What could have been

More HK47 mitigation pleas – Winnie Yu, founder of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance in 2019 – has her statement cut short…

She cited the Hong Kong government’s failure to contain community outbreaks during the Covid-19 pandemic as one the reasons she had hoped to stand for election, adding that it was “unheard of in other democratic countries” to be accused of subverting state power for attempting to run in legislative elections.

…“Even now, I am still of the view that there is nothing wrong in bringing changes to the established order through voting in the legislature. Perhaps the only wrong I have committed was that I love Hong Kong too much,” Shek read from Yu’s mitigation letter, before he was cut off by judge Andrew Chan.

The judge said Yu’s statement was “not a mitigation letter at all,” bearing no indication of remorse from the former unionist.

From the Standard…

“This is not a mitigating letter, it’s a political speech…do not say so in my court,” [NatSec judge Andrew] Chan said.

[Yu’s lawyer, barrister Randy] Shek argued that when one expresses regret for something that has been done, people may question their motives or sincerity.But Chan dismissed him, saying: “Then don’t mitigate! You don’t have to mitigate. You see? That’s fine.”

Looking through the full list of names, you see a number of people including Yu, Chu Hoi-dick, Lam Cheuk-ting, Jeremy Tam, Gwyneth Ho and others, who could have been impressive political figures contributing to policymaking if Hong Kong had been allowed to have a representative system of government. Eddie Chu, for example, knew (and thought) more about land policy than any of the usual officials who never manage to address the housing issue.

Hong Kong’s numerous talent-attraction schemes have drawn some 300,000 applicants so far, with 200,000 approved. This must come close to matching the outflow of (mainly) middle-class expatriate and local residents during the Covid/Nat-Sec era. A partially effective way of trying to keep the population numbers (or at least property prices) up.

One slightly surprising piece of news: Hong Kong’s inequality has declined. Not (it seems) that anyone has become less poor – just that the better off have suffered a decline in net wealth, or emigrated.

Some weekend reading…From Made in China – another look at Beijing’s version of Qing-era history…

[British Museum exhibition] ‘China’s Hidden Century’ drew a wave of harsh, combative criticism from Chinese academics … hey wrote that the primary issue with the exhibition was its ‘wrong’ historiography and distorted interpretation of Chinese history. They argued that, instead of portraying the Qing as a Chinese dynasty defined by unambiguously Chinese characters, the display presented it as a multinational polity under Manchu rule that conquered and colonised diverse territories, including both Han-inhabited China proper and non-Han areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. The exhibition’s biggest historiographic mistake, according to Xia and Cui, was framing China as part of the multinational Qing Empire, rather than viewing the Qing as a transient historical period of China. They alleged that this distorted view could have serious political implications—undermining China’s territorial unity, separating ethnic minority territories from the rest of China, and legitimising efforts by anti-China forces to divide the country.