Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Yesterday evening, the HK Police smashed my door down, forced me to provide an anal swab, handed me a can of luncheon meat, and warned that I will be arrested if I step outside for the next 18 hours. Or at least it feels like it. Think I’ll call an end to the week before it gets any worse (unless it gets really worse). Links…

Some 10 years ago, the Hong Kong government introduced a ‘Liberal Studies’ high-school course to encourage critical thinking. Next thing, we get the 2014 Umbrella Movement and then the 2019 Uprising – so pro-Beijing figures concluded the curriculum had worked too well. Now, your average shoe-shiner is too afraid not to be seen blaming it, along with the CIA, for the city’s discontent. The most petrified and spineless are using their time and taxpayers’ money focusing intently on renaming the subject. 

From HKFP: a pointed reminder of how the Hong Kong government’s anti-pandemic efforts are largely pointless, heartless, wasteful theatrics; a call to hold Beijing responsible for its role in letting Covid-19 loose on the world; and, if the disease strikes, a reminder that traditional voodoo won’t do the trick.

Regina Ip, getting desperate in her old age, is churning out Tweets about Uighur pop stars that prove everything is fine up there. Alternatively, here’s the latest stomach-churning gruesomeness from Xinjiang (rapes in concentration camps – feel free to skip).

One thing the Hong Kong government hasn’t had to do yet: the regime in Belarus is knocking down snowmen with a red stripe across the middle – representing the flag/symbol of the revolt. 

A reminder that, historically, Chinese rulers haven’t cared much about Taiwan.

Hey – it might be interesting! In Atlantic, Jeffrey Wasserstrom asks why there are no biographies of Xi Jinping.

Why Beijing is worried that young people aren’t marrying.

In case you missed it, why the US should leverage Chinese domestic discontent with Xi Jinping, and other recommendations from ‘anonymous’.

Former US industry bosses and others call on the Biden administration to pursue decoupling with China in tech.

And (it’s perfect weather for it) some live Hong Kong archaeology action.

More ambush lockdowns on Monday night, with no Covid carriers found. Just some people stuck in a hair salon overnight. And then last night’s, which disrupted some guys having their hair dyed/permed. (Low-rent neighbourhoods have more hair stylists – that’s my theory.)

What’s the purpose?

Does it have a scientific basis in combatting the pandemic, even when no cases are identified, and even though antibodies cannot be detected during a (approx two-week) incubation period? Is it churlish to criticize officials for taking the threat of Covid-19 so apparently seriously (deep throat saliva collection packs at every post office)?

If the ambush lockdowns are not scientifically valid, could it be that Carrie Lam and her colleagues – owing to stupidity or bad advice – nonetheless sincerely believe the operations are worthwhile?

Is it a performance to show Beijing how tough, determined and zealous the Hong Kong administration is? (Beijing has urged local authorities to address the pandemic. And these lockdowns are small-scale versions of those that have taken place in the Mainland.)

Is it an excuse to spend public money on Mainland-sourced testing services?

Or are the raids, with heavy police participation, trial runs/training exercises for NatSec Regime neighbourhood lockdowns in the event of another 2019-style uprising? (EG, reports of a 12-year-old girl singing Glory to Hong Kong, or suspicions that a resident has an unregistered SIM card.) Or a way to condition the community to accept heavy-handed enforcement action – intimidation – generally? Note threats to knock doors down.

For conspiracy-theory fans (assuming the last one is not hugely unbelievable): do the CCP really just want everyone’s DNA?

More than one of the above?

At best, it seems excessive, given the virus’s limited spread in Hong Kong. At worst, cynics can’t help considering the government’s apparent reluctance to get on with vaccinations and the broader context of a city in suspended rebellion. Covid-19 has already served as a pretext for forbidding public assemblies. In what other ways might the NatSec Regime find the crisis useful?

The SCMP has a helpful explainer on how to tell if the jack-booted Ambush Raid Testing Squad are coming to kick doors down in your tenement block.

