Ryan Ho Kilpatrick on ‘Sinicization’, with reference to Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt and Hong Kong…
…to treat Sinicization, in Communist Party parlance, as synonymous with Hanification, is to miss out on a crucial point. That is that, according to influential Party theorists and advisers, even ethnic Han people must be “Sinicized” as well — because it denotes not only the forceful spread of an ethnic identity but a political one.
…Professor Jiang Shigong … notes that the Hong Kong cultural elites he earlier chided as too Westernized to grasp the profundity of Xi Jinping’s speeches had, in fact, retained Confucian rites, feudal hierarchies, and a classical language largely lost on the mainland. Paradoxically, they are both too Western and too Chinese. And it is actually the latter — an enduring sense of attachment to “cultural China” but not “political China” — that is even more dangerous to the Communist Party, for it represents what Jiang refers to as the ceding of “cultural leadership”…
Jiang worked for the Liaison Office for a while, and has written extensively on Hong Kong. Article includes a link to his essays, and a pic of one of his works seen at Hunter Bookstore.
From Joel Chan…
Latest data as of 31 Mar 2026 shows there were a record 4,798 prisoners on remand (presumed innocent) in Hong Kong jails, which is a record 43.24% of the total prison population (of 11,096).