The 2026 Policy Address is here, and the first Five-Year Plan is here. Or is it the other way round? One has a green cover, while the other is blue. The Policy Address starts by saying the Five-Year Plan is super-important. The Five-Year Plan agrees, and adds that it ‘leads’, while the Policy Address ‘implements’. (Also, the Budget ‘supports’, while the annual report ‘gives accounts’. All this is to ‘advance each task in an orderly manner’.)
The Policy Address focuses on NatSec, integration, patriotism, hubs, promoting fertility, and supporting and enhancing everything. The Five-Year Plan is similar, but leans toward promoting and developing everything, plus some supporting and advancing. And lots of anti-terrorism exercises.
HKFP reports on the AI City Brain and other stuff. CK Asset, CUHK, Swire, the Airport Authority, HKTDC and Henderson Land all issue statements welcoming everything.
I feel sorry for the bureaucrat-scribes who had to ensure that all the right buzzwords appeared in both documents, while trying to avoid too much obvious and tedious overlap.
Enjoy!
A CFHK report on abuse in Hong Kong prisons says that correctional staff in Hong Kong are rehearsing procedures for the death of Jimmy Lai. Good luck accessing this from inside Hong Kong, where CFHK’s website is blocked. I have been able to find the key points…
Targeting of political prisoners. Political detainees are singled out for round-the-clock monitoring, extra searches, screening and seizure of their letters, and separation from the wider population. Guards have imposed both collective punishment and solitary confinement for those who voice dissent or communicate with supporters outside prison.
Compulsory political indoctrination through “Project PATH.” The Correctional Services Department (CSD)—with direction from the Beijing controlled Committee for Safeguarding National Security—uses political “rehabilitation” programs to indoctrinate prisoners with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views and dissuade them from pro-democracy advocacy. Since 2021, the “Project PATH” program has forced inmates to attend pro-CCP classes, watch propaganda films, and sit through confessional counseling sessions. Allegedly 99 percent of protester prisoners participated willingly, but refusal can lead to loss of privileges as well as solitary confinement.
Systemic physical and sexual abuse by “B-boys” in juvenile prisons. A CSD-imposed hierarchy among inmates in juvenile prisons allows “B-boy” orderlies to beat, extort, and sexually assault others. “Sexual violence happens all the time” in juvenile prisons, sums up one victim. Juvenile prisoners feared B-boys more than staff, underscoring an entrenched culture of delegated brutality.
Assaults by CSD staff. Prisoners described specific locations in the prison system where CSD staff regularly take prisoners to beat or pepper spray them.
Solitary confinement as a routine form of punishment and control. CSD relies on both formal solitary confinement and supposedly non-punitive “removal from association” authority to isolate political prisoners for weeks, months, or even years. In 2024 the number of inmates in solitary units reached 879 cases, the highest level measured over the past three years. The practice regularly exceeds the 15-day limit for solitary confinement set by international law. Remarkably, the authorities maintain that in every case that lasted more than four months, the inmates themselves requested to be placed in solitary. This includes high-profile political prisoners, like Jimmy Lai and “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, who were subject to even harsher isolation.
Chronic medical neglect. Former inmates report widespread difficulties obtaining proper medical care, including untreated seizures, broken bones, and full-body rashes. We document the case of a prisoner who died due to official neglect after showing severe signs of psychological distress. CSD staff often dismiss injuries as feigned, refusing requests for treatment. Extraordinary hurdles to receiving specialized care deter most prisoners from even attempting to obtain it, and inmates are often denied their ongoing prescription medication upon entering prison.
Squalid infrastructure and hygiene. Many prison cells leak during rain, toilets stay broken for weeks, insects infest bedding, rats crawl out of toilets, and prisoners are denied air conditioning despite temperatures regularly topping 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) confined with heat-absorbing concrete amid sweltering humidity.
Restrictions on visits and communication. Political inmates report confiscation of books, intense surveillance or abrupt cancellations of visits, letters that disappear without reaching their intended recipient, threats to cut outside contact unless they remain silent, and being denied funeral leave due to their status as political detainees.
Psychiatric detention weaponized for silence and coercion. Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre is used to punish “troublesome” prisoners; some spend days in isolation there without seeing a doctor, while high-profile detainees can disappear there for months under claims of medical confidentiality.
Retaliation against complaints. There is no genuine independent grievance system; CSD ultimately holds authority over resolution of complaints and systematically protects its own. Guards regularly dissuade prisoners from filing complaints and retaliate against complainants through sudden disciplinary charges, transfer to solitary confinement, or assignment to mental health treatment at Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre.
Vulnerable groups suffer compounded harm. Transgender inmates are misgendered and denied hormones while being relegated to Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre; gay and lesbian prisoners are placed in “protective” but restrictive segregation; and elderly or infirm detainees struggle to secure basic aids such as extra blankets and specialized care.
Behind a plain old-fashioned paywall – Bloomberg op-ed on Joshua Wong…
Wong, who has been behind bars for six years, is the only person to be prosecuted twice under the [NatSec] law. A four-year delay in bringing the second case looked calculated to prolong his sentence and keep him in prison beyond his expected 2027 release date.
…to a security-focused, one-party state, any autonomous organized network capable of mobilizing large crowds is likely to look more like an attempted color revolution, probably instigated or fomented by foreign actors. This is exactly the party’s view of the 2019 protests, which is a calumny on the intelligence and independent-mindedness of Hong Kong’s young people. Chinese state media has for years branded Wong as an anti-China separatist, traitor and pawn of hostile foreign forces.
The twain will probably never meet. It only remains for us to decide how to respond. The liberal-democratic world has lost confidence in itself in recent years, assailed by the rise of authoritarian populists, perturbed by weak economic growth and intimidated by the growing power of China. That’s no excuse for fatalism. Are we willing to sell our principles for some cheap cars when braver people who were taught our values and acted to defend them languish in prison? I hope not.
Wen Wei Po is apparently upset about this being freely available.
“ The liberal-democratic world has lost confidence in itself in recent years, assailed by the rise of authoritarian populists, perturbed by weak economic growth and intimidated by the growing power of China. That’s no excuse for fatalism. Are we willing to sell our principles for some cheap cars when braver people who were taught our values and acted to defend them languish in prison? ”
Yes. The west is completely spineless and lost their way. They have done basically nothing to help HK people.
It’s HK today, tomorrow is Taiwan, and then the rest of the world thanks to western complacency.