One more question to ponder: are ambush lockdowns a ruse to introduce the waddle-like-a-penguin test?

Paul Harris hit the ground semi-kowtowing when he took over as chairman of the Bar Association two weeks ago. He expressed opposition to violent protest as sternly as any government minister. He also tentatively suggested that Hong Kong could restore extradition arrangements with Western countries if Beijing made a few changes to the National Security Law, so it doesn’t blatantly override rule of law. That would fix the awkward situation where a murderer could flee Hong Kong and never face justice.

This polite and constructive proposal went down like a cup of cold sick among Beijing’s local officials. It wasn’t just because he also said the New Year Purge of over 50 pan-dems was a blatant abuse of the law. And of course it didn’t help that the ‘rule of law’ he mentioned is the Western variety the CCP detests. But Harris’s greatest wrongdoing was probably suggesting that the Hong Kong administration and local pro-Beijing figures might take the lead in creating dialogue with the Chinese government. This win-win/charming/naive idea would, to the CCP’s ears, sound like an attempt to usurp its influence over the city. Beijing tells the local administration and shoe-shiners what to think – not the other way round. Foreign lawyers don’t tell anyone.

Thus the Liaison Office issued a statement accusing Harris of ‘personal arrogance and ignorance’, ‘dragging the Bar Association into the abyss’, ‘challenging the constitutional order’ (for daring to suggest a CCP edict was imperfect) and so on. And the local Liaison Office-run media are blasting Human Rights Monitor (founded by Harris) as a US-funded agency, and declaring that the Bar Association is turning into a new Civic Party and should be stripped of its right as a professional body to decide who can or can’t be a barrister. And now Beijing’s propaganda team drags an assortment of obscurities into the orchestrated barrage of criticism.

The moral is: if you don’t want your head bitten off, don’t be cute and make sensible suggestions to the CCP. Your role is to obey, not think.

In other legal matters, the Court of Final Appeal heard Jimmy Lai’s bail case yesterday. The government argued that…

…the default position for suspected national security law violations is that no bail should be granted to defendants.

Which basically means the regime can put anyone in jail for months – many months – on the flimsiest, most absurd charges, so long as it comes under the vague NatSec Law. And, if you are Jimmy Lai, transport you in chains in an armored truck under armed guard, just to send the rest of us that message (again): Your role is to obey, not think.

The hearing is also controversial because there is no overseas Court of Final Appeal judge present. For an extra dash of weirdness, in the actual trial starting in a couple weeks, Lai is being defended by Audrey Eu, while her brother Benjamin Yu is the prosecutor (replacing Dave Perry QC). This would not be allowed in some jurisdictions because, in theory, one sibling might (say) go easy on the other, to spare him/her embarrassment. HKFP explains. 

And then the Diplomat (picking up on Stand News) mentions an (easily) overlooked trend in the weaponization of Hong Kong’s courts: a multitude of individually minor travesties of justice in lower-level hearings before magistrates and district courts in which the police get away with providing false testimony.

To end on a cheery note, try a sample of the sudden outbreak of obituaries – from the Australian, the Guardian and the Business Standard. 

So much Mainlandization and general mayhem in the last few days: the Bar Association struggle session, a quick ‘consultation’ on real-name registration for SIM cards, hints at more ambush-lockdown compulsory-testing operations, and more. We start the week with Beijing’s Big BNO Freak-Out…

On Sunday, the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office … strongly condemned the British for violating its promise not to give BN(O) passport holders right of residence…

The office claimed the UK was beautifying its colonial history and called this “a shameless logic of bandits’, seriously hurting the feelings of the Chinese”.

Beijing’s local minions repeat warnings of retaliation against BNO passports, now the UK is offering those eligible for them plus dependants – maybe two-thirds of the population – a route to residency. There’s a lot of uncertainty about Beijing or local authorities ‘not recognizing’ BNOs. Can the government force airlines not to recognize the documents as valid for outbound travel? Will it sanction those who hold BNOs if they are, for example, civil servants? Can it even identify who holds one? If BNO holders are hassled (it seems to have started already), what message does it send the hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers holding Canadian, Australian and other documents?

