A Stand News explainer on the ongoing second NatSec Law trial, of Ma Chun-man…
Unlike the city’s first national security trial, which ended in July, Ma is not accused of committing violence and is charged solely on the basis of what he said.
Lingnan University fires academics Hui Bo-keung and Lo Wing-sang critical of the NatSec regime. Better news for the boss at HKU, however.
The Confederation of Trade Unions formally disbands.
Nice Try of the Week Award goes to the HK Police for issuing special social-media quasi-memes marking Mahatma Gandhi and International Non-Violence Day. Security Secretary PK Tang can’t understand why many Hong Kong people dislike the cops. Also on Twitter, a selection of the HK Police’s greatest hits.
An ongoing rectification of Jiang Zemin-faction/Zeng Qinghong-linked Public Security and other officials in China deals with Sun Lijun and gets going on Fu Zhenghua. Asia Sentinel does a bit of digging and finds an intriguing, if not very specific, Hong Kong angle. (For more, see the original 2020 IRIS think-tank report – at least do a search on ‘Hong Kong’ to see the now-Security Secretary getting a mention. So far as anyone on planet Earth can tell, elite CCP factional power-struggles are going Xi Jinping’s way.)
References of Hong Kong in many Mainland TV shows have been replaced with ‘大灣區’ – ‘Greater Bay Area’. Watch for RTHK and others to follow suit – for example ‘hugely popular Greater Bay Area movie star Jackie Chan’. Former CE CY Leung called for this new identity three years ago.
The SCMP reports a government Covid advisor as saying that opening Hong Kong’s border with the Mainland will take ‘at least four to five months of negotiations’. So that could be six, seven or eight months. Why can’t negotiations take four or five days – or hours, even? Or does the word ‘negotiations’ really mean ‘an excuse to continue sealing Hong Kong off from the rest of the world’?
So I’m guessing HKU’s honcho was parachuted in from the mainland to ensure correct education amongst the kids? Judging from his Pinyin name.
In other news, I believe I saw last Friday no international spectators at the Beijing winter games next year. Not sure if this includes spectators from ‘Chinese Taipei’
I can only see the lifting of travel restrictions once Cathay Pacific have been declared bankrupt and the glorious GBA airlines that would never have any protesting staff flying in PRC airspace are the sole HK carrier. Telling that GBA were the first to land on new runway etc…
Where have we heard this before?
“Even if we legislate Article 23 or national security law, actually [it] will impact only a small group of people, not the majority, and these people have been warned repeatedly to stop, or else they will face legal consequences,” said Tam Yiu-chung, the city’s sole delegate to China’s National People’s Congress.
In associated matters we now have a Pan-GBA talkshop – “Pan-Greater Bay Area Inward Investment Liaison Group”
For “delegate” read “quisling”
Looking forward to the proliferation of pan-GBA organizations, to fill the vacuum created by the gutting of a certain southern-GBA city’s civil society.