Big Lychee, Various Sectors

It’s unlikely that right-thinking Hong Kong people plan to turn out for December’s Legislative Council ‘improved’-style election. The only candidates you will be able to vote for will be shoe-shiners approved as sufficiently ‘patriotic’ by Beijing’s elaborate new vetting system. Even sycophants are under pressure, and one is trying to display her loyalty by asking the government to advise everyone not to vote for people who will not be on the ballot anyway…

DAB legislator Elizabeth Quat complained that publicity for December’s Legco races does not emphasise strongly enough that only patriots can be allowed to rule Hong Kong … the authorities should … warn people not to vote for anyone who isn’t patriotic, she said in Legco.

With typical thoroughness, the government official concerned agreed with her.

The government will spend HK$38 million on encouraging people to vote. (Maybe HK$38 billion would do the trick – depends how they distribute it.) The HKFP piece also says…

Calling on others to cast a blank or invalid ballot is punishable by up to three years in jail.

…which is news to me. But have no fear – I won’t call on people to go to the polling station at all. (When officials were considering this, they seemed unclear about whether it was possible to criminalize urging a boycott but not the promotion of voting. The Big Scary Thing now seems to be ‘vilification’ of the election.)

In the meantime, there will be an even more absurd ‘election’ in September for the Election Committee – the (mainly appointed) body that rubber-stamps Beijing’s choice of Chief Executive, and will also nominally conduct the screening-out of non-patriots from the LegCo poll and appoint many LegCo members. The EC has always been a farce, but now they’ve given up pretending. Rather than being chosen by 246,440 voters, the body will now be selected by just 7,891 – a 97% drop. The reason is that humans are now barred from voting; only organizations (mostly United Front astroturf ones) will participate…

Under the new electoral list, the education sector has 1,725 voters … this compares with 80,000 voters from the sector in the [2016] election…

Local media also reported that 404 bodies have registered as “grassroots organisations,” a new group. They included such entities as the Modern Mummy Group, Tai Kok Tsui Friends, and “Chinese Arts Papercutting Association”.

Officials trying to boost the numbers of voters turning out for rigged and pointless elections must also contend with net departures. And they’re not alone. School principals coyly call on the Hong Kong government to analyze the reasons for and do something about emigration. Schools are apparently noticing a fall in the ranks of both teachers and students. Maybe the problem will be solved when the principals themselves have left town and there’s no-one left to complain.

HKFP op-ed from Steve Vines on the hypocrisy of Hong Kong officials whose spouses and kids hold foreign passports. It is possible to have a more sympathetic view of the predicament that at least some civil servants and others are in – given that their co-option by the CCP might have involved pressure, and their families are not necessarily to blame. But to hell with that. Far more satisfying to enjoy the sight of Beijing making its own toadies squirm for their status-symbol Legislative Council and Election Committee seats. 

From now on, sycophants will have to pay for the privilege of being shoe-shiners. The more zombie-like ones will adapt, but those with lives (like lawmakers with companies to run) will find the council attendance rules and impertinent questions about passports far more onerous. And this is before the weekly Xi Jinping Thought study sessions become compulsory.

Issued in the early hours of Saturday morning – the Hong Kong government’s extensive whine, intoning ‘facts speak louder than words’ at the beginning of three consecutive lengthy paragraphs, complete with passages in mellifluous Mainlandese, about something it could just as easily shrug off…

 “The US Administration’s latest attempt to issue a so-called ‘advisory’ to US businesses and individuals operating in Hong Kong based on totally ridiculous and unfounded fear-mongering about the situation in Hong Kong only serves to prove yet again its hypocrisy and double standards, driven by ideological hegemony,” the spokesman said.

Kevin Carrico on the cop-stabbing/suicide Leung Kin-fai…

When the punishment for peaceful opposition and violent acts are essentially the same, some people will tragically choose violence.

The police chief suggests that certain views of this case could amount to inciting terrorism or sedition. (‘Could’ depending on what? Funny how the senior law-enforcement officials sound just as clueless as anyone else about what the NatSec Law actually means). 

From Mary Hui at Quartz: a NatSec court spends days debating the meaning of ‘Liberate Hong Kong…’ and whether Malcolm X was a secessionist. 

