And a fascinating (subversive, tongue-in-cheek) use of symbolism to create a spirit of nationhood (?) – a rousing Hong Kong Song (from the 60s? The first word is ‘Victoria’) against a backdrop of historic images, carefully chosen to avoid any reference whatsoever to the Mainland. CY Leung’s brain would explode.
Perhaps Chickeeduck’s Herbert Chow has already secured and solidified his HK Exit Strategy and is now playing stick wielder to the CCP’s hornet nest? If so, then he’s the true visionary… leaving HK with a prominent middle finger extended to “The Man”.
He might need extra rooms in his estate wherever for Steven Vines, Michael Chugani and other such people speaking out and allegedly protected by Hong Kong’s “core values”.
Maybe this is what Geremie Barme means when he calls Education Secretary Kevin Yeung an ‘ideological ephebe’
“ephebe – a genus of lichens having the thallus small and branched and composed chiefly of the algal element. The apothecia are small and round. The species are few and occur on wet rocks and earth.”
https://www.wordnik.com/words/ephebe
Bernard Chan is his usual laugh a minute self on the SCMP today. In summary, regulate and control journalists but leave the police to do what they will.
Look, It’s clearly incredible and rarely raised that none of these lame fokkers have resigned as a matter of principle, instead of being instructed and compelled to force-feed all this increasing bollox down everyone’s throat in their various increasingly reshuffled and venomous capacities.
None of them need the final few years of money, and none of them will be around in 25 years time, as they are mostly already in their 60s and at the end of their working careers.
So why not just leg it and say nah, I’m off, and not forcing this Stalinist nonsense on schoolkids, civil servants, and this will not be my legacy etc….?
Not one has had the danglies to step down, and they all seem to be all too willingly bending over to do a Tonny Rong…… Surely they don’t have the dodgy goods on each and every one? Unless of course you know different.
I think we have to accept at this moment in time that Hong Kong is hopelessly compromised. It’s over.
So Cheekyduck according to New World should ‘ensure that the decoration of the premises is at all times maintained to a standard appropriate to a first-class shopping centre’. Ummm …. this is Discovery Park in Tsuen Wan.
Built in the late ’90s so a little passe despite a re-branding to D-Park to give it some tekkie relevance.
New World should be delighted with the media attention. And I thought that its only claim to fame was its location on the route between the MTR and The Mills. Might even be tempted to pop in next time.
Max – My sentiments entirely, if a little more crudely expressed!
@max: Maybe being utterly contemptible slime bags IS their true nature? Remember, it took a few years to put together this cast of castoffs that no sane real leader would want.
@max
Lack of balls is one factor; you don’t climb to the top of the greasy bureaucratic pole by showing too many. But there are other factors. For a start, the reach of the CCP is long, both in space and time. And they play the long game. Secondly, while the Secretary for X may have reached retirement age, he has friends, and especially family, who haven’t.
The noose tightens: RE ‘REFERENDUM’
https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202006/19/P2020061900951.htm
Should the ward office be used for discharging duties not related to the DC, e.g. using the ward office as the polling station of the above mentioned event, the related expenses will not be reimbursed.
No-one has resigned
No-one has resigned, and that is reassuring.
Very few, the criminals who will be affected.
The Law is aimed at properly securing
The SAR against its foes within;
From the Motherland, some discipline.
Do not fuss, I tell my troubled mind.
Our honourable leaders – not one has objected;
It’s very reassuring that no-one has resigned.
SCMP: “National security law: plans for general strike in Hong Kong, class boycott fail to win enough support at unofficial ‘referendum’”
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3089902/national-security-law-hong-kong-workers-and-students-start
Ha. Ha. Ha. For months I have been saying that it was a only a tiddly fraction of HKers who wanted to take on China, but most people posting here thought I was a 4ckwit – Mark Bradley, Stephen etc. How right I was, though. I must say, however, that I feel sorry for those suckers who thought they were a part of a “Revolution of our Times”. Quite a few are now in jail and thousands more will soon be joining them. Sad. Very sad. I very much hope that their middle-age, super-comfortable supporters will now be thinking about how they can help them rebuild their lives after they are released from prison. After all it was many of them who egged them on. Cannon fodder never goes out of fashion.
@ Knownot
If there is any irony in there, I am failing to detect it……
max –
It’s hard to transmit irony through a screen. One clue is “honourable leaders”. Not even a zealot would call them honourable.