Are these the best arguments we can think of for sharply reducing the number of directly elected District Council members?
Former National People’s Congress Standing Committee member and Legislative Council president Rita Fan on Thursday said she fears the Hong Kong public can easily be misled into choosing the wrong people to sit on district councils and around 20 percent of seats should be filled through elections in future.
…a veteran member of the DAB, Lo Man-tuen, wrote in an editorial in Ming Pao that according to the Basic Law, district councils are not organs of political power, so there are no democratic rights when it comes to the councils.
Some weekend reading…
Interview with a CUHK visiting fellow on online media in the Mainland.
The Guardian on China’s new anti-espionage laws…
Observers have warned that the expanded law increases the risk faced by foreign individuals and entities working in China, particularly those in key technology, research and monitoring and other potentially sensitive sectors.
“The anticipated amendments to the espionage law add to the already breathtaking breadth of its provisions,” Jerome Cohen, a China law expert at New York University, said shortly before the amendments were formally passed.
Much of the concern has focused on a new provision expanding the law’s reach beyond the illegal handling of “state secrets” to cover any “documents, data, materials or items related to national security”.
Welcome to the world of spamouflage. Giant ASPI report (with quick intro/summary) on China’s social media influence operations.
Hu Xijin of Global Times says Europeans criticizing ambassador Lu Shaye’s comments on former Soviet republics are rude.
Foreign Policy on Beijing’s insistence that it can – and must – choose who gets reincarnated…
Bizarrely, for an atheist communist party-state, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) claims that only it can decide on reincarnations of Tibetan Buddhist lamas—a privilege the PRC says it inherited from the Manchu rulers of the Qing Empire, which included both Mongolia and Tibet.
Asian Review of Books on Dorothy Tse’s Owlish.
Out of area – Prospect on how Fox and Murdoch have corrupted American democracy.
And you thought the world started to collapse after Elvis swiveled his hips on TV. The rot set in a generation earlier when the evils of snuggle-pupping started to spread. Beforehand, of course, all was purity…
Speaking to 1,500 students at Wellesley College in 1921, Mrs. Augustus Trowbridge — the wife of a Princeton professor — railed against “the vulgarity and revolting badness of petting parties.” She said that the loose-moraled gatherings — along with jazz music, unchaperoned dancing and lipstick — were symptomatic of a decadent society, the Coshocton, Ohio, Tribune reported…
Former National People’s Congress Standing Committee member and Legislative Council president
Oh dear! The woodwork is still crawling…I thought she was long gone.
I remember Rita when she was Chief Whip…
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/–o9foDcKlGI/UUEq38eRV_I/AAAAAAAAAJc/KoZxPILC_7Y/s1600/Chief_Whip.jpg
A more appropriate name for Rita in another era might have been Mrs. Augustus Trowbridge.
“…a privilege the PRC says it inherited from the Manchu rulers of the Qing Empire…”
So Pooh actually DOES think he’s an emperor.
The “Manchu rulers of the Qing Empire” were regarded as invading foreign forces when they came to power. Too many layers of irony here to count…
OT but
Hong Kong on course to meet target of 35,000 high-fliers: chief secretary SCMP
Who does he think he’s kidding?
By “high fliers” they mean mainland coal barons from Shanxi with suitcases full of ca$h.
Some employers of Foreign Domestic Workers will be pleased to learn that non-citizen residents of HK (aka the little people who wash your underwear) deserve less Christian love than everyone else, according to the Church of Rome’s panda-cuddling representative here.
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1698283-20230428.htm
“…she fears the Hong Kong public can easily be misled into choosing the wrong people to sit on district councils…”
Given that the opposition has been arrested, exiled, and neutered, the only people Hong Kongers can choose are from the pro-government camp.
Wrong people indeed.
Rita Fan is entirely correct in claiming that the public are easily tricked into voting for the wrong people. How else would the DAB still exist? How else would LegCo include one member who has claimed undeserved academic qualifications for years, and another who publicly called for the murder of his political opponents?
That is why Hong Kong is in THE P E O P L E ‘ S Republic of China.
Maybe we should now call it the “Democratic People’s Republic with Chinese Characteristics”