Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Just heard that a new season of Kodoku no Gurume/the Solitary Gourmet – classic Japanese food porn featuring unlikely hero Goro – is on the way. And the long-awaited, desperately overdue second series of Kobayashi-san’s Maid Dragon is apparently in the works. (I’m not some pitiful, depraved manga freak. These are serious works of contemporary culture.)

Also, My Little Airport are, it says here, planning concerts in August, at KITEC in Kowloon Bay. (Are concerts allowed now? Are songs like this allowed now? Vid of last show here.) 

And the good news keeps coming. An Air Force C17 carrying three US senators touches down at Songshan Airport in Taipei, and needless to say it’s a move – or landing – ‘likely to anger China’. So far, it seems Beijing is biting its tongue while nationalists do the ranting, as the three meet President Tsai and bring promises of vaccines. (Vid here. Go to the right part of Zhongshan district in Taiwan’s capital, and little boys and other plane-spotters get a great view of incoming aircraft, even if most are smaller domestic flights.)

Friday’s massive June 4 performance showed all the signs of petrified Security Bureau bosses scrambling to be seen to comply with a table-thumping command from the CCP/NatSec HQ: make sure there are zero visible vigil-type activities. 

Hence roadblocks at cross-harbour tunnels, deployment of a water cannon, the arrest of Chow Hang-tung (since released), thousands of cops standing around Causeway Bay, cops stopping and searching citizens on streets and on mountain-tops, one valiantly blowing out candles, and such sights as six police surrounding a plastic candle left on a pole. 

All so the puppets can demonstrate obedience to their masters, regardless of how comical or desperate it looks to the public, no matter how much a huge crowd of cops in Victoria Park resembles a sort of weird vigil in itself. In the streets, people strolled with their phones lit up (HKFP video). Result: a ‘self-own’ by the paranoid regime that, if anything, unified and boosted the morale of its enemies, and helped boost 6-4 awareness in the NatSec era.

Because the ‘optics’ were aimed at satisfying the CCP guys. “Look sir! Look! Look! We spent millions in overtime to keep six concrete soccer pitches empty! Just like you told us to!” What did the NatSec HQ officials threaten their local underlings with? Being found in an unlicensed massage place, or something more serious? That’s how it works in the top-down punishment-based system on the Mainland.

Ever eager to call more attention to the Tiananmen anniversary, Beijing freaks out over consulates joining in the candle-burning. 

Which brings us rather neatly to an amusing read: Fun Ways to Annoy China and Support Taiwan. Includes Beer! And Pineapples! You can also try this.

Also, Kevin Carrico in Apple Daily on the CCP’s attempted…

…reframing of the events of 1989 from the ruthless suppression of a nascent civil society by a corrupt aristocracy willing to do anything to stay in power to an origin myth for China’s reform-era economic miracle…

(Pics plundered from here, here, here and here – where there’s more.)

It seems the CCP has sent out the word that absolutely no June 4 vigils are to take place in Hong Kong. The event that cannot be named must not happen or even be publicized, as we will remind you at length. The countermeasures (and counter-countermeasures) are drawing so much attention it would have been lower-profile to just let the usual event go ahead. We have even had pre-emptive mini-vigils.

Hence the ever-rising number of cops being mobilized. The Hong Kong Police have let it be known that they will mobilize 1,000 2,000 5,000 7,000 to stand around looking macho in Victoria Park and other places their Facebook-lurking intel suggests there might be gatherings. Never in the field of public health have so many officers been crammed together in such large numbers to enforce social-distancing measures.

Even Home Affairs – the doziest government department out there (which is saying something) – gets in on the act.

Local United Front groupies get classy: churches hosting memorial services have banners hung outside naming them evil cults spreading chaos. 

Elsewhere in law-enforcement overreach: an Israeli hosting company removed Nathan Law’s 2021 HK Charter website upon request by the HK Police claiming extraterritorial jurisdiction in cases of subversion etc. The cops were probably surprised that the company – one Wix – complied, for a few hours until it reinstated the site. Chances are an underling took the high-handed letter from the HKP seriously (copy here). Wix has now apologized.

From the Diplomat, a good intro to a (paywalled) story on the NatSec Law (‘more accurately, a regime security law’)…

If Hong Kongers do not want to be extradited across the border to mainland China, the central government simply brings its secret police and public security agents to openly operate in the city… 

Why did Beijing elevate elections and unionizing to national security threats? As Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam put it, the entire opposition represented the “enemy of the people.” This is the CCP’s code for an all-out struggle.

