Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Erick Tsang writes a wrathful letter to the Wall Street Journal insisting that Hong Kong still has freedom – and then, in a nice touch, threatening the paper with legal action for ‘incitement’. This for publishing an editorial mentioning that election boycotts/blank ballots are a way for voters to express their political views. 

The WSJ being an English-language paper with a fairly impenetrable paywall, few people in Hong Kong would have noticed the editorial – but thanks to Erick’s missive, now everyone knows about it (even if, like me, they still haven’t actually read it).

If you enjoy the Hong Kong government’s whines to the media, immerse yourself in the glorious treasure trove that is the ‘clarifications archive’.

And do you remember when a Chief Executive announced that he would boycott a LegCo election?

In case you are still undecided – Hong Kong and Macau Affairs boss Xia Baolong wants Hongkongers to vote. 

David Webb analyzes HKFP poll results and finds (or confirms) a major correlation between age/education and political leanings in Hong Kong.

DW on the gradual suppression of press and speech freedom in Hong Kong. 

A rolling tally of traffic accidents in Hong Kong per day (by ‘accidents’ we mostly mean ‘morons not driving properly’)…

…every day in HK there’s over a hundred road crashes reported and dozens of injuries.

Don’t often link to the UK’s Daily Mail, but here’s an interesting piece on a Conservative MP blasting leftist Labourites as useful idiots for backing the CCP…

[A] coalition of left-wing campaigners and Chinese activists blame ‘aggressive Government statements against China’ for driving a spike in anti-Asian racism, claiming it is leading to a ‘new cold war’.

If I were a hardened cynic, I might suspect that the UK leadership opened the door to Hong Kong immigrants on the assumption that the newcomers would likely vote Tory.

Wired joins in the Peng Shuai analysis…

When civic spaces are closed and groups deleted, individuals with few or no connections outside of social media have backlogs of resources and connections taken away. In the case of WeChat specifically—which users in China utilize for chats, payments, blog publishing, travel, and other digital record keeping—a suspension or ban cuts a user off from many everyday communication and life tools.

This is not about topics. This censorship is fundamentally about the dismantling of social resources.

And I join in the https://app.wombo.art/ trendy fad…

ICAC boss Simon Peh feels a need again to give the impression that any public mention of boycotting the December 19 quasi-election might be illegal…

“I’m not saying that offering such an option in the survey [is] definitely against the law, but I don’t know how they would ask the question, how they would collate the data or how they would release the result,” Peh said.

“If there is any element which amounts to inciting other people not to vote or to cast an invalid vote openly, publicly, that could be liable under the ordinance.”

Peh however noted that it isn’t illegal for people to cast blank or invalid ballots.

When Peh declares ‘I’m not saying’ to be safe, he highlights a key difference between Western and Mainland political rhetorical style. In Western intercourse, speakers often drop in phrases like ‘in my opinion’, ‘in our view’, ‘we feel’, ‘I think’ and so on, to at least appear reasonable. None of that from Chinese spokesmen, who just rigidly recite the official line as incontrovertible, and come across as doctrinaire, hectoring and constantly angry.

Another rule of corporate or political communication is to be consistent and not fall into the trap of sending different messages to different audiences. CNN on China’s weird Peng Shuai dilemma – having a state-run newspaper rant internationally on Mainland-banned social media while maintaining total silence on the issue domestically.

“We could talk here about a two-pronged strategy, about how China has enforced complete silence at home while pushing a narrative externally about meddling journalists and the politicizing of sport. But to call it a strategy at all suggests a sophistication that is not really there,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project.

“What we actually see is desperation … It’s an extremely sensitive issue for the leadership. I think probably one of the most sensitive news stories that’s happened in the last decade.”

Politico on Joe Biden’s ‘democracy summit’, which is guaranteed to annoy all the right people – ‘China is furious’. Beijing misses a golden opportunity to keep quiet and ignore the contrived-sounding event and issues a desperate white paper on its own ‘democracy’…

China’s political system today is as different from Western democracy as Chinese characters from Latin or Cyrillic alphabets. But it does not make this system inferior or less attractive, Yury Tavrovsky, head of the “Russian Dream-Chinese Dream” analytic center of the Izborsk Club, told the Global Times. 

Global Times offers a similarly laughable comparison between the Chinese and US election systems. Tankies will no doubt take it at face value. Bear in mind that the purely ceremonial exercises in the Mainland are even less pluralistic and up-for-grabs than Hong Kong’s quasi-election, which has vestigial features from freer times, like campaigning on the street and candidates masquerading as opposition.

The ‘we are democratic too’ claims are even richer given that Beijing has long dismissed the core ingredients of representative government – like a free press and independent judiciary – as evil foreign ideas unsuited to the motherland and indeed threats to one-party rule. More mixed messaging.

As with the WHO, the Olympics mafia are struggling after succumbing to Beijing’s ‘elite capture’ and discourse management tactics. For anyone following #MeToo or Peng Shuai – or who has worked for an emperor-tycoon – try YouTube vid I was a bodyguard for a Chinese serial rapist.

Another poll the government won’t like – schools report a doubling in the numbers of students and teachers leaving.

