Big Lychee, Various Sectors

I didn’t intend to look through the government’s Northern Metropolis Development Strategy, but after an astute observer of such things assured me it ‘looks like it was pulled out of someone’s ass at the last minute’, I obviously couldn’t resist.

And oh boy – is this utter bilge or what? Welcome to ‘Twin Cities, Three Circles’, which is a ‘strategic spatial structure of the Hong Kong-Shenzhen boundary area’. 

Basically, someone was told to use some existing plans and a bunch of buzzwords to contrive cross-border hub-zone-type districts that make currently separate (even quite distant) areas look like naturally united neighbourhoods.

Thus you have: the Shenzhen Bay Quality Development Circle; the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Close Interaction Circle; and the Mirs Bay/Yan Chau Tong Eco-recreation/tourism Circle.

The first echoes the ‘Quality Living Circle’ promised by the Greater Bay Area, but for tech and logistics activities straddling Yuen Long, Nanshan and Qianhai, with some mangrove conservation thrown in. The second sees a ‘Technopole’ sprouting alongside Fanling and Sheung Shui and hooking up with a New Financial Centre, an Innovative Financial Industrial Belt, an Emerging Industrial Belt, an Internet Industrial Cluster and other hub-zones over in Shenzhen, plus some fish pond conservation. The third is a desperate attempt to find a destiny and role for the areas around Mirs Bay, resorting to sustainable, traditional and cultural blah blah.

If you never realized how important it is to make sure geographers never get their hands on hallucinatory drugs, check out some of the transport/connectivity maps.

I’ve just reached the episode where they have to play marbles, and I must say Squid Game is getting rather compellingly grim. Depends on the rate of binge-watching, but I might be absent for three or four days. (An academic’s view.)

A few things you might have missed…

HKFP on the judiciary’s response to the government’s attempt to apply ‘joint enterprise’ to riot…

The Court of Final Appeal is set to hand down a far-reaching verdict to decide whether people who are not physically present at an illegal assembly or a riot may face the same criminal charges as the actual participants under the legal principle in question.

Also HKFP, a discussion of the level of policing on National Day gives rise to some awkward comparisons…

Whereas the last Governor of Hong Kong could amble around pressing the flesh, Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive in Name Only, does not dare venture out without a phalanx of armed police sheltering her from any possible casual contact with the public. 

Indeed, the suspicion lurks that one reason why Chris Patten’s name is greeted with such venom by the current rulers simply comes down to jealousy over his popularity and ease of contact with the people he was governing.

A thread on (and link to) HK Alliance videos taken down from the group’s YouTube channel – many are being archived elsewhere on the site.

Hong Kong’s anti-Covid measures amusingly compared to EM Forster’s The Machine Stops.

From Asia Times, more on the purge of Jiang-faction officials Sun Lijun et al…

Xi has been trying to cut off Jiang and all previous leaders, but there are simply too many … To isolate them totally would deprive Xi of part of his own legitimacy, derived from being born into this elite. But to keep them around undermines Xi’s power.

Politico on how Xi lost Australia…

Nearly 10 years ago, Australia thought it was on the cusp of a beautiful friendship with China: It was opening up its economy to Beijing, wanted to teach Mandarin in schools and invited the Chinese president to address parliament. 

Now, that’s all over.

…Xi’s “wolf warrior” tactics simply pushed Australia right back into its traditional military nexus, with the U.S. and U.K., costing Beijing a potentially valuable partner in the region.

(Also from Politico – China’s self-defeating bullying of Lithuania.)

And CSIS on how Beijing, on balance, came out the loser in the two Michaels/Meng Wanzhou saga…

The defeat for Beijing was not absolute, but it was quite comprehensive, and those who advised the Xi leadership to take this approach will have a lot of explaining to do…

China’s scheme to force Meng’s release by taking hostages backfired in ways big and small. China showed its teeth, but instead of cowering in fear, Canada and the United States held firm. Chinese state media is highlighting Meng’s return home as proof of their victory, but this claim is reminiscent of the Lu Xun character Ah Q, who deluded himself into thinking that his string of failures were actually successes. 

New Statesman brings up the rear and asks whether China’s ‘rise’ is inevitable.

China’s Belt and Road is a ripoff, says academic research – news story here.

