Big Lychee, Various Sectors

I would normally follow the Oscars about as avidly as I’d follow Miss World or the Eurovision Tiddlywinks Cup. (Still haven’t seen Parasite, or Titanic, or even Sound of Music.) But the Hollywood bore-fest suddenly becomes fascinating if Beijing is scurrying around trying to micromanage the event – or at least perceptions of it. 

Hong Kong entry Do Not Split didn’t get a prize, but got a name-check from the documentary-category winner. This film was probably the reason TVB didn’t broadcast the ceremony (the station’s only chance this year at getting decent ratings, probably). Another Hong Kong-ish nominee was Better Days, which was subject to much Mainland-meddling.

The big story is that Nomadland by China-born Chloe Zhao won best director award. As the first Chinese (Asian/non-white/etc) woman to win this accolade, she should be the pride and joy of Beijing’s hyper-curated domestic media apparatus. Added bonuses: the film depicts the US as a post-capitalist dystopia; and Zhao’s acceptance speech included nuggets of ancient Chinese wisdom – all right up Beijing’s street. 

But because she once said something not totally adoring of the nation, the CCP had ordered state censors to erase her person, film and the actual award from the news. Instead of an easy (not to say unearned), ethno-nationalistic soft-power victory for the Glorious Motherland, the Leninist system orders another sullen, stroppy sulk. Funniest cinematic thing since Airplane! (By contrast, Koreans – free to make their own minds up about such things – celebrate an award for one of their actresses.)

Any Hong Kong civil servants showing enthusiasm for Chloe Zhao’s success will be reported to the NatSec Gestapo and demoted.

So China still awaits an Oscar the CCP isn’t too embarrassed to claim as Chinese. It will probably be something like The Wizard of Xi Jinping Thought, Some Like Xi Jinping Thought Hot, Lawrence of Xi Jinping Thought, Xi Jinping Thought at Tiffany’s, Gone With the Xi Jinping Thought, A Fist Full of Xi Jinping Thoughts, or Debbie Does Xi Jinping Thought.

Elsewhere in the Hurt Feelings Dept, Beijing freaks out over Australia cancelling Victoria’s mainly-symbolic Belt and Road agreement and the UK parliament’s also-symbolic motion recognizing genocide in Xinjiang. The former is an instructive example of how a free country can liberate itself from worry about Panda-Tantrums if it just sits out the panty-wetting and mouth-frothing until the Chinese officials reach their limit. (Incidentally, ASPI have done a slide-show explainer on Beijing’s Xinjiang disinformation on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere – worth a look for the fancy graphics/design, starting with a shot of the Xinjiang lavender fields.)

Canada, on the other hand, falls to its knees and does a stomach-churning pre-emptive kowtow any time Beijing demands. A Chinese-based hotpot restaurant in Vancouver – popular with PRC citizens – was recently found to have a surveillance system including two cameras per table sending live footage back to China. Some believe it is a test to see what Beijing can get away with. 

RTHK journalist Bao Choy is found guilty of checking the (public) vehicle registration database, getting a fine. As numerous people have pointed out, this makes her the only person convicted in relation to the Yuen Long attack. 

The key point here is whether her viewing of the database was connected to ‘transport matters’. I would have thought that by definition, any checking of a vehicle registry must be – you won’t find any information about cakes or wombats there. She was checking the transporting of thugs who attacked people. Obviously, in the NatSec era, what matters is whether the information might embarrass the regime.

(More on RTHK under pressure from VoA.)

A court denies bail to former lawmaker Jeremy Tam, partly because he received an email from the US Consulate, and is thus ‘of interest’ to a foreign power and might ‘continue’ to endanger national security if out of jail. The diplomats respond with appropriate indignation. (The unanswered emails had been submitted by the defence as evidence that he had not recently been meeting the Americans.) Again, the key issue is your stance: if Regina Ip had an email conversation with US officials insisting there is no forced labour in Xinjiang, that would be OK.

Good luck to anyone on the CCP’s enemies list who is due to appear before these judges in future.

