Today’s Can’t Make This Up Award winner: HKU students are arrested for ‘advocating terrorism’ by mourning the guy who stabbed a cop and then killed himself. Was that tragedy terrorism, or the act of a mentally disturbed person? Is mourning advocating? Can any judge convict someone for this with a straight face? (If I were the defendants, I would consider claiming devout personal Christian convictions. Or at least quote John Donne.) Is the students’ real crime not respecting the police force’s apparently inflated sense of victimhood? Could the police leadership at least find better uses of taxpayers’ money?
Runner-up in the Can’t Make This Up Award: former Chief Executive CY Leung bemoans the ‘radicalization’ of youth to which his own policies surely contributed. Oblivious to Beijing’s recent exclusion of opponents, democrats and non-CCP-worshipers from elections, his think tank suggests…
…platforms must be broadened for young people to participate in politics and public affairs.
And in today’s purge of civil society, the 612 Humanitarian Fund – which helps prisoners and arrestees – is to cease operations. Will the NatSec regime scramble to freeze assets/arrest organizers before the group winds up?
At least the latest departure from the West Kowloon Cultural Hub-Zone is probably nothing to do with political rectification. Some other sort of embarrassing bureaucratic screw-up, maybe, but not that. Maybe.
This just in: the judges have ruled that a late entrant to the Can’t Make This Up Award qualifies for joint winner. The government’s US$6.4 million (later haggled down to 5.7 million) public relations consultation with the Consulum agency yields a bunch of slogans grabbed from a handy thesaurus, featuring ‘innovation’, ‘cosmopolitan lifestyle’, ‘dynamic’ and ‘diverse’, adding up to ‘the best place in Asia to live, work and invest in’.
Stuffing their US$5.7 million into their pockets, the PR folk rush to the airport to join the hundreds of families seeking one-way tickets out.
(One booming investment opportunity right now in Hong Kong: relocation services for emigres taking pets with them. Really.)
Well CY Jelly definitely wins the Catch-22 Award for suggesting people get involved in civil society activism and…*gasp*…POLITICS…when that’ll just expose them to the witch hunt. Maybe THAT’S his intention?
Absolutely believable about the pet relo business. It is MASSIVE and highly lucrative. I did a brief stint in the relo game in the mainland many, many years ago as a naive young lad and saw some truly eye watering amounts of money corporates, governments and individuals would shell out to have some of the best traveled non humans in the world make the transitions from London or Cincinnati to Shekou or Huizhou more bearable for their humans!
Notice that Vag Ip asked the requisite “hard hitting” questions about Consulum’s contract and what was accomplished, to which the Minister of Umm, Uhhh & Obfuscation gave a lot of puffery and official blah blah at which point Vag was satisfied and didn’t press the issue, having appeared to have given a flying fuck and not wanting to be the next one investigated by NSL Gestapo for daring to make anyone uncomfortable.
At this pace The Expats may be airing before my 21 days hotel quarantine is up!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/nicole-kidman-allowed-to-skip-hong-kong-quarantine-media-say
I’m wondering if Amazon having not just one but two productions about expats in Hong Kong (which, from their descriptions, will either ignore the protests and subsequent repression or just have them as an annoying backdrop) is part of the overseas campaign to make it seem like things are A-okay in Hong Kong?
https://twitter.com/rhokilpatrick/status/1427917254713245696
@YTSL
Maybe it’s an Amazon-Consulum joint production titled “Best Place in Asia for Expats” with the tagline “As long as they’re called Nicole Kidman”? Part of Amazon’s new TV fantasy series …
‘ One booming investment opportunity right now in Hong Kong: relocation services for emigres taking pets with them. Really’
Yes, really. I got a pushed ad on social media offering four seats on a private jet to Heathrow, with the kicker that you can bring your pets with you. Guess if you have to ask the price you can’t afford it
Oooh goody!! Maybe Netflix will counter with an adaptation of Theroux’s “Kowloon Tong”!
Personally my favorite “Expat in HK” was Roger Moore as 007.
@BigAl — The Nicole Kidman not needing to undergo quarantine bit really puts the icing on the cake of a thoroughly distaseful series of developments, doesn’t it?!
https://hongkongfp.com/2021/08/19/hong-kong-exempts-actor-nicole-kidman-from-covid-quarantine-as-amazons-tone-deaf-expat-tv-shows-see-backlash/
Oh, but she’s not allowed to take public transportation while in Hong Kong…
https://twitter.com/tripperhead/status/1428261545440464902
…like she’ll care!
“Hong Kong: The best Hong Kong in Asia to live, work and invest in.”
There — fixed it for truth in advertising.
How come I feel much more terrorized now than before 1 July 2020?
Asia’s Worried City,
Reminds me of the succession of increasingly desperate claims once made for that large reigious statue in Ngong Ping. You know the one.
As I recall, they went something like this, with one following the other as the previous one was debunked.
1. The World’s largest Buddha.
2. The World’s largest outdoor Buddha.
3. The World’s largest outdoor seated Buddha.
4. The World’s largest outdoor seated Buddha made of bronze.
5. The World’s largest outdoor seated Buddha made of bronze on a hilltop.
6. The World’s largest outdoor seated Buddha made of bronze on a hilltop in Hong Kong.
I don’t know where this progression of claims currently stands, but without a doubt, your suggestion that Hong Kong is the best Hong Kong in Asia contains more than a grain of truth.
@YTSL – Nicole Kidman’s “not allowed to take public transportation while in Hong Kong…” According to tonight’s TVB news, this didn’t stop her from going shopping in Central. Presumably she walked from her suite at the Mandarin or wherever?
@Asia’s Worried City: Thank you!