…35% of BRI projects have run into serious implementation problems, including corruption scandals, labor violations, environmental hazards and public protests, according to the study. That compares to 21% of non-BRI projects.

BRI projects take 36% longer to implement than non-BRI projects, and face a higher probability of being shut down by host countries because of “corruption and overpricing concerns, as well as major changes in public sentiment that make it difficult to maintain close relations with China,” the report finds.

Example: dirt-poor Laos now has a shiny high-speed rail line. To help pay off debt, it has passed majority control of Électricité du Laos to a Chinese power firm. (Dire headline from the Economist.)

A CNN feature on torture in Xinjiang witnessed by a defecting police officer – a lot of stomach-turning detail.

On cultural matters…

Some wall art by Badiucao in New York.

Worth a quick perusal if you’re a historiography fan, from Project Gutenberg – Hong Kong by Gene Gleason, 1963.

Finally, do you ever hear Hong Kong Thais or Filipinos complaining over and over that Hong Kong restaurants offering their homelands’ cuisine are all, universally, always terrible? No. From the SCMP, a thought-provoking report on That Problem your Malaysian and Singaporean friends have… 

It’s remarkable how every one of them likes to whine and grumble about not being able to find the foods they miss from their hometown … Even when the food is actually good, they’ll say it pales compared to Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh … At every opportunity they like to remind us how all the Malaysian and Singaporean restaurants in Hong Kong suck.

Only Chief Executive Carrie Lam would deliver a three-hour Policy Address. It’s all here. 

After years of complaining about a crippling shortage of land, the government has suddenly noticed all the underutilized space along the border between Yuen Long, Lo Wu, Sheung Shui and Fanling. It says it could accommodate another half-million or so homes. The resulting contiguous ‘metropolis’ (population 2.5 million) will form some sort of integration-friendly suburb in which Hong Kong’s Deep North can merge seamlessly into Shenzhen. All the signage will be in simplified characters and Pinyin, and facial-recognition robots will patrol the streets ensuring children aren’t playing online games.

It will also include a ‘technopole’ in San Tin…

…dubbed “Hong Kong’s Silicon Valley”, which would be a community for IT talent and provide a total gross floor area as big as 16½ Science Parks.

Can you imagine the Hong Kong government ever devising a way to encourage tech that isn’t a real-estate project?

Another white-elephant, because of course there’s always room for one more. This will be the Greater Bay Opportunities!!! Express Rail, linking Hung Shui Kiu to glamorous go-go Qianhai (presumably along a similar route to, or beneath, the Shenzhen Bay Bridge and on a bit further north to the much-hyped financial/tech/blah blah services cooperation hub-zone).

Carrie doesn’t usually indulge herself with little luxuries, but she couldn’t resist a spot of bureaucratic restructuring – combining various civil service departments like culture and tourism into one new ministry. It looks great on an organization chart. You, the public, will never notice any difference, we promise.

(Which reminds me of a great revelation I recently experienced. Walking in Causeway Bay, pondering the fact that pretty much only residents may, with difficulty, currently enter Hong Kong, it suddenly occurred to me that not a single person you see around you on the MTR or the street is a tourist. Amazing.)

Much of this stuff is vague and might not even happen. But one thing we can guarantee is that there’s a lot more to be done on national security – covering cybersecurity, a ban on fake news, a mega-courtroom and more. The Security Secretary, Carrie says…

“…is drawing up effective and pragmatic proposals and provisions, and formulating effective publicity programmes to prevent those who are opposed to China and attempt to destabilise Hong Kong from taking advantage of the situation to mislead the public with ill intentions.”

Not creepy at all.

The CE appeared to get close to tears towards the end of her speech (who didn’t?). Some amateur – extremely amateur – observers interpret this to mean she has chosen not to aim for a second term as CE. This is a joke. It is not for her to decide whether to ‘try’ for a second term: she will do what the CCP tells her, and that’s that. Most of us would cry if Beijing ordered us to stay in the thankless pseudo-job for another five years.

Carrie Lam spells out her (or her bosses’) Covid travel reopening priorities…

Hong Kong’s ties with mainland China are more important than international business and global travel connections, according to the Asian financial hub’s leader.

“Of course, international travel is important, international business is important, but by comparison the mainland is more important,” Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam told a regular press briefing…

“…the most important thing is to open the border”.