There’s a lot going on here. 

The CCP has multiple reasons, yet again, to be angry. It sees ethnic Chinese as essentially the property of the emperor, and Beijing’s officials are seething that another country dares presume to have some sort of rights over part of the bloodline. It finds it insulting that foreigners claim to wish to ‘protect’ Chinese from their own rulers. On a more practical level, Beijing is paranoid about its subjects potentially having foreign allegiances (unless they are CCP elites’ family members). And of course it will be humiliating if sizable numbers take up the UK’s offer. Beijing’s immediate impulse here is simply to hurt someone, out of frustration.

To many Hong Kong people, citizenship has always been a rather fluid concept, like national identity. A foreign passport has long been seen as a desirable insurance policy, and even as a status symbol. Any effective action Beijing takes to penalize BNO (or other foreign passport) holders will have to be heavy-handed and intrusive. What better way than hinting at exit controls to confirm families’ suspicions that they need to get out of this city? Airy talk of ‘just replacing them with Mainlanders’ will further convince people to pack their bags. Most Hongkongers are descended from people who fled CCP rule in the 1950s-70s.

Hong Kong’s own local officials must recite Beijing’s line, but in reality they are torn by all this (and not just because Carrie Lam once promoted BNOs). Many middle-ranking civil servants/cops and their families have foreign passports. As we saw in the 1990s, the urge to emigrate is infectious. Any serious retaliation by Beijing against BNO-holding families could impact people’s lives a bit like US sanctions have affected the top officials – encouraging an exodus among bureaucrats along with the rest of the middle class.

In short, Beijing might really want to assimilate Hongkongers, but its fury over BNOs is more likely to create a bigger diaspora. Meanwhile, on top of ‘ambush’ lockdowns and SIM card worries, the FT reports that companies want Hong Kong written out of arbitration clauses in contracts.

Remember these arguments from 30 years ago?

The UK has stumbled on to a win-win. It can appear virtuous, while boosting its aging population with immigrants who are no less hard-working than Poles and Somalis, but who – after they have sold their apartment in Shatin – will be GBP millionaires.

How many cops does it take to unroll plastic barrier tape in Hong Kong’s attempt to beat the World 100-metres Barrier Tape Frantic Unravelling record? Count them. 

Note the Deputy Sub-Assistant Lockdown Ambush Commander sprinting into the sunset with the tape. His mission: to ensure no residents spot what’s happening and flee Kam Ping Street with seconds to spare. He is clearly massively chuffed – after much pleading with his boss – to have been picked for the job. His mother must be so proud. (Similar video of the cops in action here.)

Links for the weekend…

Hong Kong’s greatest living ‘innovation and governance architect’ says cycling is inconsiderate. (Selfish space-wasters on bikes do leave a mess on your Alphard when you drive into them, don’t they?)

An academic thinks Macau might not renew US casino operators’ licences when they expire next year. Obviously, it would be another way to hit back at the US right now. But Beijing has long been unhappy that foreigners were making so much profit from Mainland gamblers. And it would mirror the earlier pattern in other (infinitely less scummy) industries where overseas investors gained access to China’s market until Mainland companies acquired the expertise to do it themselves. 

In Atlantic, Timothy McClaughlin looks at the arrest of activist Tam Tak-chi for sedition and sees Hong Kong going back to being a colony.

What the Hong Kong government has lacked in creativity with regard to addressing the protest movement, it has made up for in finding ways to punish those involved.

(In fairness to the CCP, the Mainland under one-party rule is arguably a colony, too.)

The US State Dept offers writers of press releases a superb lesson in causing maximum offense to the right people with the smallest number of paragraphs and words: PRC pressure on Taiwan threatens regional peace.

China Media Project on how CCP theoretical organ Seeking Truth has become Xi Monthly over the last few years.

