Some ‘not guilty’ verdicts

A jury acquits seven people of conspiracy to commit bombing, while three are found guilty of a lesser charge of conspiracy to case explosion…

…three bomb plots involved planting explosives at a site near the Lo Wu border crossing point; Caritas Medical Centre, a public hospital in Sham Shui Po; and a car park in Tseung Kwan O, where a memorial was planned for a student who fell to his death amid a police-protesters clash in November 2019.

If convicted, the defendants would have faced up to life imprisonment.

Some echoes of the ‘Dragon Slayers’ case: also a bomb plot, also dating from late 2019, also tried under the UN model anti-terrorism law, and all but one of the seven defendants were found not guilty last year. Nowadays, the suspects would be charged under the local NatSec law, and tried without a jury by NatSec judges who hardly ever deliver ‘not guilty’ verdicts.

Another ‘not guilty’ decision, in the case of an LSD member charged with displaying an unauthorized poster at a street booth in 2022…

The poster featured pictures of the party’s detained members Leung Kwok-hung, better known as “Long Hair”; Jimmy Sham; and Figo Chan, alongside a Chinese phrase meaning “helping the needy, proceed without hesitation.”

Magistrate Kestrel Lam ruled that Yu was not guilty, saying the poster was small in size – measuring 1 metre by 2.5 metres – and was not especially eye-catching in the colourful streetscape of bustling Causeway Bay, according to The Witness.

The poster was only displayed for around 40 minutes and did not obstruct pedestrians walking past, he added.

Some weekend reading…

More on the symbolism of this week’s huge military parade in Beijing from China Media Project…

…in the days ahead of this week’s parade of high-tech weaponry, ideological moves of equal or greater importance have prepared the way for the CCP’s new historical consensus. This view rewrites the history of global war and peace to firm up the narrative of China’s centrality. It was the CCP, the story goes, that decisively won the war for Asia and for the world.

…As the soldiers, tanks, missiles and drones goose-stepped and rolled along Chang’an Avenue on Wednesday, and Vladimir Putin had his smiling moment with Xi Jinping, some might have felt a sense of America sliding out of contemporary relevance. But behind the physical demonstrations of military might and the cementing of partnerships, there was an insistent narrative effort on all fronts to re-position China — and by extension, the CCP — at the center of the global historical narrative. For the leadership’s vision of a “new type of international relations,” nudging American leadership out of contemporary geopolitics is only half the battle; ensuring that it slips out of the history books may be equally important.

George Magnus summarizes China’s mercantilism in a tweet…

1) the brazen pursuit of economic policies that result in huge [balance of payment] surpluses 2) Reserve asset accumulation fetish 3) Currency undervaluation and 4) … industrial policies that are unprecedented in scope and reach. All symbols of or leading to national greatness 

In Engelsberg Ideas, he writes an in-depth essay on the subject…

China was happy to take the outstretched arm of the US and others to join the World Trade Organisation in 2001, and benefitted enormously. The WTO, however, was not adequately equipped or empowered to deal with or discipline China, whose trade and industrial policy idiosyncrasies were tolerated for far too long. The long march, as we might say, of industrial policies embraced from the mid-2000s onwards included an array of initiatives spanning a special status for state enterprises, subsidies, direct grants and lending, below-market borrowing, state-directed credit, and technology transfer and procurement policies, all of which sustained China’s status as a ‘non-market economy’, notwithstanding understandings that these policies would not persist.

…Just over 80 years ago, a generation that had suffered the consequences of a fractured global economic and political order in the 1930s and then the Second World War, set up important institutions at Bretton Woods in 1944 so as to prevent the kind of commercial conflict that has now once again erupted. Yet, how is such a pinnacle of international collaboration to re-occur, when the world’s two major powers are adversaries? China wants to game the system, and the US has – for now at least – decided to replace the commitment to rules and alliances with transactional relations based on favour and patronage.

We are up to our ears in ‘reverse Nixon’ articles at the moment. The basic idea is that Trump is trying to pull Russia closer to the US in order to isolate China – the opposite of Henry Kissinger’s strategy in 1972. It’s nuts, but even assuming Trump really thinks on that level, the difference is that Russia is running rings around him as it deepens ties with Beijing. Francesco Sisci in Asia Times explains…

Putin is the total winner of the day. He can frame Trump’s erratic behavior as proof of influence, boasting to Xi and Modi: “I control Trump, stick with me, no need to talk with the Americans.”

Whether true or not, the narrative may seem believable, and if so, then anything can spin out of this spiel. Indeed, the next Trump-Xi summit, apparently scheduled for October, could take place under a Russian cloud. Is the US cornered? Trump now needs to prove that Putin is not in control. It could be very tricky.

For good measure, Trump is also driving India closer to Beijing…

…What many Asian diplomats find mind-boggling is the reason behind the betrayal [imposition of a 50% tariff]. Reportedly, it stemmed from a testy phone call, where Trump insisted Modi nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, as the US president had helped resolve the recent India-Pakistan clash (see here). The damage to the US is compounded by how trivial the cause appears, casting a deep shadow over its reliability as a partner.

Russia can now boast a political victory greater than any it has achieved in Ukraine, gaining significant political leverage points from which it can upend the current world order.