Some reading for the weekend…

9-Dash Line on the rewriting of history in Hong Kong…

The notion of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ has already been hollowed out politically and legally, and by further policing history within Hong Kong, the hope is to culturally integrate the city with the mainland.

Science.org on the departure of senior management and gradual Mainlandization of Hong Kong universities.

Reporters Without Borders mark the first year of Jimmy Lai’s detention.

Propublica on Beijing’s pressure and intimidation against Mainland students on US campuses…

“This is an overall extension of the police state,” said Anna Puglisi, a senior fellow at Georgetown University who served until last year as the U.S. intelligence community’s national counterintelligence officer for East Asia. “It is brazen. But when you talk about it, people act as if you’re nuts. There has been no cost to China for this.”

Atlantic adds to the commentary on Peng Shuai…

She’s not advocating for democracy, or calling for reform, or even directly standing up for women’s rights. Yet she is being treated as if she is. For a political party that presents itself as infallible, anything that suggests otherwise is perceived as dangerous. The corollary to this rule is that the party’s most senior leaders, especially those with the right connections and relationships, can act as they wish, without fear of public scrutiny or reproach.

Another thread (in fact, a review) on the leaked Xinjiang documents (background here).

More policymaking-by-state-media: Ta Kung Pao accuses Hong Kong’s PORI pollsters of breaking the law by surveying the public’s voting intentions – and the (apparently, vaguely) relevant official at the ICAC suddenly ‘can’t rule out the possibility’ that asking such questions breaks the law. The problem, of course, was not the pollsters’ question, but the respondents’ answers suggesting a low voter turnout. 

Another survey shows that young people are not interested in careers in the Greater Bay Opportunities!!! Area. Was that question also illegal, for not prompting the correct replies?

The ICAC boss’s need to awkwardly echo a CCP newspaper’s baseless claim reminds us who’s really in charge. It also confirms how frustrated Beijing’s officials are at the prospect of a low turnout in the forthcoming election. And we can conclude that PORI is toast now. 

In other NatSec horrors, the government prevents a lawyer with human-rights expertise from taking a political case. And primary schools must make kids love the motherland…

The framework also lists over 20 examples for teachers to follow, including one suggesting teachers play the song The East Is Red when teaching primary students about the achievements of Chinese aeronautical science. 

If you’re scratching your head over that, the SCMP mercifully explains…

The revolutionary ballad, which was popular during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and praises Mao Zedong as “people’s great saviour”, was the first song that China’s earliest satellite beamed back to earth after it was launched in 1970.

At the behest of the authorities, a Hong Kong court issues arrest warrants for former legislator Ted Hui and former district councillor Yau Man-chun – both now overseas. Their alleged crime: calling for a boycott or the casting of invalid votes in the forthcoming quasi-election. While now illegal under recent hasty revisions to the elections laws, urging people not to vote is perfectly acceptable in any free or democratic country, so the warrants are an absurd and embarrassing gesture. HKFP story here. Official announcement from the ICAC (pursuing those who encourage non-voting is apparently a job for the anti-graft agency) here.

Ming Pao quotes (in Chinese) a pro-Beijing businessman as saying that a low turnout in the quasi-election will be the result of foreign forces attempting to put citizens off voting. (The same foreign forces that got two million people on the Hong Kong streets in 2019, presumably.)

A China Daily op-ed accuses pollsters PORI of breaking the law and inciting people not to vote – by asking whether they plan to boycott the election…

The common objective of public opinion surveys on elections all over the world is to rate the popularity of the election candidates. But for the HKPORI, as explained in their press conference, it’s clearly more interested in registering the number of respondents who would cast blank votes. As this is clearly irrelevant to the primary objective of election surveys, there is undoubtedly an ulterior motive behind this exercise…

…by conducting the survey to ascertain the number of respondents prepared to cast blank votes and disseminating the results of the survey, it likely constitutes a prima facie case of incitement…

…The HKPORI would be wise to stop their public opinion survey on the election or it may face the same consequences as those of their associates now languishing in jail.

As the above three stories suggest, the government is frantically trying to draw attention to the fact that It’s Really Worried About A Low Turnout On December 19. You’d almost think it’s a very clever subliminal campaign to convince the public to boycott the exercise. Essentially every official and every CCP shoe-shiner is now running around shrieking: 

You really really must go and vote in this election even though the results have been decided ahead of time! The unelected regime will look bad if you don’t turn up at the polling station on December 19! If there is a low turnout it will make the CCP unhappy and sad! If you admire and wish to endorse this regime and this system, please please please turn up and vote!!!!

Obviously, the key players here are more interested in appearing (to distant superiors) to be anti-boycott than in actually persuading the public to take part. For example, does the former ICAC guy writing in China Daily really believe what he says?

While you are duly noting and considering this heart-rending appeal, I will do my best to help. Do not follow reports of the courts ordering pan-dem politicians accused of a ‘vicious plot’ to subvert the government – holding primary elections – to be kept in jail without bail for 12 months by the time their trial begins. Here’s another. And on no account read Bitter Winter’s All Elections in Hong Kong Are Now Meaningless.