Good luck also to Hongkongers moving overseas (though their chances can only be better). From HKFP, a profile of a single-parent family moving to an uncertain future in the UK, and the official and voluntary help available to them. A world-famous expert on keeping your kids happy under Communist dictatorships warns that they might regret leaving and advises that we stay and nurture our minds instead. This migration is in its early stages – so plenty of sour and peeved commentary from pro-Beijing quarters to come as people vote with their feet. It will be interesting to see at what stage the phenomenon shows up in actual skills shortages, relocation of corporate HQs, even housing prices. The ‘3’ telecoms group perhaps eyes an opportunity.

Other things going on…

The FCC writes to the police commissioner about his ‘fake news’ rant. (The Club also issued a statement on Bao Choy’s case, earning a rebuke from Global Times apparently handled by a copy editor who googled ‘FCC’ and got it wrong.)

Beijing’s officials decide to hold a struggle-session with Bar Association head Paul Harris. Not sure how they would handle the technicalities of rectifying/replacing the HKBA in order to install a ‘patriotic’ leadership and silent/compliant profession – but count on it happening.

From HKFP, a look at Ted Hui’s attempts to get the Independent [sic] Police Complaints Council to do its job. And how the NatSec Regime is driving films underground… 

…if you want to make money in Hong Kong, you have to make a film that makes China look good on the international stage and can pass government censorship.

Former SCMP editor Robert Keatly on the end of Hong Kong as we knew it.

In case you haven’t seen it, SCMP local-history columnist Jason Wordie – who usually recounts colonial-era oddities – unleashes a stream of vitriol about Hong Kong’s modern-day putrid governance driving the population away. 

And proof that Hong Kong’s infamous anti-pedestrian barriers piss off everyone trying to cross the road with their kids.

If this guy can be ‘worn out’, so can I. I need to ramble on about something other than the NatSec horrors occasionally – probably reviews of binge-watched inane Japanese TV dramas. (It’s either that or recipes.) So be prepared. By the way, today’s music (click on pic) is a song about Hong Kong.

To (hopefully) finish the week…

Before Reuters go behind a paywall, they convince some judges and lawyers to talk to them about the insane late-night bail hearings for the 47 politicians in early March, as Mainland-style justice comes to Hong Kong…

One active judge told Reuters the bail hearings were reminiscent of “show trials” used by China and other autocracies to publicly humiliate and ultimately break political opponents.

I’d be more impressed with righteous judges if just one went on the record on this and did a high-profile resignation on principle.

You know the CCP has taken over your radio station when… RTHK rejects an award for excellence in journalism – probably the last one they’ll ever get.

In the Washington Post (possibly paywalled), thoughts on the occasion of NatSec Education Day…

Directed at children and designed to rehabilitate the image of the Hong Kong Police Force, last week’s campaign showed how the authorities are enforcing a single narrative of the protests — meddlesome foreign forces stirring up trouble — and how no expense will be spared to fully integrate the financial center into China’s authoritarian system.

…as opposition leaders are marched off to jail, memories of the 2019 protests are being erased, leaving only a narrative of violent rioters deceived by foreign forces and the imposition of laws designed to eradicate them. And, as a friend who recently left Hong Kong wrote to me, this place is now “unrecognizable.”

CNN takes the government’s ‘anti-doxxing’ excuse at face value but otherwise does a good explanation of how partially obscuring Companies Registry data will lead Hong Kong to become Asia’s Dirty Money City for CCP elites’ families.

And how the NatSec regime ends the city’s dream of being an arts/culture/creative hub.

A thread on what the CCP’s Hong Kong newspapers – now scourges of ‘fake news’ – were up to in 1967.

And one suggesting that the government is making it harder for people below age 65 to get their MPF funds out if they emigrate. You thought this was your money, taken out of your salary? Wrong – it’s the CCP’s to withhold out of spite.

On glorious motherland affairs…

Beijing is launching a hotline to allow public-spirited citizens to report people who post ‘mistaken opinions’ online. 

National Interest compares Xi’s China and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany.

Ultra-long read for the weekend: Minxin Pei in Journal of Democracy on China’s undemocratic future…

The biggest threat to China’s neo-Stalinist order is a succession struggle. One now looms on the horizon. Having done away with the presidential term limit, the 67-year-old Xi is set for open-ended rule. If he grooms a successor, it will probably be a weak loyalist. As happened after Stalin’s death and Mao’s, once Xi is gone a power struggle will ensue. 

And an interview (maybe paywalled) with short-seller Carson Block…

Block’s team is exploring the idea of a long-biased fund that would invest in companies in emerging markets in Asia and Eastern Europe that could benefit if China’s authoritarianism leads to a loss of direct foreign investment post-Covid, which he predicts will happen. 