No-one’s saying opening the border isn’t important, though note that Beijing seems to be in no rush at all to do it.

More here.

If I have both toothache and an ingrown toenail, do I postpone calling my dentist because the podiatrist can’t see me for a month? If I am running out of both toilet paper and beer, do I deliberately not buy any toilet paper until and unless I’ve bought the beer? Do I justify letting unwashed dishes stack up in the kitchen sink for days on the grounds that I still need to vacuum the floor this week?

It would be bad enough if Beijing was imposing this on Hong Kong simply for the sake of appearances, because they don’t want Hong Kong to look (or feel) different/autonomous from/better than the Mainland. Or as a pretext to (say) access residents’ personal and medical info. But – as the tone of the Bloomberg piece suggests – the insistence that we stay closed off until the (decoupling) Mainland eventually deigns to open up to the world seems more like a way to de-internationalize Hong Kong. 

* glances nervously at floor and kitchen sink *

Speaking of household chores, there’s one type of international travel Hong Kong must allow at all costs.

Just in: please remember in your prayers.

Macabre Sense of Humour of the Week Award goes to the Hong Kong government for creating a severe shortage of affordable housing, then having a photo-op of an official handing out fire extinguishers to tenants in tiny and dangerous subdivided apartments. In a Korean dystopia-flic, the next scene would be the guy’s entrails slithering down the grimy stairwell. 

A United Front zombie casts doubt on whether the Democratic Party will be allowed to run in the new fake-election system, saying it…

…must review its platform, respect the Communist Party-led state system, not act against national security to meet the minimum requirements of the principle of ‘patriots ruling Hong Kong’. This is the only way it could hope to be reborn.

Beijing’s overseers would probably like a token ultra-moderate to take part for the sake of appearances. Watch the DP agonize over this.

Another United Front drone says the Buy-One-Get-Two No Extra Charge locally-enacted Article 23 NatSec Law will – heard this before? – affect only a small group of people. ‘Who’, he goes on, ‘have been told repeatedly to stop’. Who wrote Tam’s lines for him? Do I detect the same spin-doctor who thought up the fire extinguisher PR stunt?

Similar you-won’t-feel-a-thing cheer from Financial Secretary Paul Chan, who says the Evergrande problem will have only a very minimal impact on Hong Kong – as our stock market hits a 52-week low, and the China-only index a five-plus years one. While over the border…

local authorities … are resorting to various measures to protect the interest of their communities [ie, to stop Evergrande from using local assets to pay off out-of-area obligations], as they are anxious to ensure stability and a protest-free period during the ruling Communist Party’s centenary [or any time].

To put it in context: these stats say salaries in Shenzhen are around a quarter of what they are in New York City, yet property prices are maybe a fifth higher. (Not sure of the source, or whether it includes migrant workers, etc, but it sounds about right – an affordability ratio of 30 or 40.)

Paul Chan’s confidence may be well-grounded: Beijing’s policymakers will surely blink at some point and do whatever it takes to stop the Mainland’s property bubble from bursting. Assuming, of course, they can. What happens if, for example, thousands of Mainland owners rush to sell their Hong Kong apartments? Contagion can be surprising sometimes.  

On cultural matters… Fascinating clip (in Canto) about how film-makers brought the streets of 1980s Hong Kong back to life for a movie about Anita Mui. Especially interesting for bores like me for whom anachronisms (hairstyles, dress, billboard ads’ typefaces) jump out and ruin recent-modern period dramas. Watch out for the venerable old Lee Theatre at 0.38. I remember watching David Lynch’s Blue Velvet there – had to go to a nearby bar and order a double whisky afterwards.

A Stand News explainer on the ongoing second NatSec Law trial, of Ma Chun-man…

Unlike the city’s first national security trial, which ended in July, Ma is not accused of committing violence and is charged solely on the basis of what he said.

Lingnan University fires academics Hui Bo-keung and Lo Wing-sang critical of the NatSec regime. Better news for the boss at HKU, however.

The Confederation of Trade Unions formally disbands.

Nice Try of the Week Award goes to the HK Police for issuing special social-media quasi-memes marking Mahatma Gandhi and International Non-Violence Day. Security Secretary PK Tang can’t understand why many Hong Kong people dislike the cops. Also on Twitter, a selection of the HK Police’s greatest hits.