On which subject, the official trailer of Revolution of Our Times – likely to trigger some upsetting memories.

EJ Ensight op-ed by Neville Sarony on the HK Justice Dept’s embarrassing obsession with letting its lawyers style themselves ‘Senior Counsel’…

One may stick a label on a duck and call it a swan but it remains a duck.

Within the DoJ there are legal officers who are entitled Senior Government Counsel, why would any patriotic legal officer want to dissociate himself from government? Surely, they cannot be ashamed or embarrassed of being so described?

A compliant Legislative Council will be eager to accommodate the SJ’s desire, ably assisted by little green-eyed monsters gazing covetously at a title to which they cannot aspire.

And scenes at the British Airways check-in at Hong Kong airport in the last few days of the LOTR (apply-for-BNO-in-the-UK) system.

Hong Kong anti-doxxing law to be pretext for censorship and protection of officials caught in massage/hotpot situations. Who’d have thought it? Because leaving press freedom in tatters isn’t enough.

On the subject of Hotpot-gate – word is that Beijing’s officials have not so far issued a ‘line to take’ to their local supporters.

Some worthwhile reading…

Further to the Hong Kong government’s lack of non-security policies, Steve Vines in HKFP on the HK$5,000 vouchers.

Jerome Cohen on the contradictions surrounding the still-unresolved Taiwan murder case that set off the extradition bill crisis in Hong Kong.

In the ‘Move Likely to Anger China’ department, the Cannes Film Festival will screen Revolution of Our Times, directed by Kiwi Chow (who contributed to Ten Years and remains in Hong Kong). Variety says… 

…there’s now a risk that China will boycott future editions of Cannes, just as it is punishing the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan for the island’s go-it-alone tendencies.

Hollywood Reporter adds that the…

…hard-hitting chronicle of police brutality during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests in 2019 … is certain to attract the ire of China’s ruling Communist Party.

So soon Mainland movies won’t appear at any international festivals.

Also in HKFP, a look at how different sides fight over wording to put their own spin on Hong Kong-related (and indeed many other) Wikipedia entries.

In Chinafile, former lawmaker Charles Mok examines why Beijing is going after the tech giants.

An analysis of China’s Great Firewall… 

China’s Great Firewall currently blocks around 311,000 domains, with 270,000 blocks working as intended, while 41,000 domains appear to have been blocked by accident…

For example, researchers said that when Chinese authorities blocked access to reddit.com, they also accidentally blocked access to booksreddit.com, geareddit.com, and 1,087 other sites.

Protocol on the deletion of Mainland LGBT social-media accounts…

Some online voices have accused the West of using LGBTQ+ ideas to undercut China’s global rise. “External forces first show that they understand minorities, and then propagate how much minorities are respected in the West. After such brainwashing, minority groups will mostly lose their confidence in China’s system and follow suit to become the West’s vassals,” one WeChat blogger wrote. “China’s competitiveness lies in its demographic dividend, and through LGBT propaganda external forces are reducing China’s fertility rate to weaken China’s competitiveness.”

Latest evil Western plot: ‘Brainwashing by showing understanding for minorities’.

In the ‘Going Down the Tubes’ department, Asia Times ponders Belt and Road’s prospects in Afghanistan, and 9-Dash-Line looks at China’s relations with Central and Eastern Europe.

Global Taiwan has some good short articles – notably on how the CCP’s 100th anniversary ‘highlights the unbridgeable gap between Taiwan and China’, and (for enthusiasts) the disruption to Taiwan-Macau ties.

What do the 23rd floor of a Hong Kong skyscraper, a variety of (especially Mainland) rich scumbags, and the delightful Pidgin phrase ‘Long God Yumi Stanup’ (‘In God We Stand’) have in common? The Guardian explains. 

Today in history – Mao’s famous swim in the Yangtze river. He was really into this quite a lot, even taking a dip in the Pearl River in the 1950s…

“The water,” Li went on, “just as I had feared, was filthy. I saw occasional globs of human waste float by. The pollution did not bother Mao. He floated on his back, his big belly sticking up like a round balloon, legs relaxed, as though he were resting on a sofa.”

