It’s called ‘democratic centralism’

The Diplomat looks at the powerlessness of Hong Kong citizens as the government decides how to respond to the Wang Fuk Court fire investigation…

Shortly after the fire, student Miles Kwan was detained by police after distributing material demanding an independent investigation and government accountability. His detention illustrated the risks surrounding collective mobilization over the disaster. Without meaningful electoral leverage and with constraints on public organizing, citizens have few effective means to challenge the political settlement announced by the administration. 

…In [Beijing’s] Liaison Office’s framing, a report exposing pervasive failures in government supervision became an occasion to celebrate the administration’s capacity for self-correction. The announced measures were presented as evidence of responsible leadership, while the public was encouraged to recognize the government’s efforts and turn its attention toward future development.

…In Hong Kong, the chief executive can decide which officials should resign, which should remain, and when the administration should move forward. The people who suffered the consequences of its failures have few options to demand a different outcome. That imbalance lies at the heart of Hong Kong’s accountability problem, and no amount of official contrition or administrative reform can resolve it on its own. 

But it is not a ‘problem’ – it’s by design in what is a Mainland-style system that does not accommodate any possible challenge to the executive authority. No representative government, no separation of powers/checks and balances, no independent inquiry.

Which leads us rather elegantly to independent bookstores. Lingua Sinica on Hong Kong’s latest closure…

Though the circumstances in both cases intimated pressure on national security grounds, Greenfield and Elm Books were not forthcoming about their reasons for shutting down. “The road ahead is shrouded in fog,” Elm Books said in its message to the public. “If fate allows, we will meet again.” 

Luck Win, the latest casualty, has been equally guarded.  

State-backed media were far less reticent, and their coverage spoke volumes about what booksellers would not say. A full-page undercover report in the Chinese government-backed Wen Wei Po (文匯報) on July 13 helps fill in the blanks: it alleged that Luck Win and Elm Books had stocked “independence books” (獨書) that disparaged the country, the Chinese Communist Party and the National Security Law.

And now Agape Garden bakery.

Anyone following the more cerebral parts of social media last week would have noticed a sudden upsurge in posts on Mao Zedong as a tyrant – the tens of millions of deaths he oversaw, the allegations about peasant girls, etc. This followed China’s reaction to a French soccer player’s mention of the Great Helmsman. From First Post…

The “crisis” began with peak internet absurdity. Football fans, poking fun at Mbappé’s massive influence at his clubs, routinely circulate memes portraying him jokingly as a ‘supreme leader’. Shown a viral Photoshopped image featuring his own face superimposed onto the body of Mao Zedong, Mbappé casually remarked, “I think he was a Chinese dictator,” and broke into laughter. 

If Beijing had ignored the remark, few would have known or cared. But instead, Chinese authorities orchestrated a frenzy of mass outrage, removing Mbappé’s face from ads and threatening to ban TV coverage of his games, encouraging citizens to denounce the guy. For ‘hurting the feelings’, etc.

This did not exactly make China look like a confident and contented country. Mbappé and his teams’ profuse apologies possibly make some nationalistic Chinese citizens feel good (though being behind the Great Firewall, they couldn’t know exactly what Mbappé said in the first place). But it also highlighted the illiberal and cantankerous side of the Chinese authorities to the international audience watching the whole thing going viral.

Then comes the counter-reaction, and even Twitter and YouTube users who mostly follow celebrity news suddenly find themselves getting content about the Great Leap Forward famine and the Cultural Revolution. For example, a short witty cartoon showing Mbappe in the Cultural Revolution. And here’s part 2, featuring Hello Kitty.

First Post concludes…

Nothing reinforces the authoritarian nature of a regime more convincingly than watching it purge a footballer and extract coerced apologies over a historical truism. In its determination to let the entire world know that it had suffered a grave ideological injustice and would impose costs proportionate to the “insult”, China triggered a global Streisand effect—transforming a fleeting joke into an international case study in thin-skinned authoritarianism.

As the Sharp Text blog puts it…

…the Party under Xi Jinping simply can’t get out of its own way. Ever. [S]tories like this one provide a much louder reminder to the world that China is still an often-paranoid and chronically authoritarian state, where companies and citizens can be mobilized on a whim if it serves the Party’s opaque aims. Facing down a trade war with Europe, they are seeking to humiliate a French national hero who doesn’t even know who Mao Zedong is. It’s so senseless and embarrassing, yet completely unsurprising. 

Lingua Sinica examines the origins of ‘hurting the feelings’ and asks why the authorities chose to make such a fuss over this particular particular episode…

One exasperated Weibo user put it bluntly: “Mbappe’s words seriously hurt me, but I don’t know what he said; I hate him, but I don’t know why. I don’t even care about football.” 

Someone (as Jacques Chirac once said) missed a good opportunity to remain silent.