A letter in the WSJ from Mark Simon on the Jimmy Lai trial…
Under China’s national-security law, the proceedings were a farce: hand-picked judges, no foreign lawyers, no jury. The city’s common-law heritage—which nominally rejected retroactivity in criminal law—was junked. Mr. Huang would certainly cite an internationally recognized legal body, the United Nations or an English law expert who would praise the trial. None exist.
Describing Mr. Lai as someone who colluded with “external forces” is a transparent whitewash. His primary “offense” was having Western friends, running Apple Daily and being resolved to “fight,” not for America but for values inimical to the Chinese Communists. He was a newspaperman, and a successful one, which makes him a threat to a regime that can’t coexist with a free press. It’s nearly impossible to overstate the fixation of the city’s pro-Beijing political elites on Apple Daily, Mr. Lai and those in his orbit. I’m well-aware: I worked with Mr. Lai for more than 20 years and was mentioned more than 900 times in the verdict statement.
Reading Mr. Huang’s screed, one concludes that the government is trapped in a mess of its own making. Beijing finally seems to realize that it is the one forced to cash the reputational checks that Hong Kong has bounced through its own incompetence and authoritarian overreach.
From HKFP – China’s foreign ministry office in Hong Kong called in foreign diplomats…
In a statement published on Monday, the Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong SAR said it had lodged “solemn representations” and summoned representatives of “several” consulate generals, including the US and the UK.
…During the meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, the office expressed “strong concern and firm opposition” towards officials and politicians from those countries and the organisation over comments they made about Lai, who was found guilty in a national security trial earlier that week.
The office “urged those countries, organization and politicians to abide by international law and the basic norms of international relations, respect China’s sovereignty and the rule of law in Hong Kong, and refrain from interfering in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs in any form,” the statement read.
Also from HKFP – HK University bars students from holding a vigil in memory of the Tai Po fire victims…
Undergrad, the official publication of the now-abolished Hong Kong University Students’ Union, reported on Monday that HKU had refused permission to use a campus venue and had urged student societies not to organise memorial events.
More on ‘force majeure’ in Hong Kong from Index on Censorship…
The first known case of political force majeure occurred in March 2023, when a screening of the British independent horror movie Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was cancelled. Winnie the Pooh is often used to satirise Chinese leader Xi Jinping. When announcing the cancellation, the organiser, Moviematic, initially wrote on Instagram: “I believe you understand that in Hong Kong nowadays, many things are force majeure.” This line was later removed and replaced with “technical reasons.”
The Diplomat on China’s recent concern over pregnant women sending blood samples overseas for fetal sex-testing…
…Reportedly, the gang used social media to explicitly advertise “risk-free” genetic screening and fetal sex identification. The latter service is banned in China – begging the question as to why social media sites allowed such ads to proliferate in the first place. After the blood was sent to the gang, the blood-filled test tubes would be taped to the abdomen or inner thighs of couriers, or stuffed into suitcases or boxes of tea. With fees ranging from 2,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan, the gang’s revenue likely exceeded $30 million.
While the authorities didn’t confirm where the blood was eventually sent to, many news bloggers have speculated the destination was Hong Kong, which has long been a destination for fetus sex identification services. The location of the bust – Guangzhou, Foshan, and Shenzhen, all close to Hong Kong – adds some weight to this speculation.
…China’s 2020 Biosecurity Law makes it clear that the “state enjoys sovereignty over our country’s human genetic resources” and says the government must “strengthen the management and oversight of the collection, storage, use, and external provision” of these resources.
In 2023, the Ministry of State Security was blunt about what it believes the risks are of foreign entities getting their hands on Chinese genes. In an article shared on its social media accounts, it warned that “genetic weapons can be developed to kill targets of a predetermined race, so as to selectively attack targets with specific racial genes.”
According to the Smithsonian…
While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2% … [measuring] only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share.
I am fairly sure that the tiny differences in DNA among humans do not correlate neatly with ‘predetermined races’, and certainly not with modern national borders. Does this reflect official Chinese thinking on science? On bioweapons research? And will Hong Kong now clamp down on this weird smuggling operation?
Twitter keeps switching to its algorithm as its default feed, as a result of which I accidentally saw this halfway decent joke. Took me a moment to get it…
A priest, a pastor and a rabbit entered a clinic to donate blood. The nurse asked the rabbit: “What’s your blood type?”
“I’m probably a type O,” said the rabbit.
A deliriously merry Christmas to everyone. Alan Leong (Civic Party, etc) points out that the date 25-12-25 only happens once a century. Cosmic.
From the comments – a past seasonal airing of the genius that is Knownot.