Some mid-week links…

A thread on the CCP-supporting leadership at the WHO.

Another on an (alleged) first-ever leak of ‘Top Secret’ comments by a Chinese supreme leader on Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang.

The Spectator’s contribution to the Peng Shuai saga, focusing on the concubinage angle. Perhaps the funniest item so far on the poor PR skills displayed by CCP media in the Peng affair is this – in Russian state media by a Beijing-worshiping Westerner. CGTN has banned him for his candid analysis.

HKFP describes the dismantlement – so far – of Hong Kong’s civil society through a list of 50 groups and NGOs that have disbanded under the NatSec regime replaced the city’s autonomy in mid-2020. They include professional organizations dating back to the 1970s-80s with long records of cooperation with the colonial and post-1997 administrations. Of all the ways Beijing is erasing pluralism in Hong Kong, this – along with the ‘patriots’-only rigged elections – is perhaps the most vivid reminder of Leninists’ phobia about forces they do not control.

By contrast, young Taiwan activists are joining the country’s democratic system and considering how in Hong Kong they would be in jail. 

Also in Taiwan, films banned in Hong Kong and the Mainland feature in the Golden Horse Awards. Revolution of Our Times wins best documentary.

A thread on how a pro-China Taiwanese became anti-CCP. 

Newbloom on the prospects for Taiwan’s Apple Daily.

More censorship on the way. Enjoy what’s left while it lasts.

More good commentary on the Peng Shuai affair, from World Politics Review.

And Asia Sentinel offers a conspiracy theory – that Peng’s accusations were part of a pre-emptive Xi-ist attack on the Shanghai Gang (in the form of Zhang Gaoli) days before the Sixth Plenum and its ‘historic resolution’, at which the Jiang Zemin faction threatened to depose (or something) the Emperor-for-Life. The explosion of the issue on the international media stage was thus an unintended hiccup (‘obfuscates the original allegation’ as the Guardian puts it). Interesting idea, with parts that add up, but unlikely to impress fans of Occam’s razor.

Reading for the weekend…

From Al Jazeera: how Hong Kong’s NatSec Regime leaves low-paid workers worse off; Hong Kong’s decline as a media hub; and ‘Why I left Hong Kong’ by a journalist.

HKFP op-ed on the vagueness of the NatSec Law. And a link to a Stand News story on the government starting to assign Beijing-friendly lawyers to defend people accused of political crimes. Insert ‘Mainland-style’ as required. In case you didn’t read it the first time – another plug for Jerome Cohen’s piece on the Hong Kong criminal justice system’s transformation to a tool of oppression. This piece contains the lot.

After Foodpanda, a nice story – Black Sheep restaurant chain pays US$650,000 to send staff to see families worldwide and do quarantine on return.

A review of Anita – the Anita Mui biopic.

Academics Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung in a (very) long essay asking whether Xi Jinping has made China’s political system more sustainable.

Leftist but fairly economically literate (and non-tankie) Jacobin on property and the future of China’s ‘state capitalist’ economy. 

Former lawmaker Charles Mok on Beijing’s plan to establish its own definition of human rights. The Hong Kong and Macau quasi-elections, he says, are trials for fake universal suffrage in the Mainland.

Beijing-backed Ta Kung Pao accuses opinion pollsters PORI of inciting misleading incitement or something, for reporting that only 34% of citizens definitely plan to vote at next month’s quasi-election, and 52% think they probably sort of might (as the slide shows, normally some 80-85% say that, though of course fewer actually go). Indeed, many don’t even know who’s running. Frankly, the CCP should give PORI a medal for suggesting that as many as a third of the population care deeply about the pointless exercise.

Beijing seems sensitive about the fact that it’s new ‘improved’ patriots-only elections are widely perceived to lack legitimacy. Officials will set up polling stations at border checkpoints in the hope that Hongkongers living in Shenzhen or even beyond might go and cast ballots. And a Mainland think-tank type has proposed that the local authorities issue a turnout figure that averages out the voting rate among all 90 races – including the 70 for Functional and Election Committee seats with tiny electorates of just a few hundred or thousand loyalists.

The obvious comparison is going to be with the District Council elections two years ago: 2.94 million voters participated – a 71.2% turnout. Pro-democrats were allowed to run, and won a landslide.

HKFP finds that many candidates do not reveal contact details on their nomination materials. But this is a CCP-style election in which the winners have essentially already been decided. If you were the designated loser in a fake race, would you want to give everyone your email address or phone number? It’s bad enough that they’re allowed to know your name.

To get into the election mood, watch Carrie Lam waffle in response to a question on whether it is legal to cast a blank vote. And maybe read the HK Democracy Council statement on the sentencing of Tony Chung (background here).

A letter in the FT several days ago, and one of the replies…

On Peng Shuai: Beijing demands that foreign forces stop ‘deliberately and maliciously hyping up’ the affair. China Media Project didn’t get the memo. Nor did ‘mixes creepiness and cutesy’ Quartz. Human Rights Watch joins in with criticism of the Olympics mob. RTHK, on the other hand, deletes its coverage.