A good piece of investigative reporting from HKFP on the effort and money – HK$84 million – the Hong Kong Trade Development Council spent over several years lobbying US politicians to vote against the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. If anyone else did it, it would be collusion with foreign powers or meddling in internal affairs. The campaign, of course, failed. Here’s the intro, and here’s the full story.

(That reminds me – how’s the HK government’s PR agency getting on?)

Even the SCMP is doing some investigative work: directors of Mainland bodies that now have corporate votes in Hong Kong ‘elections’ aren’t Hong Kong ID holders. OK, not exactly a surprise.

The NatSec horrors continue to bubble away. Apple Daily responds forthrightly to the Police Commissioner. 

Like nearly all pan-dem figures, Tanya Chan is on the CCP’s put-in-jail list. Best the police/prosecutors could manage was a social-distancing rap. Looks like a mess so far.

And People’s Daily announces the next target: student unions.

Every week, I hope nothing will happen for a few days, so just some links will do until Friday. Here goes…

One interesting side-effect of Covid: migrant domestic workers have middle-class Hongkongers by the balls. More pay or wash your own dishes.

The director of Do Not Split – Oscars-nominated low-budget 2019 uprising documentary – thanks Beijing for all the free publicity. CCP = Commie Cinema Promotion. 

In case you’re not already thinking of leaving Hong Kong – psychopath transport planners believe the solution to rising car numbers is more roads and parking spaces.

Why is it taking so long for the Catholics to get a bishop for Hong Kong? Could it be the church is torn between looking after its flock and kowtowing to the Communists? Yes it could.

A video of a composed Nathan Law versus a ranting pro-Beijing ogre on a BBC talk show. Nathan adds…

Civility vs barbarity — that’s the difference between democracy and autocracy. 

Human Rights Watch’s new report on China’s human-rights violations against Uighurs and Kazaks (press release on report here).

An informed response to a recent SCMP op-ed whitewashing Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang.

Former Premier Wen Jiabao gets censored. The chatter now is that he or some Wen else (haha) might be on the verge of a purge.

The Jamestown Foundation on Beijing state media’s infiltration of Western newspapers and online.

Hungary’s plans to blow a huge amount of money on a Chinese university.

For a glimpse of how things can be without a police-state/dictatorship – private-public partnerships in the conservation of historic buildings in Taiwan (with great photos).

China-related links fans will like this – a newsletter full of them.

Suzanne Sataline a couple of weeks ago looked at the reasons behind the trial of the ‘Grey-Haired Seven’ – Martin Lee, Margaret Ng, Jimmy Lai, Long Hair et al. On Friday, they received prison sentences. At the same time, Jimmy Lai had new NatSec charges brought against him (‘conspiracy’ variants of charges like ‘collusion with foreign powers’), and he appeared in court in connection with the ‘fraud’ case against him.  

The whole rigmarole looks carefully pre-scripted: suspended sentences for the moderate/older (and most venerable) defendants, thus avoiding extreme outrage at callousness; imprisonment (for peaceful assembly among a crowd of a million or more) for the more radical/less aged, backed by feeble justifications from the judge; and simultaneous additional legal skewerings for Jimmy Lai – pure sadism by the CCP in revenge for his refusal to kowtow ever since calling Li Peng a ‘turtle-egg’. They will be happy if he dies in prison.

Here’s Margaret Ng’s rather noble statement to the court. Comments from Jerome Cohen on her case. And a word from Chris Patten…

The CCP simply does not understand that you cannot bludgeon and incarcerate people into loving a totalitarian and corrupt regime.

All those who are conniving at destroying the Hong Kong loved by the world will be remembered in shame, even as, in due course, they scurry off from HK clutching their foreign passports.

With peaceful assembly by government opponents now de facto illegal, it’s going to be the media’s turn. Top officials are already talking of laws against ‘fake news’ – meaning anything that counters the CCP line. Police Commissioner Chris Tang is the latest to call for such censorship after Apple Daily carried negative comments about the HK Police NatSec Fun Day ‘kids with toy guns on MTR’ photo. (The photo was not faked; what Tang should really do is fire the idiot who came up with the ‘kids-guns-MTR’ idea.)

