The CCP’s Hong Kong vote-fodder and all-purpose running dogs sense that – even safely protected from elections – they are on the wrong side of public opinion…
The pro-Beijing DAB party has urged the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, to mend fences with the people, saying government policies in the past few years showed that the officials were out of touch.
Could this be the same DAB that has spent the last two decades blindly supporting Beijing’s appointed incompetent bureaucrat-tycoon-crony administrations? Yes it could! But hypocrisy aside, they make an interesting point.
The Hong Kong government is now a mere puppet. The HK Police are a CCP-run political-oppression force running riot (latest escapade looking like vengeance for face-loss after Next Digital shares bounced following Jimmy Lai’s arrest). Judicial independence looks doomed. Schools are enforcing censorship and propaganda directives.
You would have thought someone in the murky but very involved and in-your-face power structure would at least want to create some sort of hearts-and-minds diversions. Something to sway fence-sitting ‘Silent Majority’ types who are uncertain whether or not it’s OK for the cops to knock pregnant women and 12-year-old girls around. High-profile initiatives that look at least superficially like there is a government interested in taking constructive positive action for the populace. There’s plenty of money.
A boost in health-care spending to reduce waiting times for treatment, for example. Reallocation of land slated for auction to affordable housing. If you want to be really basic, cash handouts for poorer families. Or if you want to tackle something tougher, phase out on-street parking for cars, or shake up the education system (on which subject, if you get angry about your tax dollars being wasted, best not read this on Chinese-language for non-native-speaking kids).
Yet playing nice (or at least playing at good governance) is the last thing on the CCP officials’ minds. Their only mission is to crush opposition, and establish the government’s legitimacy and respect through brute force and fear. Almost as if they want the job of taming the city to be as hard as possible.
Some China links you might have missed…
China Media Project on Beijing’s celebration of victory over the coronavirus (and a few ‘eyerolls of irritation’). How long before Hong Kong has to put up with this sort of stuff…
Let us unite even more closely around Comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the CCP Central Committee, strengthening the “four consciousnesses”, strengthening the “four self-confidences,” and achieving the “two safeguards,” bearing forward the great spirit of the anti-epidemic fight.
Also Beijing’s state media are setting up shop in Brussels to ‘tell China’s story’. What does that mean?
War on the Rocks looks at China’s strategy in the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands – creeping ‘law-enforcement’ presence.
And remember that snotty letter from the Qianlong Emperor to Lord McCartney in 1793? ‘We don’t need no stinking barbarian manufactured goods’. Here’s a revisionist look at it. Apparently, foreign emissaries were not that unusual in the court around that time, and His Celestial Eminence was pretty laid back about kowtows – but for some reason he had a hunch that the Brits might be bad news.
It is interesting to see that Exco convenor Charnwut Sophonpanich had a commentary published explaining the purpose of the mass DNA collection scheme the government is currently conducting, 11 days after the scheme started and just a few days before it will be finished. Why bother at this point?
China’s story
Xi Jinping’s so-called “Chinese dream” of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.” It is wrapped up with nationalistic notions of China’s inevitable return to the center of the global stageb>ever at the centre of the global stage?
Bugger.
Maybe I was missing the day it was covered in world history class but when was China ever at the centre of the global stage?
A worthy non-political public service would be to install free wifi in all public buildings (hospitals, courts & tribunals, office towers, etc.).
How difficult could it be?
Nice title today. Reminds me of Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest.
How is it that you have never used “A little DAB’ll do ya” as a title line before?
Did you notice that SCMP paywall has gone down or is it just me?
@Casira
I am always amused by the people who inform us regularly about their loathing of the SCMP, but seem to track it’s paywall status with the same intensity as Gary Glitter stalking prey through the railings of a primary school playground. Very odd.
Nice tribute to the late Diana Rigg at the bottom of today’s missive.
Did anyone notice how the alleged stock speculators in the Next Digital shares were charged by the police for Conspiracy to Defraud a generalized crime which can be used for various types of fraudulent activity, rather than Market Manipulation, a specific form of market misconduct which is under the Securities and Futures Ordinance and usually raised by the SFC against persons undertaking actions which manipulate stock prices and create a false impression of price levels or volumes.
As I described in July, there was much nervousness expressed by the Financial Secretary regarding the NFL’s impact on continued viability of Hong Kong as a global financial center (https://www.fso.gov.hk/eng/blog/blog20200719.htm) and even a personal letter written to the SFC https://www.sfc.hk/web/EN/files/IS/pdf/20200717_FS%20Letter.pdf, with them immediately seconding the same (https://www.sfc.hk/edistributionWeb/gateway/EN/news-and-announcements/news/doc?refNo=20PR68).
Why would criminal charges like this be brought by the police rather than the SFC? It’s my opinion that the powers that be, most likely those Mandarin speaking mandarins that direct the Chief Executive to, in turn, direct the various Hong Kong governmental “organs” under our now clarified executive led system have taken the accurate view that the global reputation of the police is already trashed despite the good report card they got from the international inquiry several months ago and the government therefore would have nothing to lose by using them to instill fear in the restless natives for daring to support a journalist which doesn’t express the “correct” views.