John Pomfret in Atlantic on what Xi Jinping is doing when he clamps down on private business

Why is he messing with this golden goose? In a word, control.

National Interest compares (in a fairly non-wacky way) Xi’s China with Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s very readable preface for the Thai edition of his book on the Hong Kong protest movement.

Lowy Interpreter on the wolf-warriors’ own goals, with reference to the Big Kimchi War…

…unnecessary, transitory chest-thumping over fermented cabbage.

Great thread on an arrogant-going-on-delusional Xi-inspired war-mongering piece in the SCMP (link included) by Zhou Bo…

Col. Zhou concludes by saying “Biden… can save China-US relations from going into free fall.” Hope springs eternal because otherwise, you are getting into a fight too early and therefore, likely to lose.

A good basic post-pandemic economic outlook for China by George Magnus.

Magnus Fiskesjo in LARB on Racism with Chinese Characteristics.

A Western artist sneaks subversive work into a Beijing exhibition. 

Did Covid-19 leak from a lab? A long deep look from New York magazine.

A review of Trade Wars are Class Wars by Klein and Pettis.

On off-topic out-of-area matters…

An extract from American Kompromat, a book on Russian influence over Donald Trump.

A digital game designer’s view of QAnon – a game that plays the players.

Hilarity of the week has been Reddit-based kids forcing hedge funds betting against GameStop into a ruinous short squeeze. David Webb explains why other, later-arriving short-sellers will, inevitably, ultimately win.

For your viewing pleasure: a hyper-in-depth analysis of Max Headroom (amazing VJ-concept wrecked by idiotic backstories. For hardcore 80s pop-culture/media geeks only).

In case you hadn’t noticed, Beijing is planning changes to Hong Kong’s ‘electoral’ system. This might seem superfluous. The CE is hand-picked by the CCP, with a small-circle rubber-stamp ‘election’ following. The Legislative Council has always been rigged, and is now largely cleared of pan-dems. District Councils are largely powerless, and now due to be cleansed of pan-dems as well. 

But just rigging outcomes is not good enough. Underlying polling figures still show that Beijing ‘loses’ whenever a free vote is allowed, making the process itself humiliating for the CCP. So we are now hearing talk of rejecting nasty Western-style democracy and replacing it with a healthy ‘consultative’ approach – essentially to strip universal public participation out of the formula.

Presumably, District Councils will end up being ‘elected’ by (Beijing-friendly) functional/United Front bodies – thus becoming like Municipal People’s Congresses, which send delegates further up the pyramid to rubber-stamp the regime’s decisions, like selecting Chief Executives. The symbolic presence of popular representatives in the Chief Executive ‘election’ procedures will end. 

This is not about control so much as appearances. The abandonment of just a pretense at a Western-style electoral system (outlined in the Basic Law) sends Hongkongers an obvious message about their cultural/national identity. And simply the sight of opponents within the essentially ceremonial structure drives the Leninist mind nuts. The system is perfect, so by definition there is no place for opposition or dissent. In order to maintain this state of bliss, it follows that accurate public opinion polls will also have to cease.

In other Hong Kong matters…

The FT reports (paywall) that the HKMA, SFC and Financial Services Bureau are phoning bankers and fund managers leaving Hong Kong for Singapore and Tokyo, to ask why they are relocating. 

The calls … described as new and unusual, asked for a full picture of the decision-making process behind the moves and the significance of the timing. 

Sadly, no mention of the answers the agencies received. It would be a bigger story if these agencies weren’t keeping tabs on this trend.

And a Bloomberg op-ed wonders whether Beijing is more nervous about suppressing Hong Kong than we might think. The circumstantial evidence is that the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China – the organization behind the annual Tiananmen vigil – survives. 

Of course, the June 4 gathering itself is suspended owing to Covid. But continued toleration of the vigil was one of Governor Chris Patten’s dozen or so tests of whether Beijing was upholding One Country Two Systems. Another example of Beijing’s supposed restraint would be RTHK, which remains editorially independent and vibrant (notwithstanding attacks on specific programming and staff members). 

