From today’s Standard… Tears as people surrender their hamsters, lest the creatures breathe all over them. Shares in Checkley Sin’s old company zoom after he announces a bid to ‘run’ for Chief Executive. And the HK Police have a recruitment problem. A snapshot of Hong Kong today – marked by unfeeling and incompetent officials, corrupt elites, and once-admired public institutions in decline.
Which brings us to a big article from Prof Michael Davies – perhaps the ultimate comprehensive account of what has happened to Hong Kong under the NatSec regime. Among many points…
One would be hard-pressed to devise a fuller plan to shut down an open society and inhibit freewheeling debate.
The shutdown of Hong Kong as a free society is still only (say) 30% or 40% complete. Where else in modern times has anything like this happened? Maybe Czechoslovakia being Sovietized in the late 1940s?
And…
For the CCP regime, the NSL represents a momentous strategic choice. The regime has no doubt made that choice with a view not only to Hong Kong, but also to the risks of dissent and democratic ferment both within China and around the world.
This is not about Hong Kong; it is about how Beijing’s leadership views the world. Uighurs, United Front ops, arrests of lawyers – it’s all the same thing.
The demise of local recruits for the popo will not affect anything in the least as the department will be made to take transfers from the PAP/Gong An on the mainland. The bonus is HK popo will have 100% compliant and “patriotic” minded officers that will unquestioningly enforce dubious orders from supervisors and will carry out that enforcement with violence and even glee. They’ll also be convenient and cheap to house in old, run down barracks, wiping out the need for housing allowances or other perks.
And just like on the mainland, after a few years serving the front lines, they’ll be offered more cushy, low level government jobs like drivers for officials, passport stampers with immigration or other entry level civil service positions.
Hong Kong has been recruiting police recruits from mainland china for at least ten years. This isn’t news.
A question for your readers: what is that military-style installation ringed in barbed wire at the foot of Cotton Tree Drive and Queensway across from the Bank of China building, on the Wan Chai side? It looks very much like a detention centre, and is definitely being used, as it shows signs of being spruced up and maintained. But I don’t ever remember it being so for many years. There are no signs to identify it, but it looks well defended. And it doesn’t show up on any maps I can see publicly. Thoughts?
I used to get my black puddings there when it was the NAAFI
Professor Davies’ view that, “…economic policies which impact performance may be the only path to policy change…” left me shaking my head at the absurdly academic and unmanly nature of the prescription.
CCP leaders’ lives are unaffected by pinprick economic and trade restrictions. They laugh at condemnatory words from “the international community”, as well as they should. If restrictions are placed on the trade in computer chips or similar, their schemes to accrue personal power & money will go on unabated.
The swiftest and most effective peaceful means to bring about positive change in CCP policies would be for the five major English-speaking countries to cancel all visas of all types issued to all CCP members and all of their immediate family members.
That is likely to have an immediate salutary effect on their attitude & behaviour.
@Donkey – I think it’s a large cage for bastard rodents*. If you look closely, there’s a large wheel for exercise.
* not the DAB ones, but actual rodents.
Weren’t both cats and dogs supposedly found with covid in the early stages of this farrago? So why was there no call then for a mass cull?/sarc
@where’s my jet plane
Let them try. Seriously, they’ll have to take Fluffy Poos and Mr Wiggly from my cold, dead hands.
@reductio
Precisely. The cat/dog fandom would make 2019/20 look like child’s play.
Before they became potential killers, who even knew that hamsters were kept in HK? Unlike shops selling dogs and cats, and providing services for them, and shops selling aquarium fish, shops selling hamsters are (as far as I know) not conspicuous.
I once came across one in a plain, unsmart shopping mall in a NT town, on an upper floor, at the back. One or two of the premises nearby were unoccupied. (I assume they were selling hamsters – I admit that I don’t know whether they were hamsters or guineapigs or mice or something else.)
There would hardly ever be a casual passer-by, and this was before the Internet became universal. I imagine that, somehow, by personal contacts and word of mouth, people learned that if you liked hamsters, this was the place to go.
@Knownot – there is a shop in a Taipo mall selling mainly rabbits which also has chinchillas, and maybe hamsters as well – I haven’t had occasion to probe too deeply.
Oh they’re happy to cull hamsters.
But wait for the outrage if they propose to do the same with horses at the Jockey Club.
“Some animal owners are more equal than other animal owners” will be their response I suspect.
@Tyler I’d put the EU in there as well for good measure
@justsayin
Sure, the more the merrier, except the CCP players don’t want to invest or live in non-English-speaking countries, and they don’t want to educate their children in non-English-speaking countries, either.