Bringing a proper prosecution by the SFC under the Securities and Futures Ordinance could be interpreted by market as this “organ” now succumbing to pressure to fall in line to support the glorious motherland much like, inter alia, Education, Health, Immigration and soon the Courts have been so rendered. Such perception, might scare the international business community, particularly those involved in the financial services area and typically regulated by the SFC and/or the HKMA. This would turn what I expect presently will be a slow departure of international businesses from Hong Kong in the next 5 years into a fire drill rush for the doors in the next 24 months.
I already hear talk of local fund managers with overseas offices instructing their portfolio managers and traders based in Hong Kong to, when there is a need to sell their holdings in H shares and A and B shares traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen, to originate the order from their overseas office and not from Hong Kong to avoid any charges brought against these persons for, shall we say acting un-patriotically”. At some point the international financial community will conclude that there’s no need to be in Hong Kong, except perhaps for their research analysts’ proximity to China and local sales staff to flog their financial products. All the decision-making likely to antagonize the government and the Mandarin speaking mandarins above will be moved offshore.
As an aside, the police also brought charges against these persons for money laundering which is a kiss of death, even if not true. The mere allegation of the same committed by a person or bank is effectively a sentence of guilty as charged, much like in the West a mere allegation of racism will destroy a career, or some 500 years ago a charge of being a witch we quickly bring one’s life to a painful end. I suppose this additional charge was brought as a foolproof way of jailing these folks in the event the police are not competent enough to prevail on the generalized Conspiracy to Defraud.
Just a few moments ago the SFC issued a statement on this, referencing their 2017 MOU with the police requiring them to cooperate to the fullest extent possible, and of course not being able to comment further given investigations are continuing. My biased interpretation of this is the SFC saying they really want to maintain their honor and purity but they are required to hold hands with the brutal thug police (and by extension the co-opted government) because the MOU requires them to. Eventually the MOU will require the SFC to sleep with them.
Then it is truly lights out.
Any evidence, any allegation, can be made at any time, directed at any person or group.
Question the powers that be, or make any unpleasing noises, and expect to be slandered, harassed, beaten, fired, jailed, prosecuted, assets frozen. Thoughtcrime is now official policy.
Punishment, originally confined to the individual, will soon extend to anyone associated with the individual — family members especially. A unity of powers now solidified, only the harshest of penalities and treatment can be expected.
Now considered a threat to long-term political security ala Tibet and Xinjiang, the same draconian governance practiced in those two locations will apply to Hong Kong. Mandarin-only schooling supervised by Han-Chinese teachers shipped in from the Mainland, “voluntary” classes in Xi Jinping Thought for children and adults alike, pervasive internet censorship, mandatory registration of identifiying details when going online, CCP officials stationed at all larger-scale enterprises, etc. At least we’ll finally know who Reactor #4 is!
The writing is on the wall. Things can only get worse, and can only hasten with the worsening geopolitical tensions involving China.
Those with the wherewithall to do so should consider making concrete departure plans.
@ Conference
despite the good report card they got from the international inquiry
What international inquiry? The only report as far as I am aware was the whitewash by the IPCC that, yes, had international members to start with, but who very quickly quit.
@Reactor #4: Yet here you are commenting. Old age is a shipwreck.
@MarkLane – touché. The mere act of purchasing a copy of Apple Daily or Next Magazine will soon be an admission of guilt before a ‘patriotic’ firing squad.
@Conference – thank you.
@Reactor – I’ve never reacted to your posts, but would like to politely suggest that you move into the current decade in order to remain, at least in your own mind, relevant. Gary Glitter and his clique of Vietnamese children are so 2000. Au courant insults will reference Joe Biden and his obvious penchant for touching and smelling little girls.
Brylcreem doesn’t blacken the hair, therefore the cultural reference is lost upon disciples of Xi. DAB spelled backwards, perhaps?
And lastly: + R.I.P + Emma Peel.
@Mark Lane: Easy to find Rectum4. He’ll be the one “stalking prey through the railings of a primary school playground”. Obviously something he knows a thing or two about.
Commissioner for Census and Statistics is next in line for Rectification. Her department had the courage to publish population statistics that clearly indicate that there is no need for the East Lantau Mega Line Property Developers Pockets Project.
https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/sp190.jsp?productCode=B1120015
“This publication presents a new set of population projections covering the period from 2020 to 2069, using the mid-2019 population as the base”
So numbers are going to increase from 7.5m to 8.11m by mid 2041 and then drop to 7.35 by mid 2069. So where is the urgent need for hundreds of thousands of additional units? Clearly our ‘housing shortage’ is one of affordability rather than supply as reports indicate that there are more than 200,000 empty units. The assumption that 3 people reside in a 50sq.m unit indicates that there is already ample supply of homes. Covid allowed developers to dodge the proposed tax that would have encouraged the offloading of some of these.
That the number of elderly will more than double by 2039 to 2.5m should finally get the community all hot and bothered about the continuous rezoning of land from GIC, community use, to Residential when clearly the urgent need is for residential care homes and other facilities to cater for this trend.
Will be interesting to see how the Thick Tanks react. No doubt a change of career for senior staff at Census will be demanded by the usual front line stooges.
Curious that the sernior police officer talking to the media about the market manipulation allegations was from the Narcotics Division.
@Reactor #4: just change ‘SCMP’ to ‘Big Lychee’: aren’t you describing yourself?
@MarkLane, para beginning ‘Now considered a threat…’: that would be considered a job well done by the people in Causeway Bay and the North.