Some mid-week reading

A former HKU professor is given seven years for the manslaughter of his wife, after appealing an earlier sentence of life for murder. As several commentators have pointed out, this is barely more than the six years and nine months many of the HK47, like Long Hair, received for ‘conspiracy to commit subversion’ – participating in a primary election. Several, including Gwyneth Ho, got seven years or more.

Some Wednesday links…

Desmond Shum on China’s ‘bucket of money’…

Since 2020, China’s M1 and M2 have grown by 89% and 49%, while GDP rose only 36%.

…When money supply keeps outrunning GDP and velocity keeps falling, liquidity stops being a policy tool and becomes a structural condition. Each slowdown forces the PBOC to inject more cash just to keep the system afloat. 

…China has become a liquidity superpower trapped in a deflationary economy, sustained by capital controls and public compliance.

Taipei Times op-ed on the CCP’s concept of power…

Even gods are owned by the CCP. Officially, religion is also a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CCP. They claim the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation is an internal Chinese affair and must be administered and approved according to Chinese law.

Constitutionally, the CCP is also the “leadership core” for the “orientation for China’s advanced culture.”

Those are just appetizers; they also wrote in their constitution that they are the “vanguard” of “the Chinese people, and the Chinese nation,” so those are theirs to run as well.

They fear and loathe what they term as “desinification” in Taiwan, where culture can flow and develop naturally — sometimes expanding and deepening traditional Chinese customs and traditions, and sometimes finding whole new directions. Over time this has developed into something unique to Taiwan and individual to the people living here, regardless of whether they consider it “Chinese” or “Taiwanese” or both. Taiwanese do not belong to the CCP, which the CCP views as infuriating and threatening.

“The Chinese people, and the Chinese nation,” are not limited by geography; anyone they deem “Han Chinese” is included. The CCP considers up to 50 million people worldwide to be theirs, including over five million Americans, many of whom have no connection to China whatsoever other than ancestors who arrived in the distant past.

A lecture by Sarah Paine on the historic China-Russia struggle for power. She leaps forward in the chronological narrative, so you better know your stuff.