An ongoing rectification of Jiang Zemin-faction/Zeng Qinghong-linked Public Security and other officials in China deals with Sun Lijun and gets going on Fu Zhenghua. Asia Sentinel does a bit of digging and finds an intriguing, if not very specific, Hong Kong angle. (For more, see the original 2020 IRIS think-tank report – at least do a search on ‘Hong Kong’ to see the now-Security Secretary getting a mention. So far as anyone on planet Earth can tell, elite CCP factional power-struggles are going Xi Jinping’s way.) 

References of Hong Kong in many Mainland TV shows have been replaced with ‘大灣區’ – ‘Greater Bay Area’. Watch for RTHK and others to follow suit – for example ‘hugely popular Greater Bay Area movie star Jackie Chan’. Former CE CY Leung called for this new identity three years ago.

The SCMP reports a government Covid advisor as saying that opening Hong Kong’s border with the Mainland will take ‘at least four to five months of negotiations’. So that could be six, seven or eight months. Why can’t negotiations take four or five days – or hours, even? Or does the word ‘negotiations’ really mean ‘an excuse to continue sealing Hong Kong off from the rest of the world’?

In case you haven’t heard: the first batch of the CCP’s spiritual pedigree (you know – the one forged during the Party’s century-old endeavor) was officially released on Wednesday. It says so here.

Today’s local sub-batch of spiritual pedigree…

Hong Kong NatSec police charge a 16-year-old girl, and six others, with ‘conspiracy to incite the commission by other persons of the offence of subversion’. Assuming you can’t incite yourself, I guess we can strip this down to ‘conspiracy to incite subversion’. Or is the ‘by other persons’ part there to make clear the seven were not conspiring to incite one another? (Or can you incite yourself?)

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old is in jail and denied bail, accused of ‘inciting other persons to organise, plan, commit or participate in overthrowing or undermining the basic system of the People’s Republic of China’.

I hope these two young women one day make it to a free society and put these charges right at the top of their resumes. If ‘Aged 16: charged with conspiracy to incite subversion’ doesn’t get you an interview, what will?

The trial begins of Captain America 2.0 – Ma Chun-man – for shouting and displaying slogans in public places with intent to incite secession on 20 occasions last year.

RTHK issues new editorial guidelines – full of NatSec blah blah blah, must cultivate national identity, uphold constitution, blah blah, but steer clear of involvement with foreign organizations or inciting hatred against the government, and much else. Guideline-compliant story here. Some extracts from the (apparently 100-page) rules here – how to deny Taiwan’s relations with other countries and when to pull material from online archives.

By a startling coincidence – or is someone obsessed with these things? – involvement with foreign organizations and inciting hatred will also crop up in the Article 23 NatSec legislation, which will fill gaps left (carelessly? in haste? deliberately?) by Beijing’s own NatSec Law. The hang-up about ‘inciting hatred of the Hong Kong government’ seems specifically driven by cops who get upset every time someone mocks them.

Lawmakers in the all-patriot Legislative Council take turns – the line goes on and on – to demand more respect and protection for the national flag.

Ten district council members are disqualified for not sounding sufficiently deep and meaningful when reciting their oaths. They include some from the Democratic Party, which is still debating whether to participate in the forthcoming LegCo quasi-elections. It’s hard to believe they will be so self-absorbed and obtuse as to participate now. Actually, it isn’t.

Some reading for the long weekend…

Columbia Journalism Review on what’s left of a free press in Hong Kong, and how they plan to keep going.

CNN on China’s new quarantine mega-facility, reflecting the zero-Covid approach to which Hong Kong must defer, even though the rest of the world is opening up again.

David Webb finds that, as a percentage of government annual revenue, the value of the land occupied by the Hong Kong Club is the same today (2.42%) as it was when the Club bought the plot in 1894. Who says markets are not perfect? 

Stand News (In Chinese) interviews a Hongkonger who works as a truck driver in the UK, and can’t handle all the enquiries he’s getting from goods vehicle licence holders back in his hometown.

The offshore 8964 Museum website is reportedly being blocked. And you can try for yourself here. There are degrees of Internet censorship, and experts say this example (government asking ISPs to block a site) is the least creepy and easy to circumvent, if that’s any consolation.