So maybe the CCP is slightly mindful about upsetting international opinion. Or maybe it just has a long list of hostile forces to work through.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam describes the anti-Covid lockdown in Jordan – which 98% of armchair experts agree was chaotic and pointless – as a success. She says her officials might do it again, though on a smaller scale – limited to just a street or a few adjoining buildings. She has omniscient power and knows for certain that future suspected clusters or outbreaks will be less extensive than in Jordan. 

But – just in case we think she is going soft – she adds that the government might impose several such lockdowns at the same time in different places. And to keep everyone on their toes, there will be no leaks or other announcements, so the operations will be ‘raid/ambush-style’, to use her own inimitably crap choice of wording.

And voila! At an intersection in deepest Yau Ma Tei, the cops suddenly descend and roll out the expandable barriers to seal off several buildings, while plain-clothes nurses with nets and spears fan out into alleyways, where they in wait to to pounce on passers-by. 

Not being a public-health expert, I can’t say for sure whether this lockdown approach makes sense (most doubt it). The problem is that, even if Carrie and her officials merely act competently – let alone dazzlingly – the aura of stupidity and malice is so thick that we will only perceive another mess.

Are the quasi-military tactics and language a conscious choice by forces that wish to acclimatize citizens to life in a police state? Or have top officials so thoroughly absorbed Beijing’s paranoid hatred of Hongkongers that testing elderly slum residents for Covid and clubbing MTR passengers are all part of the same thing? Either way, the government seems compelled to alienate the public through its contemptuous style – a need to assert crude dominance – even while the community has by global standards done a better-than-average job of fighting the virus. 

Which reminds me – what’s happened to that PR agency Carrie hired?

Some mid-week links…

The SCMP reports on Hong Kong’s latest exciting demographic figures. One minute there’s not enough land, the next minute there aren’t enough people.

Christopher DeWolf at ZolimaCityMag explains how bureaucrats forgot – and the community quickly discovered – the Bishop Hill reservoir, which looks like some Byzantine emperor’s stables.

From Sebastian Veg: Music in the Umbrella Movement – on the role played by music in Hong Kong’s protests, complete with tons of links to the songs and other material.

And SMH looks at Xi Jinping’s ‘doublespeak masterclass’ to the Davos World Economic Forum bore-fest.

Meet Dan, who’s moving his savings out of the reach of the NatSec Regime. Like a lot of people, he was spooked by the cops’ freezing of Ted Hui’s family members’ local savings. 

I know people who have transferred much of their cash and investment accounts from HSBC or BoC across the street to the local CitiBank or DBS branch – but that leaves the wealth in Hong Kong and presumably just as exposed to freezing or seizure. Dan already seems to have an account in Canada. But what’s the simplest way for a plain retail saver to move money offshore if they do not have an overseas bank account/address/residency? 

(And no, not crypto.)

The Hong Kong government’s Mainland-style lockdown/mass-testing in Jordan was – let’s be generous – no more clumsily executed than we would expect. (Full photo-journal here.) The operation was leaked (maybe one in eight residents fled) and involved chained-up buildings. Not that there’s a neat, warm and cuddly way to do it, but you could at least make an effort to disguise the contempt for poor, elderly and brown people. Maybe chuck a few hundred bucks in with the instant noodles and Ma Ling luncheon meat, for the inconvenience? It makes you wonder what happened in Wuhan. (Official statement tries to sound sensitive.)

After putting 7,000 under house arrest – many in crowded and unsanitary subdivided apartments – officials find only a dozen or so positive cases. So was it panicky, heartless incompetence? Or did the lockdown yield useful and reassuring results, marred by an unfortunate dash of giving-Muslims-pork? 

Philip Bowring criticizes the whole pandemic strategy as disproportionate. The negligible impact of Covid on the city’s death rate seems to bear this out – but of course we could argue that at least some of the measures have helped keep Covid at bay. For all we know, if the government hadn’t closed the beaches, half of us would now be dead. If the authorities just pretended to know what they were doing, it would help. After all, apart from freak places like Taiwan and New Zealand, the whole world has been clueless.