One of the sad/strange/amusing things about senior Hong Kong cops making public statements (even after they graduate into ministerial positions) is the clunkily delusional nature of their fibs. Presumably, in the police force, if a top officer shouts ‘one and one are three’, the ranks snap to attention and say ‘yes sir!’ without a thought. But it doesn’t work that way with the rest of us. 

Security Secretary Chris Tang announces that three top officials from his branch, including the Immigration and Customs bosses, ‘sacrificed family time’ to attend that hotpot dinner with Mainland developer Evergrande at an exclusive club as part of their duty to ‘meet all walks and ranks to know what society is thinking’, at which they broke social-distancing rules, which came to light (you know how these things do) as part of, um, a rape investigation. Unlike an actual politician who lies bare-faced as a formality (they know we know they’re lying), PK seems to seriously imagine that we must and will all accept it without question. 

This reflects an extreme inability not just to read the public mind, but to realize the public actually have minds. It explains the obvious frustration displayed by senior cops when the public don’t think their way (as with flowers outside Sogo, mockery of ‘terrorist plot’ stories, etc).  

(In fairness to law-enforcement professionals, this guilelessness is apparent in some of the other more out-of-their-depth bureaucrats who have found themselves promoted to bureau-heading quasi-politician positions.)That said – has someone had a word with Tang about wild claims of imminent terrorist attacks?

He now seems to be downplaying the idea, admitting that if a real threat was detected we would have constant airport-style searches and checks everywhere. Maybe Consulum, the disappearing public-relations agency, managed to get this point across before they joined the hordes leaving town.

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 EC is in practice a ceremonial body with no real powers. But this is classic CCP-enforced righteousness. Shoe-shiners wanting the social cachet of being an EC member will now have to sweat for it.

On the subject of integrity, top Hong Kong officials are punished for breaking social-distancing laws over hotpot with just a small fine, while ordinary folks get arrested for shopping or picnicking – and Carrie gets flustered at the criticism. And a judge warns Yuen Long thugs of stiff sentences. Savour such tales of bureaucratic transparency and judicial independence while you can.

Beijing’s officials are really scrubbing the SARs clean. Pan-dems in Macau – a small but hardy bunch – are banned from the gambling enclave’s pseudo-elections. Again, the legislative body there is powerless anyway, and Macau has a small, docile, Mainlander-heavy population and is already under tight Beijing control. Xi must have ideological uniformity.

RFA reports on the extension of NatSec surveillance into universities, through official encouragement of student-teacher snitching. Not creepy at all.

Small wonder that people are leaving. As this Bloomberg op-ed points out, it’s difficult to measure the number of people emigrating. The net departures in the Immigration Dept figures include expat workers leaving because of Covid and not being replaced, from laid-off pilots to domestic helpers. There will be some Hong Kong-resident Mainlanders moving back over the border for the same reason. The rest must mainly be the middle-class refugees fleeing to the UK or Canada. And unlike the emigration of the 1980s-90s, these people are not getting an insurance policy – they’re cashing one in.

Local officials’ bravado over emigration suggests they find this a touchy subject, though Beijing’s overseers surely find satisfaction in seeing unpatriotic ingrates depart, and in tormenting them by withholding their MPF retirement funds.

All we can say is that lots of people – especially those with kids – are talking about it, and most of us know someone making serious preparations to go. One possible indication of how many: dozens of YouTube channels offering tips on housing, jobs and life generally in Manchester, Watford, Cardiff, Nottingham, Edinburgh, more Manchester, and almost any other city (did you know the small and obscure city of Hull has a social centre for Chinese elderly?). Some videos are by property agents, but many are emigres sharing experience – a new YouTube binge-category ‘Hongkongers in British suburbs’ is born. Their delight at the size and price of their new houses suggests they’re not coming back to Hong Kong soon.

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 Be Illegal Anyway Law’ if the drafters hadn’t been in a rush. For example, there’s no law against holding a primary election or putting stickers on your door – but it might be illegal anyway. It might be terrorism! It’s good to have this sort of thing cleared up.

Your next question will probably be: Why do we still need the Film Censorship Authority? 