A Ta Kung Pao op-ed demands that Apple Daily be shut down (for ‘promoting Hong Kong independence’ – reporting some Hong Kong-related billboards in the UK). Wen Wei Po has joined in, adding Stand News and the HK Journalists Association for good measure. When these Beijing-run papers call for something these days, it happens quickly. What’s the betting that the Hong Kong Apple Daily will be shut down by year-end? How long before wholesale blocking of websites begins?

In the meantime – an activist group looking at Andy Li’s case predicts – we will start having forced confessions. Luke de Pulford thinks the CCP will specifically make Andy Li frame elders like Martin Lee and Margaret Ng to create a ‘unified pan-dem plot’ conspiracy story. Simon Shen in The Diplomat exposes the fallacy of this idea with this survey of the ‘factions’ of pan-dems. (A slightly less dark/more naive reading is that heavier sentencing for more radical ones like Long Hair indicates that Beijing sees a point in trying to divide what is left of the pan-dem camp.)

And Beijing’s NatSec Office is expanding into the Island Pacific Hotel in Sai Ying Pun (not far from the Liaison Office). Their first task, perhaps, will be compiling huge accept/reject lists of ‘election’ candidates for the vetting/nomination process. After that, they have so much more to do.

A reminder that it’s not just Hongkongers – from one democratic free island nation to another, an appreciation of Plucky Icelander of the Week, Jonas Haraldsson.

Your tax dollars at work: HK Police do a lame – but apparently earnest – mock shoot-out against terrorists at a National Security Education Day event. Starring Jacky Chan as the heroic cop abseiling from the helicopter, Holden Chow as an evil bomb-throwing splittist, Allen Zeman as the dastardly foreign mastermind, and Regina Ip as Lassie the plucky patriotic police dog, who summersaults through flaming hoops to snatch a Chinese flag before a youth misled by Western thinking sets fire to it. Massed ranks of Asia’s Finest Goose-steppers added to the warm-and-fuzzy feel for the school-kids bussed in for the occasion.

More on the NatSec Adoration Cosplay Day activities. Although clearly aimed at meeting Beijing’s demand that Hong Kong correct the next generation’s minds, it all looks too clunky to convince average six-year-olds (though I wouldn’t mind a ‘Warning Tear Smoke’ key-ring). Prison officers battling foreign-influenced anti-China slippers here (yes, that’s slippers as in indoor footwear). For creepiness, try kids playing ‘riot squad’ in the MTR.

Police Commissioner Chris Tang celebrated National Insecurity Paranoia Day on a rather grim note, blaming protests on US agents fiendishly using public-opinion polls to ‘hype-up issues’. He promises proof of foreign influence, some time (heard that before). If the Party demands witch-hunts with a dash of xenophobia, it must be obeyed.

Not everyone is deferential. Apple Daily, with an evil gleam in its eye, examines Mainland think-tanker Tian Feilong’s ‘follow-up spanking of the pro-establishment camp’. Beijing is dividing its local followers into the merely stupid/lazy/cowardly ‘loyal garbage’ who can be slapped into submission, and the possibly disloyal ‘two faced’ who are on the CCP’s naughty list. And who among us has not wanted to give some bureaucrats and tycoons a serious ‘follow-up spanking’?

Some weekend reading…

For those fascinated by the structures of functional constituencies and the Election Committee, a couple of good explainers on the ‘improvements’ that stripped the processes of individual voters, here and here, and a look at the newly rigged Legal sector.

On economics, blogger Andrew Batson looks at how Beijing may be getting tougher on both tax and inequality.

From China Media Project, the 80 propaganda slogans you must learn to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the CCP. Start with this snappy little one…

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era is the guide of action for the whole Party and the whole nation as they strive for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation!

Genius Lateral Thinker of the Year Award goes to Regina Ip for finding an exquisitely elegant solution to the problem of RTHK’s commissar-boss looking bad when he censors current affairs programming: scrap all current affairs programming.

Ronnie Tong, perhaps realizing the no-calling-for-a-boycott law could hugely increase the boycotting, appeals to everyone to stop making a fuss about it. Even an SCMP editorial wonders how encouraging lawful acts like not voting can be unlawful…

The recent display of support by shoppers for a pro-democracy retail chain in response to a raid by authorities shows people can react independently to what they disapprove of.