As it is, citizens are left with the impression that the administration’s priorities reflect a traditionally dismal quality of governance, amplified by the malignance of the NatSec-era. It seems the number-one priority is to make sure all decisions on vaccines and travel restrictions please the CCP. Next comes the need to exploit the health crisis to suppress political protests and opposition. Third is to minimize the economic and social impact on our friends. Looking after the local community comes last.

Some good background on the origins of China’s court system in this SCMP piece by Jerome Cohen on the grim outlook for Hong Kong’s judicial independence…

Beijing and its Hong Kong agents have now made it clearer than ever that they expect Hong Kong judges to behave like their mainland counterparts. Local lawyers, especially barristers who specialise in criminal defence, should not believe they will be exempt from similar pressures.

Liberal Studies assignment is to watch an in-depth video presented by Alexei Navalny on the corruption of his poisoner Vladimir Putin, exemplified by an immensely tacky Putin’s Palace. Looking forward to the one on Xi Jinping. (Found the place on Google Maps here.)

The HK Police bring in Howard the Not Very Convincing Kim Jong-un Lookalike for possession of a gun that isn’t a gun and which he says he doesn’t have anyway – but since when did something have to exist to be a national security threat?

China imposes sanctions on the likes of John Bolton, who is chuffed. US sanctions on Chinese/Hong Kong ‘elites’ hurt because such people like to move their assets and families to the US. It doesn’t work the other way round. (See also the SCMP’s Letter of the Week.)

And then there’s this…  

HK’s Curriculum Development Council named a committee “Committee on the renamed subject” to rename the subject of liberal studies as the Education Bureau decided to rename the subject but hasn’t come up with a new name.

Surely that should be ‘yet to be renamed’? There’s Orwellian, and there’s Kafkaesque, and there’s Hong Kong bureaucracy in the age of NatSec. How about ‘illiberal studies’? 

On the subject of education, Harrow International School – the publicly subsidized (via land grant) ‘non-profit’ college for rich Mainlanders’ kids – has paid HK$240 million in fees to a company owned by some of its own board members. I know of a case whereby a British private school essentially franchises its name to a local campus via a company that provides ‘consulting/management services’. Presumably, this is something along those lines. A nice deal for the people who own the go-between. (And presumably legitimate – surely the Hong Kong officials didn’t imagine brand-name English boarding schools would whore themselves out for free?)

Some reading you might have missed…

In HKFP, the collision between the NatSec Law and the Common Law systems.

From the FFC’s Correspondent, can RTHK survive? The amazing thing is that the public broadcaster has still barely been rectified. The transition to propaganda outlet has barely begun. As if it has some sort of magic force field protecting it from Leninist ‘serve-the-Party’ duties.

A translation of Mainland academic Chen Duanhong’s National Constitution Day speech. David Ownby’s introduction is worth reading, even if you can’t put up with the Schmittian BS of the speech itself.

A Bloomberg op-ed urges Beijing to tone down its ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy. Who will dare tell Xi Jinping to get over his delusional ego-trip? (Anyway, the soft-power obnoxiousness will help dissuade Biden from lapsing into Obama-era Panda-indulgence.)

Perry Link on why so many Chinese dissidents and other anti-CCP folk have (had?) a soft spot for Donald Trump.

(And with all that in mind, Taiwan’s ambassador was invited to Joe Biden’s inauguration.)

Not sure about the book, but this review of a ‘Hong Kong expat novel’ is pretty good.

He is the everyman who was here at that time saying what everybody like him said.

Global Times gets stroppy about how kimchi is really just the same as paocai, sort of, in some ways. (As an artisanal craftsman of both, I would say GT is half-right, but since they’re making soft-power obnoxiousness out of it, I’ll let them stew in their own brine. Luckily, no-one’s told them about sauerkraut.)