The best way of answering this is to look at how the government as a whole still actually requires some non-NatSec functions. So under the new system, the (ex-cop) Chief Secretary will focus on NatSec, but will delegate authority over non-NatSec trivia (the economy, housing, old folks, ethnic minorities, etc) to the Chief Executive and her policy secretaries in their spare time (‘perhaps I will continue to work on them’) when they’re not taking his NatSec orders. Similarly, the NatSec Police’s cinema-censorship officers will focus on ensuring that foreign, splittist, non-patriotic ideas – stickers, say – are eliminated from our screens, but will leave the FCA to stop kiddies from seeing women’s boobs.

It’s all very simple once you understand.

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 in the hierarchy. We had guessed as much. 

As befits that appointment, she also indicates that her Policy Address in October will be a drab list of vague banalities. They always are, of course, but you would have thought someone somewhere might propose some slightly bold quality-of-life or social-welfare initiatives to try to divert attention from the relentless NatSec awfulness of Hong Kong today. (One of the justifications for the new regime, remember, is that now all the evil foreign-backed elements are jailed and crushed, we can have better governance and address those ‘deep-rooted problems’.) 

The fact that there will be no carrot to go with the stick suggests that the grim Beijing officials now running the city behind the scenes see suppressing and punishing Hong Kong as their sole task. They see no point in trying to persuade any wavering silent middle-ground in the population (or ultra-moderate Democratic Party politicians) that the CCP can be benign. We don’t need no stinking ‘hearts and minds’ strategy.

Some reading from the weekend…

A Harvard Kennedy School paper co-written by former lawmaker Dennis Kwok on what the NatSec Law means for business…

The HK NSL does not define “national security,” nor do the implementing regulations made under Article 43 of the HK NSL. The definition currently being applied by Hong Kong police and prosecutors is sufficiently broad as to encompass participation in journalistic activities and democratic primary elections. 

Jerome Cohen’s thoughts on Prof Johannes Chan, recently demoted by HK University.

From CSIS, how Beijing’s hubris – buying its own ‘decline of Western democracy’ idea – is throwing its international relations off course.

Interesting BBC report on the foreign vloggers pushing Xinjiang denialism on YouTube and elsewhere, often with Beijing state media help.

From RFA, Beijing cracks down on karaoke – banning songs by Cui Jian and Beyond…

Zhejiang current affairs commentator Sun Jialin said the move is part of an ongoing bid by the CCP to control every aspect of cultural life, including people’s inner thoughts and feelings.

And HKFP reports that Hong Kong could double the amount of land it has under cultivation (which isn’t much, obviously) if it grew veg on rooftops.

Or in spare rooms: curry plants, Thai basil and (still in infancy) chilis are thriving just up from the Central business district…

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 Communist Party’s monopoly of power. Meanwhile, valiant police protecting the nation from flowers outside Sogo thwart an evil counter-revolutionary plot involving chives. The 217 cops involved will be recommended for Silver Bauhinia Bravery Medals.

The trials of 47 pan-dems rounded up in February are postponed until late September, leaving the majority not granted bail in (sweaty, non-air-conditioned) detention. The 47 were arrested for ‘conspiracy to commit subversion’ – otherwise known as participating in the pan-dem primary election a year ago.

It sort of seems the NatSec regime is claiming a need to assemble large quantities of documents to keep the defendants in jail and their lawyers from seeing evidence for as long as possible. 

The eradication of pan-dems from public offices is nearly complete, as dozens of the camp’s district council members resign ahead of being disqualified (an attempt to avoid possibly being forced to pay back their salaries). Hong Kong’s once-representative political bodies will henceforth be rubber-stamps stacked with NatSec regime loyalists. There will be nothing to vote for.

On the subject of dismantling things, New World are to rename their Pavilia Farm residential development Fawlty Towers. (There’s also a Pavilia Hill, Pavilia Bay, Mount Pavilia and Fleur [not making this up] Pavilia – so that’s a ton of housing complexes now with a name that’s not only inane, but cursed.)

Some weekend reading…

A (big) paper by Minxin Pei in Journal of Democracy on China’s course towards neo-Stalinism under Xi.

North Korea attacks Apple Daily.

A new think-tank ‘dedicated to a slogan’ – CMP on the Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Rule of Law set up in Beijing a week ago.