More here. Next thing, maybe it will be a crime to laugh at the HK Police goose-stepping (‘inciting disrespect and hatred towards valiant servants of the Party’, or maybe ‘sabotaging government recruitment efforts’).

Reuters on how HK University is trying to pay lip-service to both the NatSec Law and its commitment to academic freedom. Can the institution serve two masters? To give an idea which way things are going, the CCP’s new official history declares the Cultural Revolution to have been an anti-corruption campaign. And the Great Leap Forward was a national weight-loss drive.

Another public database becomes off-limits to the public – this time, the electoral register.

Perhaps not necessary after reading this far – Why I left Hong Kong, by Nathan Law in the Spectator.

The electoral ‘improvements’ plan is out. The details are complex and designed to numb your brain to the plain reality: Hong Kong’s elections will be rigged to such a degree that no elections actually happen. But the sheer multitude of different mechanisms and approaches, all aimed at keeping the popular pan-democrats from winning, goes beyond blinding observers with superfluous process. There’s pathological hatred, obviously, of Hong Kong’s democrats. And there’s paranoia about Hong Kong in general – even the establishment. But also maybe there’s fear of the ‘relevant’ Chinese officials’ bosses. Seriously: how much work did all these duplicated, multi-faceted layers of redundancy take?

For example, try the vetting process, presented for your convenience in a nice simple flow-chart – on which three of four courses lead to ‘invalid nomination’. It’s a lot of complicated steps simply to implement the CCP shadow government’s ‘Deny Candidacy’ list. And yet it’s getting more window-dressing. 

Or check out the interesting gerrymandering, with most of Lantau plus Cheung Chau, Lamma and Peng Chau lumped in with most, but not all, of Hong Kong Island in one constituency, while the Yuen Long urban area is split between two constituencies, as is neatly contiguous Shatin. Presumably, this is to dilute pan-dem strongholds. But to be safe, each of the 10 new constituencies will elect two members to LegCo, in order to make sure that pan-dems can’t win more than half the seats. Oh, and they can’t do that anyway, because they are in jail, again and again. 

In the tech sub-sector, pro-dem elements have lost their votes while pro-Beijing ones have been included (and presumably newly created). Journalists/media groups are being removed from the cultural/sports/etc sub-sector. Mainland organizations are becoming corporate voters in other functional constituencies. This is piling on the overkill.

The rubber-stamp ‘election committee’ will be packed with even more losers, who will ‘elect’ (actually implement the CCP’s ‘Preferred Candidates’ list) loyalist-clones to dozens of new Legislative Council seats.

Most pitifully, the government will make it a crime to call for people to boycott or cast blank votes in these forthcoming quasi-elections. The supposed reason is that it may pressure voters and ‘affect their freedom to choose whether to vote’, or it is ‘sabotaging’ the election (unlike pre-approved candidates and gerrymandering). The CCP’s real fear – illustrated by the maximum penalty of three years in prison – is that a boycott will highlight not just the electoral farce but the regime’s lack of legitimacy.

Aside from being desperate (and unconstitutional under the old freedom-of-expression rules Hong Kong once had), such a move will obviously prompt citizens to wonder how they can still register opposition at (or not at) the polls. It’s not so much opposition as non-acceptance, or rejection. Clue: don’t cast a blank vote; do the, um, other – that is, ‘go hiking on election day’.

China’s top disease guy admits the domestically produced anti-Covid vaccines are a bit crappy. State media then rush out an exclusive about how he was misquoted. 

In Hong Kong, the government has been loyally pushing Sinovac, regardless of whether this has the effect of weakening trust in vaccination in general. It is also renewing efforts to get everyone to download its ‘Leave Home Safe’ app, now expecting restaurant and bar owners to enforce it. As well as being clunky and (apparently) croney-sourced, the software is of course designed to monitor you.

In normal freer times, we might not worry much about that – but in today’s Hong Kong few people are going to totally believe that the system is not connected with Beijing’s NatSec secret police. If a regime will raid AbouThai, why wouldn’t it introduce political surveillance under the guise of public health measures? This is what happens when you lose credibility.

Some midweek links…

Photography geek Lok Cheung on leaving Hong Kong.

The Toronto Star reports on a new website dedicated to collecting Hong Kong’s memories of the recent years. You can upload photos, poems, audio or artwork to be tagged on a map. The really cool thing is the url – bewater.la. (Since you’re wondering, .la is the domain for Laos, mostly used in Los Angeles.)

