OK – now try it in the Mid-Levels

The Hong Kong government’s Mainland-style lockdown/mass-testing in Jordan was – let’s be generous – no more clumsily executed than we would expect. (Full photo-journal here.) The operation was leaked (maybe one in eight residents fled) and involved chained-up buildings. Not that there’s a neat, warm and cuddly way to do it, but you could at least make an effort to disguise the contempt for poor, elderly and brown people. Maybe chuck a few hundred bucks in with the instant noodles and Ma Ling luncheon meat, for the inconvenience? It makes you wonder what happened in Wuhan. (Official statement tries to sound sensitive.)

After putting 7,000 under house arrest – many in crowded and unsanitary subdivided apartments – officials find only a dozen or so positive cases. So was it panicky, heartless incompetence? Or did the lockdown yield useful and reassuring results, marred by an unfortunate dash of giving-Muslims-pork? 

Philip Bowring criticizes the whole pandemic strategy as disproportionate. The negligible impact of Covid on the city’s death rate seems to bear this out – but of course we could argue that at least some of the measures have helped keep Covid at bay. For all we know, if the government hadn’t closed the beaches, half of us would now be dead. If the authorities just pretended to know what they were doing, it would help. After all, apart from freak places like Taiwan and New Zealand, the whole world has been clueless.

As it is, citizens are left with the impression that the administration’s priorities reflect a traditionally dismal quality of governance, amplified by the malignance of the NatSec-era. It seems the number-one priority is to make sure all decisions on vaccines and travel restrictions please the CCP. Next comes the need to exploit the health crisis to suppress political protests and opposition. Third is to minimize the economic and social impact on our friends. Looking after the local community comes last.

Some good background on the origins of China’s court system in this SCMP piece by Jerome Cohen on the grim outlook for Hong Kong’s judicial independence…

Beijing and its Hong Kong agents have now made it clearer than ever that they expect Hong Kong judges to behave like their mainland counterparts. Local lawyers, especially barristers who specialise in criminal defence, should not believe they will be exempt from similar pressures.

Liberal Studies assignment is to watch an in-depth video presented by Alexei Navalny on the corruption of his poisoner Vladimir Putin, exemplified by an immensely tacky Putin’s Palace. Looking forward to the one on Xi Jinping. (Found the place on Google Maps here.)

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12 Responses to OK – now try it in the Mid-Levels

  1. where's my jet plane says:

    What really pissed me off was Patrick Nip, Sec for Civil Service swanning around the restricted area with an entourage, all disregarding their own fucking social distancing rules, talking to the “workers” (most of whom seem, from TV footage, not to be doing very much except stand around in gangs). Does that man have no common sense or does he assume he has a god-given immunity? But then, that applies to all the “officials” of this so-called administration.

  2. where's my jet plane says:

    Another thing that I wonder is when the so-called experts and officials are going to realise, in all the testing frenzy world-wide, that a test is only valid at the moment it is taken. Once the testee has the swab removed form his -or her or its – nose, all bets are off.

  3. Chinese Netizen says:

    Not to mention the vast numbers of asymptomatic carriers wandering the streets and false negs and false pos results.

  4. Reactor #4 says:

    @where’s my jet plane

    I know. One can only conclude that stupitity affects 85-90% of the populace (everywhere). Actually, this is is why I argue that demoncracy is a rubbish way for governments to be selected.

  5. The Poetry of Covid says:

    Well waddya know? Turns out all those filthy poor people and ethnic types just have normal amounts of 0.18% covid. So it’s back to rich old Chinese women like Rejayjay and Carrie money drawers as the super spreaders.

    @where’s my jet plane
    And also the preferred method of gathering thousands of people together to mill around a small facility while they wait to be tested by people who won’t have changed gloves every time is a great way to spread a disease.

  6. YTSL says:

    “Looking after the local community comes last.”

    It’s not news to us. Ditto re the authorities’ contempt for poor people (remember CY Leung’s comments back in 2014?). But in 2021, the whole giving Muslim people pork thing isn’t just a reminder of Hong Kong’s cultural insensitivity with regards to darker skinned people but also gets one connecting what’s happening here to Xinjiang even more.

    Also, for those who haven’t seen this Twitter thread on the food supplied during the Jordan lockdown by a historian specializing in famines, refugee camps and technologies of food security:
    https://twitter.com/JennyLeighSmith/status/1353271327042375682

  7. Mark Bradley says:

    Shut the fuck up Rectum #4

  8. Joe Blow says:

    What? They already finished the Jordan lock down? I thought it had a quaint Warsaw Ghetto vibe to it. I was, more or less, expecting HK popo SSers to put up machine gun nests at strategic street corners, and such.

  9. Din Gao says:

    Found this on a Google search for Reactor #4 -Chernobyl:

    Reactor #4 – DISCONTINUED

    Wishful thinking or premonition?

  10. HKJC Regular says:

    @ MBradley + Rectum: Such utterances suggest you are both in the percentile claimed by the resident myth peddler.

  11. Mary Melville says:

    By seeking to restrict the powers of the district councils and take away their funding, the sour grapes ousted parties are in fact admitting that there is little likelihood of them regaining their seats in any legitimate and free election.
    Alternatively one can only assume that they are dumb enough to have embarked on a ‘cut off nose to spite face’ tactic as cut backs in both decision making and access to funding would impact all councilors going forward.
    Voters are well aware that previously district funds were always siphoned off to support pro-establishment cronies.

  12. bagesty says:

    How about locking down Discovery Bay next? Not necessarily for COVID

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