Never mind – you’ve still got RTHK, provided you don’t mind Xinhua propaganda presented without mention of its provenance.

Also in online NatSec news, heavy handed and apparently selective anti-doxxing action.

In the interests of sanity-preservation, just some links…

HKFP on Hong Kong prison authorities’ problems with political prisoners and M&Ms. 

A site called Naked Capitalism on why HSBC is – possibly – screwed.

Scholars Stage on Xi Jinping’s ’pivot to the state’…

What do K-pop fan groups, after school tutoring companies, Meituan delivery men, online algorithms, plastic surgeons, overheated housing markets, celebrity ranking lists, and tech monopolies have in common?

…Each [crackdown] targets an industry that seems to strip people of their agency and rob them of their dignity. Each seems to hijack healthy behavior with a set of short term incentives whose end results are self destructive and degrading.

A summary of People’s Daily article ‘Why we can succeed’. The answer, of course, is the CCP – without which Chinese would be starving and enslaved by evil foreigners. Speaking of whom: ’the British are bastards’, and other CCP views of the world.

On a literally brighter note: Hong Kong’s most beautiful and glamorous expat community, yellow-crested cockatoos – a common sight from my own apartment. 

Consistent sentencing guidelines were never the Hong Kong judiciary’s strong point. And then came the NatSec era. Now you get three months in prison for stabbing Long Hair, but nine years for stabbing Junius Ho. Simple explanation: in majority pro-democracy Hong Kong, pro-Beijing people are relatively scarce and have ‘endangered species’ protected status.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam voices embarrassingly fulsome approval for Beijing’s whiny fact sheet on ‘US Interference in Hong Kong Affairs and Support for Anti-China, Destabilizing Forces’. Among examples of dastardly American intrusion into domestic matters: putting electric candles in the consulate’s windows.

Which brings us to Security Secretary PK Tang, who says that commemorating the Tiananmen massacre may or may not be legal, depending on factors. The interesting thing here is the wording (from RTHK)…

…authorities would take into consideration a number of factors when judging whether it is legal for people to commemorate the ending of the student-led protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, but stressed that they could not attempt to overturn the government.

‘Ending of the student-led protests’ is a new euphemism – to be used by those who find ‘clearing the square’ too icky. (And how exactly do people holding vigils ‘attempt to overturn the government’?)

Tang was speaking after the Hong Kong Alliance formally disbanded. Stand News presents a list of 49 civil society organizations – mainly unions and protest groups – that have ceased to exist in the last nine months.

Chris PK Tang also says December’s Legislative Council elections pose a higher risk of violence, mayhem, carnage, terrorism, etc than the recent Election Committee polls, because there will be more voters. It took 5,000 valiant cops to ensure a peaceful election for the 4,380 voters in the EC ‘election’. If we scale that up, we will need maybe a million cops in December (plus three years to count all the ballots). However, that assumes people bother turning out to vote in rigged and pointless pseudo-polls. December is a nice time to go hiking and picnicking. It may be the authorities will need just one van of cops, plus 10 minutes to do the counting.

On the subject of counting ballots (if any) in December: the civil servants who oversee the process will have to undergo political screening to ensure ‘absolute loyalty’. To whom? Why – to the winners, of course!

Meng Wanzhou’s (personal) deferred prosecution agreement with the US Justice Dept suggests that the (Trump-era) case against her was not as strong as it could be. To Beijing, of course, she is royalty. The kidnapping of the two Michaels, and their subsequent freeing upon Meng’s release, are a one-off event.

The ‘US caved’ critics say that Beijing has now ‘learned that taking hostages works’. But the world has learned more vividly than ever that China really will arrest innocent foreign citizens for extortion purposes. Will the threat of hostage-taking make Western countries more likely to defer to the CCP’s wishes in future? If anything, it simply increases the Chinese regime’s reputation as thuggish and lawless (and confirms Huawei’s untrustworthy, quasi-government status).

The sudden resolution of this affair involved a classic example of the CCP prioritizing its domestic audience over its international reputation. The state media contrived a rapturous homecoming for Meng as a moment of great national pride, while not even mentioning her plea deal or the simultaneous release of the two Michaels (later saying they have been given ‘medical parole’). The CCP pumps up patriotic hubris among its subjects like it inflated expectations of ever-rising apartment prices. In the long run, Beijing’s ‘victory’ is likely to prove a pyrrhic one.