HKFP on the government’s paranoia about people casting blank votes in neutered elections.

David Webb disproves official claims about the government’s plan to allow company directors to partially obscure their identities on the Companies Registry. 

Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s personal take on masks and the loss of freedom in Hong Kong

What makes it Kafkaesque is that even after issuing rules requiring masks be worn, the Hong Kong government has continued the court battle to defend its edict banning the wearing of masks.

Georgetown Law’s Asian Law Center has a hefty report on Hong Kong’s NatSec Law…

Over the past seven months, the NSL has been used repeatedly as a tool to threaten and suppress political expression, in particular pro-independence speech or other forms of expression. A full 22 of the initial 105 NSL arrests, and four of the first five cases charged under the NSL, have to do with so-called seditious or pro-secessionist speech, or possession of such materials. Of those, 12 are “pure” speech cases, such as chanting and displaying pro-independence slogans, and do not involve other alleged crimes. The other 10 involve a combination of alleged speech crimes and other acts. 

Lowy Interpreter’s analysis of Beijing’s H&M/Xinjiang/cotton uproar.

Chinese authorities now invite citizens to snitch on online commentators who stray from CCP-approved versions of history. By linking to things like this, for example.

Possibly paywalled, but worth noting: people are starting to notice that it’s OK to call China’s regime ‘totalitarian’. 

…the government exercises a form of power in China that is as fine-tuned as it is total. Whether it’s lashing out at a corporate critic, silencing all warnings of an emerging infectious disease, or suppressing the language and religion of an entire ethnic group, China’s government is no brute-force authoritarian regime. It is the inventor of a new 21st century techno-totalitarianism. It possesses all the tools of classic totalitarianism—and many new ones of its own invention.

We know Beijing won’t allow representative government in Hong Kong, and it will continue to tighten its control of schools, the media, courts and civil society in order to eradicate opposition and criticism. But what then? 

An HKFP op-ed on how the CCP will select and manage the large number of new shoe-shiners and loyalists coming into the establishment. While many of these people will occupy ceremonial rubber-stamp posts, some will gradually replace senior civil servants and others in decision-making positions. And behind the scenes of course…

…real power in Hong Kong resides less with the chief convener or the chief executive, than with our party secretary, Luo Huining, and party central in Beijing.

‘Chief convener’ is a mystery job that I would call ‘chief conveyor’, as it will obviously be a channel for CCP edicts.

(Author Prof Burns has studied this for ages – see a 1987 article on China’s nomenklatura.) 

And what will the new style of administration do in terms of policy? A (Chinese) article in Stand News describes an internal discussion paper by the newish pro-Beijing/Beijing-backed Bauhinia Party on Hong Kong housing. It might have been drafted and leaked deliberately, maybe in order to soften up vested interests. It certainly has something to upset different segments of the city’s traditional establishment. 

It refers to the housing situation in terms of a threat to ‘One Country’ (implying that it encourages secessionist sentiment). The paper suggests an expansion of affordable housing that could only be achieved by using land held by private interests, notably developers – and while it doesn’t mention expropriation, it does maintain that the central government has a right to play a role in deciding land use in Hong Kong. (This would be in flagrant violation of Basic Law protection of private property, so all-too believable,) The paper also – intriguingly – blames bureaucrats for putting high land-prices first in order to protect their lavish pay and pensions. Almost starting to like these guys.

Still, it’s hardly worth sticking around for. The UK is not famed for encouraging immigration, but is now funding assistance for Hongkongers settling in the country, and almost bending over backwards to get them to come. This is probably cynical, though you could see a noble gesture by the kids of East African Asian refugees who make up much of the Conservative government cabinet. (OK, it’s cynical.) Worth every penny just for the inevitable outraged ranting from Beijing officials.

Mouth-frothing about Britain laying out the welcome mat is also forthcoming from retired HK Police, like the one who wrote a nasty email to the Hongkongers in Britain organization. He (an expat, it seems) accused the exiles of not working and/or taking other people’s jobs, and particularly mentioned – slandered – Simon Cheng, the UK consulate staffer arrested by Mainland security. We are assuming this former Superintendent is real: the ‘‘Flying Kukris Rugby Football Club Girls Section committee member’ sounds like a parody.