Some weekend reading…

Elizabeth Economy in Foreign Affairs on the reality behind Xi Jinping’s hubris…

…China’s own society is fracturing in complex and challenging ways. Discrimination based on gender and ethnicity is rampant, reinforced by increasingly nationalistic and hate-filled online rhetoric. The creative class is at loggerheads with petty bureaucrats. And severe rural-urban inequality persists. 

He’s not that much into federalism: Xi’s historic mistake – obsessive centralization and control-freakery – by J Bradford DeLong. 

Globular Times quotes a Pakistani think-tankie type as saying that Chinese Covid vaccines are the best as they suit Asian people’s genes. She also raves about Belt and Road.

Lowy Institute’s Interpreter on the CCP’s Tibet paranoia. In coming weeks: the Xinjiang paranoia, the Mongol paranoia, the Hong Kong paranoia, the foreign media paranoia, the Christianity paranoia, the June 4 paranoia and so on – an exciting 173-part series.

Vanity Fair’s in-depth – long – contribution to the big Covid lab-leak debate.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam raises the possibility of reviewing Legal Aid, following complaints from pro-Beijing shoe-shiners that the system is used by pro-dem defendants, even to hire pro-dem lawyers.

Carrie also sees moving the elderly to the Mainland as a solution to Hong Kong’s (alleged) demographic problem. The young too are, of course, urged to go north to enjoy the many Greater Bay Area, Belt and Road and other wondrous opportunities that await them there. (Brilliant efficiency-enhancing idea from me: the government can load the elderly and young onto the barges going back after dumping all the sand for the Lantau Mega-Reclamation Vision Hub-Zone. Then again – will the reclamation be needed when only the middle aged are left here? And half of them have split for Thamesmead? Need to think this through.)

The RTHK item mentions the importation of young Mainlanders (plentiful supply guaranteed by new three-child policy). And in the next breath, the station reports that the central Ministry of Education suggests that Hong Kong ‘clarify the status’ of Mandarin and simplified characters in law. Current references to an official language skirt around the issue by referring vaguely to ‘Chinese’. I had this down as coming after Internet censorship – to Hong Kong, this is one step from killing all first-borns. But of course, how much of a backlash can it provoke if most of the population have moved/been moved out?

A few interesting reads…

The Guardian recounts the neutering of RTHK over the last year, and what it means for the media and press freedom in Hong Kong. A telling detail: the paper’s correspondent is ‘in Taipei’.

Ex-cop Martin Purbrick in the SCMP condemns (or, officially, draws lessons applicable elsewhere from) his former force’s decline in public esteem… 

The Hong Kong police have stepped beyond the line of authoritarianism and will not regain the support of many people who were involved in the pro-democracy protests in 2019. However, they can regain some confidence from people who were not involved in the protests but were disturbed by the police response and lack of accountability.

Regaining trust will require the police to accept a genuinely independent process for the investigation of complaints of criminality and misconduct by officers… 

The measures taken by the police to regain public confidence – such as childish social media campaigns, open days with children playing with guns at the Police College and statements that are not credible to much of the public – have often done the opposite.

On the subject of improving PR – in a recent, well-publicized Politburo study session, Xi Jinping called for China’s messaging to be ‘more open and confident’ and its image to become ‘more credible and lovable’. China Media Project explains. Slight spoiler: it’s partly the West’s fault for not understanding China properly, as at least three SCMP op-eds per week remind us. (Idea from me for making China more lovable: cushions for the Hong Kong old folks on the barges.)

A tragic wave of memory loss breaks out among Hong Kong pro-Beijing figures, including CY Leung and three current government ministers, about statements they signed in 1989 denouncing the June 4 massacre in Beijing.

That compulsory SIM card registration system that you and the rest of the public have called for will take effect March next year. (Background here. Obviously a command from the CCP. Can you imagine the Hong Kong government really doing something in response to popular demand?)

Seems you also now need a licence for a museum – at least, if it’s about June 4. 

The League of Social Democrats announce that they won’t take part in the forthcoming ‘elections’. They couldn’t anyway: most of them are in jail, and the CCP’s candidate-screening mechanisms would almost certainly reject those who remain free. The same goes for any younger-generation/localist groups that have not disbanded or been proscribed. The more mainstream Civic Party, also with leading members in jail, was last heard talking about disbanding. Of the various splinter/fringe pan-dem groups, the ultra-moderate/pragmatic ADPL might be tempted to help the CCP out and play the role of solitary token-opposition useful idiots. Unless, of course, the venerable Democratic Party, in whole or in part, debase themselves by joining in.