Why do so many of China’s new modern art museums have white males in their top jobs? The Art Newspaper (kinda heavy on white females, but anyway) has found four of them (including Hong Kong’s M+), on fat salaries.

And a detailed but interesting account of Ketamine in China, from a basic military anaesthetic to recreational drug among nightclubbers to more recent decline in use – mirroring the social changes in the (ahem) ‘party-state’.

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?’ Maybe I hadn’t been checking ProvokeMedia.com, or the guy who writes their Hong Kong reports had left, or Consulum’s grand relaunch project was still in the works – or maybe there was some other, perhaps juicier, explanation. 

And voila! Hours later, all is made clear. The PR company – one that could stomach the Saudi account – has scurried off. It seems they did some ‘baseline research’ (love to see the executive summary) and maybe cobbled together a plan for some propaganda-ish ads, encouraging the bureaucrats to…

…run a business confidence campaign overseas later this year that will pave the way for a ‘Relaunch’ campaign tentatively next year.

We might guess that the company, watching in mounting horror as the CCP officials behind Hong Kong’s NatSec regime determinedly drove the city into a bigger and bigger reputational ditch, decided – not very tentatively – to grab what they could of the US$6.3 million and run. 

Which is exactly what – as I finished my pee-pee – I had surmised. Cue slight deep, warm feeling of glee. (Hint to Information Services Dept managers still adjusting to the new way of doing things: when you relaunch the ‘Relaunch’, slap an extra zero on the budget and don’t quibble about the exact terms/deadlines of deliverables. Works for the other dictatorships.)

Meanwhile, some updates for any PR firm thinking of pitching…

The NatSec regime comes for Falun Gong. Not sure what took them so long to go after this virulently anti-CCP but nonetheless wacky and grubby quasi-Buddhist sect – presumably it doesn’t touch Hongkongers’ lives the way RTHK, pan-dems, Apple Daily, the legal system, etc do.

The FLG idea comes from a legislator trying to ingratiate herself with the regime. Not to be outdone, a colleague of hers comes up with this.

The Bar Association objects to the government giving Justice Dept people ‘Big Macho Senior Counsel’ badges. Nothing they can do about it, of course – what better win-win than to devalue an independent institution’s symbol of integrity while tossing a cost-free reward at your shallower quisling staff?

The HK Police Anti-Flower Division deploy dozens of men outside Sogo as part of Operation Everything is Normal.  

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 and walkie-talkies used by annoying teenage cosplay-soldiers in country parks). Also, Guy Fawkes masks and coffee filters. The cops say they found ingredients for making TATP – a peroxide-acetone mixture plus an acid. As pointed out here, this could mean hair bleach, nail polish remover and toilet cleaner.

Look – maybe there really is such a plot, with a ’revolutionary group’ and its $10,000 in sinister ‘foreign currencies’. It’s just that after the last four, five or whatever ‘bomb factories’ and other such contrived-looking alarms since 2019 (plus real MTR atrocities in Yuen Long and Prince Edward), people are jaded and skeptical. Especially when we have senior officials ranting things like…

Mourners for attackers will become terrorists. Security Secretary Chris Tang even hints at arresting an academic who analyzed the Sogo flower-laying as ‘sympathy for someone who died or to register discontent with the government’. No-one expects cops-turned-cabinet secretaries to be nuanced or subtle when others contradict their line on National Security-threatening Terrorist Violence Mayhem, but it’s starting to feel like we’re headed towards criminalization of views that don’t echo the ‘heroic police/security state’ line. And there are those credibility-sapping frantic HK Police outta control hashtagging tweets. And then…

Carrie Lam says ‘ideologies’ threaten Hong Kong’s youth. (Oh for the days when it was ‘Hey Kids – Say No to Drugs’!)

Government departments “shouldn’t allow illegal ideas to filter through to the public through education, broadcasting, arts and culture, beautifying violence and clouding the conscience of the public,” Lam said.

“I also call on parents, principals, teachers, and even pastors to observe acts of teenagers around them. If some teens are found to be committing illegal acts, they must be reported.”

Not creepy at all! Among today’s list of pro-democracy bodies disbanding to avoid being rounded up for thought-crimes: an alliance of protesters’ parents, HK Psychologists Concern, and a group of actuaries.