…so probably not much going on here until the New Year (barring unforeseen etc).
Main horror of the weekend, according to Apple Daily, is a Hong Kong government plan to amend immigration law and entitle itself to bar people – without any other legal process – from leaving the city. This is presumably to plug a loophole where the authorities want to persecute someone but haven’t confiscated their travel documents, let alone jailed them. Can’t have people just wandering off whenever they feel like it.
An SCMP op-ed takes the new Bauhinia Party’s sort-of counter-establishment platform at face value, saying ‘they should be given a chance’. Which is obviously what you’re supposed to think. For a more skeptical view, try Ching Cheong (former prisoner of the CCP) at RFA.
Some interesting statistics: 722 (12%) of all local Covid-19 cases in Hong Kong came out of the recent ‘dancing/singing’ socialite cluster. That’s over 9% of all cases included imported ones. They account for nearly 40% of the current fourth wave. To a great extent, they are the fourth wave. Pie charts here.
Some other things…
Jeffrey Wasserstrom in Nikkei Asia likens Hong Kong today to post 6-4 Beijing.
The Diplomat on Apple Daily as a symbol of what is happening to Hong Kong, including some good background on the paper’s ups and downs over the years.
HKFP op-ed on the persecution of Hong Kong’s moderate pan-dems. Worth remembering that in many cases the older traditional pro-dem figures were openly proud to be Chinese, pro-1997 handover, and – in essence – willing to be co-opted into the system had Beijing been flexible enough to tolerate a dash of pluralism.
The US extends its Mainland travel warnings (against detention for political views, etc) to Hong Kong. Not unreasonable, so expect a high-powered mouth-frothing press statement any minute (they’ve been busy churning out this one).
A summary of an NYT story on how Beijing has micromanaged information from the beginning of the pandemic…
Videos that showed hospitals overrun, corpses in the streets, angry residents in lockdown were purged. Media was ordered not to call the virus fatal. Terms like lockdown were downplayed. The heroism of party officials was emphasized.
Hmmm of the Week Prize goes to the ‘Brits to Stamp Out CCP Menace’ stories. The Guardian presents the background on the UK’s move away from lovey-dovey win-win cooperation…
Overall, it represents as swift and complete a reversal in foreign policy as the UK’s shift from treating Russia as an ally in 1945 to cold war foe in 1946.
And the Spectator on how the UK will get tougher with Beijing, oh yes.
As well as Hong Kong and the Uighurs and obnoxious diplomats’ Tweets and Covid and much else, this change in the UK has been influenced by the CCP’s obsessive thing about Australia – explained in detail here by news.com.au. And ASPI Strategist looks into how Beijing has hijacked Australia’s Chinese-language media.
In the next day or two, some special recommended festive season links.
Immigration (Amendment) Bill 2020
https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr20-21/english/bills/brief/b202012041_brf.pdf
The new Regulation 6A relating to “Persons on Board Carriers” empowering the S for S to obtain crew and passenger manifests and the Director of Immigration to “direct that a passenger or crew member may or may not be carried” is presumably what is causing concern.
Something that I would like to know is, what happened to the imminent threat of bomb attacks? I have not seen, or heard, any mention of this most serious threat to life and property for some time. Did it just go away?
A Merry Christmas to all, socialite clusters included.
@Ho Ma Fan: The perpetrators realized that the risk of getting caught red-handed and losing face in front of a court was too high.
Brownnose of the week (month?) award goes to …(rustle, rustle)…
https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3114314/china-behalf-my-country-australia-sorry
Strewth, mate!
Court of final appeal ruled that the ERO and face mask ban is “constitutional”. I am sure if the court of final appeal sided with the 25 democrats, they would have been overruled by the npcsc. Because there were threats of this last year in November when the two judge panel originally ruled the ERO and face mask ban as unconstitutional.
Beijing went on a mouth frothing tirade against the hk judiciary. They said only the npcsc has authority to interpret the basic law.
And remember the original ruling in November 2019was essentially a “separation of powers” style ruling. That was the true and correct ruling.
But if court of final appeal makes such a ruling now then it would merely speed up “judicial reforms” and there would be a very nasty interpretation from the npcsc that overrules the court of final appeal and completely writes away all of the judiciary’s powers with a stroke of a pen.
Either the hk judiciary get all of their power written away by the npcsc or they self censor their ruling to something Beijing finds palatable.
Basically from a practical standpoint the hk judiciary is a useless ornament. If we are lucky they can be a Singapore style judiciary that still means decent commercial rulings, and even there it is only as long as there isn’t a state owned enterprise involved. Useless judiciary.
Reductio.
Fabulous letter from Doug “his own grave and fell over a” Cliff.
Sycophancy of this order is truly an art form.
I lost my lunch.
@ Casira – perpetrators being the police/prosecutors or the accused miscreants?
@Mark Bradley: “Basically from a practical standpoint the hk judiciary is a useless ornament.” Well said, and this captures the whole point of “rule of law with Chinese characteristics.” The law and the judiciary become a ceremonial ornament to wave while using a monopoly on violence to detain, torture, and intimidate whoever the CCP’s enemies are this week.
Casira & Din Dan Che – or miscreants being triads or pro-CCP agents provocateurs.
It must be weird choosing to suckle off the 95% empty teat. Day in, day out, the world you inhabit must look like a shit hole. It isn’t. There are many positives. Try to see them.
The lives of the people who loiter around here are some of the very best in the world. Harold Macmillan’s saying “You’ve never had it so good” is truer than ever. Many of “you lot” need to think about it.
Merry Christmas and happy 2021.
Writing this at 6.05pm: Slow week? It’s been an eventful first day of this week!
Just four developments that have got my attention: The runaway covid patient was successfully hunted down; The Court of Final Appeal rules that the mask ban is constitutional (at a time when we also have mask wearing regulations in place); High Court judge Anderson Chow dismissing a challenge by the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) over claims that police acted unlawfully by failing to make sure the media could carry out their duties while reporting on protest; and the banning of flights from the UK from midnight (and Cathay Pacific also announcing that this means they won’t have any flights TO the UK until at least January 10th, 2021, too)!
Great link to the Guardian article. Anybody else spot the typo concerning our beloved CE?
Joe
No