The cases of 47 pan-dem activists accused of ‘subversion’ (taking part in a pre-election primary poll) are moved to the High Court. This could mean they get a jury, though since the CCP deems a primary election a national-security threat, this sounds unlikely. It also means they could receive sentences of up to life in prison, which in theory should also sound wildly unlikely – but where the courts are concerned these days, anything goes.

‘Grandma’ (actually a fairly spritely 65) Alexandra Wong gets arrested for unauthorized assembly while alone. This raises all sorts of possibilities – maybe rioting in your own home, or conspiracy with yourself. (The cops have since let her go. This was presumably ‘punishment’ for the banners she carried: if her placard had been advertising PCCW broadband, there would have been no problem.)

Some mid-week reading…

From HKFP, the insult that would be a ‘race’ between Carrie Lam and CY Leung to be Chief Executive; not only is the CE ‘election’ a farce predetermined in Beijing, but the office of CE itself is now little more than a puppet. As with LegCo, right-thinking people should treat the charade with disdain, and limit their participation to poking fun at official announcements and ill-informed media reports suggesting an ‘election’ is happening.

If you ever thought Hong Kong schools should focus a bit more on music, here’s some good news: new NatSec Regime guidelines urge the teaching of patriotic (presumably CCP-spun) songs from the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-45.

Today’s must-read: Jeffrey Wasserstrom in Mekong Review on remembering June 4.

How to deal with Tiananmen denialists on-line. A good briefing on how on-line disinfo/propaganda spreaders do their thing. (Cue another from HKFP – the disinformation campaign about the first-aider shot in the eye on August 11 2019.) 

In-depth article on the planning and ideological aspects of Xi Jinping’s model socialist new city south of Beijing. Xiong’an represents a resurgence of the state vis-a-vis the private sector, and the North over the South. Unlike, say, Deng’s Shenzhen.

Seems they usually appear on Fridays…

Pan-dem figures including Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Jimmy Lai, Cyd Ho and ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung are sentenced to prison terms for inciting and/or attending an unauthorized assembly – the march on October 1, 2019. 

(The defendants had earlier delivered pleas of mitigation. A translation of Long Hair’s.)

A chart here shows how sentences for unauthorized assembly have become harsher, from a HK$500 fine 20 years ago to 18-month prison sentences today.

(Does judge Amanda Woodcock bear an uncanny resemblance to Shawnie – the brutalized girl in a novel of the same name, noteworthy for being written partly in Bristolian?)

In the High Court, judge Esther Toh denies Claudia Mo bail in part because of text messages with the BBC, NYT and other international media, which are deemed evidence of ‘continuing’ to ‘endanger national security’. Surely the BBC and other parties in this correspondence must also be suspects? The same judge had previously denied bail to Andrew Wan in part for having called for people to ‘say no to totalitarianism’.

A Hong Kong student is jailed for more than four years for hitting a water barrier with a hiking stick.

A pro-Beijing barrister becomes head of the police complaints body. It doesn’t seem to do much. A thread on the deteriorating quality of holders of this office over the years.

Not content with banning the June 4 vigil, the government issues a warning that anyone ‘publicizing’ it might get a year in prison, and anyone ‘attending’ could get five years. The Chinese Communist Party is clearly wetting itself at the thought of people quietly burning candles in Victoria Park. (What about talking about it? Or thinking about it?) It seems you can go there and not burn a candle (unless the cops seal the place off – sounds probable), or be elsewhere and still burn a candle. Seriously hard to work out what threatens national security these days.

The Hong Kong government devises a system whereby people who have been fully vaccinated will be able to travel free of some anti-Covid restrictions. You can tell it’s a local officials’ idea because it applies only to bankers, and the conditions remain so complex and onerous it is of little use anyway.

For light relief, Cartoon of the Month Awards go to Zunzi (seriously, agonizingly not suitable for squeamish men) and Harry…

Among other unsurprising things yesterday… The NatSec Regime bans Hong Kong’s once-annual 6-4 vigil (no word on whether people can go to Victoria Park alone to sit and look at a flickering candle on their phones). And the (now all-patriot) legislature votes to abolish free elections to itself – all thanks to the CCP. You’ve heard of turkeys voting for Christmas; this is shoe-shiners voting for being swamped by patriot-zombie appointees

Slightly less predictably, the Secretary for Security threatens HSBC and Citibank management with prison if they do business with Jimmy Lai’s accounts in Hong Kong. I’m a bit skeptical of forecasts that regional headquarters will flood out of Hong Kong in a panic – the most noticeable exodus in the years ahead will be that of middle-class families. But the NatSec officials clearly don’t care if they do scare businesses away.

