Cruise passengers – a sad bunch at the best of times – express disappointment at the poor facilities and transport links at the giant, worm-shaped, HK$8 billion CruiseVoid terminal at Kai Tak.
It is a genuinely weird structure, comprising some of Hong Kong’s largest enclosed emptiness. Imagine repurposing it as elderly homes (nice garden on the roof), accommodation for young people, artists’ studios – attracting enough people to support some retailers and restaurants. And you could still have room to dock a ship full of idiot tourists.
Al Jazeera on Hong Kong’s embrace of a Mainland tactic…
As pro-democracy Hong Kongers continue their activism in self-imposed exile, police are turning their attention to their families, friends, and associates still living in the city.
…Hong Kong authorities’ shift to targeting families is the latest sign of the city’s growing alignment with the authoritarian tactics of the Chinese mainland, where families and friends of dissidents are often harassed by police and pressured to encourage their loved ones to return to China or stop their activism, activists say.
Reportedly, Hong Kong police also have plans to arrest Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt, creator of the Pillar of Shame. This sounds nuts, except maybe it doesn’t. Includes a short history of the allegation that ‘foreign forces’ have been behind Hong Kong’s discontent.
Some reading from the weekend…
An HKFP explainer tries to pin down the dreaded but indefinable ‘soft resistance’. As China’s top Hong Kong affairs official is quoted as saying…
…be wary of ‘soft resistance’ causing chaos in secret…
Will Hong Kong be pressuring economists who publish pessimistic analyses? Now happening in the Mainland. George Magnus comments on an FT story (‘Chinese economists told not to be negative as rebound falters’ – no-one can mention deflation)…
…since the party is responsible for China’s economic rise, leads everything and can’t be wrong, the model must be right… So when pesky ppl like economists start to point out that things are going awry, they must be calling the model and therefore politics/the party into question. This is something hostile foreign forces do, and hence verboten for Chinese economists.
But not verboten for Magnus – his thoughts in the Spectator…
While a number of Chinese economists have gone on the record to advocate for more substantive measures to boost household consumption, the authorities seem clueless about what to do. Perhaps no one wants to tell Xi Jinping that only economic and institutional reforms – which are anathema to the party – can improve China’s outlook.
Instead, the government has recently stopped publishing a consumer confidence index because it isn’t conveying the ‘right’ information…
NYT investigative report (seemingly non-paywalled) on how Beijing co-opts and funds leftist groups like No Cold War and Code Pink in the West…
On the surface, No Cold War is a loose collective run mostly by American and British activists who say the West’s rhetoric against China has distracted from issues like climate change and racial injustice.
In fact, a New York Times investigation found, it is part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda. At the center is a charismatic American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, who is known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes.
What is less known, and is hidden amid a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies, is that Mr. Singham works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.
From a think tank in Massachusetts to an event space in Manhattan, from a political party in South Africa to news organizations in India and Brazil, The Times tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.
The bottom line…
…a seemingly organic bloom of far-left groups that echo Chinese government talking points, echo one another, and are echoed in turn by the Chinese state media.
On a related subject, a long academic paper from last year…
Twitter has pushed public opinion on foreign policy into partisan bubbles that often value alternative media sources over traditional media or political elites. Public opinion on China is no exception. On the left, some alternative media outlets support China as a socialist ideal, while others criticize it as a key player in global capitalism and neoliberal order. This leads to an important puzzle: How and why do some transnational left media disseminate pro-China messaging while others do not? We focus on two leftist alternative media outlets: the Qiao Collective and Lausan.
Thread on the transformation of a wall in Brick Lane, London – from hip street art, to pro-Beijing slogan, to anti-CCP slogans.
“…Hong Kong authorities’ shift to targeting families is the latest sign of the city’s growing alignment with the authoritarian tactics of the Chinese mainland, where families and friends of dissidents are often harassed by police and pressured to encourage their loved ones to return to China or stop their activism, activists say.”
I suppose kidnapping family members of HK residents not even remotely involved in a fray, while they visit dying grannies or the such will be next, even if they’re 100% foreign citizens (You can check out but you can never leave https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46352336 ).
Yet another good story to tell about HK.
Not related to anything in today’s post, but a discussion in the comments section a while back (Stanley was quite involved): https://youtu.be/l0f3yZ9jJPY
The link is to a clip of Mehdi Hasan on MSNBC (yes, I know, leftish bias), about a very unfortunate consequence in Samoa of RFK Jr’s anti-vaxx stance.
‘Why is it only broadcast now?’ you might – legitimately – ask.
Conspiracy theorists would probably go for collusion between the White House/DNC and a pro-Biden network to smear an election rival who, at that time at least, was polling at around a decent 20%. After all, the network has the former WH spokesperson on as a presenter (although Hasan himself is a pretty independently-minded character, less likely to allow himself to be directly influenced by the establishment political machine).
Others might say this is the kind of scrutiny a candidate running for US President can expect to get (when polling at around 20%); indeed, it is the job of the media to lay out the views and actions of those in public life in the interest of transparency, and tell ‘bad’ stories.
Or a mix of both. Take your pick depending on your view of the world.
Just nitpicking, I know, but the famous abandoned vessel was actually called Mary Celeste, not Marie.