Your daily dose of pessimism about Beijing’s choice of new Chief Executive for Hong Kong, from the Diplomat…
Despite the false optimism that has been expressed by some in the international community who seek to find a positive story in Lam’s exit, her successor will likely be worse.
NatSec horrors du jour: the HK Journalists Association considers disbanding, the disciplining of teachers in the wake of 2019, and a guy gets 16 months in prison for protesting against the (never really punished) Yuen Long mob attack on MTR passengers on July 21, 2019.
TVB’s cringe-making response to criticism that an ethnic Chinese actor in black-face played a Philippine domestic helper. People seem shocked – as if no-one would imagine that this dinosaur schlock-media company stuck in the 1980s would do such a thing.
And don’t these morons ever go away? Bunch of car bores again want the government to devote a huge chunk of land to the world’s second-most mind-numbing sport…
“We need a motor racing circuit as part of a modern city…”
Unserious question: can’t they combine a motor-racing circuit with a golf course? A tedious-pastime hub-zone that wastes land and wrecks the environment efficiently.
Some Easter reading…
Podiums are cool! The M+ museum looks at Hong Kong’s high-density residential design, and makes it sound quite visionary and trendy.
From ASPI Strategist, how China’s United Front system extends influence overseas.
And from CNN, Beijing tries to stop pro-Putin domestic propaganda from leaking out onto international platforms (notably this one) – the perils of sending different messages to different audiences.
A Taipei Times op-ed asks: have you joined the Kowtow Club yet? Sure, ‘public groveling may significantly affect your self-worth and damage your reputation’ – but think of the money.
On more distant matters…
Serious Atlantic analysis of the choices now facing the US and the West in Ukraine…
What explains the desperate throw of the dice by the Russian high command? One may assume that neither Putin, nor his senior advisers, nor even senior subordinate commanders have an accurate picture of the situation on the ground. They know that they have been humiliated, but they do not have a feel of the battlefield. As stewards of a military that cannot adequately care for its wounded and that abandons its dead, they don’t care about the human price they are paying. In a system built on lies and corruption, they receive or pass on falsely optimistic information. Having sought to upend the notion of truth in the West, they now fall victim to their own pervasive untruths.
Foreign Affairs on how Putin underestimated the West.
And a former US Army Europe commander on the transformation of the Ukraine military.
“We need a motor racing circuit as part of a modern city…”
Isn’t that what the mainland is for??
The time and place for a motor racing circuit capable of hosting international competitions like F1 and MOTO GP was post Handover at Kai Tak.
For decades Kai Tak remained home to used car lots and a golf driving range.
With some imagination it could have become a street circuit for racing as well as home to hotels, residential accomodation, sports stadia and facilities, the MTR and ferry services as well as the eventually built ocean terminal.
We could have had a venue as successful as Macau and Singapore and long before Shanghai.
Re: motor racing
There is a very large piece of land, freshly reclaimed, over towards Chep Lap Kok way, and it’s hardly used at all. Quite out of the way, so few neighbours to annoy, and ideally placed for visitors from Macau and the mainland. What’s more, it’s almost completely flat and covered in tarmac.
Would TVB anx any regulatory authorities have a problem if an ethnic caucasian was made to play a Chinese character? We all can imagine the furore this would raise which demo strates the inherant racism at play here.
“We could have had a venue as successful as Macau and Singapore and long before Shanghai.”
You mean with….gasp!…VISION????
“ From ASPI Strategist, how China’s United Front system extends influence overseas.”
Tik Tok is probably China’s most successful soft power play to date and damn what a way to export ccp style censorship to the west
“From ASPI Strategist, how China’s United Front system extends influence overseas.”
Bit od turnabout is fair play I’d say.
Creepy US consulate (overweight) gweilo / CIA cover tried to chat me up in the gym few months ago, saying how excited he was to make “new connections” in the Fragrant Harbor.
Feck off mate, or I’ll hand your over to the grim faced chaps in Tai Hang.
@Fick: You sure you’re not giving yourself too much credit? Maybe the chap just wanted to chat you up for some possible drinks later? Either that or he was one of those Midwestern evangelical “Christians” (or Mormon) always on the lookout for new suckers to recruit into the flock?
“and on the third day he rose again, according to the scriptures”
I know it’s Easter but you’re too early, Reactor #4. Back to your cave please.
The article on the former USAREUR CO was quite interesting and especially so in that I’d bet you could insert “PLA” into wherever he was talking about Russians and you’d likely get the same end result: Corruption at top levels, top down command structure, unempowered NCOs and line soldiers, rote training, questionable battlefield logistical capabilities.
But I do know the PLA are AMAZING at doing choreographed martial arts demos and jumping through rings of fire!