Another prediction: the Democratic Party – or at least a rump of it – will end up participating in the ‘elections’ for LegCo later this year. Chairman Lo Kin-hei has said that pro-Beijing elements want the party to help legitimize the charade, while his own supporters do not – and he is therefore (incredibly) undecided. The Dem Party has long been prone to occasional bouts of ‘self-important nonentity syndrome’, and it looks like it could easily suffer a fatal attack of it.

As Kevin Carrico points out in the RTHK item, the only credible stance on this ‘election’ system is to boycott: don’t run, don’t vote, don’t even watch. If you need a clue, the government itself is talking about making it illegal to call for a boycott. What more do you need to know?

Some weekend reading for the gentry…

The Diplomat on the gutting of RTHK… 

For journalists, news consumers in Hong Kong, and others familiar with RTHK, each development brings a renewed sense of pain and loss as another of the territory’s once renowned institutions becomes a shadow of its former self.

From Transit Jam: after cornering sports-centre bookings and parking spaces, gangsters are now making HK$200,000 a month trading in motorbike inspection slots. (Doesn’t the system use ID card numbers to ensure users are genuine? Guess not.)

ABC presents a long story on China’s proposal to create a massive hydroelectric plant on the Yarlung Tsangpo. ‘Completely nuts’ says one overseas expert. Worth reading just for the graphics.

A (slightly geeky) case-study in social-media forensics tracing the online origins of China’s boycott of H&M.

A Beijing-sponsored art competition for Turkish schoolkids backfires as the youngsters include East Turkestan flags in their paintings.

For language fans, a Taiwanese betel-nut vendor’s sign uses written Chinese, Japanese and the Bopomofo phonetic script to render an indigenous Paiwan word. 

Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia: an article on Thai King Vajiralongkorn’s bizarre upgrading of his Bangkok palace, including underground tunnels and the installation of a Boeing 737 in the garden – with some detail on the aircraft itself (it might not be the one His Highness thinks it is).

Hong Kong has millions of doses of the (classy, superior) BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine that will have to be dumped in a few months when the ‘sell by’ date comes up.

Fewer than 20% of the population have had even their first shot. The low level of cases in the city makes hesitancy an easy default option (see Macau). But there’s a twist to it: in some quarters, not getting vaccinated – or tacitly tolerating or backing those who do not – has become a form of anti-government defiance. This might sound deranged, but the new NatSec-style of government has become so threatening and lost so much trust that many people see even this type of resistance as justified.

The regime itself has not always appeared to be prioritizing public health. The initial mess over border closures, the use of anti-Covid measures to suppress protests and the apparent downplaying of BioNTech in order to flatter the Chinese vaccine – these all look politically-driven. To the extent the government appears eager to achieve herd immunity, it focuses mainly on being able to reopen the border to Mainland visitors.

Now Chief Executive Carrie Lam laments that many of the city’s people will refuse the shots even if she offers them money. But she seems curiously reluctant to give it a try.

A humble suggestion – just offer everyone who gets vaccinated:

• cash (say HK$1,000); plus 
• a lottery ticket; plus 
• the right to enter HK without being quarantined; plus 
• the right not to wear a face mask.

(In anticipation of complaints: those of us who have already been vaccinated and are tempted to whine about not getting their thousand bucks would get a back-dated Bronze Bauhinia Medal as consolation. Top prize for the lottery could be a never-used retirement home in Oxfordshire owned by a certain Lam family; 2nd prize, an apartment in Thamesmead. The sky’s the limit.) 

Even a dictatorship should be able to mount an effective public-health campaign if it wants to. It would be an opportunity to gain some legitimacy (indeed, if our officials were genuinely devious, they would see it as a way to sow discord within the opposition movement). Yet the administration dithers.

Of course, all this assumes the government actually wants the current state of domestic semi-crisis to end. Maybe, instead, it is biding its time while secretly working on a special vaccine that makes tourism safe but leaves opposition gatherings risky. 

Who on earth is John Cena? Never heard of him. Apparently some sort of tough guy, now on his knees publicly groveling to the almighty Panda.

At the other end of the virtue-and-heroism scale: Lee Cheuk-yan’s plea of mitigation to the court ahead of his sentencing for taking part in an unauthorized assembly on October 1 2019. It reads almost like the older-generation pan-dems’ swansong. His heartfelt claim to be a true and constant patriot will presumably cut no ice with the judge.