Ten years after ‘Ten Years’

Jessie Lau in Prospect on the 10th anniversary of the film Ten Years…

Now banned in Hong Kong and Mainland China, Ten Years captured Hongkongers’ anxieties in 2015 over what their home may become by 2025, in a series of haunting vignettes depicting the potential impact of Beijing’s increasing control over the semi-autonomous city. Filmed on a tiny budget of just HK$500,000 (£47,400), it was an instant hit upon release, selling out screenings across the city before it was pulled from commercial theatres following pressure from Chinese authorities. When it unexpectedly won Best Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards a year later, Beijing barred the broadcast of the ceremony on the mainland, calling it a “virus of the mind”.

I was a journalist covering the film awards for local media in 2016—an era of relative press freedom that now feels like a lifetime ago. I still recall the shock that reverberated across the auditorium that evening: the moment of utter silence, followed by rapturous applause. The flash of cameras from the press area, as we all flocked forwards, scrambling over one another, for our front-page shots. The look of disbelief on the executive producer’s face, as he stepped onto the stage and spoke about how the award represented hope in Hong Kong; how it belonged to us all.

For anyone who thinks an EV factory makes sense in Hong Kong – a good Reuters story on China’s car glut…

China has more domestic brands making more cars than the world’s biggest car market can absorb because the industry is striving to hit production targets influenced by government policy, instead of consumer demand, a Reuters examination has found. That makes turning a profit nearly impossible for almost all automakers here, industry executives say. Chinese electric vehicles start at less than $10,000; in the U.S., automakers offer just a few under $35,000.

Most Chinese dealers can’t make money, either, according to an industry survey published last month, because their lots are jammed with excess inventory. Dealers have responded by slashing prices. Some retailers register and insure unsold cars in bulk, a maneuver that allows automakers to record them as sold while helping dealers to qualify for factory rebates and bonuses from manufacturers.

Unwanted vehicles get dumped onto gray-market traders like Zcar. Some surface on TikTok-style social-media sites in fire sales. Others are rebranded as “used” – even though their odometers show no mileage – and shipped overseas. Some wind up abandoned in weedy car graveyards.

These unusual practices are symptoms of a vastly oversupplied market – and point to a potential shakeout mirroring turmoil in China’s property market and solar industry, according to many industry figures and analysts. They stem from government policies that prioritize boosting sales and market share – in service of larger goals for employment and economic growth – over profitability and sustainable competition. Local governments offer cheap land and subsidies to automakers in exchange for production and tax-revenue commitments, multiplying overcapacity across the country.

Another hub idea: rather than assembling EVs, how about disassembly of aircraft?

In the SCMP (where else could it be? – a Chinese academic thinks the country could use West Germany’s approach to absorbing Taiwan …

Beijing could incentivise Taiwan to reunite with the Chinese mainland by learning from German policies adopted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Chinese government adviser told a security forum on Wednesday.

Zheng Yongnian, a political-science professor from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, said Beijing could consider steps such as financial support and unconditional citizenship for Taiwan residents.

He hinted that mainland China had the means to adopt measures similar to some of Germany’s post-reunification policies, such as a “solidarity tax” and exchange rate parity.

He told the Xiangshan forum in Beijing that when the East adopted the Deutschmark months before reunification, the East German mark was worth far less than the West’s currency “but they treated one East mark as equal to one West mark – that gave many ordinary [East German] people incentives to side with West Germany”.

He added: “The current exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the New Taiwan dollar is roughly one to four, and I think that could work.”

He also cited the German government’s nationwide “solidarity tax” – initially 7.5 per cent, later 5.5 per cent – on income and corporate taxes to fund infrastructure and integration, hinting that mainland China could adopt a similar approach.

The levy raised the equivalent of hundreds of billions of euros and is still being paid by the top 10 per cent of earners today.

The Deutschmark thing is irrelevant, as a ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy would leave Taiwan with its own currency. Anyway, West Germany made that pledge because the DDR’s currency was non- convertible, unlike Taiwan’s (though like China’s). Which brings us to the main problem with this academic’s proposal: German reunification involved a rich and democratic region absorbing a poor and unfree one. (Hence the solidarity tax – a wealth transfer to help the East catch up.) In the case of China and Taiwan, it’s the other way round: you’re trying to lure a free society with a developed economy into being taken over by a developing authoritarian one. 

The academic would be better off asking how things might have worked out if German reunification had involved West Germany being ‘incentivized’ to be ruled by the East German communist regime.