DC election excitement latest

HKFP reports that the number of registered voters has fallen for two years in a row…

Voters in the 18 to 20 age group saw the steepest drop of 52 per cent. The age group with the second largest drop was those aged 21 to 25, in which voters dropped by 10 per cent. 

In other words, they’re not bothering to register (assuming they’re still in Hong Kong).

(This report on polling stations opening later gives a good rundown of the changes in elections in recent years.)

And Transit Jam does some digging into the challenges facing anyone hoping to run in December’s District Council elections, which look…

…more like a very small group of patriots giving jobs to their mates, and a long way from John Lee’s promises that all are welcome to stand in the election as long as they are patriots and follow Basic Law.

(Read his disclaimer over calculations of how many candidates local ‘committee’ members may nominate – the rules are not spelled out clearly on the official website. But either way, finding out who the qualified nominators are is near impossible.)

This SCMP columnist notes public ‘political apathy’ (which is surely a design feature of the restrictive patriots-only ‘improved’ election system) and pleads that…

…it is important that those with the power to nominate consider letting the Democratic Party take part…

Given how tightly managed these elections now are (most seats will not even be filled by candidates on districts’ ballots), many people will probably assume that all candidates will in practice be selected from a central shortlist. The nearest thing to excitement in these polls is whether the organizers let one or two Democratic Party members take part as a cruel joke – and that’s using the word ‘excitement’ loosely.

The waterfront carnival night-economy bizarre bazaar hub-zone will have to shut down during the fireworks show on National Day. (Presumably the authorities are petrified of what might happen if people are eating, shopping or strolling while looking at the pyrotechnics.)

Cool statistics…

HK’s deputy [Chief Secretary] Warner Cheuk revealed that the gov put on over 110,000 pieces of decoration at 3000+ spots across the city incl 70,000+ China and HK flags to celebrate the upcoming Chinese national day – a jump from 5,000 flags at 2000+ spot for the handover anniversary.

Some weekend reading and viewing…

Doublethink lab looks into China’s influence operations, ‘including official state media, participatory propaganda, and amplification through coordinated inauthentic behavior’…

We developed a codebook of official propaganda tropes, and will show how they are employed by state media and participatory propagandists. … Eight key tropes connect to the CCP’s narratives distorting the situation in Hong Kong: Vandals and Traitors, Western Hegemony, Law and Order, Perfected Hong Kong Democracy, Red Hong Kong, Powerful Ancestral Motherland, Magnificent Development, and Social Progress.

From Merics, an in-depth analysis of China’s attempts to succeed in its ‘discourse power’, covering NGOs, media, academia, etc.

An amusing New Bloom report on a book launch for The East Is Still Red – a book by a London-based pro-Beijing ‘anti-imperialist’…

Chen … spoke about how large China was and how the challenges of governing China were much larger than the West – so could not be understood by Westerners.

A new entry in the CMP dictionary: the People.

On out-of-area affairs…

Translation of a fascinating German article on the luxury hotel run by the Taliban.

And Monty Python in Japanese.