In case you missed it, in a lengthy and rhetoric-laden press statement Friday, the Hong Kong government…
…strongly condemned and firmly rejected the so-called “staff research report” recently published by the United States (US) Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the so-called “hearing” on the situation of Hong Kong, which again made slandering remarks and despicable threats against Hong Kong judges.
A ‘spokesman’ said…
“It is most despicable for the so-called ‘staff research report’ to name judges of the HKSAR specifically with a threat of imposing so-called ‘sanction’ on them. The threat is a shameless, sinister and malicious attempt to put spiteful pressure on judges in the HKSAR…
“…The politically motivated attempts by US politicians to undermine HKSAR’s due administration of justice by repeating a lie as if it were a truth simply reflects their ill intent and amounts to nothing more than an indecent act. Such attempts will only expose the politicians’ own weaknesses and faulty arguments and be doomed to fail.”
Several individuals are named, including Kevin Yam, who replies.
Following the demises of Zunzi and Transit Jam, HKFP’s main op-ed writer bows out…
Nowadays, the government has its own facts and its own version of history. Any expression which does not actively subscribe to both is to be contested and condemned.
…the practice is that comparatively harmless cartoonists and writers face a constant flow of official abuse … the inside of a Hong Kong police cell is not on my bucket list.
He asks whether this new intolerance comes from Mainland officials guiding the local authorities or is simply the doing of thin-skinned humourless former police. I would guess more the former in the case of awkward factual reporting (Transit Jam (plus press release phraseology)), and more the latter in the case of satire and jokes (Zunzi). Not that it makes much difference. The key thing is, it seems the more criticism that ‘incites dissatisfaction’ they eradicate, the harder they look for more.
Volumes containing Zunzi’s illustrations vanish from public libraries – including ‘storybooks published by the Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies for teaching grammar’. (Ma Ngok and Larry Diamond are also gone.)
An HKFP op-ed on all-patriot District Councils…
As Lam Miu Yan recently pointed out in Ming Pao, the problem authorities have is not with the electoral system itself, but with public opinion that does not support the government. So, their solution: marginalise public opinion until it uniformly supports us. This could take a long time.
(Wouldn’t it be quicker to establish a government that won support by having better policies? And that identified areas for improvement by listening to public opinion?)
The Economist’s Banyan declares a winner…
…a far brighter future beckons for Singapore’s young than for their counterparts in Hong Kong. They are slowly pushing at Singapore’s rigid boundaries. This month, in a first, a few hundred activists gathered on Labour Day to call for greater rights for, among others, foreign workers. The launch of Jom reflects a growing desire for independent voices. In Hong Kong, by contrast, a transport-news website promoting road safety, of all things, this week became the latest target of the authorities and was forced to close. Singapore is at a crossroads. Hong Kong has hit a dead end.
However, Reuters reports that Singapore is starting to suffer from Hong Kong property disease…
An exodus of foreign talent due to unaffordable housing costs would be a setback to Singapore in fulfilling its ambitions of becoming a technological and innovations hub. Those factors could also reduce the city-state’s appeal to companies and their employees as an alternative to Hong Kong.
SCMP on China’s declining birth rate…
Some blame the influence of Western culture, including tolerance of diverse lifestyles and an emphasis on individualism, and have called for a return to traditional Chinese family values – starting a family, nurturing children and supporting the elderly – to tackle a looming demographic crisis.
A family planning official complains of ‘individualism, feminism and materialism’ and ‘a disconnection between marriage, family and procreation … in Europe’ spreading among younger Chinese.
A bit rich considering for several decades Beijing enforced a one-child policy – complete with forced abortions, leading to a pattern where some families today comprise one kid, two parents and four grandparents. Among richer urban Chinese, housing costs and educational pressures have deterred child-bearing (as in South Korea, Hong Kong, etc). In rural areas ‘traditional family values’ have led to a sex-ratio imbalance and millions of young men unable to afford dowries.
(From HKFP – Hong Kong’s fertility rate hit 0.75 in 2021 – the world’s lowest. And even high-school students increasingly say they don’t want kids.)
After limiting price increases for years, a city near Shanghai bans developers from lowering them. And it looks like ‘food security’ is going to be a bigger thing in China, with the government forcing more farmers to grow particular crops in line with central plans.
The director of the laugh-a-minute China Dialectical Materialism Research Association and Beijing Philosophy Association and professor of Marxism on what will happen to Taiwan following a ‘non-peaceful reunification’.
The programme for Taiwan post non-peaceful reunification has some distinctly familiar features comparable to current events.
We have involuntary manslaughter to get you off the hook but there is no involuntary “despicable slandering” of officials. You can thus be done for talking in your sleep. Be careful.
Going into the curriculum soon – reporting on your Mom and Dad. Hurrah!
“It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak –“child hero” was the phrase generally used –had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.”
Wow, how to win friends and influence people, Chinese style. Maybe the Director of the CDNRA is a Taiwanese mole.
And on to Zunzi.
Of course, he was on the way out. It was just a matter of time. However, and I don’t want to do an Alex Lo here, free speech (drawing?) is under attack in the West too. It’s not just Jihadist wannabees who are calling for blood. I draw the court’s attention to the Guardian’s Martin Rowson’s cringeworthy apology for a (non) antisemitic cartoon, and Scott Adams (‘Dilbert’) getting the boot for treading on racial toes. All this censorship does is give people like Alex (love China but don’t want to live there) Lo ammunition.
The program of the China Dialectical Materialism Research Association and Beijing Philosophy Association for post subjection Taiwan is creepy and sounds reminiscent of Nazi plans for the Ostreich.
If had a so called HK dollar for every time that phrase was used in the government’s press releases it would probably cover the cost of buying the newspapers the press releases are getting printed in.
@comradeNV – the reverse had already where the Nasi Security Police were actively advertising to convince parents to report on their suicide bomber teen kids. It may take a few years before they can overcome evil foreign forces’ indoctrination of good HK kids with Pepper the Pig etc
@reductio–
Scott Adams deserved the ax. His racism is of long standing and increasingly has a real Klan vibe. Simply vile stuff. Not censorship when a punching down affront to civil society is involved.
Tim Hamlett wrote in HKFP:
“So no more politics. . . . I will try to find less stressful things to write about.”
So will I.