Will Beijing really feel emboldened enough to pull a comparable retaliatory/blackmail stunt again? It would be a sign of delusion rather than strength. With perfect timing: a Foreign Policy piece explaining the real problem – China is a declining power.

This week’s Not Creepy At All Award goes to Security Secretary PK Tang, who says he knows what you are thinking in your heart and (if it’s a forbidden thought) will arrest you for it. 

The weird – well, one weird – part is that he is afraid you might celebrate the Double Tenth, the anniversary on October 10 of the beginning of the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Manchu Qing dynasty. That movement was led by Sun Yat-sen, a Chinese national hero for whom a museum, park, heritage trail and vaccination-cum-sports centre are named here in Hong Kong. It sounds like patriots should be encouraged to mark it, but it is (or was) the national day of the Kuomintang-run Republic of China, which was defeated by the CCP in 1949. So long as a remnant of the rival RoC state remains in Taiwan to declare it the national holiday, the CCP will consider the event glorious but refuse to acknowledge the actual date.

Now it gets really confusing. PK Tang sees celebration of the RoC national day as tantamount to supporting Taiwan ‘secession’ or independence. But to true Taiwanese, the overthrow of the Qing dynasty is something that happened in a foreign country which later colonized their island, transplanting KMT symbols like Sun Yat-sen that remain as vestiges today. October 10, like the CKS memorial, is not theirs – it’s a Chinese anniversary. If you support Taiwan independence, ignore the Double Tenth. If Tang’s cops arrest anyone, it will probably be supporters of the KMT, who are the nearest thing Beijing has to pro-unification friends in Taiwan.

Another thing about Taiwan – if you run in a primary election there, you get on TV. In Hong Kong, they put you in jail without bail. And they adjourn your case so you stay there another two months at least.

RTHK’s English-language Twitter account, the station’s last bastion of hilariously sub-subversive headlines and snark, has ceased to update. 

A mish-mash of weekend reading and viewing,,,

From HKFP: how Hong Kong’s leaders have changed their tune on Tiananmen. (Part of a series on the rewriting of the past in Hong Kong.) 

The ‘improved’ election system – and Beijing’s deep concern for Hong Kong people – mean that the city’s housing problems will soon end, right? But not before Sun Hung Kai release their new project in Sai Kung, including a couple of units that are 88 square feet, or about the same as two king-size beds. A couple of hundred of the other apartments are more generous – roughly the size of a parking space.

Toll-booths of the HK-Zhuhai-Macao bridge in HK, seen from space (a similarly empty place). How many Sun Hung Kai micro-flats could fit here?

Brian Hioe live-tweeted a 10-hour conference held by various tankies (Qiao Collective, Code Pink, People’s Forum) on why the US and capitalism are to blame for everything and – most of all – China is wonderful. Not sure why. But if deranged nonentities are your thing, there’s lots to read…

She’s actually claiming that traditional Chinese medicine has a 90% effective rate in treating COVID, claims this can combat the “colonization of medical knowledge” … She claims that the US “annexed the island of Formosa”…  

CCP infiltration of British universities.

The Evergrande consensus forecast seems to be that Beijing will relax mortgage restrictions in order to encourage people to borrow money to buy overpriced apartments that they will leave empty. More on this, for those who like it: George Magnus on the tip of an iceberg; NPR interviews property buyers; and Anne Stevenson-Yang’s video comments from a couple of days ago in the form of quick-to-digest written words.

On out-of-area matters…

Over at Reddit there’s a Herman Cain Award for Trumpist hicks who publicly reject vaccines as the work of freedom-hating Satanic libtards – and then die of Covid. Officially, this is all in very bad taste. Unofficially…

…they have made their ICU beds. Now they can lie in them, and sadly, die in them.

British comedy actor Bernard Cribbins in amusing whodunit Dangerous Davies – The Last Detective, from 1981.

Rick Astley and a band called the Blossoms performing the Smiths’ tribute to Hong Kong’s Security Secretary, This Charming Man.

On one of my occasional inspection visits to Marks & Spencer, I find the US and UK are building on their new subs-for-Oz relationship by expanding cooperation – unwisely – into cuisine…