Category Archives: Blog

Candidates for the new-style all-patriot Election Committee must disclose extensive details of past employment, foreign passports/residency (including spouse’s), ‘political’ plus (apparently) media/academic connections – and their friends and family will also be vetted. What’s weird about this is that the … Continue reading →

Films cleared by Hong Kong’s official movie censors might be illegal anyway. If that sounds odd, just remember that under the NatSec regime, anything might be illegal anyway. Indeed, the NatSec Law could easily have been named the ‘It Might … Continue reading →

Carrie Lam explains that cop-turned-Chief Secretary John Lee will not really be a Chief Secretary who coordinates all the non-security policy areas in which he has zero experience. In other words, he will serve mainly as another layer of NatSec … Continue reading →

Guardians of national security in Hong Kong’s education sector punish a couple of teenage students for performing the love song Galactic Repairmen by Dear Jane at a high-school music competition, because administrators deem the lyrics a threat to the Chinese … Continue reading →

Just yesterday afternoon, I was having a pee-pee in my apartment’s modestly sized but perfectly formed bathroom, and for some reason I asked myself, ‘Whatever happened to that PR company the Hong Kong government hired after much effort last year?’ … Continue reading →

Some days in Hong Kong are Orwellian; others are more Kafkaesque. Yesterday was one of the latter.  Schoolchildren in Plot to Blow Up MTR Stations. Police display plastic bags containing cash, BB guns and walkie-talkies (the sort of toy guns … Continue reading →

The authorities are preventing Hongkongers moving to the UK from cashing in their retirement savings early – a longstanding right for people leaving town permanently. The reasoning (that the Hong Kong government doesn’t recognize BNO passports, so therefore the departees … Continue reading →

John Burns in HKFP on how an ex-cop’s rise to Chief Secretary goes with a decline in trust,  accountability and the role of professional civil servants. And Steve Vines on Hong Kong’s transition to a police (or whatever you want … Continue reading →

Among this year’s July 1 festivities: Police stopping and searching cross-harbour buses, swamping Causeway Bay, detaining Grandma Wong, kicking kids doing soccer practice and domestic helpers having picnics out of Victoria Park, chasing the usual petrified 10-year-old, and (surprising it … Continue reading →

The 2021 honours list. The post-1997 Hong Kong honours system of Gold Bauhinia Stars and other medals is a direct relabeled version of the colonial-era system (MBE, OBE, etc), and as such is a cheap but effective way to reward … Continue reading →